{"id": "king_c07ac681-092b-41e9-bb3d-c900028ed5f5", "input": "I would call the order the committee, the King County Council's committee to hold for November 17, 2021. And as we start today, I'd like to acknowledge the traditional lands, the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We thank these partakers of the land who have lived here and continue to live there since time immemorial. I'd also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians in the county who have brought their cultural ways of life here and greatly enrich our community. As we are well aware now, due to the public health emergency, Governor Inslee has issued an emergency order suspending the section of the Open Public Buildings Act, requiring that we have a physical space for the public to watch our meetings. We'll be conducting today's meeting via Zoom. As has been our habit through the pandemic and too has to be noted will get started. Help us manage the meeting. Ask allows the public as well as executive and council staff keep your video off until just before you plan to speak. Additionally, if you're collecting via a cell phone and you wish to provide public comment, please connect the meeting through the Zoom application, which will eliminate possible delays and issues in a meeting. So if you're at all able to connect to the zoom out, if you wish to give the testimony not simply by telephone without asking, please call the room. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember, founder. Here. Councilmember Dombrowski. Here. Councilmember Dunn. Council member Cornwall Council member Lambert. Yeah. Council member up to grow here. Councilmember one right there. Councilmember Sala. You're. Mr. Chair. You're Mr. Chair. You have a quorum. Great. Councilmember Cowell's going to ask you permission to record the minutes of the member third meeting. A move, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Minutes of a previous meeting before a sumo discussion. All those in favor please signify by saying I. But I opposed nay. The ayes have it, the minutes are approved. And that takes us to public comment. Do you see anyone in the call for public comment? No, I do not, Mr. Chair. Neither do I. Taking a quick look. If we are making a mistake and a new one is here for public comment. Would you please turn your video on? Raise your hand. In some way get our attention. Seeing no one. If we ran the mistake and someone was here for public comment, please email me at Joe Dot McDermott about King County dot gov and we will take a public comment later in the meeting. And if you've missed, you know that Joan Dot McDermott, Art Carney, dot gov. And that takes us to our first item on today's agenda, which is the proposed health through housing implementation plan. We had an initial briefing on this item at our last meeting. The ordinance was duly referred to the Regional Policy Committee and the Committee as a whole. It was amended and passed by the Regional Policy Committee last week. It was Sanders supporter and Cherie Sue from council staff were here to provide the staff report. And Ms.. Sanders, are you leading off today? Yes, I am. Thank you. Good morning. Good morning. April Sanders, council policy staff. As you said, I'm joined today by my colleagues Sam Porter and Sherri Sue. The materials for item five began on page eight of your packet. Proposed ordinance 2020 10330 would adopt the initial Health three housing implementation plan to govern the expenditure of health through housing sales and use tax proceeds. We last briefed this in CAO on November 2nd, so I won't go through the entire staff report or rather review what action took place in our PC last week. This item received a mandatory dual referral and was amended and passed by the Regional Policy Committee. Last Wednesday. The APC passed a series of amendments which are summarized on page 26 of your packet. The RPC passed or sorry, Amendment one amended any reporting requirements in the ordinance language. In the underlying ordinance, the committee is required to annually send a letter to the Executive and the Clerk of the Council to notify them that the committee's annual reporting through website update is available for review. The amendment required the annual report to be transmitted by the Executive on behalf of the Advisory Committee, as well as a motion acknowledging receipt of the report, the clerk would be required to provide an electronic copy to all council members as well as members and alternates of the RPC. Amendment to replace Attachment eight with the revised Attachment eight that made various technical corrections and clarifications in the initial implementation plan. The remaining amendments amended that revised Attachment Day Amendment three required notification to the Regional Policy Committee members and alternates for any substantive budget changes. Note that in the proposed implementation plan, substantive budget changes are defined as a change or series of changes within the same calendar year. The change a health or housing strategies annual allocation by more than the greater of 5% or $150,000. Amendment four removes the preference for advisory committee members to be from cities that did not separately impose the sales tax. Amendment five prohibited more than one fourth of the advisory committee from being from a single jurisdiction. And lastly, Amendment six made a series of changes on annual reporting requirements. The amendment removed the line stating that the Healthy Housing Dashboard update would be used to satisfy annual reporting requirements, and it added information that would be included in that dashboard. It stated that the annual report is to be transmitted by the Executive on behalf of the Advisory Committee and that the Clerk would provide an electronic copy to all councilmembers and members and alternates of our P.S.. The annual report would be accompanied by a motion acknowledging receipt of support a report similar to the language that was amended in Amendment one. In the ordinance itself, this amends the implementation plan, and it said that passage of that motion acknowledging receipt of the report would satisfy the reporting requirement. Lastly, it added the IRP to the list of committees that DC Jess would be prepared to present the annual report to upon invitation. That brings me to the end of amendments. It was passed again out of our PC last Wednesday, so we have a substitute version in front of you today. Mark Ellenbrook, Mario Williams Suite and Kelly Rider are on the line from DC. As for any executive questions. Your colleagues questions. What's. Your mother would entertain emotion. The structures discussed one to Moscow move adoption of the legislation with the do pass recommendation. Thank you. Councilmember Dombrowski was moved to give a to pass recommendation to ordinance 2021 2030. Would miss Sanders is just breathless and we have executive staff. If there are questions but this is the implementation plan for health through housing and as with Sanders just reported has been through the regional policy three with amendments there and provides the structure and the framework for continuing the health through housing program in the coming years. That is, speaking for myself. I'm beginning to have great success in providing housing and support to people that have experienced chronic homelessness. And this intervention is proving very successful and I'm glad to have it before us. Similar further comments. I would ask the court to please call the rule. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm sorry. One moment. Total number of. How did you were you trying. You really wanted to vote or to make your comment about. Right. Thank you, madam. Please proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member. Baluchi I Council member. Council member. John. Council member, Caldwell's High Council member Lambert High Council member of the press. I think that's number one right there. Council members only. I. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is 7i0 nos. Council members done in one hour. Excused. Thank you. By your vote, we are given a do pass recommendation to substitute motion 2021 330 and we will forward that to full council on regular schedule. And let's not put that. I was able to speak to that for a moment. And that takes us to our legislative agenda for 2020. I understand this item is not ready to move out of committee yet today, but we'll have an initial briefing and be able to sit here and review the draft that has been put together based on individual conversations with council members. And I'll turn it over to you, I believe, leading off with Matt Nicholson. Mr. Nicholson, good morning. Thank you, Councilmember. Good morning. Nice to see you all this morning. I do have Dave Foster as well, joining us to answer the hard. Questions on. The legislative agenda. There's a staff report that I believe starts on page 168 of your materials. It really just sets out that this is the motion that will adopt the state legislative agenda. The agenda is usually attached as an attachment to that motion, so you will not see it. That addresses the agenda with that. But it was sent out shortly after this package went out yesterday. So you can see the draft. There's not much new that has changed from what was discussed at the pre council work session last week. There were some language requirements on the piece around that, requesting that the governor rescind the executive order relating to minority women owned business opportunities. That's spelled out a little more closely. It tracks what was in the motion that was passed. And then we formatted it in a in a similar manner to the 2000 and the 2021 legislative agenda, which you will also see. We try to sort of match formats for the biennium so that it's sort of like I said, it's a two year process. The executive side sent over some feedback last night. We didn't have time to incorporate it before this morning's hearing. So we will do that and then provide some additional updates and some good feedback. We'll have some more processes to iron out and get a draft that's closer to adoption. With that, I'm happy to go through it some more, if you'd like. You have the draft in front of you now and we're happy to get input from your words and our reads that captures what you are looking for from us. Thank you. Members have the draft legislative priorities. In emails sent to Josephine yesterday afternoon. Mr. Nicholas and I would suggest that on the second page. I'm sorry. Top of the third page we changed the headline to 2022 Legislative Priorities. Okay. That makes sense. We got that on the top of the page when we missed the top. Page three. Okay. Back in case you thought we weren't reading. That's good. That's. Thank you. Happy to help. And just never lose it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just following up on a comment from the last time we talked about this, the affordable housing committee is getting ready also just in a few hours to take up and hopefully adopt our own legislative agenda. And I want to make sure to share it with all of you when we do. There are some very specific things that we're going to be debating, including including specific asks for large dollar amounts of an appropriated state, ARPA funds to go to affordable housing and some other ideas that have not been approved by the committee yet . But that might inform. Our. Final agenda. So that was saying one more thing to Councilmember Zala and I just to report to you were invited by the when a group of community advocates for race and gender conscious contracting you know an equitable contracting to meet with the governor's chief of staff which we did and ask has been very squarely in their court . I don't want to speak for him, but Councilman Rizal, I was quite direct in his questions. And so we hope to be hearing something back. I'm glad to see this language in our legislative agenda as well, so that we can continue to advocate, because it's it's a really important it's a really important policy. And I think the moment for change feels like it feels like now. So thank you. All other questions, comments. Feedback. Mr. Nicholson. This is Roger. Please go ahead. For you may be more of a formatting deal, but I might consider whether it makes sense on the housing piece with. So it's a little more maybe durable than just in the context of pandemic response. Just a thought. Otherwise, I think we're making good progress here. Yeah. Thank you, Councilmember. That is something we are in preliminary discussions the exact grant said had talked about making sure instead of sort of a pandemic response that's calling out a housing sort of better and a behavioral health charter. So sort of splitting that a little bit so that each gets held up more than they are now kind of taking that, you see. Well, thank you. Mr. Smith. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair, Mac and David and others. I appreciate that you included in the Protect the Environment section, the one I'm continuing to enhance and grow product stewardship programs to help encourage recyclability and reduce waste and toxicity of manufactured products. I was looking specifically at carpet recycling, which had been worked found in the legislature, and so we worked with the AARP on this and I appreciated this, wanted to call that out. And just looking at this, I'm sorry, for the first time I was saying it yesterday, I do have in there about the legislation we supported last year on all the arts. Yes. Councilmember, if you look under the sort of the rebuild the economy piece, the councilmen authority for the sales and just agricultural. And then that and then the self production as well, which would be ahead of schedule. Yep. And that's right above it to enhance those to balance it together. Great. Thank you very. Other comments, feedback, suggestions. Mr. Nicholson Are there particular elements that have been added? I know that we've all had. And what can you comment on any specific points the executive has prompted inclusion? No, I did get the feedback yesterday. It looks like it's relatively on the same page. I didn't, in my sort of cursory review, didn't see that there was a lot of significant difference or substantive difference between what the exact was the the executive seeking and kind of the council draft in front of you. But I will certainly go through and make sure that you all get that. And I can call out certain areas where there's language differences or when there's policy asks. There are additional right or additions. And it sounds like then making sure that the documents are merged into one cohesive document is the key piece of work ahead of us before we take up action in committee on the document. Thank you. Colleagues. Anything else? Mr. Foster, thank you for joining us. Always a pleasure to have you with us. And thankfully, this is a Zoom meeting. You didn't have to drive around with Wallace. Very thankful to not have to drive around. And thank you for having me. All right. We'll look forward to seeing you in it and others at our next meeting with the Advanced Draft, perhaps final draft of the legislative agenda. That takes us to a briefing with the King County Library System. Lisa Rosenberg, the executive director of the King County Library System. Ron, Ron heads the Library System Board President are here to provide a briefing to the council. Good morning and welcome. Good morning. It's it's great to see all of you. And you can also see my grade here. Here I am. And thank you, Claudia, for being part of the club. I'm just putting that out there. So I'm in a it looks fabulous. So do you. I'm going to share my screen and go through briefly what we've been up to your class. And of course, I'm very glad to have Ron Higgs, who's the president of our board of trustees, here with me. So with that, let's talk about the future, because eventually we're going to be out of COVID 19 sooner than later, I hope. And I want to talk about the probably the elephant in the room, which is our hours. I know many of you probably have gotten some concern from some of your constituents on what's going on with cases like ours. And we get it. But just know that we didn't really open door to full service until July of this year. And so we took a very conservative approach with our staffing. We did not hire any staff, new staff during time. We lost a bunch of staff because for natural, you know, people retire, whatever. So we were very slow to hire people. And now we're doing that. We're have hiring and in progress, but it does take time. This is a very big system. We have contracts we have to abide by with our our membership regarding scheduling and hiring. So we're we're hiring a lot. So I just want you to know that in 2022, 22, our community library hours will increase 20% over 2021. And our with more than half of our locations will be opening to six day a week service. We're now at five day a week service, and we're also innovating our public technology. We learned a lot from COVID 19. We always knew there was a digital divide. Sadly, we were proved right during COVID 19. So we're going to support our patrons remote, remote working and their entrepreneurial needs, particularly in bipoc and resource challenged communities that heavily rely on libraries, which we learned a lot during COVID 19. And I'm going to share more of that in a moment. So our initial pandemic response was we did sustain service during the entire pandemic. However, we did have multiple mandates and it did limit in-person contact. We did pivot to online programing and contactless curbside service. That was very popular. People really enjoyed it. So we were able to maintain some service during the entire pandemic, and we really saw a dramatic increase in our in our cardholders. We went to one, we saw 1.1 million, and our e-book use increased from 5 million to 7.4 in 2020, which is a huge, huge increase. Ranking Casteels as second in the US and third in the world for e-book downloads. Our ongoing pandemic response continues. And we really pivoted and we added some vaccine clinics at our libraries. We partnered with King County Health. We really feel where we're a partner in health, in our communities, we invested in increasing better airflow in our libraries , and we offered a phased reopening of all libraries by July 21, 2021. And we have done some aggressive grants seeking to tackle some of the problems we saw from COVID 19, particularly when it first happened. We saw people in our our parking lots trying to get Wi-Fi access because they didn't have that access from their home. We saw families in our parking lots, which was really kind of sad to see that in order to for people to get to get wi fi, they'd have to drive to our parking lot. But we were happy to help them. So by mid October we had secured a 365,000 in non library grant funding and almost 1 million from the KC Foundation. And I'm going to share the highlights of what we're going to be funding in the next year. So we're going to add some technology innovations. We are collaborating also with Harborview Medical Center to pilot telecomm at a telemedicine service in five libraries, including Unum, Cloth, Federal Way, Skyway, Tuscola and Wood. So what is that? Well, when the pandemic first started, I got a call from a doctor in Harborview, and he said, What we are discovering is our South County residents are not using telemedicine in the way that other residents of the county are using it. And what how can we partner? And I said, this is a wonderful partnership with us. Let's work with clinics in South County and let's start offering a private room because we have to be HIPA compliant for anybody coming in. They can book a private room so they can talk to their doctor or nurse practitioner or whatever. So they also have the advantage of not having to drive to a clinic during the middle, during the pandemic or even later. And so we're offering that innovation at a number of our libraries. We also leverage grant funding to boost our exterior wi fi signals. And most of our libraries so that people will rely on us for Internet access could continue to access it during the worst of the pandemic. And so this wasn't just the Wi-Fi bleeding out. These are boosters that really make them much stronger. We launched an outreach digital navigator service, so long library laptops and Wi-Fi hotspots to homeless shelters, encampments into hotels recently purchased and converted to supportive housing to address the digital divide. Inequities made worse during the pandemic. And in fact, I mean, this was something that happened a couple of months ago, the Red Line Hotel in Renton. We sent them a laptop and because we were able to do that, they were able to become vaccination clinics by having a library laptop to schedule appointments. We also launched a contact free library materials pick up locker at Fossil and Covington. There you see Congresswoman DelBene and me with the big scissor opening up these contact us lockers and we're going to add more of them. And that allows you to just come in 24 seven, pick up your books. It's similar to an Amazon type locker, very simple. And it really extends our services beyond our hours. And as I mentioned before, we've been aggressively pursuing grant opportunities. We are getting we do have ARPA funds funneled through our state library and we're using those funding to upgrade our meeting rooms in certain locations for our patrons to conduct online meetings and employment interviews and other online interactions using Zoom teams and other platforms. In other words, we're trying to level the playing field here. If you're lucky enough to have a house with your own office, home office, good for you. But there are people out there that don't have those advantages. So we want to have the library provide that. Attendance at our online programing has tripled. In fact, one of our Facebook Live events generated 38,000 tickets, and with a grant from the State Library, we will retrofit a meeting room that's at our service center to allow staff to provide world class creative programing. So we're turning into a production studio because online programing is not going away after COVID, and we anticipate eventual public use of the studio once the staff have mastered the technology. And with our Board of Trustees meetings like yours, we are online during the pandemic and our public attendance has increased significantly and we want to continue that . So with some of that ARPA funding, we will improve the technology at the Service Center to conduct hybrid, in-person and online board meetings in the future and to continue to encourage increased participation in our meetings. So let's talk about the service innovations we have learned a lot from COVID 19. The Casillas Foundation awarded over $100,000 to launch it. Invest in Yourself an economic justice program to increase patron skills and knowledge related to small business operations, job seeking careers and financial literacy. We were also awarded 20,000 an ARPA grant funding to work with an established group of partners called Welcoming Enterprise to create community centered solutions for equitable local economies by connecting small business owners with KC less resources and services. We opened up welcoming centers, offering wraparound services for new U.S. arrivals to feel welcome and as they adapt to their new home in King County. And we also offered welcoming ambassadors. They're selected for their cultural and linguistic and community knowledge. Our current centers are at Bellevue campus and of course, online and service will expand the tech will in 2022. We know that in-person in some cases is the best. And so we're hoping that's why we're going back to in-person for these welcoming centers. And we also offer a writer color series, and that will increase our portfolio of high profile bipoc authors facilitated by local bipoc community members to further increase the impact and diversity of our world class authors programing. Partnerships. We maintain strong partnerships, and they grew even stronger during COVID 19. At the Skyway Library, we collaborated with Metro to launch an Uber like service that connects riders with regional transportation options. And Skyway, as you know, has somewhat limited transit options. So this new service takes riders up on demand and transports them to light rail or to major bus hubs nearby and charges public transportation rates rather than cap rates. Casillas is also supporting the King County Executive Office outreach efforts to reimagine public safety in urban, unincorporated King County, and recently joined with the King County Executive Office and Area Chambers of Commerce to assist local businesses as they access and print vaccination signage in multiple languages for the health and safety of staff and customers. And we continue to add King County elections drop boxes. We now. X is at 23 of our community libraries. Library boxes consistently receive 20% or more of all ballots return, proving their convenience and ease of use. The library continues to offer nonpartisan voter education materials in multiple languages, as well as online programs about candidates, ballot measures, election integrity and protecting democracy from misinformation. And we continue our ongoing program to enroll every student in our service area. Student E-cards Making a decisive difference for Learners. While schools and libraries were closed during COVID. Our community libraries are playing an increasing climate action plan public safety role. This past summer, we opened libraries as cooling centers during that June, intense heat wave. I actually worked at a library, have not done readers advisory for about 15 years, but I was at our incarnation library and we've also upgraded the filtration of our HVAC systems to improve indoor air quality. Environmental demands and technology have changed dramatically since we passed our capital bond in 2004. In 2018, we launched a green initiative to conserve energy and reduce paper waste by increasing digital storage options for our patrons and staff. Moving forward, we are embarking on an effort to increase and align our capital investments with federal, state and local county climate action plans. And we will be looking for partnership investments to increase community environmental health by more aggressively lowering the emissions of our vehicles and facilities in our facilities, and also to actively pursue some grant opportunities for for climate action. Those might include include electric chargers in our parking lots and solar panels or whatever we can get some funding for. And finally, where it is budget time, our annual budget hearing will be held tonight in conjunction with the November 17 Board of Trustees meeting and will include time for public comment. And you are all welcome to attend. And now I'd like to introduce our Board of Trustees President Ron Hicks. Thank you, Lisa. I'd like to thank you for that great presentation that truly shows that the wonderful impact that the library system has in our community. I hope you all enjoyed it, Lisa. Chairman McDermott and members of the Council. As you know, our board is appointed by the King County Library's King County Executive Office and approved by you. We perform our fiduciary responsibility through the monthly payment of bills at public meetings and the annual adoption. Of our library budget that Lisa just mentioned. Tonight, the Lisa and staff, or at least the staff, has already presented their proposed. Budget on October board meeting. And tonight, as Lisa mentioned, will be. Conducting a public hearing on the proposed budget. A final budget option is scheduled for our December 17th meeting. Thank you for having us. We appreciate the opportunity to show you what our library system is doing. For the community. Thank you both for this robust presentation. Anybody who is behind the times and thinks that libraries are only about books going to update today on your work to reach people well beyond the medium of books, but also in their home for e-books to recognizing and addressing the digital divide to a variety of authors and making sure that Bipoc voices and others are well heard throughout our community and responding to the climate crisis in our facilities and our support of people. I'm impressed by the breadth of the work and the presentation you've made today. And that only is supported by an occasion last summer when I dropped by the National Library. As you were reopening to some public access and learned the extensive work you had done, particularly to keep children engaged in reading and literature during the pandemic. Book Times are available for pickup to art classes and art projects being sent home to engage in continued learning and in fostering that engagement with people's communities, with their libraries. I was impressed then and only w so today. Thank you. Colleagues. Thank you. Councilmember Bellucci. I just want to add my voice of appreciation. You know, libraries are just traditionally kind of this bedrock institution of democracy, egalitarianism, sort of access for everyone committed to community engagement and education, lifelong learning, all things we want to see in our county. And we have an outstanding library system. I've always been a big supporter, and I just I appreciate all you do. I can't imagine how difficult it has been to be such a public facing, public serving institution that's used to just sort of being with and in community all the time during this COVID times. It's been hard for us and we have a much more specific task that we do, which is these open public meetings and and policymaking. And yours is just so broad. So thank you. Thank you to your board. Thank you to your staff for all you've done to continue serving the people of King County. I know our family, my neighbors and community, my district really values the wonderful libraries that we have here in King County. And I think that's probably true all over. But I wanted to just share my appreciation and thanks to you. Thank you. Lambert and his number. LAMBERT Thank you. I, too, want to say how much I appreciate all your work and the variety of libraries and library services across the county because it's not the same in every part. Whether you're talking about Redmond Ridge or whether you're talking about Carnation or all the way out interstate commerce. So thank you for being so flexible and all the different types of libraries and needs that. The one thing that you didn't mention that I think is also incredibly important is that you've hosted the community courts for a very long time when it was just a pilot and nobody really knew much about it. But you were so open to the idea. And I remember the one statistic that was particularly important was that 78 people showed up one day at community court to get services that weren't even court impacted. They just came because they knew it was a safe place and that they could get the services that they needed. And they think about what the ripple effect of that was that those of the people left with services and with hope and addition to the people who were there into the system to help them with those things. So thank you for your vision and for caring so much about so many people. And I really appreciate that. So thank you. Again, I really appreciate your joining us for an update report on your work and the actual work and investments in our mutual communities that you've been able to talk about have undertaken. Good luck with your budgeting process and the coming work as we as we come out of the pandemic and see perhaps a new normal and make strides to make it work better for everybody as we do that. Thank you again. It's always a, believe it or not, a highlight of my year when I get to present to all of you. It's your your support for libraries is is undaunted and we're happy to partner with the county. I think COVID really taught us the importance of partnership and that we were in this together and from distributing masks and being to to and vaccination clinics, we're happy to use our open our doors to whatever our county needs when when there is an emergency. And you also afterwards. So thank you so much. And for the opportunity to be here today. Our pleasure. Thank you. And our final item today is a briefing on new construction property tax revenue from the assessor's office and King County Assessor John Wilson and chief deputy assessor albums are here to provide the briefing assessor also. Good morning. Good morning. Council member McDermott and another council member is a great to be here. I come here today bearing money, new construction money and that for the fifth year we have been in the range of $10 billion. We're just a scant bit under it this year. What that will mean is overall for the county's 13 funds in the 22 year, it'll be over $15 million of additional revenue in particular. A couple of highlights for parks, it'll be 1.8 million for best starts. For kids, 1.1 million. And for EMS would be $2.6 million. We've worked hard this year, especially in wake of the pandemic and state staffing levels, and that to make sure we tried to capture every bit of new construction that we could. It is a challenge, though. One of the things we have found is that while the pandemic has affected the region in so many ways, there's still a great deal of new construction that's going on, that's going on throughout the county, from from the downtown core out into Easter and King County and Bash Island and such. So I think it's important for us to be able to do this. Part of it is a you're all aware is with the 1% cap we now have, one of the great advantages of getting as much new construction as we can on the books is there's a compounding effect so that each year it adds a little bit of ability for us to property, to set properly, set values and get the revenue in that we need. But we just wanted to come and share with you that bit of good news and we're out in the field already getting ready to collect money or rather collect values for the next year to hopefully bring you some more money come next year for new construction. Mr. Olsen, you're welcome to come and bring good news and cash any time. Thank you. Council member. We thought we could. Save some of that. Thanks, John, for bringing the revenue. You're welcome. You might know your calendar. The committee's next meeting is on December 1st. Let's see if I can break it with a bow. Okay. Thank you. So thank you for all your hard work and two things. When I was giving a speech last night and I was looking for local skate and it was not easy to find. I knew. I knew it existed. I knew where to look. And it still wasn't easy to find. So I think making local skate more easily accessible on your Web site. And anyway, I. Think. That's a great resource. And then secondly, could you remind me that six or eight months ago you gave a speech and you talked about how much they anticipated rather than anticipated, the praise increases in the snow. Call me valley might be. Do you remember the top of your head what you said that increase might be over the next five years. Oh, you'll have to forgive me. Council member. I don't have that number right off the top of my head. I'd be happy to get it to you and share it with you. Now, I was really surprised in meeting slowing thoughts because it was such a big increase and I know that it's a wonderful place to live. So I think it's important everybody know how much that's growing because they contribute so much to the county revenues. And I want to make sure that they get enough to make sure that they feel comfortable. Well, certainly one of the trends we have seen in wake of the pandemic is is some outmigration from the urban core of Seattle to Eastern King County. And that's where you have more people moving out your way looking for property. You know, I kind of scan real estate across the county on a regular basis, and I'm always a little bit surprised at both how much is out there and frankly, the price of it. You know, there's there's no place realistically in King County that is a bargain anymore on a map. But it's a sign of of how we're evolving as a community. I think, you know, the bridge back to our previous presentation, it speaks to the value of having a dispersed library system that also has that high speed connectivity, because we're finding people more and more looking into, how can I drop into the library for a few minutes? Frankly, our staff uses the King County Library system when they're out in the field to connect data and connect their iPads and that. So it's important in terms of local escape. We're working on a brand new portal that will make hopefully all of that kind of stuff much more readily accessible to people and make it easier for them to get quick access to information. So I hear you loud and clear on that. We want people to be able to access that. And we've been talking to Specialist who is the developer for us of Local Scape about some additional features that we hope to add here down the road. But I commend you and your team and include because I know you worked on that, on putting that program together because it's so amazingly valuable. And so I wanted to share it last night and it took me a while to find it. So thank you very much for your good work. Thank you. Colleagues anything further. Thank you so much, John. And now for joining us. For passing on the information. And we look forward to being able to use those resources for the betterment of people at King County. Absolutely. Thank you, Councilmember. Take care of everybody. Thank you, Madam Court. I believe we missed a couple votes earlier in the agenda. Yes, Mr. Chair, council members standing right there were excused for the vote on 2020 1033. Oh, that's the unhealthier housing implementation plan has never done one by. Thank you. And Councilmember one right there must be having connection issues. He was there a moment ago and I do not see him here now. And he will have the opportunity to withdraw his vote by email per our rules for remote meetings such as this. With that councilmember councilmember of Mike Bowers reconnecting now wait time he has audio. Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! James McGovern I we are at the end of the agenda and noting that we do not have a vote recorded from you on our ordinance 2021 2032 Health through Housing Implementation Plan. If you're able to unmute and cast your vote, we would welcome that. Member of Fowler. But remember, going forward, the end of our agenda, we do not have a vote required from you on ordinance 2021. 333 Housing Implementation Plan. That's now in Kauai after going through the Regional Policy Committee future. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I again, I think you were notified that I had a doctor's appointment at the earlier and it just got into my office here in Federal Way. Can you repeat the. You asked me to make the formal motion? No. I asked simply for your vote. We have voted earlier in the meeting on Ordinance 2021 330, the Health and Housing Implementation Plan. We've made no amendments from the version that passed the Regional Policy Committee last week under your chairmanship. Thank you very much. I got I thank you. Madam Court. We have that recorded. Yes, we do. Mr. Chair, council members Dunn and one Mike Bauer. Both. Both vote. I agree. Then, with no further business to come before the committee of the whole, we are adjourned. Thank you so much to everyone for participating in today's meeting. ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE adopting the Initial Health through Housing Implementation Plan to govern the expenditure of sales and use tax proceeds authorized by K.C.C. chapter 4A.503 and RCW 82.14.530 from 2022 through 2028 and creating the health through housing advisory committee; and adding a new section to K.C.C. chapter 4A.300."}
{"id": "king_63205617-c8a5-417a-96d7-dee173f01500", "input": "Afternoon. I call to order the meeting of the King County Committee of the Hall for Wednesday, March 29th, 2017. And I'd like to ask our committee assistant, Marcus Stedman, to please call the roll or our clerk whoever controls my first. Who calls the roll? I'll do it, Madam Chair. Do it. Melanie Pedroza. Thanks. Councilmember DEMBOSKY, you're Councilmember Dunn here, Councilmember Gossett. Councilmember Caldwell here. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember Von Right here. Madam Chair. Here. Very good. So I understand Councilmember Gossett will be joining us by phone. Can we confirm if he is on the line? Hi, is Larry. Thank you for joining us, Councilmember Gossett. Just as a matter of practice, usually what I will do for you is when we have discussion or action items, I'll just call on you towards the end of the item. If you have any questions or comments. Is that okay for you? Okay. When we get to early, although I have to make the motion, I. Will call on you to do that as well. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you. Sorry I didn't wait on the phone. And there we get to that point. If you would, that would be great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. All right. First, next item is approval of the minutes of February 1st and March 1st. Committee meetings if there is a motion. To move the approval of the last two sets of minutes. Thank you. It's been moved to approve the minutes from February 1st and March 1st. Any comments or questions? Seeing none. All those in favor please signify by saying I ii any opposed. I think the minutes are approved unanimously. And this brings us to our first topical item for the day. We are currently considering here at the Council, as I think my colleagues all know, a proposal to send a sales tax increase to the voters which would fund, if approved by the voters, cultural access across King County, previously known as Cultural Access Washington, now known as access for all. This matter has been referred to our Budget and Fiscal Management Committee for deliberation and a recommendation to the Council. But I have asked for this informational presentation today, partially because in this committee all of the council members are here and can hear it. And also because our timeline is very short and due to some of the oddities of the calendar, this is a fifth Wednesday of the month and therefore there were three full weeks in between the two meetings that we have to discuss this at budget and fiscal management. So I offer this time to learn more about the proposal. But deliberation and action will occur in budget and fiscal management. I just will pause there for a quick second and ask our budget and fiscal management chair, council member of the group if he wants to say anything or has any any comments at this time before we launch into our presentation. Oh. No, I appreciate it. I think the more information, the better and I'll reserve comment later. Thank you very much, Councilmember. So just for a roadmap going ahead, after we hear the presentation today, we're scheduled to take this matter up again for deliberation and possible action at the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee on April 12th. And my understanding is that if we wish to put this on the August ballot without declaring an emergency, we need to vote it out of full council by April 17th, is my understanding. So with that road map ahead, I want to thank everyone for being here today. I see a lot of you with the buttons on, no doubt in favor of this proposal. And I will call on our staff, committee staff a critical zombie to introduce the topic. Good afternoon council members I'm Leah crackles IP council staff. The materials for this item begin on page nine of your packet and most of you are familiar with the Access Bra proposal because it has already been discussed in their Budget and fiscal management committee last week. So I'm just going to provide a brief free recap and then introduce our panelists and let them do the talking. So the King County executive transmitted a proposal to create a cultural access program entitled Access for All to Improve Public Access to Arts, Science and Heritage Programs and Experiences in King County. That program would be funded by 1/10 of a percent sales tax for seven years. Proposed or proposed for voter consideration at a special election on August 1st, 2017, the Access for All program is projected to raise 67.4 million in 2018, and the program would be administered by for culture as provided by state law. Funds would be and are proposed to be allocated 21% to a public school cultural access program to provide public school students with in-classroom and field cultural learning opportunities 45% to a regional cultural organization program to increase public benefits. Large cultural organizations provide and 32% to a community based cultural. Organization program to increase programs offered by smaller community organizations. Today's panel discussion will cover the history of the proposal, how it was developed and provide perspectives from representatives of the program components. The panelists are Gary Johnson from Pacifica Law Group to talk about the history of the proposal. Beverly Harding Buehler Director of Arts Impact Puget Sound Educational Service District. Well, Doherty, President and CEO of the Pacific Science Center. Elizabeth Stewart, director of the Renton Historical Museum. And Jamie Barnett, director of Education from Kids Quest Children's Museum. So I will move and they will come up. Thank you. Leave the panels with, please. Just come on forward. Sit anywhere. I will just warn you, our microphone system is not terribly intuitive. There's those white buttons in front of you where you push to make sure the microphones are on and everyone can hear you. I want to thank you all for coming. And do you have an order or shall I just call on people? I want to just jump right in then. Welcome. Thank you. Terrible duty members of the County Council. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to give a short history of the creation and development of what is now called access for all. My name is Jerry Johnson, and as you heard, I am a partner at the Pacifica Law Group here in Seattle. From its inception, I have served as the pro bono counsel for the effort to secure the state legislation the Council is considering implementing, including having been the principal drafts person of that legislation. The germ of this idea of something like access for all. First came to Kent County through a Chamber of Commerce intercity visit to Denver and I think 23, which I believe. In 2004 actually. And I was there. Thank you. Chair Baldacci attended that trip. The agenda for that visit included a discussion of public support for local scientific and cultural facilities, which was first approved by Denver voters in 1989. LAKE Access for all the proposals and the proposal before you. The Denver Scientific and Cultural Facilities District, the S.F. CFD, distributes funds from a 10th for a 1/10 of 1% sales tax to Denver area cultural institutions now numbering more than 300 in a seven county area in and around Denver. In November of last year, the Denver CFD was reauthorized by Denver area voters for the fourth time with about 63% of the vote. All of the reauthorizations have been by wide margins since it was established, and this most recent one extended the life of the district until 2030. At about the same time, Bob Drew Hall, former executive assistant Hamish County, then head of the Puget Sound Regional Council, launched what the council called the Prosperity Partnership, which was an effort that some of you may have been part of, or at least recall. It was a coalition of government, business, labor, nonprofit and community leaders, which was developing a strategy for long term economic prosperity and the creation of 100,000 more jobs than was at that time. Anyway. Forecast for Central Puget Sound, the PCC Part Prosperity Partnership, identified six specific foundation initiatives, including one on social capital and the quality of life . Recognizing that real prosperity depends on our ability to provide a high quality of life for a for the region's businesses, workforce and families by delivering job training, affordable housing, childcare and the arts. They said the region's nonprofit institutions play a critical role in providing such quality of life. In addition, the arts and culture sector was itself recognized as an important pillar of the regional economy. Out of all this work, the PRC developed a regional economic strategy for the Central Puget Sound region, which it adopted in September of 2005. One important action that was included in the plan was to develop a strategy to celebrate and promote arts and culture as a strategic advantage for the region. PSC put their muscle behind this action, transforming what we called the Denver model to work here. Arts Fund then adopted the cause and recruited civic leaders John Shirley and Maggie Walker to co-chair the effort. Over multiple years, Pierce RC shepherded and staffed cultural leaders from around the region to help craft the proposal that you have before you today. I was asked by John and Maggie to provide pro-bono counsel to that project for several years. SA So you continue to provide administrative support to move the initiative forward. Cultural institutions assessed themselves dues to support the hiring of professional staff, lobbyists and public relations support. At a later point, CRC handed the administration of the project off entirely to Arts Fund. And finally, after many years it seemed like dog years. Actually, the legislature, featuring innumerable drafts of the bill, adopted the legislation, as you know, in July of 2015. We have reached this point with the consistent, formal encouragement of King County, including several resolutions by the Council over the years and many cities throughout the region. The PRC, the cultural institutions, King County and other local governments all recognized that vibrant science, heritage and arts opportunities for students, adults, for everyone in every part of our community are essential to our quality of life and ultimately our prosperity. That focus on public benefits has been the cornerstone of this effort from its from its inception. I also have, for the record, the long list of Current for Culture Program grantees. All of these, plus the science oriented institutions that are not now eligible for funding from Fort Culture, would be eligible recipients of funding from for act from access for all. If you all send it to the ballot and the voters approve it, thank you for your consideration of the proposal. Before you, I'd be pleased to answer any questions for the. I think we should go down through the panel as best as possible once there like imminent immediate questions that people want to answer because they don't understand what's being said. If you all would indulge me, I think we'll sort the panelists. I'll go through and then we'll do discussion at the end. Thank you. Please continue. Thank you so much for the opportunity to address your council members and Madam Chair. My name is Beverly Hurting Buehler, and I'm the director of Arts, Education and Arts Impact at the Puget Sound Educational Service District. The ESD is a service organization that provides supports to our both King and Pierce County schools. And we are a clearinghouse and a network of places where you can find services like Headstart prevention, dropout prevention programs for teens. And my program, Arts Impact, which is a professional learning program for teachers. We train teachers in the foundational ideas of the arts and how they connect with the other core subject areas. And our objective is success for every child. And so at the Puget Sound ESD, our end is success for each child. And to eliminate the opportunity gap leading through racial equity we access for all would provide critical support for this work by providing opportunities for low income children to learn from direct experiences with global works of art , with culturally responsive performances, immersion in living heritage events, and amazing feats of science, some of which they get to do themselves at places like a Pacific Science Center in nature, as you heard and you've seen in your proposal before, you access for all would not only provide free admission and transportation to museums, the zoo and heritage organizations in King County for low income children and families. But approximately 20% of the funds supports public schools serving the most disadvantaged students in King County, with both field trips and in-school programing to embed these rich experiences into everyday learning, research shows that children who benefit the most from arts and cultural experiences are often the ones who receive it the least. We know this not only from national research but also from local research. As recent as 2011, with Seattle Public Schools doing an access survey of the arts in our city, low income children of color, especially African-American, Latino and English language learners who get to learn in and through the arts, tend to do better academically , have fewer discipline referrals, tend to graduate high school on time and go on to post-secondary options. These are the same children again who are least likely to receive arts and cultural opportunities in school. My own organization, Arts Impact, was able to show in 2014 in three Title one schools in Seattle, that when students had a chance to learn reading by acting out stories or fractions, by creating artistic compositions, either dance or visual arts compositions that were broken into equal parts that not only were they able to achieve high, we had a benchmark of 80% success and the kids blew past that. But most significantly, there was no statistically significant difference between any one racial or ethnic group in any other. Therefore, the opportunity or achievement gap was closed. This is really exciting and we are excited for the opportunity that Access for all provides for us to continue to provide those kinds of supports for children. I want to close with just a brief story from a school in southwest Seattle from Concord International School, where I got to observe a second grade classroom in December, where we were teaching a theater and writing infused lesson. The classroom is the classroom of Mozzarella de Lavinia, and the students are about 85% English language learners, and it's a second grade class. Most of the kids in December were reading at a kindergarten to first grade level. What I got to observe was a lesson where they were modifying verbs through theater. So jumping sleepily, jumping quickly, jumping energetically. And how that changed the meaning of everything they were doing. So about two thirds of the way through the lesson, children were asked to go and sit down and write a sentence, which they will then they would then act out. And the children raced to their seats, you know, hurriedly writing their sentences so that they could act them out. At that point, Mr. Lavina pulled me to the side of the room with tears in her eyes, and she said, I shouldn't tell you this, but none of my students before today has written a complete sentence yet. This year, she said, they have come further in one hour of theater infused literacy than I have brought them in three months of school so far. Wow. So what excites me about access for all is that we can provide these kinds of opportunities for making meaning in culturally responsive ways for the children who most would benefit from that in our schools. So thank you so much for the opportunity to speak. Thank you. Welcome. Teamwork. Yes. Okay. Excellent. My name is Wil Darity. I'm the president and CEO of Pacific Science Center Council members. I am so grateful to you for the service that you provide to the people of King County. And I'm very grateful for the opportunity to meet with you today. Our mission at Pacific Science Center is to ignite curiosity and to fuel the passion for discovery, experimentation and critical thinking. One of our guiding principles is to enable access for all. We're committed to making our programs. The experiences and the benefits that they provide accessible to people of all backgrounds and financial, physical and intellectual abilities. Another guiding principle is to support educators and high quality science education, focusing on pre-K through 12th grade. We serve more than a million people each year in classrooms and in community centers throughout King County and across the region. In addition to the Mercer SLU in Bellevue and our campus in Seattle, I'd like to highlight two examples. First, Science on Wheels. Science on Wheels travels to schools, community centers and libraries in communities that have limited resources for science, technology, engineering and math education. We provide interactive workshops, science demos and portable exhibits. We cover the essential STEM subjects, including areas that are critical to this region, such as health sciences, computer science, nanotechnology and agriculture. And half of the schools that Science on Wheels visits, more than 40% of students qualify for free and reduced price lunch. In 2016, Science on Wheels served 43,000 people. In King County, 37,000 students and 6000 adults. The majority. Of these people were outside of the Seattle Bellevue Urban Center specifically. Science on Wheels served more than 23,000 students and more than 3000 adults in King County's odd numbered districts in 2016. With funding from access for all. Science on Wheels would serve more schools and communities throughout King County with richer and more impactful hands on programing. We would focus on increasing service to those schools and communities that lack resources, as well as those that are outside the Seattle Bellevue Urban Center. We're preparing a map with all the data about the schools that we currently serve and will serve and will provide that to you. Second, I'd like to tell you about our family and youth access memberships for us. Enabling access for all include serving people with financial challenges, people who are homeless, jobless or worried about their futures. Last April, we introduced the Family Access membership. Anyone receiving public assistance can get a full family membership to the Science Center for just $19 per year. We had planned to make it completely free, but the experts that we consulted said it would have more impact if the people we were serving had a small investment. But we're happy to waive that fee in every case. The regular price is $119 in less than one year, more than 2400 families have joined. 72% of those families have visited the Science Center at least once since joining, and 38% have visited at least twice. This is a higher rate of usage than our general membership population. Building on the success of this program last November, we launched the Youth Access Membership. Any homeless or foster youth can get a full family membership for free. In less than five months, more than 400 youth have joined. The people benefiting from these access memberships live all over King County. The communities with the largest number of family access and youth access memberships are. Shoreline. Rainier Valley Lake. Forest Park. Federal Way. Maple Valley and Kent. With funding from access for all, we would continue to grow these family and youth access memberships. We would also introduce free days at the Science Center for All King County residents. We would expand our Discovery Corps program that provides high school students from underserved communities with jobs, mentoring and career development in the sciences. And we would continue to innovate, developing more and more ways to serve people with financial, social and other challenges throughout King County. I want to emphasize that we're not alone. Our partners in informal science education, including the Museum of Flight. Woodland Park Zoo. Seattle Aquarium. The Burke Museum, Moe, High Island, Wood and others are all dedicated to enabling access for all for everyone in King County Council members. Let's work together to enable access for all. Let's work together to ensure that everyone in King County. Benefits from the science, technology, engineering and math experiences that institutions like Pacific Science Center provide. Thank you again for everything you all do for this community. Okay. Thank you and welcome. Thank you. Thank you. Terrible duty. And members of the Council for this opportunity to speak to you again. I. My name is Elizabeth Stewart. I'm the director of the Renton History Museum. I'm glad to come and speak in favor of access for all, because I know how significant these funds could be for community based organizations like mine in King County. A little bit about the Renton History Museum. Our mission is to document, preserve and educate about Renton's heritage in ways that engage diverse people of all ages. We do that by offering changing and temporary exhibits, programs, events and classroom to curricula about Renton history. We're the only heritage organization in Renton. We're also the only cultural organization with regular open hours in Renton. With two full time and two part time staff members, we do our best to cover all the history needs in a city of 100,000 people. When property owners want information about their historic houses, they come to us. When families want help piecing together their genealogies, they ask us for assistance. When residents want to show off their city, they bring visitors to the museum. And most importantly, when teachers need help with very local history materials for their third graders or their seventh graders. They come to us for assistance. We know there's a need for these services because families, researchers and visitors tell us that every day we want to share the many rich stories of Renton history. But with our limited resources, we can't necessarily meet all the needs our community has. I've spoken here before about the ways in which a past partnership with the Renton School District enabled us to bring in every third grader in Renton to the Renton History Museum for their first experience with local history, regardless of their parent's education or income. Every student had this common civic experience of learning about their communities history until the funds dried up. These tours were memorable experiences for kids that laid a foundation to help them become better, more informed citizens. And we know that because we have adults come in at least once a week and tell us that. So access for all really promises to revive these opportunities for students and other underserved communities to take advantage of what we have to offer. If the ordinance is passed, these funds could contribute up to an extra 15% of our small budget, a proportionally greater contribution than that that the large Seattle organizations could expect. These funds will enable us to get more students through the door. Instead of sending curricula off with teachers, we'd be able to bring students in again to have that museum experience for themselves. In my conversations with my colleagues, the community organizations that would benefit from access for all are really not concerned about any perceived advantage on the part of regional organizations. We're all focused on this ordinance as really a game changer for helping us meet the needs of our community. So I have to admit, I sometimes have difficulty conveying the need for local history because I work every single day with people who believe that implicitly. From our Teen Advisory Council, through our senior volunteers, they all find meaning and life satisfaction in their work with the Renton History Museum. Through history, they make connections with others that knit us all together as a community through a shared understanding of our local past. So what I'm going to do today is close with the words of one Renton High student that we've worked with in the past. Nailah was a sophomore in the Renton High Honors English class when she began working on one of our collaborative exhibits. We had a program for several years in which we worked with classes of Renton High students to have them write and curate their own exhibits. These projects gave them the opportunity to really compare their experiences with that of historical, Renton writes from the past. After the project was complete, NAYLOR wrote to us and I'm quoting this Before this project, I. Not that Renton wasn't all that important and that nothing ever happened here. But now I know so much, and I have the museum to thank for it. Never in a million years did I think I could do something so big. So I want to thank you again for the opportunity to speak to you about the importance of access for all for community cultural organizations. We're very excited about the prospect of being able to increase our ability to serve our community. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Howard. Appreciate that and welcome. Jamie Bonnett from the from one of my favorite organizations. I have to say not to play favorites here, but. Thank you so much. Thank you, Candy. King County Council. And for allowing me to come and speak with you today. I apologize for my voice. I'm getting over a cold so I have water if I get to raspberry. While access for all is an invaluable program for kids, quite a children's museum. And while we already serve hundreds of. Can I interrupt you for closing? Would you just formally introduce yourself and say your. Yes, thank you. My name is Jamie Barnett and I am the director of education with Kids Quest Children's Museum. Thank you. While we already serve hundreds of thousands of people, we still know that there's a lot of work that needs to be done in our community, especially on the east side. The museum serves 60 mile radius and outside of our own district, which is District six. Our next districts that we serve are District nine and District three, our next highest served. And we do that with our outreach programs. And one of our most popular outreach programs is called Field Trips to Go, which much like the Pacific Science Center, Science on Wheels. Since we are a smaller organization, we are working more with getting in to the classes and working with the teachers. And so it's an hour long science enrichment program that goes in and builds off of the curriculum that the teachers are already doing in their schools. And we also do that program with early learning. So we go all the way down to children that are in preschool and do and make science accessible for those teachers and those students. And this hour long science class allows those students to dove deeper into what they're already studying and take that newly gathered knowledge from our programs and apply it directly to experiments and trials and engineering challenges we've received. Thanks from second grade teachers at Cascade View Elementary for providing engaging programs and for making science accessible and fun. We've also partnered with the IF across school public schools and their after school programs to help train and bring more science enrichment to their afterschool programs. They call it a programing party. And they came into the we came into their space and we showed them how to take simple science experiments and make them a part of everyday things that their students are doing after they're done with school. We want to help expand that reach not just in the classrooms but beyond the classrooms in a way that we will expand our programs with this opportunity that access for all will provide is that every child who participates in one of our outreach programs would then be able to receive passes to come to the museum with their families. And this would allow them to come and explore on their own time what works for their families. And then that child would get to be the expert and show their families what they have learned by taking the opportunities that they've learned in their classrooms and then showing it to their families in the museums. In a little over three years, our museum has delivered 1200 programs to 175 schools in districts one through nine, and with access for all, it would allow us to acquire and maintain two more vans which would double our fleet. Thank you, Reagan Dunn, for our current two vans. We've been able we wouldn't have been able to do it without you. With more vans, we would be able to employ three more staff and these additional staff would be able to go to more schools, housing authorities and community centers, not only in our district, but again in all of the nine districts. In addition, it would allow us to expand our existing partnerships with our local heritage organizations like our current work with the Eastside Heritage and their continued work with the Bellevue Arts Museum, the Museum of Flight, the Boys and Girls Club, the YMCA, and all the school districts to make sure that our students are being supported in all three areas of arts, science and heritage. I want to thank you again for your time today. You will receive further information from us on the actual schools that we have impacted, and you'll get that shortly. Thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you to all the panelists. I know you agreed to come and speak to us on very short notice and took time out of your. Jobs that you all have. I should also probably say that the reason I single out consequence is because it's my son's favorite organization. And, you know, that just goes a long way in the family. Right? So before that. Yes, go ahead. I just wanted to say my kids love kids. QUEST And we were there on the same day here. Recently with the. Kick off of the building here. So as I as I said, colleagues, this is an informational presentation. We will continue deliberations and potential final action in budget and fiscal management. But if there are any questions for the panelists or comments that people would like to make today. Councilmember A Councilmember. Geisinger. Okay, Councilmember Garcia, why don't you go ahead. Thank you. And this is my first time calling. And so please forgive me for any mistakes I may have on my side of the aisle. And the reason I had the call and what I wanted had the opportunity to be upfront is that I do not think any council member is against the concept of access for all , and I don't think anybody would challenge the idea of making cultural and scientific and technical access to all the Adobe and youth in our community are more accessible. Those of us who have been raising questions and concerns are troubled by what appears to be the fact that 30 of the larger organization, 34 of the larger organizations in our county are going to be given about $31 million, and that I have to compete for it once they get it for five or seven years. And then another 399 smaller organizations are told will have access to competing for these contractors for all on an annual basis. Some might get it one, some might get more than one year to me. And these I can't speak for anybody out that the very unfair. So my my first question, Madam Chair, is to the lady who spoke right after Mr. Johnson broke with her name. I believe you're talking about Martin Butler from ESD. Yeah, because she she seemed to say that our understanding was that all of that money to provide transportation and it set up a culture and scientific access for low income children and King County. And I thought it was something I, you know, would have strongly supported. But I thought that this is for all of the school districts we're talking about providing a buffer that I thought that you know where out school then King County could require busses. I didn't I didn't know that. I wanted to find out if she or anybody on a panel. But I concur that on the contract, that's money that is spent by the big organization must be to facilitate access for low income and working class kid. Thank you, Madam Chair. Okay. Could you hear the question? And I'll just. Say, yeah. Yes, we all heard it. We heard the statement. I just want to make sure that the person who the question was directed to heard the question so she can answer. And it looks like Mr. Johnson would like to say a word as well. So in whatever order you choose, go ahead. I think I was asked. Sorry. I think I was asked to respond. Please go ahead, both of us. First of all, Council Councilmember Goss, it's Jerry Johnson. Yeah. Hi there. All right. The the the issue you raised at the beginning with respect to the allocation of funds to regional organizations and then a separate pool of funds available for smaller organizations. Right. The the state legislation provided for that. Structure. And the reason that that is there is that the larger organizations, the regional organizations, do, in fact, serve populations throughout the county and even beyond. With the Science Center director pointed out that the Science Center has attendance of a million each year. The same is true of the zoo. It's close to that for all of the Seattle Art Museum facilities combined. It's this close to that for the Seattle Aquarium. And these are institutions that function at a at a level and at a scale that the state legislature found deserved to have a baseline of support. All of that money is really tethered to the provision of public benefits by all of the recipients, big and small. And with respect to the the school access component, that is a requirement of that. All of the institutions, specifically including the regional institutions, participate in that program regardless of how much money they are getting and through what and through and for whatever other purposes or public benefits they provide. It is true that every school may participate and benefit from that program, but it is also the case that the legislation requires that schools with high populations of school lunch eligible children have access to more opportunities than better off schools. Who is going to monitor that area to make sure that that actually case? Well, each the first of all, with respect to the one time grants that that need to be made on a competitive basis, those will be for specific programs for which there will have to be accountability and reporting in that with respect to the regional organizations, they need to make annual reports on the public benefits that they provide back to the the the poor culture and their continuing eligibility, even for the baseline funding is dependent upon their performing those public benefits and participating in those programs. So there will be accountability and that will all be transparent. Okay, but all but only two protocols are done in council. I'm sorry I. Couldn't hear you quite much. For culture is a kind of different culture. I don't know who they're reporting to, to the common council at all. So, Councilmember Gossett, the the the program is designed is administered by for culture. We as a body could certainly require reporting and oversight if we see fit to do that in the ordinance and we can. No, I said we can not. Cannot. We can. Okay. Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Gossett. Like. I'd like to talk to Jerry outlined after today. After Monday of next week. Okay. Yeah. I'll give you a call. I'm happy to do it. You sure you want to do it right now? No. Okay. Okay. Councilmember up the Grove, followed by Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you. Your water came and testified, and I know you're playing favorites. I was a little disappointed. If I had to play favorites, it would have have to be Renton and Elizabeth. I'm sorry. My question, after spending some time in the Budget Committee, I guess it would probably be for Mr. Johnson as a drafter state law allowed for a 10th of up to a 10th of a cent sales tax for homelessness and arts and homelessness aside for now, figuratively and literally. But it says you can do up to a 10th of a percent for this access program. And what I heard most of the passion about most of the speakers speak today about is the value of investing in access for kids in education. It says we need to do at least 20% of the regional organizations need to spend their money. State Law on access. Why did you choose to take the largest possible tax increase and the smallest possible percent on access when it says at least 20% and up to 1%? Why was the policy choice made to maximize the tax revenue and take the minimum amount allowable for public access? Let me just jump in for a second here. We invited these folks for their specific areas of expertize. And I don't know that we have anybody sitting here right. Now where I thought he drafted it. My bad. Now that he was the guy. I mean, if you want to feel these questions, feel free. But I just want to take them and respond to them at the very least, by the next BFM, if we don't have somebody here who can respond to them right now. I apologize. I thought he was no, it's not my drafting. And it's a perfect he did. But the proposal came over from the executive based on the legislation. So anyway, if you would like to try to answer the question, please go ahead. I'm not trying to run interference. I just wanted to suggest that sort of like some of the folks we have here might not be able to speak to the. Yeah. So I don't I can't remember. And I don't. There was no connection between the level of taxation chosen. That was an amount that was felt to be minimally adequate to do a reasonably scaled program countywide. And the 20% was a number. If I'm remembering correctly, how that was arrived at that that folks felt was a reason was a reasonable level of funding to accomplish what we felt we needed to do with respect to the magnitude of the school age population in the county and some research that was done with respect to transportation costs and that that sort of thing. So the goal was to provide the the access for literally everyone with enhanced access for more disadvantaged schools. Understand the cost of doing that and and then answering the question then, well, how much do we need to earmark in order to accomplish that? And that's where the 20% came from. Thank you, Madam Chair. Trying to figure out how to phrase this in the form of a question. I guess the the decision to do proportional funding is one that I've sort of struggled with. And I know part of it's in the state law, you know, the decision that the regionals automatically get 15% of their operating budget by , you know, that formula no one can get more than 15% of their operating budget. But it's driven out by formula by basically on the operating budgets, kind of like the difference between progressive taxation, regular taxation, the the reality, good or bad, is that in real dollars, the vast majority of the dollars end up going to the large organizations. Is there. And I worry that that can exacerbate rather than improve equity issues. I heard a great argument like the science or people from all over come to those institutions. But I wonder if millions of dollars were invest in these other institutions, if people would come there too, and those communities would get the benefits of people shopping and visiting as well. To kind of highlight, I was looking at the numbers or two excellent speakers. The Renton Historical Society, if they got 15% a year, could get up to $41,000 a year, which is a big deal for their programs. It's $287,000 over the bond. The Science Center, another fabulous place over the life of the bond, would get $26.3 million and some of that would go for schools. But $21.4 million would not go to access. Public school access would not be required by the statute to go to public school access. And it's that gap there. It's that under strain to understand the rationale for putting such a large proportion of dollars into the operating budgets of the large organizations. I mean, in the Fifth Council District combined, all of the direct investments, I understand people will visit and people might come down. But in terms of direct investment in the councils which I represent, it'll be about $387,000 a year. And I guess and I know help me understand how that improves versus exacerbates equity between geographic areas and highlighting one Section 40 describes one of the things public benefit the other 80% of the money for science there not to pick on either here but science center gets there 26.3 million. Some of it is required to be spent on school kids. 21 million can be spent on broad public access, which includes broadening cultural programs, performances and exhibitions for enlightenment entertainment to the public, which means just doing more programs. That's a lot of money for just expanding the programs of larger institutions, particularly with the regressive tax that falls on lower income folks. So that was more of a speech and a soapbox than a than a question. But I wanted to put it out there because I know there are answers and responses. And if this makes it to the ballot, these will be the things that'll be talked about out there. So this is a a chance to help me understand how how there's a good return for the folks I represent and how it doesn't make it worse in terms of inequity. So I'm sure that we'd be happy to follow up with you in a more detailed conversation about that. But the at at the regional institution level and we'll we'll hear from the Science Center directly about how they intend to comply with the public benefit requirement. The regional institutions, as I mentioned, provide benefits throughout the county, and each and every one of them have attendance or participation outside the city of Seattle. I bet that is equal to or greater than the folks in the city of Seattle that participate or attend any of those institutions. So there are lots of people in your district who go to the zoo. There is only one zoo, right? Only one world class zoo I hear about. And the determination was made that that zoo deserves to be supported and that its work with respect to providing public benefit access deserves to be sustained on an ongoing basis. The formula, the budget is safer for scale, but that the budget is weighted much less than attendance in the allocation formula. Attendance counts twice what the budget counts, so that I think in some respects also addresses your concern. If I may just say I'm going to give this whole agenda item about five more minutes because we have one more substantive item we have to get to today. So within those constraints, Councilmember Upskirt, please. Okay. I have Councilmember Lambert waiting, then Councilmember done anything else? We're going to ask. The humanitarian in the thought of good timing I won't talk about my over doesn't grandchildren with their favorite Syracuse all day and as a former school teacher I would never have been able to teach about pixelation. I had no idea how you do art and numbers with pixelation, but my class loved it. So the art in a box was wonderful. So I wanted to make sure I understood what you said. So when you do the data, you're going to calculate how many of the class schools were either, you know, by free or reduced lunch, how many of those schools there were, and are they going to get more points that you did more of those schools than schools that were not in free and reduced lunch? Is that what you're saying? They they are entitled to receive more experiences. So instead of just one for every kid, those schools, the populations of those schools could have more to three, whatever they can organize to do. And the the the reason that we focused on transportation in particular was for those schools, because that has been a determinant of whether those schools can enjoy the experiences that are already available because they cannot afford to bus the kids there. But in the school, liability for parents driving has gotten to be really high too. So let me get it right. So if a school were to say, I want my third experience and this school over here is not free and reduced, I didn't get any. Would they get their third experience or would they get their first experience? That that's a level of specificity. I think that has yet to be worked out. And there, you know, maybe a limit. But it is clear that the high percentage school lunch schools get priority for additional experiences. And I'm good with that. I just want to make sure that the taxpayers that spent a lot of money on taxes, children don't get wiped out, that they get nothing. So I think we need to make sure that that works out. And then the other thing is I looked at a potential list of how the allocations would be in my district. One of my little but could be growing would get 500 and I think it was 63 or $67. You're not going make many changes in your company by having 500 and something dollars more. So that's not going to take us very far. And the pie is 63 million and my district yet would get around 1.8. So the parody of this, I have some concerns about this. I just want to put that on the record. Thank you for that comment. I understand that concern and I do understand that. The question in your statement, council member up to Grove Lake, I'm not a lawmaker. I'm a public servant. I would welcome whatever simplification is necessary to ensure that what we're trying to accomplish is actually reflected. What we're trying to accomplish is to serve everyone in King County, where they live, where they have needs. And and what we're trying to accomplish is to not just make it easier for people to come to our institutions, although that is a big challenge for a lot of people, an economic one, in some cases at transportation, one in other cases, some cases a physical one or a cultural one. But to make it easier for them to receive the benefit of the programs and the experiences that we offer where they live in their schools, in their communities. And, you know, if you if you think about the different institutions that receive funding, I think that leads us to the wrong lens. This isn't about institutions receiving funding. This is about the people of King County receiving the benefits that this collective group of institutions provide. And so if you say, well, the institutions in my district will only receive X dollars, it misses the fact that there are institutions outside of your district that are already seeking to and already investing in serving the people in your district. And I was I didn't I didn't realize this until I did the math the other day. I did not know that the majority of the people that we serve through science on wheels in King County are outside the Seattle urban core. And I was thrilled with that because that's the goal. I also know that we're strapped. We can't add more vans, we can't add more programing with the current funding. We I would be very. Happy to. I'm not going to try to rewrite the law, but I'd be very happy to say that's where we're going to put all of this effort. The Science Center wants to put it all into expanding access out in the community where your constituents live and where it is most needed. And for those for those people who have a hard time getting to the science center or getting to the mercers slu. We want to eliminate those barriers, too. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Dunn and Councilwoman and Bousquet. I'm afraid we're going to have to. You have 30 seconds apiece. And you could. Point. To 3% of the funding would go on to Council District nine. So less than one quarter of 1% of the whole. And, you know, I represent communities like Black Diamond and Maple Valley and Edam. Quite a long ways for them to come up. So I think that there's maybe a way to solve this. I think that there's an opportunity here to provide at least some seed funding. To the actual creation. Of arts organizations that don't exist. Yet. And so one way maybe to fix this is to. Consider like a minimum, like 2% of the pot, just 2% in every council district. And where that the difference being point two or three and two might be the kind of funding we can do to create some kind of desperately needed cultural arts program out in some place like Maple Valley, for example. And so you can't a proposal like this isn't going to come up here without being tweaked. So sure, that's just what we do. So I think there is a way. To solve that problem that would probably make those of us who represent more rural districts more comfortable with the proposal. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank nine chair and thank you for making time on your calendar to continue the work on this jury. It's nice to see you here. A former Magnus and bumblebee. I think maybe Mr. Senator Magnuson would be proud to see you sitting a seat away from the executive director or the presidency of the Science Center, for which he secured $10 million to start the World's Fair. There's some karma maybe in that. And of course, I think, you know, the history that the Science Center, the Science Center and the World's Fair Century 21 was put on the civic campus. The Civic campus was approved in 1956 with a seven and a half million dollars bond measure approved by the voters to get that going. So I like to operate in a little bit of history and context when making these decisions. I think you're hearing some concern about the confines of the statutory scheme that we're working in. And I really am glad you're here to help us understand some of the rationale behind that. I had a couple specific questions that are related to that. One is the timing. You know, we deal here in a general purpose government with a lot of competing needs. And in this statute that's recognized. But you're going with a companion, 10th of a penny authority to address housing and mental health services. That's in the same statute. But there's specific timing for kind of our exclusive right to go countywide. And that, I think, requires that we act to put a measure on the ballot in 2016 or at least take action to do that. Well, what was the thinking in requiring that timing? And then the timing on the housing authority. The temporary housing authority is later. Right. There's additional time there. Can you help us understand because I. I know that you couldn't predict what today our public policy challenges would look like when you started this journey 11 years ago or more . But, you know, right across the street, Mr. Dougherty, from the Science Center, are people in tents living in the median. And we see that and our constituents see that. And it's one of the things I think some of us here are struggling with in terms of overall public policy priorities. So, Councilmember, with your indulgence, I'm going to take that in the nature of a comment and a very big question that requires follow up and more deliberation. But if I can, Madam Chair, I actually had a specific question for Mr. Johnson on the timing in the statute that he would be equipped to answer. Are you able to answer that question briefly, please? Thank you. I mean, I'm sure we're talking about a half a billion dollar tax here that we're being asked to move expeditiously. And with all due respect, I think we have this incredible panel here of expertize. We're not likely to get it back. We also have an olio agenda item, which is also incredibly important. Law enforcement oversight is a very big deal that's going to be working on for a long time. And I want to get through that as well. And this wasn't even going to be here. Recall we were only going to do this and BFM a two meetings. So I appreciate the desire for more. I'm just trying to strike a balance. Thank you so much for your indulgence. Please, Mr. Johnson. So the. I can't speak to the the designation of the dates that was done by the legislature. And I, if I recall correctly, we didn't propose those initially. But there was a sense of urgency in getting this to the ballot. After having worked on this for 8 to 10 years to create the opportunity for the county to exercise the authority and that particular provision with respect to enabling cities to step up if counties were not willing or able to do it, was probably more oriented from a statewide perspective and where there might not have been counties that were interested at all in doing this. So that may have been how that came into into being. And I will point out that the legislation was passed in 2015. So there have been two years since then to think about when this could go. I think that that is accurate. I had some other questions, but we don't have time to hear them today. And I've got some other work I'm doing on things, so hopefully we can get them answered before votes are cast. And I apologize for the rush. I do. It's just that we we only have so much time to do all the important things we need to do so. And I'm going to give the last word to Councilmember Caldwell, and then we will need to move on. Thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to make sure that Councilmember Garcia's question was answered fully. Part of it was pertaining to the requirement that supposed community based organizations have to apply annually and are awarded on a competitive basis. Basically, what happens with the. Regionals appears. To me there's a very good reason for that. But if someone would like to just summarize the rationale for that. Well, I'm. Actually and I'm trying to recall this. I think that it is possible for them to receive multiyear commitments from successful applications for funding. But there will be an annual cycle for organizations to submit proposals to receive funding. And my understanding is that that is important and helpful to the community based organizations, because we want to have new ones created and be able to have for them the opportunity to apply. Well well. That's exactly right. And the of the uses that community based organizations can make of their funds is much broader than the uses that are available to the regional organizations they can do. They can even use it for bricks and mortar. Well, as you can see, we could we couldn't possibly exhaust this this topic, even if we had all day. And I have a number of questions to. But I'm going to hold off on them and ask them another time. Thank you all very much for coming and speaking to us today. Thank you all in the audience as well for coming to show your interest and support for this topic. And we will take it up again, as I said, on April 12th in the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee and working towards an ultimate vote whether to put this on the ballot this year. Thank you again very, very much. And we're going to move on now to our second item for discussion on possible action today. Proposed ordinance number 2017 0139 relating to the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight. And we will have our chief policy officer, John Risha, here to speak to us about this topic. The sponsors are Mr. Gossett. Mr. Dombrowski. And so, John, when you're done introducing, I'm going to call on Councilmember Gossett. Thank you. Maybe we could just take a breath for 1/2 while the chamber clears. Okay. Yeah, I think we can hear you now. Please go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. John Risha stopped King County Council today before you is proposed ordinance 2017 dash 201393. Target into the mike. Absolutely proposed ordinance 2017 dash 0139. This ordinance would amend King County Code Section 2.75, which is the underlying authorization for the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight in King County Code, as well as amend Section 3.16.060, which is the Department of Public Safety. Following initial comments, I'll be happy to go through some of the key points of the legislation, or I can go directly there. I wanted to make some comment first. Go ahead, Councilmember Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I wanted to indicate to you, Madam Chair, you were correct that the darling of the with the issues surrounding the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight. Councilmember Garcia, can you possibly speak into your microphone a little closer? We're having a hard time hearing you. Okay, that's better. Thank you. That's better. As much. Thank you. And Governor, government about due to the earlier remarks about the importance of the issues that currently surround the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, I believe that the sheriff's department is one of the larger and more complex issues that we are addressing at this time. Just like, you know, the call for more contra access for all is important. And I don't think anyone is trying to say that one is more important than the other. But what I want to say is that the answer is in this matter, that the King County Council has been working on establishment of a civilian oversight of the sheriff's office for more than ten years now, Madam Chair. And at the end of 2015, we we put an amendment we recommended an amendment to our charter that would amend it be civilian oversight and provide the opportunity for King County government offered of law enforcement oversight to be able to be a little more affected by some actively investigating. Some rather controversial complaints that are brought here are by one of our sheriff's deputies. Then a few months later, I believe that last year we had our new director of the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, Bret Jacobs. And we're very excited about her experience and her ability and her insight and her ability to lead this effort. And she has been working to recommend, along with John and our achievements there, how best to implement the will of the people as it relates to the charter change and how our code needs to change in order to facilitate the voters desire. This legislation now before Madam Chair, is a result of that work and include the following one oversight of the sheriff's complaint handling process from a person talking to her office or the sheriff's office through the final determinations of that process. A We're looking at almost everything. The authority to conduct an investigation. Okay. And among other things, the authority to review and make recommendations regarding their sheriff operations, training policies and procedures. I personally think this is going to be even a more valued part of the work that is offered there. And really, that's fair. And they can assist the sheriff. And right now, if we pass this legislation and there's still important bargaining to be done with our partners in labor, specifically the King County Sheriff's Deputies Association, our guild, as well as three or four other girls that represent different sector of the employee that work for the sheriff's department. But it's equally important for us that the county council be clear about our desire to have a more effective civilian oversight of this. And that's really been admirable here in Martin Luther King Junior County. Thank you very much, Madam Chair, and colleagues. Thank you. So I could use a little guidance here. We are getting ready to move this out of committee today, I understand is the desire. So is there more discussion or Councilmember Garza, would you like to put this before us? Well, John John and I John to get John every he. Can hear you. Was there anything else specifically that he wanted to say and. In relationship to my oversight and talking point. I can add a little bit of additional clarity, but very a few brief comments on the specificity of the legislation if the Chair desires. If it's helpful to Councilmember Gossett and and the committee. Okay. Well, then I'll be very quick, Madam Chair, and you can find this on page 15 of your packet, some of the key pieces that are within this legislation. I think some of the key areas start in section four of the legislation where sections subsections A through C really hone in on that complaint handling process and the ability to receive complaints, investigate complaints and review and certify those the process that goes through with them. That section also contains a number of the key elements relative to policies, procedures, operations and training. Section six looks to the Sheriff's Office or the Department of Public Safety side of that equation of access to it. I'm sorry. Excuse me. That's the only access to information. Section nine is the core element of that in the sheriff's office. So both officers have access to information and they one has a duty to receive one has a duty to provide. And then very key at the very end of the legislation, since there is bargaining with 11 bargaining units within the sheriff's office, there is special specific language added about provisions of this ordinance that require mandatory bargaining would not be effective until the the county completes that bargaining. And then further, if there's a conflict, then a bargaining agreement would apply. I am happy to answer any questions. I'm being relatively quick on this just in the interest of time and trying to address your specific questions as needed. Thank you, Mr. Issa. I want to open up now for discussion and questions from the council members, and then we'll see if we're ready to take a motion at that point. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. Martin Short There's a section for 2.7504 OBE. Does that mean that if there is, that the OLEO has the ability to look at all of the complaints coming in and decide whether they need to go to IU or to Oleo and make that determination? That is correct. Excellent. Perfect. Thank you. I think that's great. Any other questions? Councilmember Garza, would you like to make the motion? But I would need help from you. Councilmember. Councilmember Gossett, would you move approval of proposed ordinance number 2017? Dash 0139 with a do pass recommendation 190139. Okay, I'm glad. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move adoption 2017 0139 ordinance at this time. Thank you. The ordinance is before us. Yes, there's. No, no, no, no. The board. Okay. And we do have an amendment. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Madam Chair. This amendment, number one, and it's the one we talked about that would say that the any report will also be approved by us as the body. And so that's all it changes. Added a motion approving. Okay. We have an amendment before us. Any discussion or questions about the amendment? Councilmember McDermott. Thing. Thank you, Madam Chair. Do we want to approve or accept this report in your intent? Councilmember Lambert. Except. Okay, I'd be happy to change that word. To accept. Okay. We have a friendly amendment to change. Approved. To accept. Councilmember Garcia to do. We don't cover. I. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Councilmember Garcia, go ahead. Okay. Because I can't be my colleague. I think that the protection that Councilmember Lambert just put forth and I've got one, because it gives us another opportunity to review and look at what our progress we have made in this important area. Please comment upon it before it moves on for another year. Okay, very good. Just clarification on the word accepting. Accepting. All right. With that, the amendment as a as as friendly amended is before us. All those in favor please signify by saying i, i any opposed? Okay. Is there a title amendment? Not that I say no. That brings us to the main motion. Any final comments or questions? Councilmember McDermott. Mr. Fisher or Ms.. Jacobs, can you speak to the effect effective date of the ordinance before us? When the provisions within the ordinance become effective. So the provision so the ordinance itself would be effective through a normal course, which is ten days after executive signature. However, since there is bargaining that will take place with various guilds in and labor unions over the course of the next, I'm going to assume probably a two year cycle for each of those bargaining units. It would not become effective until after completion of bargaining. So on that rolling cycle, it would affect each one differently. And so each one would then become a it would then affect them as a following bargaining. And then presumably also only to the degree that the contract that was collectively bargain design measures with in compliance with matches, the ordinance put it up today. Otherwise we might see ourselves with the revised ordinance in front of us. Absolutely. That would be a choice for the Council. But it is very possible that the completion of bargaining you may need to or desire to go back and revisit the ordinance and perhaps amend it to reflect the will of the various bargaining units and your own decisions in approving those bargaining agreements. You say will and perhaps it will be the could be the will of the council, and perhaps we could do that. What would be the consequences if we the council chose not to. Under Section ten, be at the very end of the ordinance? It says that if a bargaining agreement has language which is different than that which is in a bargaining agreement, the bargaining agreement governs. And so the bargaining agreement will always overrule the code under this, which is a it's not a defined it's it is a relatively standard concept which your bargaining agreement is going to be the governing document, but this sets your policy in place within code. Thank you. Catherine. Councilmember Gardner. Madam Chair. Thank you. I'm really pleased that the progress that we've been able to make. But I wanted to share with and remind members that I had the opportunity, particularly last year, to work closely with some of the larger unions or associations that represent the share of power, that basically the captain and the rank and file officers who are in their service advocate scale. And I am working with their leaders to be very productive. They put out their idea that I'm hopeful that will come from being acceptable to both parties in a relatively short period. And we also did we also plan to and John help helping with this. When do we plan to let them lead of our new effort right away or we're. Currently the language is a matter of public domain and is an available is available in your online system. So it is currently available and the amended version will be available probably within a day or so, depending upon processing time. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Gosset. I just want to add a few comments of my own. This has been a piece of work that has been many years in the making, and particularly since 2015, after the voters of King County agreed to amend our charter to include the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight as a required office in the Legislative Branch. As you said at the beginning, Mr. ICIA. I want to acknowledge the leadership of Councilmember Gossett and others, my colleagues who were here, I was not at the time. I want to acknowledge our still relatively new director, Deborah Jacobs, for all the hard work she's put in with all of the parties involved to get us to this point. I think that the proposal has improved sequentially each time we've looked at it, because that's that's just shows that there's been listening and adapting going on to make sure that this works with everybody who's going to have to work with it and provides really significant and really significant oversight because the whole goal is to build public trust and build the relationship between our law enforcement and the public. I also just want to acknowledge Susie Swaniker and Bob Railton who are here. They also have worked with us on this and have the job of making sure that this works with our colleagues in Labor and that will have to go forward from here in negotiation. So I'm really pleased that we've gotten to this point, looking forward to taking a vote on it. And I will just ask Councilmember Cassidy of anything to close again. You reminded me something is different. Jacob. There she. Is. I didn't hear the commentary and what she being that I will not hear from her. Me speak. Ms.. Jacobs, are you. Do you believe we should adopt this motion? I do. I'm very enthusiastic about the final product. It's been, you know, literally dozens and dozens of drafts. And because this timing has taken place, where when I'm new, it's, you know, a thing where we've been learning as we work through the systems and figure out, you know, how this can fit with the sheriff's office's existing systems . And so it's been very valuable in that way. And also, just generally, I'm grateful to every single one of the council members and their staff members who have cared about this. Issue, have shown. Support, who have respected the will of the voters. And I just really appreciate that. And numerous people have had input and influence over this document. So you all have my gratitude and I can't wait to see what happens next. All right. So thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Without further discussion, if I don't see any, I will call for the vote. All those in favor, please signify by saying I'm sorry. It's a roll call vote. Yes, thank you. Thank you. First time council member Dombrowski. Hi, Council member Dunn. I remember Gossett II. Councilmember Caldwell five Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. All right. Council member of the group. Yvonne. Right. All right. Madam Chair, I am sure the vote is a nice. No, no. It signal the member up the grove excuse to. Get in passes unanimously. Congratulations. And I believe we want to expedite that, but probably not put it on consent. Expedite is not necessary. Can go to the regular course to the 410 agenda, and whether you'd like it on consent or not is your call. I would anybody like to put it not on consent speak now. When is it going to be forwarded? Kind of like. Ford. Ford ten. You'd like to speak to it. Okay. So not on consent in the regular course. Thank you. All right. Final item on the agenda today is item six. And this is just an announcement for the for everyone to be aware of. There are currently two judicial vacancies in the Southeast Division of King County District Court. As you know, King County Code Chapter 2.70 provides a process for the King County Council to fill those vacancies. That process provides that the committee of the Hall shall review candidates and interview the final candidates. Eight candidates applied for these two vacancies. All council members have been provided with application materials, bar association ratings and references. Furthermore, a subcommittee of the committee of the whole was convened by Councilmember Lambert and we reviewed the materials and met with candidates. The committee consisted of council members Lambert, Dombrowski and myself. I want to thank Councilmember Lambert for leading that effort again, as she did the last time. And based on that process, five candidates have been recommended to come before the Committee of the Hall for final interviews at our next meeting on April 5th. Those applicants are Jason Porges, Krista Swain, Bobby Edmiston, Matthew York and Rene Walls. If there is no objection, then we will go with those five finalists. Are there any comments, suggestions, questions and we will interview them at the very next. We are the committee of the whole on April 5th. All right. So that's how we will proceed. And if there's no other business before us, we will be adjourned. ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE relating to the office of law enforcement oversight; amending Ordinance 15611, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.010, Ordinance 15611, Section 3, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.020, Ordinance 15611, Section 4, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.030, Ordinance 15611, Section 5, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.040, Ordinance 15611, Section 8, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.070 and Ordinance 1438, Section 3(c), as amended, and K.C.C. 2.16.060, adding new sections to K.C.C. chapter 2.75 and repealing Ordinance 15611, Section 6, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.050 and Ordinance 15611, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.75.060."}
{"id": "king_1fb623ab-cfc9-4891-85d4-95c03bb22224", "input": "Good morning. A call to order the King County Committee of the Hall for Wednesday, April 19th, 2017. Welcome, everyone. Glad to see you here today. And I would like to ask the court to call the roll, please. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Dombroski, Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett, you're council. Member here. Here. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert here. Councilmember McDermott, Councilmember up the grove. Councilmember Von Bauer. Madam Chair. Here. Okay, thank you. We do have a quorum at this time, so I would entertain a motion to approve the minutes of our April 5th, 2017 meeting. Madam Chair, I'd like to move the minutes April 2017 as written. And it's been moved to approve the amendments. Any questions, additions, changes, seeing none. All those in favor please signify by saying I and the opposed motion. April 5th minutes are approved. Okay. The first order of business on our agenda today. Item number four is the King County Federal Legislative Agenda and federal policy interest document for 2017. This item would adopt a document that would tell the public and members of Congress what positions and bills King County feels they should be acting on during the year, with new administration taking control in Washington, D.C.. I know that he wasn't paying attention. This we have a new administration and it's you know, it's very, very clear to us that we need to be very direct and clear with Congress and the administration where we stand on issues of federal importance. We are also going, some of us, to take our annual trip to D.C. to present our interests and to our delegation next Tuesday. So it would be really great if we could adopt this next Monday at council. So it was formal and ready for us to take with us personally to Washington, D.C. So I welcome Jack Nicholson , our director of government relations, to introduce the topic and tell us where we are and what we can do to get to the end. Thank you, Madam Chair, members of the Committee. Good morning. Thank you to the perfectly well trying to get the federal agenda finalized before the trip next Tuesday. What you have in front of you is a version that was sent out at eight this morning, which is based on comments received yesterday from council members in their offices, primarily some non substantive changes around grammar, making it kind of read better. There are a couple of substantive changes on the on the back kind of high level, really three buckets looking at kind of an infrastructure bucket, which would be kind of roads, bridges, federal infrastructure, investments in King County, Eastside Rail Corridor, and then environmental uniqueness of Puget Sound, a bucket on healthy communities, which really kind of gets after the homelessness, affordable homes and combating opioid addiction. And then kind of the strong investment, the partnership that we have with the federal government and highlighting how we use some of the much of the money that we get from the federal government, either directly through grants or through pass through is from other state programs. So kind of highlighting those pieces, giving us talking points, giving us things to ask for and work with our congressional partners on. As far as the substantive changes that are probably new to you from the last version sent out yesterday, that are in the version sent out this morning, kind of adding to the river as a an ongoing investment regarding cleanup. So it's kind of the last bullet in the infrastructure bucket, the last couple of words. So making sure that or asking that the federal government continue their investments in clean up of Puget Sound down the river, rewording a little bit of language around the first bullet under the invest, investing in healthy communities so that the bullet reads supporting national efforts to combat opioid addiction and transition people safely off heroin opioids and then adding in the last bullet in that which is kind of a catch all of of issues that the county would support federal programs, initiatives that address issues important to King County families, including equal protection for all, including those in the LGBTQ community. So those are kind of the three big changes from what you have seen previously, unless you got the email this morning. So. Okay. Councilmember Lambert, plenty discussion and questions first and then we have an action. If we're ready to take one, go ahead. It could be probably three quick things. And the first part of the infrastructure for a strong economy to maintain and replace aging bridges. And the last part is this ensure we meet the transfer station needs of our economy. I think we should say and citizens, it's not just about the economy. And then down under. Prosecuting Attorney's Office Grant funding for GAAP. Remind me what GAAP is. I have to look that up. Okay. So why don't we write down what that is? Because it'd be easier for our legislators to remember, too, since there's so many acronyms and then another infrastructure. You said earlier about bridges, but I think we should also list bridges there. And my concern is that they used to have a bridge account and then they two years ago or so, they moved them together, roads and bridges. And it doesn't have the same transparency as when it was just bridges. So I'd like to see bridge funding be separate to and listed under infrastructure. Okay. Those are my thoughts. So if I may, on the on the infrastructure piece, that's kind of what we currently get funding for and how it's kind of allocated. And I can check and see if we are getting specific bridge funding that we could call out there. On the bottom piece, we can certainly add on the top piece if there's not a separate kind of source of money that we're getting for bridges that we would like to see that. Yes. So thank you. I don't think we're getting it separate. I think it was tied in with roads and I think that's a problem. Okay. Thank you. They used to have a chart of all the roads in the country, how old they were, how much they cost, and their anticipated amount to redo them. And I think that transparency is really healthy. And they know, looking at the time for our county and our 181 bridges and their safety numbers, it's frightening. So I think it needs to be kept before everybody. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. Under adult and juvenile detention, I was wondering why we do not have school to prison pipeline, because that is a very big and growing problem and challenge to our community and many others across the nation. And maybe that nobody brought it up. I had not brought it up earlier, but it appears to be an omission unless the federal government does not provide help in that arena. I don't really know for sure, but I wanted to add it as an area that we would investigate which orchard path. My thoughts are it's entirely up to this body to decide what kind of what they want to include on their on their agenda. As far as kind of the the bottom portion that you that you talk of that has a dollar amounts. That's what we currently kind of bigger buckets of money that we get from the federal government and kind of generally how we use it. I don't know that there there would be a kind of a call out for specifically kind of school to prison issues. I think various programs that we do get funding for can be related to that particular issue. But if you wanted to call that out as something that you would like to see work on at the federal level probably fits some language under the healthy communities. I would like I would like to explore the possibility of doing that, because right now in our juvie, we have a 55% African-American population in there and about 70% youth of color. And a lot of that has that starts that starts with the expulsion and suspension rate in our public schools, and it just cries out for. Our. Attention. And that's a big problem across the nation. So I would suspect that the federal government should have or if it doesn't, that groups of leaders from various parts of our country should raise this issue. And that's what I wanted to be able to do. Okay. Customer McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. Nicholson. Either we have a bullet in the wrong place, or I, or we have funding that I'm unaware of. And that is under adults in juvenile detention. On the back side, on the bottom left column. Grant funding for school meals. Is there school meal funding within juvenile detention or should that be perhaps under Health and Human Services somewhere? I can check that out. That might need to be under the Health and Human Services. Okay. Well, check one way or the other. I think I'm hearing comments in the room that there actually is. Okay. Okay. So just kind of rolling up what I heard here today. It seems as if this is a good basic document. I'm not hearing a lot of concerns with this document. There's a proposal to add some language about roads and bridges. There's a proposal to add language about disproportional confinement by race of youth, of color and Councilmember Garza youth particularly, or just disproportionate confinement. I mean, because with adults, you see a similar pattern. Were you thinking specifically to call out juvenile detention? Or. I was thinking more of a focus on juvenile detention. And that's why I used the concept, scored the guideline, rather than just talking about disproportionality. Okay. The pipeline ends in adult prison. I was just there. Yeah. So and then a question about maybe moving around this one bullet point. So, colleagues, could we move this document forward to full council expedited without recommendation to give an opportunity to absorb those requests for changes? It seems like without objection. Get them into the final document with the striker and then take that up on Monday. Would that process work for people? I'm saying thumbs ups and heads nodding. Excellent. I would. You've been handed motion 2017 0163 and I would entertain a motion to move that to full council with no recommendation. Madam Chair, I move. We give, we move motion 2017 163 to vote council without recommendation on an expedited basis. Okay, that's been moved to do so. Any last comments or questions? Anyone want to speak to it? You know? Madam Chair, we have an amendment and a title amendment, if I may move those as well. They were at our place this morning. I move adoption of Amendment One. Amendment one removes the reference to the policy address that we are. We do not have one before us. The motion language is actually left over from last year. Okay, so we have the agenda before us. So we have a motion for a we have an amendment in front of us. Amendment one may ask a question about the amendment. Mr. Chairman, the A we know maybe this is for Mac. Are we simply not adopting a federal policy interest document this year, which is sort of doing away with that? Are we using the one from last year? What's the plan? We would not be having one this year. So just the federal agenda. Okay. Very good. All right. Any question? Other questions about the amendment? All those in favor please signify by saying i. I. Any opposed amendment carries unanimously. Item of adoption of tier one. So the motion complies with the amendment. We just adopted the title and complies with the amendment. You just adopted the title amendment. C1 has been moved. Any further comment? All those in favor please signify by saying I any opposed motion carries. Okay. Now we come to the final motion again as amended. Proposed motion 2017 0163 without recommendation. And I'll ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember DEMBOSKY Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett, I Council Member Bowles I Council Member Lambert I Council Councilmember McDermott All right. Council member of the Grove High Council Member Von Bauer. Hi, Madam Chair. Hi, Madam Chair. The vote is 9i0 no's. Thank you all very much. By your vote we will move that along and I am very confident we will be ready for our flight on Tuesday. So this brings us to item number five, which is the proposed ordinance motion propose ordinance 2017 0178 regarding King County access for all. This ordinance council will recall is a revised version of the executives transmitted access for all program to improve public access to arts, science and heritage programs. On Monday, this ordinance was introduced and it was duly referred to this committee and to the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee. Part of the purpose of that dual referral was because the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee does not have a meeting scheduled until May 10th. And if we are to. Take up any action on this as proposed for the April August ballot. It would need to be done before May 10th. So we have this meeting to have discussion and proposed changes to the new and updated ordinance, if we choose. And then we'd have to figure out a path forward procedurally because one is not really apparent at the moment. But this enables us to at least have discussion of the substance today. So with that, I'm going to turn to our. Okay. Before I turn to our lead staff, I'm going to call on Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Madam Chair. And if the chair permits, I'd like to just give a little introduction. I think that would be very welcome. Thank you. Thank you. As my colleagues know, I introduced on behalf of the executive the proposed ordinance that was transmitted to us. And I did that along with Council Chair McDermott and council member of the Belle Duchy. And I have to say this has been quite an experience, and what the three of us did I can guarantee is to listen to our colleagues, listen to the concerns that have been expressed and those mainly focused on not enough geographic fairness, equity, that the regional organizations, which are the large ones, get too much funding and the community based organizations get too little of the funding, and there's inadequate attention to social and economic equity. Another concern was that there was inadequate oversight of fort culture, which would become the agency to oversee access for all. And there was concern that not all school districts in our county would benefit. And another major one is that the implementation plan should be approved by the Council. There were other ones, but those are the main categories that I heard anyway need to be addressed. So as it was not possible to continue the discussion in the Budget Finance Fiscal Management Committee, I worked with my colleagues to develop a new proposal. So this is a new one. This is a new ordinance. And I believe that it really does address these issues that I mentioned, including a $1 million per district floor requirement, equity and inclusion being enhanced seed money so that new organizations could emerge, could develop, especially in those council districts where there are very few opportunities for organizations to develop currently strong reporting and accountability language in this new measure. And then there are some miscellaneous technical changes, but I commend this to you, and I am very appreciative that we are able to have a discussion on it today. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Councilmember Caldwell's for that overview. I think it's really helpful to set the stage and continuing. I am going to call on our council staff here today, Lia Zoghbi and Andrew Kim, to walk us through the new ordinance and make sure that everybody understands what is in it, that we have an opportunity to ask questions. And then when I think when we've established a base level of understanding of where we are, then we can turn to discussion about where we ought to go. So good morning for being here. Thank you. Good morning. Council members. I'm Lee Zoghbi and with the council staff and with me is Andrew Kim. Council staff. The materials for this item begin on page nine of your packet. This proposed ordinance is a revised version of the Access for All program, and to briefly recap the program, it would provide public access to arts, science and heritage programs and experiences in King County, and the program would be funded by a 1/10 of a percent sales tax for seven years, proposed for voter consideration at a special election on August 1st of this year. And because members are familiar with the executive transmitted from a proposal, I would have us skip to the analysis section on page 13 of your packet for a comparison of how this version compares with the executive proposed ordinance. So there's a table on page 13 that compares the major program elements, the Public School Access Program, the Regional Cultural Organization Access Program, and the Community Based Cultural Organization Access Program. And so the major change you've. C is that there's a shift of funding from the regional cultural organizations to the community based to community based programing, and the requirement that includes mandatory requirements for regional cultural organizations to provide equity and inclusion benefits and a geographic distribution public benefit. So those benefits would be aimed at providing cultural programs for people with economic and geographic barriers to access. The regional cultural organizations would be required to spend at least 30% of their award annually on equity and inclusion benefits. And then of that, at least 10% of that would or at least 10% of their total award would have to be spent on programing that it's occurring outside of the cities where regional cultural organizations are not primarily located. Are. Occurring in those cities. If I said that right, regional cultural organizations would also have the option of meeting that geographic geographic distribution requirement by contributing their 10% of their award to for culture to distribute to community based cultural organizations. So overall, you see that requirement reflected on the chart with the $3.8 million shift from regional choral cultural organizations to the community based cultural organizations. The requirement for regional cultural organizations to contribute at least 20% of their wards to the public school access program, and at least 30% to equity inclusion benefits means that at least 50% of their award is restricted to specific uses. So you see that reflected in the chart with the $19 million that is now unrestricted, unrestricted for regional cultural organizations. What page you are? I'm on page 13. So the first column of numbers is the new proposal, and the second column of numbers is the executive transmitted proposal. And. I'm sorry. Anytime. It might make sense, but it's related. Please go ahead. Councilmember, tell Americans where you finished asking your question. No, but I'm glad I'm okay. Councilmember, I have to go, but go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Lia, did you say 3.8 million is moving from the regional organizations now that 3.8 million will go to the community based organizations. So the way it would actually work is that 3.8% of the total awards that would go to 8 million are yes, 3.8 million would be required to be spent in communities that don't have a regional cultural organization. Or there is the option of providing it directly back to for culture to distribute to community based organizations. So how I would look is there's a few different options. Organization, regional organizations could provide programing in a, you know, somewhere other than where they're located. They could do that already. And it was. Correct. Now they're required. What percentage? That that's at least 10%. Okay. But the 30% has to be used for equity and inclusion benefits, and that would be also considered an equity and inclusion benefit. If I might have a follow up. Can we legally do that? Say, I mean, I'm intrigued by this idea that we can have 70% go to the regionals, but then ask that a percentage be given back to for culture. So has that been through legal review, the ability to say you can meet, we can comply with state law? And still direct the regionals, know if the regionals are giving a piece of it back, could we direct 50% or 90% to go to for culture and then distribute? You couldn't direct it specifically what you what how it structured is they can either they have choices for how to meet the 10% requirement. We can legally require. So they can do that by providing the programing, by partnering with a community based cultural organization, or they are given the option if they want to, to give the money back. So that is what we can do under state law. Okay. So there's not necessarily any I'm not trying to be facetious here, but there's no guarantee there will be money going to poor culture, to the regional organizations. It's just an option there. Correct. But there is a guarantee that that 10% has to be spent in communities. It can't just be spent where. That 90% could still be spent in Seattle, or if it were a Seattle based organization, 90% could be spent community benefit Seattle and 10% could be in the busses out to the other. Technically, not really that either because 20% have to go to the public school program, which has to go countywide. And then also, well, it's kind of technically difficult, but it doesn't have to go countywide. But there's there's very specific requirements what what the public school access funds have to go to. And it you know, it has to be spent at, you know, at the public school level for all districts within King County, all public schools, the 30%. Again, it is a requirement that of at least 30%, the award has to be spent on equity and inclusion benefits. And those could be in the form of providing discounted, you know, admission to an organization, or it could be in the form of taking programing out to the community. But at least 10% of their overall award would have to go out to the community. Thanks. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett. And thank you, Madam Chair. Leah, I have a question on the last comment that council member of the would just throw that I can understand that equity and inclusion means the regional, cultural and scientific entities are providing public transit or bus access and that taking some of their programs into the schools and perhaps the neighborhoods. But is that the same as what you said earlier, about 3.8 million being transferred to their communities to set up regional culture. As I understand your question, it's that two different things. So that. To be honest, I'm. Not sure the 20%, 20% of a regional cultural organization award would be going to the public school program, the Public School Cultural Access Program. And that program involves transportation to students, to cultural organizations. It also involves cultural organizations taking programs to cap classrooms so that the 20% then there's an additional additional and and that was always required in this ordinance. There's an additional 30% requirements. And of that for equity and inclusion. And many of those benefits, you know, the defined benefits involve either providing overcoming barriers to access for people who have economic barriers or people who have geographic barriers. And so the additional requirement would be that 30%, you know, a third of it, 10% of the overall award had to be spent towards mitigating those or has to be spent in communities that don't have regional. Cultural or. Economic. That's meant by whom, as spent by the regional organizations or for culture or given to our community groups, for them to define what cultural aspirations and programs they like to see develop. So that that would actually get worked out at the contract and implementation plan level those details. And so it could look different for each cultural organization. But when they are entering into contract with for culture to receive their awards, the specific benefits, they would come forward with a proposal of how they would meet this requirement culture. I would define what culturally legitimate for these organizations. Not for the community organizations. For the regional organization. I know, but I'm talking about the 30% that you said now that would be made available for creative, cultural and scientific activities that take place in the communities. Are you, senator for culture would be the determiner of what groups get that money? Can I find a figure? I want to step in for a quick second. One of the items we discussed wanting to see in this proposal for the sponsors was the idea that there would be involvement of the council members in helping to shape the implementation plan, which would include a plan for geographic areas and specific geographic areas. I should say plans plural for specific geographic areas and how those would be met by the cascading flow of money, but also countywide equity plan and how that would be developed. And that then after having had that upfront input into what those plans should say as part of the implementation plan, then we would as a council have to approve the implementation plan so that we would see it back and be have an ability to make sure it reflected what we wanted to see it say. And then my further understanding is that the implementation plan will be used to flow down to the contracts with individual agencies so that when for culture creates the requirements that each agency has to meet in exchange for the support through this policy, that that those contracts would collectively have to meet the vision in the implementation plan. Am I saying that about right? That's correct. I don't see it really clearly in the language, I guess, of at least of the staff report. And I haven't, I'll be honest with you, looked at this closely this far down into the ordinance, yet this is happening like in real time. But I want to make sure that that language says exactly what I just said in the ordinance. But by the time we get to doing anything with it. You. Yeah, 1/2. I want to make sure that she got it. She write it down yet? Okay. Yeah. Councilmember and I would be much happier if we saw your pen actually write something. Marc Andrews. Okay. Thank you. Andrews Pen is right in council. That works. Okay. So Councilmember Lambert and then Councilmember Caldwell's. But we trust you. You know where to find the tape. I'm sure you're listening to the tape. It makes for excitement on page 14 on some area, the equity and start up plan on the first bullet says Cultural Opportunity Act six is expansion plans for the east, west and south sub areas of the county. So yeah, there's no north. But mostly when we talk about east, we're talking about maybe close to two thirds of the county is in east, which means that it ends up closer to Seattle than, say, North Bend or Snoqualmie. And in a meeting yesterday with people, they said, you know, we're really tired of things never getting out beyond the halfway mark of this county. So I think we're going to need to add another category there. At least one. I'm not going to speak to that. When somebody wants to speak to North, that's another issue. But I don't know how he said. Whether I'm next. Okay. 92, that for you, sir. The people yesterday to me say we don't want to be called the Far East anymore because that's not where we want to be called. So I don't know what we want to be called, whether we want to be called outside the rural areas or around the rural areas or unincorporated areas. But we need to have another thing in there so that it isn't just and not that I don't love Bellevue. I do love Bellevue, but what's in Bellevue doesn't necessarily help the people out in sky comas or in in Oklahoma. So I think we need to be looking at that 1007 square miles to make sure that they aren't left out again. Thank you. Councilmember Carl Wells. Thank you, Madam Chair. Just and I agree, I believe there should be another category I thought that was being put in. But I do think another point is very important here that is added to this new proposed ordinance, and that is that the equity advisory committee that would be established by foreign culture would have at least nine members on it, appointed by or confirmed by the Council. That means that every council member of the nine districts is able to determine who would be a good representative of her or his district, and the council would confirm those appointees. I think this would go a long way toward the council. The council excuse me, the council would confirm those members appointed. So that would go a long way to address what I believe a council member will do. She brought up and council member. Council. Okay. Any other questions, comments at this point? Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Thank you. And I'm trying to get orange. I just came from the Shoreline Rotary, my annual presentation there and their annual one of their annual inquiries is with respect to sound transit. And it's been, I don't know, 20 years since they've had a supposed North End or an actual North End representative on the board. And so this is fresh on my mind because having a meeting at the table, make sure you're at the table and not being eaten. So why isn't there in this new proposal? Why was the North End left out? I mean, we have strong cultural organization as a shoreline historical society, the Kenmore Historical Society. We have a void, if you will, a gap in in in capacity up there. Why was it left out? I know. I will I will dove right in there and say we had we have had a number of discussions among us who were working on this. We've invited others to join us in working on it. And we're inviting now for people to join us in working on it and perfecting it. So I think that regardless of why it is the way it is today, this is the point of a discussion with all nine of us is now we are all nine here. We were all nine talking about it and that we can perfect things that are missing. And I think that that's an important thing to do. But the I will tell you, the way the discussion went was, should we have a plan that each council member engages in advising for culture what it should say by district? That was the initial idea. And if you look at a map of our districts in some places, that makes a whole lot of sense. In other places, it doesn't make as much sense to do it by district. That's just because the district lines me. You know, they were written for a purpose, which is to basically get us all as somewhat equal amount of population to represent. They weren't necessarily drawn based on, if you will, watersheds of arts and culture and heritage. Well, as someone who drew those lines and knows the law, one of the factors you look at our communities of interest. Right. So that's in the state statute on redistricting. And so. I understand that obviously. You have northeast, south and West together. And so it seems like a choice was made here to leave the north end out. And I'm just wondering why. No, no, no. We we what we talked about in our meeting was having sub areas. And the sub areas in this county have typically been represented by north east and south north is, you know, think about transportation, you've got skateboard, you've got seashore, you've got ETP. I don't think those are perfect. And I'm perfectly open to talking about smaller and different segregation, but that was the discussion. There was no discussion of let's leave the north end out. Nobody said that. And in fact, we put the north end in. But like I say, if there's a different and a better way of doing it in, you know, your district, as I know my district, as we all know our districts better than anyone else. Well, maybe maybe I'm just misunderstanding, maybe the communities in there, but it's not in their name. Councilmember Cole. Well, I thank you. It was intended to be part of West, but if it if I can certainly reword. And Madam Chair. Go ahead, Councilor. I did get a text from a staff that yeah, it was I thought it was going in there. That was the intent, just there was never any intention to leave it out and it was an error that it did not get included. So I think we should go along with what the chair has indicated that we're here to get this perfect, and that includes making technical adjustments as needed. Thank you. And I. I meant what I said. If north, south and east aren't the right words, clearly west isn't the right word. But if north, south and east aren't the right words, or if that's not enough words, then we should add more words or change the words. That's fine. And thank you. Thank you for the information. I think it may be less about the labels and more about logical communities of interest that are based on a history of investment or not investment, or any communities of common interest and how they might work together or not. And so I'm not sure if those are further defined in the ordinance somewhere, but that's really my kind of thinking on it. You just, you know, if you're going to go with this approach of having these regional plans, what what should those regions look like? There's a great discussion to have. And I that's what I meant, actually, is if if the words north, south and east don't capture the logical communities of interest because they're too broad or because they're not in the right places, then I think it's a great discussion to have about what are the right categories, how small, how focused . That's a good conversation to have. But I would I. It also add that that requirement is within the implementation plan, with the intention that it would be further defined within the implementation plan that the Council would be approving. And I'm sorry, I don't mean to make this into too much of an informal discussion here, but but it's also very important that the ordinance say clearly what we expect to be in the implementation plan, because if it doesn't say that clearly and the implementation plan then doesn't include what we assumed would be in it, we don't have the authority to require that to be in it. So, I mean, the ordinance language is very important for that reason. Did I see Councilmember Garces hand a few minutes ago? Councilmember Garza, were you waiting? No. No. Okay. You were in the middle of your presentation. Why don't we let you continue? So that was the explanation of the chart and the first change from the underlying ordinance. If there aren't any more questions about the the chart, the next requirement is that I did. Madam Chair, I think clarify back to the numbers, if I might, a very brief one. Go ahead, Councilman, before. We get too far ahead on it, because I think this is important, this question of whether or not the new measure. Shifts money from regional organizations to community based organizations. And I'll say my read first, it's partly a comment I want to just make. I want to make sure I'm understanding this accurately. I think I am. Regional organizations would receive the same amount of money under this proposal as the original one. This just says 10% of it has to be spent in communities outside, you know, whether it's intentional. And the classic example we use is the science center vans. It's an easy one to understand. Or if they volunteer, they could voluntarily give some money back to for culture. So one scenario, if they chose to do things like Vans, is that the community based organizations would get not one dime more in dollars under this, but those communities would have. It just kind of locks in what we've been talking about, which was that organizations could come into your community. I just want to because I it's at the core of one of my concerns is that distinction between investing in a community versus investing in a different community and having them come into yours. And I just wanted to the way it appears the money flows here is that the money is proportional money to regional and communities the same under both versions. We just say the regionals need to spend 10% on certain things that benefit communities other than the one they're located in. I just want to make sure that I'm following that correctly. That's correct. Okay. And some of that, how we communicate is a matter of. Correct and made data. Differently. But I if the chart dynasties, say organizations, probably we'd be at this point better to categorize this total amount as spend on communities, most of it going to community based organizations. But we can't tell you exactly what that would be at this point until those contracts are are signed, because. It kind of that throws me because then we put it in categories and we say it's kind of another example. The schools, if I understand it, 10% of the money goes to school districts. Other money goes to regional organizations that they spend on school programs. And so sometimes we conflate the terms. School access program with money for the schools. And when we do that, it makes it appear as if the regional organizations are getting much less money than they are. If we pull out the portion that they're spending on the schools, pull out the portion that they're spending on community organizations, and we say, look, they're only getting 40% of the money. The reality they're getting a much larger percentage, but they have some strings attached on how they spend that. And that's good or bad. It's a matter how to communicate. I just want to make sure we're transparent about where the dollars are, who's getting to make them make those decisions about the dollar. So that's as more of a comment than a question. But I think it I think it's a fair one to correct. And and really, in terms of who's making the decisions, even with the the public school access program restricted funds, it really is down to that contract level. So it it's it's a proposal by the regional organizations, but it's a process to determine if if the proposal meets the eligibility requirements and the eligibility requirements will be based on what is in the ordinance. Councilmember Coles. Thank you, Madam Chair. Leah, I would I think we're getting ahead of ourselves a little bit. Lia has not gone over the whole proposal yet, but there are a couple of provisions I think do need to have attention. One is that unlike the original proposed ordinance, this one includes language that each council district will be receiving of a minimum of $1 million to be directed toward community based organizations. That is something very different. Yes. And secondly, we did include language. And I cannot tell you where it is right now, but you can go over it as a path forward for council districts to add a path for community based organizations to be come or have created centers. Big centers could become regional centers themselves so that people from Seattle, from my district, could go to another area of the county to attend an event, to go to a museum that would be a new regional organization. So money is spent in that district as well for hotels, restaurants, shops and so forth. So we are trying very hard to address the need, legitimate need, I believe, to get an equitable distribution around the whole county in every district. Thank you. Madam Chair. That the member for the. Question on point Councilmember Caldwell's that's a really interesting idea, an appealing idea for a district like mine and I think other members on the council and I could see that really bringing value. You know, Councilmember One has been a good supporter of the new federal waste center and you can see the enthusiasm around from the community surrounding that and what that will mean at the federal way. And I could see something in the kind of redeveloping North End, you know, Kenmore Mall area. In this proposal, how would that be funded? Are there dollars in the funding allocation method that could bring that to life? And if so, how much? It sounds like an expensive undertaking, but there's a lot of money here. So is that is that in here to fund that? So what Councilmember Caldwell's is referring to would be within those those Sabrina plans that would be developed. And so those those plans would be intended to look at the funding available within the different categories, and it would be different in different areas and how, you know, direct how that it should be developed or how it should be used over time to develop such things as a regional center for specific purposes. And that then would be used by more culture in working with their organize the organizations that they're providing grants to and looking at how distributions should be made protected, particularly within the competitive pool to achieve that vision. Okay. And maybe this may be an offline explanation, but I'm not seeing on your helpful chart on page 13, which seems to allocate the dollars where that money would come from. I mean, one of these centers would 10 to $20 million. I would assume. It could come from any of the categories. It would be. A matter of the organizations that the money has to go to, organizations other than the public school access, the 10% part of the public school access program. So everything else has to be achieved through awards to to cultural organizations, either regional ones or community based ones. So in theory, could a regional one say the zoo or the Seattle Art Museum? Would they somehow in their bucket of money, be funding a North King County Regional Cultural Center? Is that possible that that wouldn't that? I don't think that's the way that it's written currently. It would be borders that money. Well, I'm honestly, I'm trying to understand where the where the money is to do this. It's I guess it's a I love the concept and it seems to have a lot of value. I mean, it's very appealing. I mean, next. Councilmember Lambert's been meeting him and Councilmember Gossett. So I really like the idea of some regional planning like this, both what Councilmember Caldwell says, and then the other day, Work Council member of the Grove said, When we bring people into Seattle, there's a multiplier effect and it be interesting to know what the multiplier effect is. You know, for every dollar spent in the arts, does the surrounding community get $15 because people are getting dinner there and they've spent the night at the hotel or pay for parking, whatever? Because, you know, a lot of our districts could use some economic development. So how do we get something in other districts, too, out of this money so that we would have some economic development going on? Because this is a wonderful thing and it should be available to other places. The other thing is that as I'm listening to this, there are districts in this county that don't really have the wherewithal , as I'm wondering, much like with our best starts for kids, if we could have a navigator, a listener, an expert, whatever we want to call this person. Who. Was on tap that anybody could say, I need you to help me get an X in my district and help with the expertize of that. Is there somebody like that in here or there? There is actually there within the community based cultural organizations. That 1.8 million you see for admin administration of the community based cultural organization program. The vision is to have technical assistance, to have some, you know, to to provide technical assistance for organizations, to help them learn about the program, to help them apply for a grant funds to learn about what they may be eligible for. And the vision would be actually to have some of those technical support people co-located out in communities, not Seattle, where our culture is currently located. So one in the north, one in the east, one in the south. And then beyond that, there's some planning towards using money for communications, using money to develop initiatives, basically. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett, followed by Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Madam Chair. Yeah, this is in response to a response that you made to Councilman Dombroski. I thought that at the beginning of this process and peak my interest when you said we're going to have $3.8 million available for community based cultural activities, even possibly a couple of regional centers. But then later, when he asked about who makes the decisions about this money or this kind of money, it wasn't clear on who that would be. I'm trying to figure out, is this 3.8 million and for Culture Bank and we have to go to them and make a case. Or is this part of the council's strategic plan where the King County Council will have some say and determining who gets this money is just it's not clear. The 3.8 would be part of the Regional Cultural Organizations Award. So the state law provides a formula where the regional organizations get their award. You know, we talked about they don't just get a blank check that it's actually an eligibility. Says how much each one of them get. Correct. And I know we've done that, but the 3.8 million would be is a restriction on those funds to be spent in communities. That's what DEMBOSKY was asking. Like if the zoo get 4.7 million and the Pacific Science Center gets 4.2 million. Are you saying that in order to come up this 3.8 million, each of them are giving up 800,000 and putting it in a pot that smaller regions can apply to. It's true that our culture or some other entity that's going to make the decision on who gets this money, how much and what they can use it for. Yes. Okay. So there are three basic options of what those regionals could do with that restricted portion of their award. They could spend it directly on programing in communities. They could partner with a community based in. In that case, that would be a joint decision between Fort Culture and the regional organization on how to spend that money . They could partner with a community based cultural organization in a community, so that would be a joint decision with the cultural, the regional and the community based cultural organization. And then again with for culture, because it would be a contract for the award. The last option would be and it could be somebody first. I don't there's no particular order, but it could be to return the funds to for culture and then it would be a part of that community based cultural organization, competitive pool that. Would apply. Health care would administer. And people would apply for. Cultural organizations would apply for money. Correct. And then the decision makers would be for culture and the people that they put together to help them make these decisions. Correct. All right. Councilmember Caldwell's followed by Councilmember Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Miss Madam Chair, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. A couple of points and I'll wait until Councilmember Garcia returns to address what he brought up. But with regard to the comments or questions made by council members up to Grove and DEMBOSKY, which I thought were there are very important ones I would like I would invite you to turn to a couple of pages in our briefing, page 14, again on the fifth bullet sub area equity and start up plans. And you may see on the third one it refers to a cultural organization's start up plan for fostering the development of new cultural organizations. And the overlying part of this one requires that for culture develop plans with. In consultation with County Council members. We also have been created the Equity Advisory Committee, which we would confirm the appointments to that representing our district. But more pointedly, if you will, turn to page 53 in our briefing, this is the actual redlined version of the proposed ordinance for us. And on that, which is page five and insert 53, page 53 in our materials, page five of the redlined ordinance and on the statement of facts, number 11 and 12, all added, all in red line refer to this access for all funding would foster the creation and development of new cultural organizations throughout King County, reduce geographical barriers and ensure that all residents have easy access to arts, science and heritage resources. And very poignantly, number 12, access for all funding would support the growth and development of arts, science and heritage centers throughout King County to promote healthy and vibrant communities. I wanted that those two in there to make sure that our intent is included, to be able to have that path forward, to create the centers that have been mentioned. It's integral to this proposed ordinance. I think you can smell Councilmember Dunn followed by councilmember. Of the girl. At first. Let me say you're doing a good job up there right now. I'm going to tell you when you're ready. Yeah. Doing a good job. I guess my interest is there or, you know, not a lot of arts district things in my district. I want to be able to create something out of whole cloth that doesn't exist there because there's nothing there right now. And so the flexibility is important to do just that. And I just want to make sure that we can build that in. Yes, it is. It's built into the state statute that funds can be used, community based cultural organization funds can be used to fund startup costs for new organizations. What about capital, though? Yes, capital. Regional culture organizations cannot fund capital, but community based ones can. Very good. Thank you. Yes. And Councilmember Dunn, if I may, you're being a little unfair. You have three excellent community based organizations on our list here, and we just we'd like to see more. Yeah, I wish we had more. The way my district is sort of balkanized, there just isn't that urban core that traditionally carries the arts organizations. Thank you. Very good. Councilmember at the. Grove. Madam Chair, I'm worried I'm wading into beginning a discussion back and forth that we want to wait on. I think that I think we're there. I myself. But thank you for asking. I appreciate that. I have I I love the language in here that calls for development of plans for how we get geographic equity, how we address that. But we're spending the money and then we're going to go have a plan. I one, I think we should have done that before we created how we drive all the dollars out. And I also think there's an important distinction between non legally binding and, you know, findings language that we want to do this or language that calls for the creation of a plan is very different than putting money aside to do that. And there's no guarantee that there will be any money to do that. There is the the pot of money for community based organizations. We could tap into that. Maybe that could happen. Maybe in some areas. That means it comes out of the other community based organizations. You know, I. I wish that's what our plan did. I wish whoever wrote the state law had done that kind of planning and create a system that allowed us to invest those dollars in ways that created that. But if we make a decision to put something on the ballot, the buy formula drives a huge chunk of the money into the large regional organizations that are geographically centered largely and then say, we'll have a plan and we'll that might try to achieve some other things. It doesn't provide certainty and it it appears almost like window dressing on something. It's a good faith. I think it's a listening and response to concerns. But, you know, if you know, there's only 7 million a year for capital in there and if we're going to spend 7 million a year on developing this, this means there won't be capital for small organizations. There's all trade offs in those decisions we make and we punt on those decisions, which is okay. I mean, it's an implementation plan and contracts for how people spend the money. But I just think there's a difference in point. I think it goes to the question Councilor Dombrowski was asking. Around. Where will the dollars come from? And also, is there is there any level of certainty at all other than it's eligible? There'll be a plan. Maybe we'll do it, because I believe you can. I think the up my soapbox squirrel. I actually believe in that vision that if we had a part of, you know, this is a $500 billion plan, let's say you put a 50 million into something up north to develop a string of historical museums up there and then developed a plan on how to we'd settle for 40 . Yeah, well, 50 million is only 10% of this whole thing. Are these two. And you know if the dollars went, if we had certainty that those dollars would be there to implement the plan, whether it's 100 million, 50 million, 40 million in a community, then you know, you're getting that. But to say, well, the plan and they can compete within that existing community, part of money I don't think provides a level certainty that gets me comfortable. I think that's a to comment and a I guess a debate on that on that point. Okay. Councilmember Cole. Well. Thank you, Madam Chair. Well, as council member at the Grove pointed out, there is a requirement for a plan for the funding, but no funding takes place before an implementation plan is approved by the Council. So I think that if we can keep that framework in mind, then we can see that the Council will not approve any plans. No money will be provided until the plans are approved and the Council will be having a lot more involvement in that implementation plan itself, especially through this equity committee with a representative from each council. The ordinance proposed ordinance also includes a provision that the board culture board will have to hold meetings out in the communities to get the community input what they want. And the last thing I'd like to say here is this is a process. The money is not going to be there instantly. It will be gradually increased as the revenue comes in. And that's why I said that we included a path forward. So there could be these large regional centers in sub areas and individual districts have to work toward that. And that's what we will be doing with our involvement with the implementation plan. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that Councilmember Antigulov articulated my vision and analysis really quite well. And then let me give you an example of why I say that. And let's add that we're going to get $3.8 billion moved from the big organizations, big regional organizations that could be flexible and used and all over the county first roll out first. Then in response to Councilmember Dunn, who articulated the possibility of building a big community based cultural center in his district. She said that he said that would we have to use the community based funds? And she said yes. And I had earlier thought that the big extra money was coming from the big organization. So when I come out of the ground and said that whoever set this up, they really put us in a bind because they put in the legislation for any county over 1.5 million we want is a prescription problem. All the big organizations get a lot of money based on their traditional attendance rates and the amount of money that people are already putting in these cultural institutions that have been here a while. And and then when there was a lot of funds coming from the community, they said, let's see what we could do to try to get a more equitable process established. But it would have been much better to have a lot more flexibility and $500 million coming for control and scientific development or county if one. We, the legislative body, have a lot more flexibility from the get and setting something that we collectively thought would be democratic and real responsive to our people . And I think that's the reason we're having so many struggles now. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. I feel a little compelled to just kind of put a little historical context on this, though, that this legislation was worked through Olympia for eight years, quite a number of years. And my understanding is it was supported by a legislative agenda and lobbying each step of the way by county council members. So it has been here a number of times over the years. I know my predecessor was very active in advocating for this bill, both at the County Council and at the state. So I there's a big difference between a bill that we're not trying to implement and a big tax ask that we're not like imminently about to do. But and today, when we're being asked to imminently do it, but it's the structure is not something that is or should be news to this council. Okay. Were you done, Leo? And we got into discussion or did you have more? I hadn't finished providing the comparisons. A lot of them have come out. So it's up to you if you want to make sure that I get them all in or if you feel, you know. I'm going to ask for you to finish, please. And if there are things that we've already sort of talked to, maybe you just hit them quickly and carry on. Thank you. Okay. So. So first, there would be a requirement for for culture to distribute a total of at least $1 million in each community based or in each year to community based cultural organizations in each county council district. So that's a change from the original ordinance and next requirements for Four Cultures annual report on the program to the Executive and Council would include specific provisions, including a report on the distribution of funds and numbers served broken down by council districts. So members would be able to track that over time. The first report would be transmitted in 2019 rather than 2018 because that's when the money would be coming in. Next, the proposed ordinance would require the council require council approval by ordinance of the implementation plan, and it allows for amendments to the implementation plan, which could be initiated by the executive or the Council. But the Council would approve any amendment by ordinance. The proposed ordinance also restricts proceeds of the tax exempt start up funding from being spent until the implementation plan is improved approved by the Council. Next it in group includes require requirements for for for culture to develop three plans and those have been discussed somewhat. But let me lay them out what they are and they each plan would be developed with community input and also includes council can't even talk anymore in consultation with county council members. So the first one would be a cultural opportunity and access expansion plan for the sub areas of the county and we will correct those. And the next one would be a county wide cultural access equity plan for achieving equity and inclusion outcomes. And the equity inclusion outcomes are listed in the ordinance, and this would be a plan for how to specifically achieve them. And last would be a cultural organization start up plan for fostering the development of new cultural organizations. A next requirement would be that it would require at least nine of the members of the Equity Advisory Committee that for culture would be creating to be recommended one each by each county council member and confirmed by the King County Council. And finally, it makes a number of technical changes to clarify the ordinance and comply with state law, including amending four cultures charter to make it clear that they have the authority to administer this program. Okay. That brings us to the end of the presentation. Is there any other questions or discussion at this time, Councilman Domanski. Thank you very much. I was looking at this red line version, which is helpful. And in section ten, on page 78 of our materials 30 of the ordinance, there's some new language here around the Charter of the Cultural Development Authority. It says it's approved. It says it references an attachment A which isn't here. Help us understand what's going on in this section. I'm sorry. That's my mistake. The attachment age should have been in your packet. So is the legal question, you know? Feel free to toss it to our legal beagle over there, Jim. It was a legal recommendation just to make it explicitly clear that for culture has the authority to to administer the act this for all program. I mean, they have broad authority, but one of the things they don't have explicit authority is to provide funding for, for example, science organizations. So this just cleans that up, make sure that they have that that actual change in the attachment. A if you saw is, is pretty small, but I will make sure it's distributed. It's like a one liner. We are we by this ordinance changing the charter of our culture to give it new powers. Yes. Just narrowly focused to administering this program. Okay. And if we're doing that by this ordinance, can we make other changes to the For Culture Charter in terms of its. You could if they were related to the access for all program and fit that one one subject role. Well, I probably shouldn't be giving legal advice, but that's what I've been told. We want to invite him is. Nodding. I think they got it right. Okay. At least for today's purposes. I want to echo Councilmember Dunn's comments. This is a complicated ordinance and it's very clear you're prepared and know it well. It's been helpful to hear your answers to the questions. Good job. Thank you. Any comments or questions. Okay. So I've heard a number, by the way. I think there's been a really good discussion. I echo the thanks to the staff and especially Lee. I know I have a sense of just a sense of how many hours you have spent to get to the level of mastery that you have today. But it's been very, very helpful to us. So thank you so much. A lot. But could I just also say poor Andrew. Doesn't say anything, but. He is doing a lot of work. There. Looks really good, you know, just he looks like he he gives a lot of confidence just because of his demeanor. You have. You know, from. Your work with him behind the scenes, but. He thank you as well, Andrew. I mean, I know that there have been a large number of people, I mean, district staff as well, who have been working, just working very, very hard to get this to a place where we could have just the type of discussion that we had today, which I think was very, very helpful and productive. I appreciate everybody is engaging with it where we are right now, if I may, was sort of wrap us up here over this agenda item is, as I said at the beginning, this ordinance does has been duly referred to budget in fiscal management and to this committee. I am not going to unless somebody waves their hand frantically to me and asked me to ask for a vote to move this out of committee because it wouldn't really accomplish anything. If we want to move forward and discuss this further and potentially take up an action that will have to happen at an upcoming meeting of the full council, because, as I said, the Budget and Fiscal Management Committee doesn't meet until after our timeline has run out to do what was proposed in the initial ordinance. And so that decision will have to be made by the body at council whether and what they want to do and I don't think we're going to do that here today. So I think I'll just leave it there for now. Councilman Domanski. Think that chair and. Your Councilmember Dombroski is up and then you're next. Sorry, Councilmember Garcia, thanks for having this again, this working session today and for bringing forward this new ordinance. Just procedurally following on that, can we get reoriented or refreshed or reminded about the timeline that the council is facing? Assuming that we were shooting for that August 1st, 2017, ballot measure, I know there's some different vote requirements being on when you do it and let us know what what we're what our time. Sure. So the last and the last council meeting to do it as a regular action, it would be with minimal processing, meaning the chair and the executive would need to sign it right away and that it would be May 1st. And then after that you'd have until May 12th to pass it as an emergency. But the last council meeting would be May 8th unless there were a special customers. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett. I had a question of first of all, thank you, Madam Chair, and a question on something you said and and I need, Councilman, I think about the way and and here it is. And I understand why the council as a whole decided to refer it is to committees. It was originally in the budget and now it's a budget. And Kyle, if. But it is not going to or nor has any intention of and had before our deadline of May 1st, what was the value, what was the necessity of referring it back to budget? If there's a likelihood that we're going to make the decision on that before it could even get the budget. And I don't understand that. And it was a redland budget. I believe councilman of the Grove might have a word or two on that topic. Well, thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks, Councilmember Gossett. And I can only speak for my personal perspective and understanding, and I'll be candid with folks as it was, we have some divisions on this council as to whether or not this is the right plan and the right time at the last council meeting. Some members were you know, there were there were different paths forward. And it was unclear whether or not there was the support at the time to pull this forward. And the the two committee chairs talked and it appeared there was support to refer it back to the Budget Committee. But there also is a shared desire to support the public interest of having greater debate and discussion in order to facilitate trying to find a solution before the clock runs out. That would have been harder if it had been referred to the Budget Committee because we didn't have a meeting to have this kind of discussion and input . So even though. There wasn't necessarily support for it to go around the Budget Committee. There was support to keep trying to keep trying to find solutions to that that meet a majority of the council. And by having by doing the dual referral, it allows it to essentially, if we were to vote it out today, it would go to the Budget Committee. But if it had just gone to the Budget Committee, we would not have had the opportunity to listen to each other and listen to the public and keep exploring solutions the same way we could. So it was a way to keep the discussion moving without, quite frankly, the budget chair feeling like it had been pulled out of the jurisdiction of the Budget Committee. So that's my best attempt to explain why I thought a dual referral made sense. So the Budget Committee would possibly never will hear this. That's a scenario I think I can. I think that if this were to pass, the likely scenario would be a majority of the council feels strongly that it needs to come up and would vote at full council regardless of what committee it was were referred to. I would hope that that, you know, anytime committee chairs don't want that to happen to themselves, but. Procedurally, if the decision today is not to advance it out of this committee, then that would be the procedural path forward, as I understand it, if it were to advance and I don't know, let maybe the chair. You know, add a word in. First of all, I agree with everything that our budget chair, councilmember of the group, just said. That was an accurate rendering of my understanding of how this came about. It was a compromise. And the compromise was to for the purpose of allowing discussion and an opportunity to try to. I've been using the word perfect, the ordinance, but I guess I should say to amend the ordinance to a place where perhaps there could be stronger support for it going to the ballot on on the council. If we succeed in that, then I think you might see that there's a path to vote at full council because it would be by agreement and without objection. However, if we can't get to the point where people were council members feel that they want to advance this, then we would be back, in my opinion, in the same place we were out before today, which is that there's no agreement to move forward at the Budget Committee and therefore it does not move forward. So this is just give us one more opportunity publicly to discuss the specifics, to discuss particularly the new proposals. One of the challenges in all of this has been, although some of us have been working on amendments, they weren't widely shared because they were very slow in coming along. There was a lot of work to do here. And and council members rightly said that they would need to see and understand exactly what was being proposed before they could have a position on it. I mean, that's eminently reasonable. And so today was that opportunity. And we're going to see after today where we are, whether we can get close enough to have a vote at council , at full council, or whether we can't. But it's going to be the will of the body either way. I mean. Right. We we vote as as nine and you need a you need a majority on something like this. I'd like to see more than just a bare majority anyway. So I think we're trying to get to a place where more of us feel that it's something that they can support. Councilmember Gossett, thank you. Earlier you had said that one of the amendments is that $1,000,000 go to each council district. But then when I made an inquiry about that, they say, oh, Councilman Garcia, it doesn't mean you're district because there are different entities located in district that are already cumulatively receiving more than $1,000,000. Well, that's not every district getting $1,000,000. That may have been an earlier concept, but the concept that is in the ordinance your district, every district would be guaranteed to receive at least one. Additional million. Dollar community. The community based cultural organizations within your district would be guaranteed to receive a total of at least $1 million. Why did the chair say no? I said, it's not you. As she was speaking and you asked an additional million dollars and I don't know if she heard you say that. So she was not saying every district gets an additional million dollars. Well, so was I correct originally that if there are organizations in District two that are cumulatively are getting $1,000,000 or more, then I would not get $1,000,000 for community based cultural entities. So an additional yeah, that's my question. I'm not sure if I understand your question. So there's there's the regional culture organizations that are distributed by formula, the community based cultural organizations by state law. Their process is a competitive process. So there's not really a guarantee necessarily of who gets what. I know there's numbers that have been circulated. The numbers. Correct. That's based on the previous grant awards that have that that occurred in 2015. So each council district would be guaranteed to have their community based cultural organizations receive a total of 1 million each year at least. So if if you looked at, you know, a chart that showed that you already were that District two was already receiving that to your culture, then it wouldn't add any to. It wouldn't be another million added. All right. The specific purpose, if I may, Councilmember Gossett, of proposing this type of law was because in the original proposal, there were some districts that got I mean, almost literally nothing in community based. Okay. Yeah. Because as Councilmember Dunn pointed out, if you didn't have cultural organizations in your district, there was nowhere for the money to go to . And so the idea here was to set a floor of some reasonable amount that could be used to develop and grow cultural organizations in places where they don't exist already. That that was sort of the concept. Yeah. All right. And remember. And just adding on to that, there was one in my district that got $583 and I got people to do 83,000. You know, no. 500, 3000 might have been wonderful. There were those zeros further down. So not having a floor made that really not as good as it could have been. I think we'll figure this out. Councilmember Graham. Just want to clarify, we're talking $1,000,000 annualized every year now. Okay. Just want to correct. All right. Thanks for good clarification. Okay. Councilmember up the group. Thank you. And I'll try to be brief. Since we didn't, we kind of we're in the middle of questions that we the comment kind of went quickly. And I, I just want to make one point because this may be one of the last chances, may or may not be what the last chance is to talk about it , kind of that why the geographic distribution matters in my mind. One of the tremendous benefits of arts and cultural investments is the economic return to a community. These are important and worthwhile public investments. And I was looking at the American Planning Association website. These aren't my words. I want to be used to plagiarizing. They actually, as a planning association, acknowledge the value of arts and cultural investments in a community. They point out it improves a community's competitive edge, creates a foundation for defining a sense of place. It attracts new and visiting populations. It integrates the visions of community and business leaders and contributes to the development of a skilled workforce. Simply put, they provide direct economic and community benefit to the communities in which they're located. I've often heard the county executive and others talk about the differences in equality between one zip code and another in this county. Now, some people live shorter, lives in the poorer areas. And I think that if we want to have an arts and cultural funding plan that serves the purposes and the mission of this one, then it would have. We can, I believe we can. I have optimism that we can find a way to provide direct dollar investments into the lowest income, most ethnically diverse portions of the county so that those types of benefits are shared. There are benefits from people coming into your community. There are tremendous and I said it before, I really value and appreciate it. When Seattle Theater Group runs a camp for low income kids in South King County, or when the Pacific Science Center brings bands to schools. And overall, this plan will increase the amount of that. And that's good. But the idea of a very significant sales tax increase that burdens working class people the most without a significant investment into the lowest income parts of the county, is at the core of my concerns. I just wanted to make sure I had a chance to get that on the record as to why I feel the way I do. And I appreciate the million dollars per district, but at the end of the day, it's sort of I don't mean to say this in a negative way, but it's kind of fiddling around the edges while the main thrust and strategy of the plan remains, um, rather problematic. So it's because I value these and because I want to see these benefits shared, but I'm hopeful that we can keep moving in that direction of of ensuring that kind of direct investment in every community. I just wanted the opportunity to get that on the record and appreciate it. Thank you. Councilmember at Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I appreciate what Councilmember up the Grove said very much. That's been the fabric of what I've worked on as a public policy maker for a long time. It's spread across the policy areas to a and when the Prosperity Partnership came up with one of its recommendations for creating such a plan like we had before us, and I think that was in 2005, somewhere in there, if they looked at what was happening in Denver in particular, they had created something very similar to what we have here. And I believe the voters in the greater metropolitan Denver area have twice now three times voted on continuing that plan. And I don't recall all the other cities and counties, the metropolitan areas and the in the country that have since done the same. I know there are quite a few of them. And the point behind this was to do what the title of this act indicates access for all and. As such, the work in the legislature for eight plus years was focus. That has been the focus not to get money to the big boys, so to speak, the regionals, but how we can not only spread the opportunities throughout the county for especially for under in underrepresented areas, for access to arts, culture and science heritage, but also to create those economic opportunities in throughout the entire county. Madam Chair. Would it be all right if we had Jim Kraft come up for a moment? Because because he represents Cultural Access Washington, which worked on this for so many years, and I would appreciate him in just a couple of moments from him. Councilmember Ordinarily, I would be very, very flexible with that sort of thing. But we had a panel at the last call me that when we discussed this where we had a number of people who had a full opportunity to present the perspective of the proponents. And today is really meant to be about debate among the council members in our opportunity to have discussion. And we've gone well over the amount of time that was allotted for this. So I would just as soon move on to the next agenda item. And I apologize for that, but I don't think that that is going to advance our discussion any more today than we already have been able to advance it. So I would prefer. To add not appreciate that, but we do have a new ordinance before us. I understand. Thank you. Thank you for understanding. I appreciate that. Councilmember Councilmember run right where you've been waiting. Thank you, Madam Chair. First of all, I make sure everyone understands that this afternoon at 1:00, the Regional Policy Committee will also have this before it. And it's an opportunity for the gentleman who is just referenced to speak before us. We have a substantial list of people who are going to speak before the RTC on this very issue. Thank you, Councilmember. I appreciate that. I think that would be a good opportunity. You know, and I can speak to why I wanted to speak. I was just really. Oh, please go ahead. Councilmember Yes. You know, when I was a member of the state Senate, I took a very strong regional view, even though I represented at that time South King County in North Pierce County, because I looked upon some of the major players in our arts and related communities that reside in downtown Seattle, as you know, regional assets. And we needed to protect them, particularly as it nurtured. So I'm going back 30 years, 40 years. Well, they've had a good protection and they've got a lot of nurturing by us at the state level, by the state. Those of us who in the suburban areas are very happy to also nurture our burgeoning in growth industry of arts and sciences. And it's time, you know, again, as a state senator, I bucked a lot of criticism in my community to support taxes and plans and programs to support, whether it's a civic science center, Seattle Art Museum , other major projects, because I saw them as major assets that benefited my community. My community is looking back now to Seattle saying help us. You know, I think it's very interesting. We use the word access to arts. Well, access to arts is very difficult for a lot of us because of transportation problems. You know, it's very difficult for people in Councilmember Lambert's district to drive down to Seattle. It's very difficult for people in councilmember up the groves to drive down to Seattle or even public transportation. We don't have light rail in federal way. And I just want to ask you, let's focus on that word access. There's not a lot access in Maple Valley to downtown Seattle. So we need to focus on trying to put some arts back in those communities. I would also talk about there's this body has taken a very strong position on recognizing that we've got to even the field. Well, it's interesting. The field has changed dramatically. If you look at the demographics of my district in 2017, it looks more like councilman regardless district in 27. So when you look at the demographic changes that taking place in King County and you want to talk about access to the arts and you care about the issues I've been raised here, I think we better take a long look and make sure there's more equitable, equitable access to the arts. Thank you. Okay. I think we have had a really good, robust conversation. We could do this all day. I would like to take the the final 15 or so minutes and and get to the the scintillating and very important topic of solid waste. So perhaps we could have one of my SO yeah, if we could move on to the next agenda item. Thank you very much, everybody, for that discussion, for that presentation. And we will now take up our final agenda item for today, and that's item six, where we have staff from the Solid Waste Division to speak to us regarding a demand management pilot program. Council will recall that during the budget process we spent some time reviewing the issue of how to complete the solid waste transfer network. And I think that you all are keenly aware that we have a long awaited, solid waste, comprehensive plan that needs to be adopted. And some of the issues have to do with the how our transfer network builds out and whether or not to proceed to build a new Northeast transfer station. The executive budget recommended a demand management pilot project to test whether the service needs of that area could be addressed through strategies partially to address, through strategies to control demand . It's an issue we've been hearing quite a bit about, including at the regional that regional water quality, but Regional Policy Committee and in particular, there's been interest on the part of the council on how the pilot would deal with places like the Holden Transfer Station in Kirkland, which serves Northeast King County. So we had a proviso which the executive transmitted a response to. We're going to ask our staff, Mike Reed, to provide an introduction. Are you prepared? Yes. Okay. And and then I understand that the division will be presenting a PowerPoint. And so I want to ask Mike, would you please proceed with the report, understanding that we have given a little bit of short term, short change this discussion a little bit, so maybe we can just do a high flyover and come back to it at a future meeting. Thank you. I'll do this very high level again. You've noted, Madam Chair, that that that the council did approve a $2 Million increment for a pilot project for demand management in the 2017 2018 budget. And the context, of course, is, is that the the region is working to complete its upgrade of the transfer network because of a decline in tonnage that occurred over the course of the Great Recession 2720 ten. There were questions raised as to whether the full buildout was was needed. And what you indicated in the years 2013 to 2015, you you called for a review of that buildout process and the results came back, said in certain some two things. First up, that you need not build the full transport network. And in particular, the northeast sector could be served through a demand management strategy. And I'll talk in just a minute about what that what that constitutes. But secondly, that if you were going to do a demand management strategy, you needed to test that on the ground. You needed to have a pilot project to, in essence, test whether it would work in real time. Demand management is basically a tool to push transfer demand up from those hours of the day. And those are locations that have limited capacity or no capacity to those locations and hours of the day when there is greater capacity. So the executive proposed in the 2017 2018 budget a $2 million pilot project for demand management. The council approved that that funding, but also added a proviso. And that proviso said, in sum, we there are some remaining questions. One has to do with the Houlton transfer station. Does that station remain open or is it closed during this demand management process? And secondly, does recognizing that that there's a compromise, a planning process that's going on and that is expected to be concluded prior to the end of this demand management process, how do you incorporate the results of that process into that comp plan? That was the sum of the of the proviso you did provide for withholding $1 million until a report was provided back to the council addressing those those questions. That's the substance of this morning's presentation that that has been transmitted to counsel. And I should again note that there is a motion in your packets that would approve or acknowledge receipt of of that response. With me this morning is Megan Moorhead. She will she's the strategy communications and performance manager for file with the business you present the the proviso response. And also Pat McLaughlin, who's the director of the division, is here as well. Madam Chair. Okay. Good morning. Thank you. Welcome. And please go ahead. Loved it. Here talking solid waste with you. And let's go pretty quickly through this presentation. You've already heard about the budget proviso and its history. So we were asked to submit a implementation plan that says what we're going to do as part of this pilot. So why don't I just get into the recommendations for that? Demand management basically asks whether we can serve users of our regional system without a transfer station in the northeast area. Now, where's the northeast? Well, it's that kind of green upper right hand side of our service area. You can see the Houlton station. And Kirkland is the one station that's currently serving that area. We're recommending a 12 month pilot program starting in mid 2018. That's a little bit later than what you had heard when you approved this pilot during budget, because we found through our interaction with our stakeholders and partner cities that we needed more time to set up for a successful pilot and work out host city concerns. So what's going to happen? We're recommending that we suspend services at Houlton to best simulate the absence of a northeast station. That means about 135,000 transactions during our yearlong pilot will be redirected to what we think will be the Victoria Station and also to shoreline, about 90% to Victoria in the Eastgate neighborhood of of Bellevue and then the rest to Shoreline. Let's go back. We're recommending that we retain the self service recycling that's there on the the OTN site as a convenience for northeast area customers. So what does that mean? That means we're going to more than double the tons that are going into the Victoria Station and more than double the transactions. That's the number of people kind of coming across the scales. How are we going to accommodate all those extra people at the station? At Victoria, we're going to do that by extending the hours on weekdays, taking it from 4 p.m., closer to 10 p.m. and on weekends, extending a little bit in the morning and taking the evening closer to 8 p.m.. We're also trying to get people to use the station outside of the peak hours of use, and those peak hours of use are from 11 to 3 p.m.. And so the study that was conducted said we needed to double the price during peak hours to get people to choose to visit at different hours. And so a doubling of the minimum fee for self-help customers would occur during the peak periods at Victoria. They would pay the same if they used hours outside of the the peak periods. We're going to as part of the budget, you approved temporary staff to accommodate these changes in hours and the increased use at Shoreline. Our first strategy, though, would be to use the regular full time staff that would be taken from the suspension of service in it at Houlton and redirect them first to this pilot project and then use temporary staff to fill in the gaps. So part of this is measuring beforehand and then during the pilot what some of the effects are. And our regional partners have had a lot of questions about what's this going to mean in terms of the amount of time it's going to take for customers to go through our stations. Will there be queuing out of the stations, sites and onto local streets? Will there be noise? Can we actually put the amount of waste that we think we're going to see through our stations without having it pile up? What's going to happen to local intersections as well as regional highway and and road systems? The Proviso asked us to look at other options that were not recommended. Those included increasing rates at home and curtailing hours at home and or changing the mix of services at home. We felt that leaving open open except in a minimal way for recycling, would not replicate the absence of a North-East station and so would undermine the credibility of the pilot. So what's going to happen? Right now, we're talking with the host cities about what permit issues need to be resolved and the associated environmental review with that for us to actually proceed with the pilot. We'll need your authorization of the suspension of hope services as well as the peak prices at Victoria, and that would be coming at the end of this year. The haulers would need to plan new routes because now all the collection, curbside collection that's currently going to Houlton would now be going to either Victoria or Shoreline. The haulers would need to plan that route and if they needed to recover some of the costs of those new routes, either through their city contracts or by going to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission, they would need it next year to open up those contract discussions or go down to the state and talk to them about rates. Clearly, this is going to have a big impact on customers and we need to do a very solid communication plan and rollout of that plan as we move into the implementation of the pilot and during its implementation. So we plan on doing that next year and then through the end of the pilot. And currently this isn't a precise date, but mid 2018 start date is our estimated beginning of the pilot. So the final you. You were so interested in this pilot that there were two provisos related to it, the one with the implementation plan requirement we're talking about today. But there's a second proviso that requests a status report after a seven months of pilot project implementation. And so we expect to be coming back and talking to you again about the lessons learned and recommendations around around how to proceed with the pilot. And so that's the pilot project. There was a question in the proviso about how could we proceed with a pilot project on this schedule? Well, we're still trying to update our comprehensive, solid waste plan according to a schedule that would have the solid waste comprehensive plan going out to the public in October of this year. So here we've got a 2017 public review draft comp plan, but we won't have results from the demand management plan until mid 2019. So just to remind you, the comprehensive Solid Waste Plan Act is required by state law. It sets the long term goals and capital program for the regional system. It goes to action not just by the county, but also by our city partners and identifies cost impacts and funding sources. And it helps implement regional goals such as climate protection. And here are just the categories of policies that are adopted as part of the plan. You can see that transfer is one of the categories that we have to address as a regional system. And it does seek to to answer questions about what's the best combination of facilities and practices to serve to serve the transfer needs of the system. And that includes either new stations like the Northeast or approaches like demand management. So here's the comprehensive plan adoption timeline. We're working with our two advisory committees, our city oriented and our stakeholder oriented advisory committee to evaluate policy options that would go through September of this year. At that point, we would have three months of public review at the end of the year, at the end of the year, and then we go through a very prescribed state process for review and approval. Our state regulators, Washington Public Health and and ecology review the plan. After we finish public comment, then it comes back to the Regional Policy Committee and to the County Council and then on to the cities for their endorsement, and then finally back to the state. And they get a period of time where they can do the final approval. So there was a question, what kind of policy would could we put in the plan that would allow any outcome of the pilot project to be to be accommodated, either continuing demand management in the long haul or doing a new northeast station. So we gave you an example in your implementation plan of a policy that might do that using level of service standards from the Council adopted 2007 transfer plan. Other service standards could be used instead. Basically, the policy might say to to meet the future transfer needs. We would want to if we're using the 27 standards, have 90% of self haulers within 30 minutes of a transfer station have cell Paul customers make it through their transfer stations in 16 minutes or less, that sort of thing. And then if if the pilot can't reach those service level standards, then it would might give direction on moving forward on a northeast station or an equivalent alternative. I'm done. Excellent. That was less than a minute. So thank you for observing the queue. No, I gave her a one minute cue about 30 seconds ago and she she nodded at me and meant it beautifully. So Councilmember Lambert has a question. Thank you. Well, first of all, I am very concerned about this. This is where my neighbors take their garbage and I take mine when I need to. So the idea of it being 30 minutes away, I think is too long. I think too many more than enough. I am concerned about people. I know everybody's supposed to cover their loads, but not everybody covers their roads well and putting more debris on the freeways, which is also dangerous. That is a concern to me. Doubling the price and doubling the distance is also of a concern to me. And then if we decide that the community that knew when they bought their homes that there was a transfer station, there has a whole year of not having this in their neighborhood, then getting it back going again is going to cause conflict. And then if we decide that we're not going to put the new station there and the new community that didn't know when they bought their house that was going to be there is going to be up in arms. So I think we're doing a lot of things to ultimately come to some problems, and I am very concerned about those. Won't put that on the record. Thank you, Councilor, for Councilmember McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Page 14 of your slide deck. How is council approval of the peak pricing ordinance in November of this year? And I'm wondering if today's motion in any way sets the stage by means or hands, builds an expectation that we are accepting the pricing numbers that were in your presentation today. My understanding is the motion. Just acknowledges it's. Not on. Sorry. The motion acknowledges receipt of the implementation plan and says that by that receipt the proviso is met. It doesn't say we endorse the content of the plan. And so you were not you wouldn't feel that we were locked in any way and argue at a later date that we had to approve or needed to approve the peak protein or the timeline. The routes. Will come back in November with the peak pricing ordinance, where you'll have the opportunity to get into the. Details. Thank you. So I will just add. Oh, we're we've reached the end here. There's no money associated with this proviso as my understanding. Correct? Actually, I believe there is a $1 million withholding until the council approves the. Just pointing out not noted in the motion language or in any of the staff presentation materials. So in the future, it's really a good idea that the motion should recite. He might have said it. But I you know, there's things going on here. It's not written. And I wish in the motions that it should be written. So with that, are we before I ask for emotion, I want to also say on the record that this is a appreciate the report. The information's helpful. And in fact, it's going to be necessary for us to engage with future requests for decisions. As as you all are aware, and I think my colleagues are aware, the Salaries Advisory Committee and the Municipal Solid Waste Advisory Committee both have expressed serious reservations about this approach. I have the I enjoy having the district where it will be hosted. And and there are strong differences of opinion within my district with regard to whether this is a good thing and a necessary thing or a terrible thing. And it should never be never be done. And those those differences of opinion are mirrored by differences of opinion about whether we should or should not build a new north east transfer station. And so it's it's a it's going to be a really challenging discussion. And I think everybody's aware of that now. The public is also aware of it. So with that, because we have withheld some money from the agency's budget requiring this report and we have, in fact, received the report, I wonder if somebody would be so kind as to move approval of proposed motion 2017 0160 with the do pass recommendation. So move, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Is there a. Comment? Just clarification. So we're approving the report showed up, but not that we like what it says. We are acknowledging receipt. We're not even approving the report. We are acknowledging that we received it. And I, I feel very strongly that we did receive it. So I am going to vote in favor of the motion. Okay. Adamant about that? Yeah. I'm really, really, really. Feels we only need for one quick please. Go ahead. Councilmember. This envisions by closing voting a scenario where voting for the pilot where voting would be closed kind of permanently to see how that works. I did see in here you referenced there'll be some kind of still sample recycling and some special days, right? Maybe have a yard holidays or things. Yeah. We continue solid waste use on the site, but only for recycling orientation. Right now there's cell Paul a small self. Paul pull through area that would remain open as a convenience for the local customers. I guess if we're modeling scenarios long term, it's always been a question in my mind of whether home could be reduced in terms of its type of operation, say from our full MSW facility to maybe a yard waste and recycling facility. And I hope that as you develop final plans for the pilot, that maybe that notion might be able to be tested if there if that makes any sense, and that that's not just one council member with an idea. So anyway, I just wanted to put that on the record. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. All right. At this point, I would ask for the clerk to call at home. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett I. Councilmember Cole. Well, I. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember Mr. Stein. Councilmember up the Grove. Councilmember gone right now. Madam Chair. I thank you. Madam Chair. The vote is ayes, no nos and council. Dunn Excused. All right, with that, the motion carries and we will take it up. Council. I don't see any reason to expedite, but it can go on consent. And with that, we are completed with our agenda and we are adjourned. ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE creating the King County Access for All program to support cultural organizations, imposing a one-tenth of one percent sales and use tax to finance the King County Access for All program conditioned on voter approval, and providing for the submission to the qualified electors of King County at a special election to be held in King County on August 1, 2017, of a proposition authorizing the sales and use tax imposed by this ordinance; and amending Ordinance 14482, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 2.49.060."}
{"id": "king_d9f5c2aa-5dba-43f2-aa5f-7e8630caac70", "input": "I'd like to bring this meeting to order today. We have a very full agenda. And so we are going to be, as the meeting today is a special meeting to deal with appointing some or interviewing for the appointment of judicial candidates for the district court. And they're all in the front row and they're all upright and looking good. So that's a good thing. So we'd like to start the meeting and then the clerk, would you please call the role? Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Bell, Dutchie, Councilmember DEMBOSKY, Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Gossett here. Councilmember Cole Wells. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember up the Grove Councilmember. Line right here. Madam Chair. Here. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. I mean, thank you. We have a personal privilege. But, Mr. Bond, right now, I would like to. First of all, I want my. First privilege. Madam Chair is thanking you for rearranging the process. I think you listen to the members who want to make sure we have an opportunity not only to follow standard questions, but might have individual questions for individual members. And I want to thank you for making that adjustment. You're most welcome. And you see these 19 pages of instructions. That's what the department gave me. So thank you. So and apparently another another piece of paper is coming down from more instructions. In addition, Madam Chair. Yes. Sir. I, for one, will probably not vote for an. Individual. Today, but hold my vote until Monday's meeting, because I want to digest what we have presented to us today and have a chance to do some questions with people who are on the referral list for some of the some of the candidates. So I, for one, will probably not vote for an individual today, but we'll hold off until Monday. Okay. And I think that will be a discussion during the executive session to see if people want to send all three motions out with out recommendations, which is legally available as an option, or if there's one or two that they would like to put the names in. And that will be the decision during the executive session. But thank you for letting us know your comments on that. Councilmember Gossett Thank you very much. Panel Chair I'm Pete. First comments about having a lot of flexibility to ask nonstandard questions. I say that we have about 7 to 9 minutes for that purpose, but I thought it was only supposed to be used for follow up questions. Can we be a little more flexible than follow up? Well, that's the legal thing coming downstairs. So basically, they would like you to follow the instructions on the email that came out three times and make sure by the email. Document, like the one from Jim. Now, this one, the one that came for me. Yeah, that one should be very aware of the bottoms, the do's and don'ts, and to try to make it as close to follow up questions as possible so that there's continuity, that all the all of the questions are fairly similar through the interview process. But of course, as means the questions already asked are based on things they've already said. Yes, that is correct. As long as they don't violate any of the do nots. And the bottom line is it. All right. Thank you. And there's 19 pages of instructions right here. So I don't think I've ever been so scripted for anything before. Maybe my wedding day. So I had no idea. So you brought lots of exciting in my life in the last four days. Okay, so before we start, since we don't have anybody here, I would like to take a moment of personal privilege also to talk to you about local government. I was at the local government meeting this morning and in Snoqualmie and I announced the land purchase that was announced yesterday. And the reaction was, why do you want to own more land? You already own over 60%. You know, take care of the noxious weeds. Our parks are closed. Takes us off the tax rolls. So I just wanted you to know that that meeting was also exciting this morning. All right. With that, we will begin our approval. Just a moment, please. Approval of the minutes we have the minutes of the March 30th, April 6th and April 25th that are before us. Who would like to make the motion on those. Thank you very much. The minutes are before us. All those in favor of the minutes as written. Please say I, I, those opposed. Nay, the minutes are approved as written. All right. Now we get to go into the process. Council members, before you you have a a sheet that may help you to keep track of all the different people that are going to be before us today. And across the top are some suggestions from the Bar Association of characteristics that make a good judge. So if you wanted to use those or any of that out to help you remember at the end, we hope that is helpful to you. All right. So I want to make sure I have those documents you just spoke about. Okay. Is that one of your. If that's the one. Yes. All right. So everybody so I'm going to start reading at our special meeting on April 25th, the committee selected seven final candidates to fill the vacancy in the Southwest Division and five for the two vacancies in the West Division. We are going to be interviewing those candidates this morning after the interviews. I expect the committee will go into executive session to discuss the candidates qualifications. After the executive session, we will come back into open session to decide what we want to do, whether we make some motions today or whether we wait till Monday. That will depend on what is discussed in the executive session. Each of the seven final candidates have been rated exceptionally well qualified by at least one the local bar associations that has a program for evaluating judicial candidates. Congratulations and all the hoops you guys have gone through to get here. It is amazing. I think that I thank the candidates for participating in the review process. This is how we are going to proceed with the interviews. We will interview one candidate at a time and like federal things going on to avoid giving the remaining candidates the unfair advantage of listening to the previous questions and answers, I will ask them to wait in the nearby room until their turn to be interviewed. And you will be with my staff member right there. He will make sure that you get to the right place at the right time, that is Ross. Well, all the candidates are still here. I want to describe the interview process. Each candidate will be given an opportunity to make an opening statement of up to 2 minutes. While the content of the opening statement is left up to your discretion. Then you will be asked a series of three standard questions. You'll have 3 minutes to answer each question. In the interest of fairness, the questions will be the same for all candidates during this election. Then, after that, council members will have time to ask follow up questions based on the answers provided by the candidates. After a candidate has answered the last question, the candidate will be allowed 2 minutes to make a closing statement to help the candidates keep within the time limits. There's a set of warning lights in front of me on the dais right here. The countdown timer will show the time remaining when 30 seconds are left, yellow light will go on. When time is up, the red light will go on. If you are in the middle of a word, you do not need to stop. Candidates should not feel obligated to use the full time that is allowed. So if you feel like you've made your point, you don't need to take all the time. When a candidate interviews over the candidate is welcome to remain in the council chamber. But you should also feel free to go and to return to your work. Attend to other business. Are there any. Questions from the candidates. Okay. We're going to interview the Southwest Division candidates first in alphabetical order by last name, which means we will start with Laura Gibson. So, Laura, if you'll just come on up here, our staff will now escort the other six candidates into the Blue Room. And he's going to be over in our executive session interview. These are open by law. These have to be open. The only thing that is closed is our discussion in executive session. Okay. When is it. Going to stop? I do not understand. Where do I think. We're going to go. Then? Now, when you tell on this stand up. Enough, as usual, as usual. She's not her. She's a lot of people who have admittedly been here more than 850 times. I'm asking you to leave the chambers now when I have ask you to leave the chambers. We are now going into recess again. Why don't. We'll come back to you after. Does he still want to be a judge? Okay. Do you want a little did. That scare you? That's okay. No. That was used to. That was going to be my question. Yeah, I. I deal with that on a regular basis. So you've heard nothing before? Oh, yeah. All right. For the listening audience, we have a group of three that comes, one of which has been here 850 times. By his own admission, I'm sure for me it feels like 850,000. But 800 times. 50 times who screams and yells, which is their constitutional right. However, we have important things to do today, and so I'm so thankful that was our scene to see how you handle stress. And you know, you did it very well. She was cool. She was very cool. So thank you. I'm hoping that won't be repeated during your testimony. Anyway, thank you for being with us today. And we'd like to give you one minute and I'm sorry, 2 minutes to do the opening introduction of telling us a little bit about yourself. Okay. Well, I hadn't prepared anything about myself in general, but I want to first thank you all for allowing me to be here. And your brain and my clothes. Sure. Is that. Is that better? Much better. Thank you. So you all know my name and you have my materials in front of you. I don't really want to necessarily reiterate that. But, you know, we're here today to decide who sits on the bench in our district court. And our district courts are, in my mind, very important to our communities. They are the courts that belong to the community and a judge that sits on the bench. The district court really needs to understand what the makeup is of his or her community, what their needs are met, their limitations are. So I've spent half my career as a public defender working with the indigent persons of King County. The other half of my career are spent determining benefits and matching people up with benefits for their disabilities and also to overcome poverty. I know my community very well. I've lived in South King County my whole life for the last 12 years. I've been actively involved in the public school system there. And I think that that familiarity and that knowledge of the demographics of my community would be very beneficial for someone sitting on the bench. I think it's a matter of knowing what are their obstacles as well as what are their needs. Thank you very much. And we asked them how you deal with stress. So our first question today will be asked by a council member. Sorry about duty. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for applying for this position. And the first question is, what is your vision for the future of our judicial system? What changes would you advocate for and why and will have to be? I think our judicial system and I'm going to focus this on the district courts, because it's it's different than superior court. The district courts, you know, are fully entrenched in their communities and they're designed to be very accessible. Attorney We don't necessarily have full accessibility, largely because of the demographic changes in our region. So King County in particular has had a huge influx of minority population. We now are taking on the largest population and poverty. Our court system hasn't really adjusted as well as it should. We don't have enough forms in different languages. We don't have that out in the community where people can access it. So as an administrative law judge, I go around to the different community support offices where I hold hearings and I'm familiar with the information that's on the walls. There's nothing about the courts, and the courts offer a lot of services to people. That's the place where they can establish rules between feuding parties. It's a place where they can go to address their concerns that perhaps they were financially exploited. It's a place where they can go for protection orders against an abusive spouse or other other person. And I think that many of our non-English speaker community members aren't aware that that services offered. So I would like to see more information put into the community in languages that are relevant to those particular language speaking areas so individuals can access it better. I'd like to see better automation in the sense that if we could get in to an electrical and electronic filing system and do so where there might be a hyperlink, so that when you're accessing the information that you need, you can actually click on something and it will pull up the information that you want. And the reason I like that is not because it necessarily helps the consumers, but it helps the judge to efficiently get information which allows him or her to spend more time personally with the consumers and with the persons that utilize that the courts. Thank you very much. Our second question will be asked by Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have the second prearranged question, and that is how does and should how does and should the District Court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? Racial disproportionality is a very difficult topic and in my mind I've not been able to resolve where the issue is, is is are we over legislating conduct? Are we making conduct criminal? It shouldn't be. Are we over enforcing our laws? Is the judicial branch failing to look at cases from a constitutional? I. I. When we met last, I had discussed my concern about the Ferguson, Missouri instance and in in that I find a good model of observation and that in that instance, the judge actually allowed close to 75% of the population to have warrants for their arrest . There's something wrong there. And I believe from the judicial perspective, the judge was somewhat complicit us in in the error. Whether or not it's exclusively a judicial problem, I don't think it is exclusively a judicial problem. I think it's a it's a larger problem. So what what role does the judicial branch play? Ultimately, judges are there to enforce the Constitution. That is the first source of law. And I think there are times when judges get bogged down with local influences. And in Ferguson, it was it was the need for money, quite frankly. They were using it as a revenue generating function. I think we need to remind ourselves as judges that we have individuals have civil rights. So it's not just the right of the community to be protected and safe, but it's also the rights of the individual to have their civil liberties acknowledged. So there there should be some form of a balance. I don't have the answer to how to eradicate disproportionality. I have a lot of questions and I'm very aware of it. Well, let me follow up then. What steps have you taken in the course of your professional career to learn more about this issue or to tackle it in your own professional way? One of the a couple of the cases that I cited as as cases that were significant to me involved just that issue. As a public defender, I would sometimes see different branches of the government that would seem seem to pull in members of our minority communities more often than are non minority members. And this includes the non-English speakers in particular. I saw it a lot with our Fish and Wildlife where, you know the rules and the regulations were only promulgated in English. And I don't know if any of you have ever looked at those Fish and Wildlife Manual have extremely difficult to understand. So they use a lot of geographic components, latitudes, longitudes and if you're not a native to this area, it's extremely difficult to understand that. So then to pile on a criminal penalty for that, what I was seeing is many, many non-English speakers that didn't intend to violate the law, never had a foul intent at all. We're now faced with charges of criminal law violations, and the efforts I took was to educate my bench. Thank you very. Much. Having read those, you're right. Even in English, they're tough to understand. Third question, council member, does it please? Thank you, Madam Chair. How long have you been doing interim presiding judge work? I've been a pro tem in District Court for just about two years. Two years? Okay. So I think this is a very relevant question for you. Our district court processes about 250,000 matters per year here in King County, and judges consistently manage very high volume our calendars. So the question is, how would you approach a calendar when you have the resolve at least to stay up with the amount of court cases assigned to you? You know, I am no more or less 50 cases oftentimes in 2 hours, while making sure that the people involved feel that justice is accruing to them. Can you do it? Have you done it? Is it realistic? And are you committed to being able to handle that? I answer yes to all of those. Yes, I am committed to it. And I think one of my advantages is having a very intimate knowledge of other benefits available. So I know what services are offered through the state government, through the federal government, state government in particular. I even know the eligibility. So when persons appear in front of me and they have particular needs, I can often advise them where they may go to address those particular needs. That is a quick thought process for me and I can go through it rather quickly. I don't believe that you sacrifice individual attention for purposes of expediency. Sometimes matters take a long time and sometimes people need to be heard. You know, when when you look at the law, oftentimes your analysis under the law is driven by the facts that are presented to you. If you don't fully hear the facts, your analysis is going to go awry. So I never believe in shortcutting the process, but I do believe in making sure that people are fully heard. And sometimes people know they're heard. When you give them a suggestion for how they can improve their situation, that is outside of the court arena. And you could handle that 50 cases in a couple hours. Maybe. Maybe not. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That completes our standard questions. And so now we have a few minutes for anybody that would like to ask a follow up question that came to their minds. That's a member. Yes, go ahead. I'm sure. Given your deep involvement with education, are you concerned about education, particularly K-12, in South King County? What do you think are some of the major problems that need to be addressed in our public school system today, as particularly as it relates to preparing young people for society? Because, again, I've often taken the position as a member of the Boys and Girls Club of South King County, that the investment we make at that level is a lot less than the investment we made later in the criminal justice system. I absolutely agree with that. I think that the the point in time that is most effective to resolve not only future racial tension is with our children to get them, you know, more engaged, more understanding, teach them tolerance, teach them some discipline. I know that our education system, at least in my school district, there has been an effort to hold kids accountable for their behavior. Also to not hand out trophies when trophies aren't, aren't, aren't worthy. So the expectations when they become adults are extremely high. And I think we do a disservice to our children when we don't prepare them for that. You don't go from being developed mentally prepared, because you turn from 17 to 18 in a day. That is a process that takes time. And I would like to see more encouragement of working directly with the kids to learn the discipline, not necessarily the academics, but the discipline of managing their time and putting forth a proper effort. I think that will teach them the reward of overcoming their obstacles. Thank you very much. Councilmember Balaji. Thank you. Reading your materials, you write about serving as a pro tem judge for going on almost about two years now. Can you just describe a little bit of how when you do that, how you run your courtroom, what's your process? How does that look from from the bench for you? Well, from my perspective, it's largely driven by the calendar, who is there? So ultimately you come in and you count out who is there, what matters are ready, and you identify the parties that can be heard to get your calendar moving right away. So you get it started. I spent a lot of time preparing my calendars, so I spend maybe two or. 3 hours. I just did a review calendar on Friday. I spent two and a half hours prepping that calendar because it was large. Review matters are very important to me. Review matters are the way that you impose consistency on people that otherwise lack an ability to be consistent. So I prepare the calendar that way. I know which ones need time, which ones don't need time, which can be resolved quickly and which can't. And I think that that's extremely necessary in the high, high volume court. And when Mr. Gosset asks, Can I handle 50 matters in two hour time period? That's how I would be able to handle 50 matters in a two hour time period. Thank you. Any other follow up questions? Councilmember Coble. Thank you, Madam Chair. Laurel is having been an administrative lead church and so understanding mainly with Department of Social Services. And is it correct that most of the litigants, too, are not represented? That's correct. So and how what's your view on that? And how have you been able to handle that, to make sure that there's adequate adequate due process? Well, it's interesting. The administrative law judges are under Article three of our Constitution. Article four is our judicial branch. So we are a part of the executive branch of government. Our guiding principles for due process come from the Administrative Procedures Act. And one of the caveats is that the administrative law judge assists in developing the record, meaning that I play an active role and ask a lot of questions. That's very different than my role when I sit on the bench where other parties present it, and I have to make my decision based on what is presented as an administrative law judge. I actively go out and ask questions of the appellant, and most of these individuals are there because they need services. Some of them are there because there's accusations of abuse or neglect. But a large majority of them need help. They need food assistance. They need cash, they need housing. And they many of them have organic limitations to their thought process. So it's difficult for them to know how to prioritize information. So I actually spend a great deal of time asking them the questions to get the information that I need to determine the right way to resolve the matter. Thank you for the time where you get to make a closing statement. I think your questions have been great. I the only closing I would say is, you know, I think I have a broad base of experience, but most importantly, I feel that I am engaged with my community and I value my community. I'm very proud of South King County. You know, in spite of all the obstacles, we have a really high homeownership rate. And so even though there's a lot of minority involvement, a lot of immigrants, and we have a lot of the poor population, we have this base, the stable base of persons that own homes are invested in their community. And that gives me faith and hope that we can help the others come along and maybe raise their standard of living, maybe fully integrate and in a in a better way. I hope that you find those qualities suitable for the bench. Thank you very much. It's been a pleasure meeting you and I look forward to seeing you again. And thank you for your willingness to serve as a district court judge. Thank you. Thank you. With that, we will call for a second person, and our second person will be Mr. Brian Todd. Welcome. Thank you for being with us today. When you do get seated, keep the microphone as close as possible. Thank you. So that way we can hear you. Thank you. It is disarming how close you have to have it. So and so when you're ready. If you'd like to make your opening statement. I would. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Our district courts are truly the people's courts. These are the smaller courts that deal with the issues, cases and constituents that have disputes that truly need to be understood by someone from those communities. And they need to be understood by someone that has served many of those communities before. This committee and this council have the unique opportunity to increase the diversity on the King County District Court bench by appointing a person to the open position in the Southwest District Court who has or who is a member of a minority community , who is active in serving minority communities from volunteering at El Centro de la Raza by providing legal consultations to clients in Spanish, volunteering for the Center for Multicultural Health, working with Deaf communities and working with many other minority and diverse communities in King County. And I am that person. I am a part of the gay community, and I am proud to have with me today my partner of six years, Ray Harris, along with my mother, who has been a support and has instilled the values and virtues that I have today have had in my legal profession and will carry through with me to the bench to respect all people, regardless of who they are, where they came from, or what they have been through. I have always and I will always continue to seek to give each and every person that I come in contact with, regardless of race, ethnicity, social status, gender or handicap. Full access to the courts. My commitment to the diverse communities in King County is demonstrated by the ratings that I received by three of the minority bar associations here in the county. The Latino Bar Association, CU Law and the Joint Asian Bar have rated me as qualified, well-qualified and exceptionally well qualified respectively to be appointed to this position in the King County District Court. This commitment and the ability to connect with the diverse constituents and litigants who come before the King County District Court are what makes me the ideal candidate to be appointed to this position. And with that, I look forward to your questions and the brief discussion that we may get to have this morning. Thank you. First question will be asked by a Councilmember McDermott and the second question by a council member. Cole Wells Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Mr.. Todd, we're really happy to have you with us this morning. What is your vision for the future of our judicial system and what changes would you advocate and why? Sure. We are at a critical point in the in our judicial system today, particularly in the King County District Court. One of the really important considerations to look at with the district court is that we want to open up the courts and allow everybody to have access to the courts. And we want them to be able to come in to the courts and continue to work with those. I say that the King County District Court is at a critical point right now because, for example, one of the ways that the district court is increasing the access to people and to clients that are coming before the court is the mediation program that is run in conjunction with the King County Dispute Resolution Center. The King County District Court has set up a pretrial hearing process where litigants can come in who have their small claims and they are able to able to mediate those claims. They're able to have that conversation, listen to each other, learn from each other, and perhaps link what they have and their concerns to come to a good resolution. So that's a very important point in working with our courts and changing our courts. One other court or even on a larger level, for example, we can look at the King County Superior Court understood that I am seeking the position of Southwest District Court Judge, but when you look at the ways that you can change the courts in the way that you can change the structure in the courts, you can look at, for example, what Judge Mack is doing on the Superior Court, where she is actually looking to engage in a process that allows for juvenile offenders to be committed to mental treatment as opposed to doing incarceration. Again, it's being able to serve those constituents, being able to understand where they come from and being able to work through what they need to do. So all of those things, the communities that I've worked with, the gay community, the minority communities, the deaf community, the Hispanic or Latino communities, all of them have different needs and different concerns. And I have worked with them and I would be able to give them the access to the justice in the King County District Court, and I would continue that process to open that access. I would be the ideal candidate to continue with the mediation program that's working in the King County. To be district court to allow the people to come in, mediate their disputes and have a different way to be able to deal with the problems and concerns that they are facing. And I would seek to do that. Thank you very much. Councilmember Coles. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Mr. Todd to you. How does and should the District Court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? Sure. Racial disproportionality in the justice system is a problem that we have seen and we continue to see through all of the processes that we have. It happens in the work that I do in Superior Court, working with felonies. Many of the clients that I serve, I serve through as a public a contract, public defender. And so I've seen the steps that many people take from the juvenile system to the adult system, and that that disproportionality then becomes even greater. One of the greatest ways that you can work to address the disproportionality in the criminal justice system, even in district court and in superior court, is by working through the restorative justice. I am trained through the federal public defender in defense victim outreach, which of course is based in restorative justice principles where you can still be bought and the responsibility and those clients that come before you and they're able to see that the impact, the choices that they make have impacts. The other thing that's really important when you look at the disproportionality in race or in in our criminal justice system, is you also have to go back and realize that there are needs and there are concerns being on the district court judge. As I said, the district court is the People's Court. It is a smaller court. You have the opportunity to listen to the litigants that come before you. When you listen to them, you can learn about them. You can learn about what brings them here and what they need to do to move forward. And then you can link those needs and those concerns with the services that, for example, as a judge, you can certainly make recommendations to the probation department to address some of the concerns, whether they are mental health concerns that need to be addressed, whether they are drug addiction, concerns that need to be addressed or whatever it is. Being in the unique position of being in the district court, the smaller court, you have the greater impact to be able to do that. Having worked with all of those communities and I've gone to the homes of my clients, I've talked to their families. I listened to some of the concerns that they have, some of the issues that they have dealt with from the time that they have been raised. And it's linking those. It's listening to those. It's learning from them and then linking the services that you're able to provide as a district court judge and make strong recommendations to be able to follow through with that and to be able to ensure that they are able to succeed. Because really that's the goal in the end is for success and reducing the number of the disproportionality the minority population. Thank you very much. And the last question of this round will be by council member Yvonne. Right about it. Thank you, Madam Chair. District court processes around 250,000 cases per year and judges consistently manage high volume calendars. How would you approach a calendar when you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours by making sure that the people involved feel that justice has been done? Certainly. And to answer the councilmembers question, the large volume of calendars is one thing that is very unique to the King County District Court. When we look at that, as the council member mentioned, that the district courts do process a large number of cases that are going through there. And so when you consider the way to process cases, there would actually be a breakdown, I think, between the difference between civil cases that would be between before the King County District Court and the criminal cases that are before the King County District Court. One way that you can encourage the processing of the large number of civil cases is by encouraging the parties to mediate and continuing that partnership with the King County Dispute Resolution Center. I am a trained mediator. I'm a professional mediator that has been trained and has gone through the practicum of the King County Dispute Resolution Center. And I've mediated cases in the King County District Court. I've mediated cases where in Judge Christie's court judge, it's court judge, step instance court, as well as many of the other judges in Seattle and Issaquah, Auburn and Shoreline. And by encouraging the parties to do mediation in a civil context, that's the best way to to work through that that system. The. Is that where they're able to resolve their own disputes? It's better for everybody involved. They can come to that win win situation by listening to concerns, coming up with the issues that need to be done and finding out and finding the best way to resolve those issues. Now, Councilmember, on the other side, the criminal side. Certainly there are other considerations that have to be remembered when you're dealing with criminal clients. The first thing is, is that criminal clients have specific constitutional rights that have to be upheld. You can't cut corners in a criminal context. You certainly can't and would not cut corners in a civil context. And I'm not saying that either in a criminal context, the the defendants that are before the court have those constitutional rights that as a judge, you have the obligation to uphold and make sure that those are followed through with. Certainly, they have counsel and it would be up to counsel to ensure that they follow through with those rights. The other thing you have to remember with a criminal case is that you have two sides, the state as well as the defense. You need to make sure and ensure that each side has the right to a fair trial, has a fair trial, and again, does have that access to the justice. So being able to work through that number of cases, you would certainly have to be efficient. You would have to make sure that all the parties that come before you are ready to go, that they've talked with counsel and they know what they're going to do with their hearing that day. But at the same time, Councilmember, if the time needs to be taken, certainly in the district court would be the place to take that, because that is the People's Court to take the time to be able to make those connections with people and work through those case loads. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. That is the end of the three set questions. So now open it up for council members to ask the pertinent questions to your qualifications. Councilmember Garcia Thank you and thank you, Madam Chair. I would like to ask a follow up question related to our question about racial disproportionality to. Mr. Todd. Mr.. TODD There's a professor at the University of Washington named Dr. Katherine Beckett who did a study on the out of with the Seattle police. 1999 to 2004, where she found that 68% of all the people then went to state prison for drug possession and distribution. At the felony level from Seattle were African-Americans during that whole five year period. And she further found through national, state and other independent study that estimated the population of illicit drug users, NCR were about 74% white . The Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party would say that that problem exists because of capitalism and racism. You agree or disagree? Why? Sure. The clients that I worked with through my work as both a private criminal defense attorney as well as through a public defender, has shown exactly what Councilmember Gossett has indicated that so many of the clients that come through the system are the minority and therefore they're the ones that end up in the prison population. And I would agree with that. Even The Huffington Post back in 2011 did an article which indicates that the reason why so many black people are in prison go well beyond profiling. So they identified not only the issue of profiling as one of the reasons that we end up with so many minority clients, but also just the institutional racism that is there. I would agree with that. The one way that I think that has been really good in King County in being able to deal with some of that at least, is the alternatives that we give to have drug treatment. Like I indicated in my comments earlier, so many of the problems that we run into are dealing with drug use. But as a councilmember points out, the largest percentage of illicit drug users are white. And it's not the minorities that are the largest percentage, but they are certainly the ones that become contacted and they are the ones that become the clients or those of us who do criminal defense. And then many times they end up in prison. The best way to address that or not? Excuse me? Not the best way. One of the ways to address that is through the alternatives. We have a great drug court here in King County. That is one of the things that certainly at this point we know. Judge Carey, is there a drug court judge here in Seattle? Judge Casey is the drug court judge down in Kent. They've done a fantastic job in being able to address some of those concerns and being able to address some of the addiction issues to try to decrease the number of minority populations that end up incarcerated or end up in prison and is continuing to listen to those clients, is continuing to learn from them. And when you listen to them, you learn from them. Then you can link up the services that might need to be done. Councilmember. Unfortunately, some of those situations are maybe somewhat outside of the control of a district court judge. You know, they were certainly institutional problems that, you know, we have seen run through. Unfortunately, here in King County and particularly in the city of Seattle, the racial profiling and the abuse of force that the Seattle Police Department uses. And some of those may be out of the purview of the district court. But certainly as a district court judge, you know, we have the ability and we have the you know, we have the ability to say something. You know, we have the ability to address that at the lower level, at the district court level, to try to ensure that there is a decrease in the number of minority populations in prison. Thank you. Perfect timing. Our last follow up question will be from Councilmember Bell. Thank you. Thank you very much for coming in. I appreciate hearing about your experience with clients and the public and different community groups. I noticed in your materials, though, that you haven't served as a pro tem judge before. So maybe could you talk a little bit about how what would be your process for running a calendar or learning to run a calendar? I mean, how would you what would be the nuts and bolts of how you would go about doing the job if selected? Certainly. And and I understand, you know, that there is a concern about not having pro talent in the past. But the one thing that I can say is we all come to this point on seeking a bench by coming through different paths. Those of us that have gone to law school, we take different paths. We have different majors to go to law school. Those of us that are here seeking to be appointed by this committee and this council to judge arrive at different paths. Some people choose to pro tem and do that, but what I've chosen to do is I've chosen to continue to practice to make those connections with all of the populations that I've been working with. And so, Councilmember, the question in particular was how to get through the nuts and bolts of running a calendar. I've appeared before the King County District Court on criminal cases. I've seen the way that they run the calendar with criminal cases I have appeared in and I have worked with Judge Christi, Judge Heidi, Judge Steffensen in the Southwest District, as well as many of our other district court judges on the small claims calendar. And so knowing how they run those calendars. I've spoken with court staff in how to get those calendars in and get them up and going. Certainly I've worked in the anti-harassment area at the King County District Court to deal with the traffic infractions that the King County District Courts deal with as many as well as many of the other areas. I'm a quick learner. I always have been, and I am confident that when I were to go in there, I would have no problems stepping. Right. And and being able to do that. We rely a lot of times on our staff. I know this committee in this council may rely on their staff for help at times, and that's certainly something that a new judge would do. And that's certainly something that somebody that has programed and worked as a judge for a long time does is they rely on their staff. They rely on the people to be able to do that. I'm confident that, given my experiences in King County District Court, both mediating through King County District Court, as well as appearing in King County District Court, conducting trials before Judge Williams down at the King County District Court, that I would be able to step into that role . And I would hope that this committee and this council would feel confident that I would be able to do that and make that transition seamlessly. Certainly. So, thank you. And that has come to the time for you to do your follow up and your closing statement. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember, and thank you to the committee as well as to the council for the opportunity today. I'm extraordinarily humbled today to be here before this committee as a finalist for the position of judge in the Southwest District Court. And I brought with Bright to you today over six years of experience in criminal, family, civil and mediation experience as well as experience practicing in King County District Court as a leader, litigator and as a mediator, ready to step into the position with the commitment that this committee and this council demands of all of their appointees. I've been humbled throughout this process with the support that I've received from members of the Superior Court bench, court staff members, and a member of the Washington Supreme Court, along with my mediation colleagues, fellow attorneys and Mayor Jim Farrell of Federal Way. My recent practice, my recent practice in many of the areas of district courts gives me the confidence to be able to step into and immediately fill the position on the Southwest District Court bench and serve all of the constituents of the Southwest District, as well as certainly all the constituents of King County as well. If this committee and this council were to appoint me, I would be the new voice on the court that would create and increase the diversity on the King County Court bench. I'm a member of the minority community and I am actively serving and volunteering with minority communities and King County and will continue to do so to ensure that they can have that access to justice. The King County District Court is truly the People's Court and it should look like our community. I recently mediated the small claims calendars which as Christy, Judge Eddy, just Steffensen and having cooperated with them in those courts, I'm sure that they would welcome me to their court in the Southwest District. Now is an important and exciting time in the change of progress for King County District Court. It is a leader in many of the areas involving public safety, access to justice, and I am the one candidate that can continue that commitment to diversity, access to justice, and bring an understanding to the connect with those communities in King County. Excellent. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to see you again. Yes, thank you as well. So, as I mentioned earlier, you're welcome to stay or you can feel free to leave and relax. Thank you. Thank you. Now turn to the. That was the final candidate for the South Division. So now we're going to turn to the candidates for the West division. And again, we're going to have those in alphabetical order by last name. So our first candidate is Greg here, Koa. And welcome, Greg. It's good to have you here. And please go ahead with your opening statement. Good morning, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the Council. It certainly is an honor and a privilege to be here before you this morning. I know you do want to ask questions. I'll just make a brief statement to open. You have all my material before you. I'm sure you have everybody's binder there. I would just like to highlight a couple of things. I would like to think that the material shows somebody who is competent, able to do this job. I'm very proud of my judicial evaluations. Those, as you know, are reviews based on interviews with my peers, with judges that I've appeared before, with people I've practice with and practiced against. And so I was very pleased to see how my colleagues and fellow lawyers and judicial officers view me. And I also want to point out that I do serve currently regularly for the King County Court, District Court Judge Pro Tempore. I enjoy that. And I like to think that if it could not be their job, they wouldn't keep asking me back. And so I'm very pleased to provide service to King County in that respect. I believe that my material also shows somebody who's collegial, somebody who can get along with a lot of people, with opposing counsel, with people that I've worked with in the legal and non-legal settings, people in the public as I worked on many public commissions , taking testimony from of citizens of King County, commenting on on issues. And I think my material shows that I am somebody who can respect other views and other opinions. And lastly, I like to think my material shows a commitment to King County. I've served on numerous commissions looking at very complex matters for the governance of King County, as well as for the city of Seattle, and have done so for many years. And so with that, I'd be happy to take your questions. Excellent. Thank you very much. Your first question today will come from Councilmember Balducci. Thank you. And thank you for being here with us today. Really appreciate your interest in this position. The first question is, what is your vision for the future of our judicial system? What changes would you advocate and why? I would like to see a judicial system that works to really address the issues that are before the people in the most efficient way. Possible. I think we have some challenges with regards to its operations. There's a lot of overlap and redundancy and I think that some of that's good. But I also think that it's possible to streamline or at least consolidate the some of the jurisdictional issues from a strategic standpoint. I also would like to see a system that really takes into account objective evidence or objective material when making decisions with regards to, for example, certain criminal matters. We hear a lot of opinions with regard to sentencing, with regards to pretrial conditions of release. And they're really opinions from from people who work in the system, law enforcement officers, probation officers and so forth. And they're valuable, certainly. But, you know, whether they have any, you know, scientific basis for that, I'm not so certain. And as a judge, I as a judge pro tempore, when I look at these things, I try to look at the objective evidence before me, the past record, past history, the dockets and those types of things. And so we're really looking at, you know, what risk are we taking when we make these decisions? And I would like to see something that has a more objective scientific basis for, you know, risk assessment basis for it. And I think that's important not just for the purposes of sentencing or pretrial conditions of release, but for the people of King County. You know, they need to know that there is the appropriate sentence or restrictions on somebody based on at least some objective science and some objective evidence and not just gut feeling. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Madam Chair. Dombroski the other councilmember with vowels. Yes. Greg, great to see you. Thanks for being here. I have the second canned question, if you will, and that is this. It's not and not to diminish it. It's a very important question that all members are interested in hearing. How does and should how does and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? That issue is is probably is an answer that's probably longer than 3 minutes. But I'll try. And there is no doubt about that. I'll do my best. And I do have quite a bit of experience in this based on not just as a pro tem judge, but also as a defense lawyer and as a prosecutor and quite frankly, as as a civil practitioner who handles a lot of cases involving the vulnerable population. By the time somebody gets to us in the court system, a number of decisions have already been made. Now we have no control over why is a person stopped? Is that based on a standard contact with the police officer or is there an emphasis in a particular area? What is the basis for that emphasis of patrol? What is the basis for the stop? What is the basis for the arrest? Why were they arrested as opposed to released? And if they are booked, why weren't they administratively released as opposed to coming before the judge on a bail hearing? That's only then do we get an opportunity to look at at the person in the in the criminal justice system. I think one thing that to get to get to your answer, one thing that is consistent with the nonwhite population, we said I've seen it tends to also run consistent with economic data in King County. There's no question that the census data shows that African-Americans make about 40, 45% of what a white King County's residents are making, Latino and Hispanics, about 60 to 65%. And I raised that because one of the biggest issues with regard to who is in our criminal justice system is based a lot upon economics, whether somebody is going to be able to make bail, whether somebody is going to be able to be released pretrial. And I think that makes a difference because of if somebody is out or somebody is able to work with their defense lawyer, they have a better chance of getting to a pretrial diversion program or not getting part in getting involved in the system. Because once you're in the system, you're in the system for at least two years following conviction. And so one of the things that I think the court can look at is the criteria for imposing bail or bond. And one of those is where you, you know, is that person likely to appear in court again. Well, so many people, white, nonwhite, with low incomes, have unstable housing, which means that's not likely to show up in court. They may be they may have mental health issues. They may come from a dysfunctional family. And so there's a housing situation. It's unstable. They may not get summons and notices, and so they don't show up. And so now that becomes a basis for incarceration or at least a bail hearing. Every judge is different. But I think I think that's something that the court can look at and probably should look at a little differently with regards to how that person is treated pretrial. And I think that will make a big difference in what happens in the rest of the case. Thank you. Our next question will come from Councilmember McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you for joining us today. District court processes around 250,000 cases per year and judges consistently manage high volume calendars. How do you approach a calendar where you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours? Well, making sure that the people involved feel the justice has been done. Fortunately, that's something that I have a lot of experience in. I do serve on the court. I say regularly. I was there yesterday on a pretrial calendar. I'll be there again on Friday. The biggest thing that I do is look ahead and try to read the pleadings and read the dockets ahead of time or read the calendars ahead of time. Make certain that I'm up to speed on a lot of the issues that are before the court at that time. One of the things that I think is important, though, is to make certain that there is a record of decisions or rulings that are made. And I if anything, I always try to make that record to make certain that a defendant before me knows the reason for my decision. I think there's some some letters in the material that indicate people who have been before me, who are observing me on the bench knows that that's what I do. I try to show the facts that I find significant and apply those facts to the law at that time. I think the biggest thing that people have to understand about district court is the volume, but also that I think people have to know that they have a have a good experience in the court system because we don't have any legitimacy if we if a person doesn't believe that we actually listened to their case. And so I want to make certain and I do make certain I think that somebody understands that decisions that I make and the basis for the. But to to to to manage the case. It's being prepared. It just means getting there. Early review, reviewing the calendar, reviewing the motions, reading everything. And that's worked fairly successfully so far. I don't think I've had to continue many matters and it's resolved the calendars before I could say again, well, you know, one of the things that we have to do is move the calendar for that very reason you've expressed. And if we don't do that, if we as judge programs don't do that, we're not going to be asked back. And that's as simple as that. Thank you. That is the staged questions. So now you're into the follow up questions on topics. So Councilmember Caldwell's and followed by Councilmember Garcia. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being with us today. I'm asking a question related to your experience as an administrative law judge in which I understand that the appellants who have come before you are under or unrepresented in most cases. So how do you handle that to ensure that there's an outcome that would be positive, but that would not provide the opportunity for people to have representation? Are you referring to at the administrative level or in district court? And I said, in your experience and as an administrative law. Judge at the minute, as dealing with administrative matters or civil matters, and so no one gets there's no right to counsel. But these are generally complex in the case of, for example, civil service rules. These are extremely complex issues with a lot of procedural timing issues. And so oftentimes employees would come aggrieved, employees would come on appeal. Before me and my colleagues. The thing that we always want to make certain and I directed the executive director of the of the Civil Service Commission at that time, and I'm sure they still do. This is to make certain that they understand the procedural rules ahead of time. So when they come before us to understand the timing, the deadlines, the the things that they can present or should be able to present, and what the commission would be interested in hearing, in knowing that they can present anything they want. But this is generally the things that we want to look at, whether they're declarations or witnesses or, you know, timesheets and those types of things. And we go on employment matters once they once they have that done at the administrative level when they're before us. The first thing that if I was presenting and making sure that are comfortable, making sure that they understand the proceedings, what's going to happen that day and if there are any questions and there's no prejudice to any other party that if they had to if they wanted to take a short break or a short continuance and the other party didn't object because now they're in court for the first time. Now, the record, this panel, for the first time in like district court administrative proceedings may be the person's only experience before a panel or tribunal. And so it is it's naturally uncomfortable for them. And they're in a world that they've never been in before. And I understand I understand that. And so there's no prejudice still in the party, and they need more time to prepare than we would. And I would at least and, you know, ask my colleagues to grant them a short continuing to break. I mean, most attorneys would do that when they come to court anyway if they need time to prepare. And so I don't see why they shouldn't afford somebody who's pro se the same reason. Once we get that, though, I try to have to have as much latitude as I can to allow them to argue their case, to present their facts. They may not, you know, I may not rule in their favor, but I want to make sure that they understand that they're going to have their day in court and are allowed to present the evidence that they think they want to present. And, you know, we'll see, you know, how it goes from there. But the thing that I want to make sure is that they have the opportunity to be in court, to argue their case as they see fit, often knowing that there is another party, that that person's due process rights have to be respected as well. But if they can work it out together and, you know, agree on what facts we're going to hear, then that's even better. But that my approach to administrative clearance. Thank you very much. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to delve, Greg a little deeper into the issue of racial disproportionality in our criminal justice system, if I may, and I want to join my colleagues. Thank you for being willing to apply to work. And I do so in our court system at the district court level. It is the hypothetical. I read an article about 2000. Five where this gala, this last politician went to speak in England. Three or 400 are criminal justice officials in England. And he told them that there are more African-American men in prison in the U.S. for one crime than there are people for every crime imaginable in the entire EU, Europe, European Union. He told them that and he told them that. And in 2005, there was an estimated 323,000 people in all the jails of the members of the European Union, collectively for every crime imaginable. But in the U.S. there 360, 65,000 black men in jail for possessing drugs or selling drugs. And in the United States and that the E.U. population was 440 million, and then the black population in the U.S. was 40 million. On and on. So the both the Socialist Alliance and the Socialist Workers Party said it's against the absolute root cause of that problem is capitalism and institutional racism. Do you agree with those two organizations? Disagree? Well, I. I would disagree with that assertion, but I do understand the concern. I think there is. And there can be implicit bias in the system. Are you talking about just the court system or the entire criminal character, part of the entire criminal justice system? I believe there is racism within it. I don't I don't doubt that. I've been stuck on Queen in while carrying a basketball, but for no other reason than somebody looked like me that they were looking for. So I do believe that happens within the court system. I think we do have an obligation to consider those issues, I think. But I'm also cognizant there's another side once they get to the court system. There's a there's a prosecutor there. And the state has rights, just like the defense counsel has. And I like to think that the court can try and balance those issues and those rights. But the one thing that I'm I'm very aware of, and I think everybody in the council are the the the bench is aware of is implicit bias within the system. And I think one of those issues are housing issues, income issues. And that disproportionately does affect people of color. I'm 100% agree with you on that. You know, whether it's based on capitalism or other types of thing, I'm not I probably I, I don't think so. But I do believe that there is implicit bias based on income. And income disproportionately affects people of color. How to address it. I think we have to be smarter about looking at how we apply the rules and our standards. And I will say this I practice in other jurisdictions, other counties and other municipalities. I think King County does a pretty good job of King County as a whole. There's a pretty good job of looking at some of these issues much better than other counties, which I've been before. There are a lot of people, a lot of times when I've represented individuals, first time offenders, first time offenders from a minority population who don't get released for a nonviolent offense, they have to make bail 5000 kilometers. Wrap this up because you're going to go over time. I'm sorry. So thank you very much. We now have time for you to do your closing statement. Well, I will. You know, I think my materials before me, I really don't want to spend too much time belaboring. I do want to answer Councilmember Gazette's questions. I'll use my balance of time for that. I think that when we look at these issues, we do have to take a look at the whole person and not just the charge, not just the crime, and not just the court rules that we're administering because we have really things that we're bound by as on the bench. But we can we can look at social situations and use that as a barometer in addition to our our basic court rules. Because I think that's important when we address this issue of implicit bias, particularly with regard to income distribution and income disparities. That's that is you know, I think one of the single biggest reasons when we look at people being incarcerated is that because they can't afford a lawyer and they'll just plead to get out. That's it. So all they do is they that they can't make bail. They plead to get out. Now they have a criminal record. Don't they have a strike against them? And there's been no rehabilitation, no training, no education. They're just out because they pleaded to get out because they couldn't make bail, because they had unstable housing, because they had no income. I mean, that is rampant in the district court system. And I would like to think that we can fix that a little bit as a court. But a lot of these other issues are, quite frankly, on your side of the dais education, training, rehabilitation, that's expensive. That costs money. I recognize that, and I'm willing to work with you on that. I've always been willing to work with people on that, but I think that's the best way I can answer your question. It's an incredibly complex question, and it's my answer, and I'll use my balance of time for that. With that, I have 19 seconds or 15 seconds left. I want to say it's been a pleasure and honor to be here. I'm proud of the material that's before you. I'm proud of the people, the support, the people that are supporting me and look forward to your decision. Thank you very much. And thank you for both interviews. We appreciate it. Thank you. So you can either choose to state or you can go home and relax, whichever you prefer. Thank you. Our next candidate for the West Division is Mary Lynch. Welcome, Mary. Well, you get seated in that one right there and be aware that the microphone needs to be really close to your mouth. Uncomfortably close to your mouth. Actually, yeah, like that. Most people don't realize that to be that close. So as soon as you're ready, please go ahead and give us your opening statement. All right. Well, thank you. Good morning again, everybody. My name is Mary Lynch. And as you know, I'm here seeking appointment to the West Division of King County District Court. I'd like to just take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about myself. You have my materials, so I'm sure that you're fairly well versed in my professional experience. But I was a prosecutor for 20 years in the Seattle City Attorney's Office, and in that capacity I did actually all kinds of criminal cases. My specialties were domestic violence, DUI law. I spent five years in the appellate division, and I also served in the specialty courts of Seattle Municipal Court. In in being in these therapeutic and restorative courts, I was able to address the specific issues that really brought people to court in Seattle. I'm sure you all know that those issues are basically homelessness, drug and alcohol addiction and mental illness. This has served me well after I left the city attorney's office because having worked in these specialty courts, I had served a niche and I was able to also work in Superior Court as a judge on the involuntary treatment calendar . For the last six years, really mostly for the last four and a half years, I've served full time as a pro tem judge in Superior Court, District Court and also most of the municipal courts in King County. My experience as a prosecutor made the transition very easy, and in the second half of my legal career, I found something that I really loved doing. The criminal justice system is moving towards a specialty court model. Having served in these types of courts as both a prosecutor and a judge, I know that they can be implemented in district court to a greater extent than they already are. And I also know that they work. Given my work in these courts, in addition to my vast experience as a prosecutor and a pro tem judge, I believe that I am uniquely qualified for this appointment. So thank you. Thank you very much. Our first question will be asked you from Councilmember Garcia, followed by Councilmember Wells. Good morning and thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being willing to be a candidate for these very, very important positions to our government. And this is also my second opportunity to interview you. So I'm grateful for having this chance. But the first question we'd like to ask you is about your outlook. So what is your vision for the future of our judicial system and what changes? If you had the magic wand, would you advocate for and why? Well, I think, as I indicated in my opening statement, I think the specialty court system is the way the criminal justice system is going, because the criminal justice system and prisons and jails are overcrowded. And we simply cannot lock up people continuously when we can address the issues that are bringing them to court in the first place . I think as we discussed a couple of weeks ago when we met the King County Jail is the largest mental hospital in the state. Yes. And mentally ill people, especially people who are low risk of being threats to public safety, should not be locked up in jail, where they're not getting the addressing the needs that are bringing them to court. A lot of times they are not getting their medications in jail. They're dealing there are vulnerable people. The mentally ill can be very vulnerable and prisons and the jails are not the places to house them. If it were up to me, I would have another holding facility for people who have the mentally ill mental illnesses and not put them in jails. We used to have a facility, the North Rehab Center up in North Seattle, where you would put people who would be incarcerated due to the it's mostly DUI people. You wouldn't put them in the jail because they were not really risk to public safety except when they were obviously under the. Influence of alcohol. Then you wouldn't want them. In a car. But I do believe that the restorative courts, mental health court, veterans court, community court, which I worked in, in the Seattle City Attorney's Office, is really exceptional because it's not necessarily limited to people who are mentally ill. It addresses the social issues that bring them to courts, their drug addictions, their alcohol addictions, their homelessness, which we all know is a huge problem in Seattle. It gets them puts them into. Contact with services for them. They do things such as they are taken to the library and they're given tours of the libraries so they understand the resources that the public library can give them in finding jobs. They are expected to do community service, so they're giving back to the community from which they took. And that's a very successful court. It's the one court that I've been in when we have a graduation and one woman told me I had her graduation. She had never succeeded in anything in her life. That was the first time she had succeeded at anything. And everybody who goes through that court, even if they don't succeed, they always think the court for the opportunities for the people who are in the program who are not necessarily successful, they see the benefit to people and it works. It's district court doesn't currently have anything like that, and that is something that I would like to bring to District Court. One of the things that would be my goal as a judge is to get the mentally ill people out of the King County Jail. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you very much. So question number two, Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for being here. Thank you for having me. My question is to you, how does and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? Well, that's an interesting question, because as a judge, you can't just say, well, I'm not going to put you in jail because you're a person of color and it's unfair to you. That has to be done more at the street level. But as a district court judge, you can educate people to the issues of racial disparity in the court, in the court system and in the jails and prisons. I think it's a tragedy that there is that racial disparity. I think that there I think it was exacerbated actually by something that occurred that was supposed to have good intentions. And that was the 1994 crime bill where they added police officers and everybody thought, that's great public safety. They increased the prison budgets and everybody thought great public safety. But one of the things that they took away was the ability of somebody who was incarcerated to get an education. And when you have literally a captive audience in prison, why would you want to take the one thing away from them that would be a benefit once they're out of prison? And so to a as in the district courts, you can address the issue of racial disparity only to a certain extent because you're not out on the streets arresting people, but you can identify offenders who are not a risk to public safety. And as I said before, community courts, the specialty courts. I would like to see a mentoring the court because people you don't stop having mentors when you turn 18 and the juvenile justice system, they do have programs that provide mentors to the kids who are in that program. But when they go to adult court, a lot of times people are just lost. They're not necessarily bad people. They're in court for a variety of reasons because maybe they have an alcohol or drug issue. But a lot of times people are just sort of irresponsible. They've never had anybody that they can really look up to. And one of the things as a judge that I hear a lot and I know we discussed this before, was when I'm sentencing somebody and I see the guy in front of me, is there anything that you'd like to say? And he tells me, and one of the things that I hear over and over and over is I just want to be a good dad. I really want to be a good dad. And I tell them, Well, the best way you can be a good dad is by being a good dad. But sometimes you have to learn how to do that and they don't have that. And if we had sort of a court that could be set up to provide people with the opportunity to find somebody. I've told people before, you might have had a fourth grade teacher that you really enjoyed. They really, you know, struck you find that person and ask how to be like them. Thank you. Council member Well, did you? Question number three. Very good. Thank you very much for being here and for your interest in serving. Thank you. The question is, district court processes around 250,000 cases per year and judges consistently manage high volume calendars. How would you approach a calendar when you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours while making sure that the people involved feel that justice has been done? Well, I was lucky enough to spend my career in Seattle Municipal Court, which is the busiest court in the state. And as the prosecutor, you're kind of in charge of moving the cases through. I've also worked as a judge in Seattle Municipal Court, which is the busiest court in the state. I worked as a judge in a city a federal way, which is a very busy court. And I worked in King County District Court. So clearly I have a lot of experience moving things along. And I'm I'm pretty efficient on the bench. I don't if people are repeating things over and over, I told them I don't need to hear it again, so just move on. You have to allocate time properly. You can't just let people do whatever they want. You have to continuously move the lawyers along because sometimes they're out inside the courtroom talking to their clients and their cases need to be done. I tell people early in the calendar that we're not going to go past noon because it's not fair to the clerks, the court staff to do that because then they lose out on their lunch hour. And I think that there's ways that concurrently are established that actually make the court pretty efficient. The electronic court records, which most courts in King County now are using, they it makes things go faster. We have online forms now so the attorneys can come to court with the forms of plea form or whatever kind of form filled out before they come into court. I know that used to really slow things down because they come into court and they're looking for the forms, you know, the day when they're supposed to be prepared before they come to court. I would like to see a system where you could apply for a public defender online rather than come to court. And then the court says, well, you have to screen for a public defender, so we're going to continue the case and come back. That cuts down on continuances. But I think that there's a lot of different ways you can manage the calendar, and those are just some of them. It's there. There's a lot of inefficiency in the courts right now. Just a quick follow up. Certainly the second part of that really was how do you how do you do that? You know, the sort of efficiency part while still making people feel that they've been heard and that justice has been done, even if they only had 2 minutes for their case? Well, I think people most people who come into the court understand when they walk in the door, when they see 40 other people sitting in court, that you're not going to be there for an hour listening to their case, their defense. Defense attorneys are really good at telling people upfront what's going to happen when they come into court. But clearly, if there's some element of misunderstanding, when you hear their cases, you do take more time to do it. But you just have to be efficient. You have to be able to make a decision. And I've I've been I was a prosecutor for 20 years, and I was before a lot of judges who couldn't make a decision to save their life. And that took a lot of time. I'm very good at making decisions sometimes. Oh, I guess I'm no go ahead in your sentence. And sometimes you have to shoot from the hip. But if you know the law, which I do. Having spent so much time as a prosecutor and five years in the appellate unit, I'm pretty comfortable that I can get my point across in a short period of time. Thank you, Councilmember. And as a follow up question, it has been a. Very. Yeah, it's free flowing now, so you have some free flowing questions. And so a councilmember at the gravel asked the first people on question. Good morning. Thanks for being here. Well, thank you for having me. I had a question. Is more about getting to know you as a person a little bit. And I'm wondering if you could share an experience, an event, a relationship in your life that was formative in shaping your values and in particular. Has helped you understand and appreciate people who have different upbringings than your own. Okay. Well, I think my relationship with my parents clearly was the most formative relationship that a person could have. My parents and I grew up fairly middle class, but we had eight kids in our family, so we didn't have really a lot. My parents never said, We're going to buy you a car when you turn 16. So I drove around in my mom's station wagon, which wasn't very cool actually when I knew nature, but my parents made a promise to all of their children, and that was that they would give them an education and that was very important to me having that. They also were strong. And basically giving being people of faith was very important. I'm I'm very, very happy with my faith. It gives me guidance that grounds me. And I forget what the second part of your question was. I was so focused on my love for my parents and I could think. God and family are a good place to start. Yeah, I am. In helping you. Develop an appreciation for folks who are. At a different life experience. Right? Well, that's an interesting question, because one of my brothers is developmentally disabled and my father actually died pretty young. And my mom had I was one of the older kids. I was 22 when he died. But my mom had five children under the age of 19 when my dad died. And one of them was my brother who was developmentally disabled. And that really opened my eyes to the fact that not everybody is born with you know, it's not a level playing ground for everybody. He was a special needs kid who got bullied a lot in school. He still lives around here. And he requires attention because as vulnerable adults, people take advantage of him. And it's very sad to see. And I think that gave me an appreciation for the issues relating to the mentally ill, the disabled people, homelessness, because it really was very close to me in my family. Thank you very much. We are now at the place. Are there any other follow up questions? Councilmember Gossett We had a quick okay. Yeah, I like the other now a little bit more. So the racial. Personality question and 2009, the city of Seattle said that 44% of all the folks that gave driving while licenses and tickets to NCR were African-American, but only 7.8% of all the citizens were. And last Friday, the King County Jail in a county that's 6% black, 6.7% black. Now, 40% of all the adults are African-American and 56% of area youth. And there is a black America. My friends and Associates, Alliance and Associates Workers Party said it's clear it's because of capitalism and racism. Do you agree or disagree why? Well, I think we actually discussed this when we met a couple of weeks ago, that there is African-Americans have been historically treated fairly poorly by the criminal justice system. And I don't think today people intend to be racist. I think that there is some institutional racism that goes on. I don't think people realize I don't think most police officers are out to get African-Americans. But whether or not it happens, it happens because while they might have good intentions, they are focusing on that community, which I think is very tragic because there are issues in every community. There's a lot of white collar crime that is pretty much overlooked. All right. I don't know how to solve that problem. As a judge, you can only deal with what you have before you as a community leader. However, you can educate people to the issue. I think Seattle is actually really good at doing that because especially since the Department of Justice investigation of the Seattle Police up on Seattle Police Department has gone on, it's really opened the eyes to more citizens that there is a problem in the city that needs to be dealt with and hopefully you have to look at long term how it's going to pan out. And we're very new into it. It's only the I forget exactly what it's called, but it's only been in effect for a little bit over a year. So we'll see maybe ten years down the road if it's had the desired effect. I hope it does. Thank you. You're welcome. There comes a time, the time now where you get to give your closing comments. Okay. Thank you. Well, again, thank you so much for having me here today. It's really an honor to appear before the King County Council. As I indicated earlier, I do believe that I'm the most uniquely qualified candidate for this position. In order to be a good judge, you have to have the requisite experience, which I have after having prosecuted somewhere between two and 300 jury trials, as well as my experience in the therapeutic and restorative courts. As both a prosecutor and a judge, I'm confident that my experience will make me an excellent District Court judge. One thing that I have learned along the way is that you can be a great litigator, either a prosecutor, defense attorney, or a civil attorney. But that doesn't necessarily guarantee that you will be a good judge. I have over 6000 hours sitting on the bench. Most of that's been in the last four years. It takes time on the bench. For that determination to be made of whether or not you're going to be a good judge. And given that I've had the 6000 hours, I believe that I've actually proven myself. You don't get called back to pro tem if you're not a good judge. If I am appointed to this position, I will not disappoint you. Thank you. Thank you very much. And according to your resume, you are quite the cook. So I know. I'm really excited to hear that. I am not. I'm great at a peanut butter chicken sandwich. That's a cookbook. Absolutely. So what I'd like to tell you is that we are very appreciative of your willingness to serve on the district court. And you can either stay or you can go home and relax, whichever is is just for you. Only the latter. Okay. That sounds like a good plan. So thank you very much. And our next candidate will be Lisa Pegg of City. And as we're waiting for Lisa to get set, we have an Amber Alert that has just gone out. So anybody listening to this should be looking for a license plate, A as an apple, you as an unicorn. Why is in yellow 0186. It's a Washington license plate with a 26 black Chrysler 300 series. So the Amber Alert is now out with an Amber Alert from the other day. And did we found the young girl? So we have a new Amber Alert. We welcome the microphone only to be closer to your mouth almost cause that that is perfect. All right. So welcome. And Lisa, viewers will begin giving us an introduction about yourself. I will. Good morning, council members. I'd like to first start out by thanking you all for considering me for an appointment. My name is Lisa Paglia. Sorry, I have worked and committed myself to working in the justice system in this community for over 30 years. My experience extends beyond the courtroom. For the past 22 plus years, I've been a public defender in King County, where I've served this county's indigent population. Prior to that, I served the youth of this community as both a juvenile corrections officer and a juvenile probation counselor, primarily primarily in the screening unit. I have come face to face on a daily basis for the last 30 plus years within access to justice, which is why I believe my qualifications are unique given my broad spectrum of experience, to open the doors, to access to justice for all members of our community. I have a passion for people. I have a passion for justice. And I have the years of experience and commitment. And I'm still very excited every day when I go to work. The people I work with energized me. I believe the skills I've gained over the years will help me to be the best judge that this community deserves. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our first question is going to come from council member up the Grove. Good morning. Good morning. What is your. Vision for the future of our judicial system? And what changes would you advocate and why? I'm speaking directly to district court. The changes I foresee that I'm very excited about working towards are the development of a community court, the continuation of development of therapeutic courts within this county. I'm a very strong believer that we can be financially wise and reduce social costs by concurrently holding people accountable for their actions while at the same time rehabilitating people. I think the mistake that our justice system has made over the last three decades that I've been involved in prior to that time is we keep trying the same thing. We have public health issues such as mental health issues, substance abuse issues, which I very strongly believe are public health issues that have been diverted to the criminal justice system. That's been a long process. It's going to be a long process to unwind that. But while those issues are still entangled in the criminal justice system, what we as judges, community members can do is work with therapeutic courts to try to divert those issues away. And there are alternative programs, one of those programs that's been very successful, and I can tell all of you that my clients are very excited about it. Is the CAP Enhanced Program, which I think provides a link that has been missing from our system, a link in transition. The CAP enhanced program is not a long term treatment program, but it does provide information to people, opens the doors to this is how you get hooked up with mental health services. This is a little bit of moral recognition therapy. This is how you get an evaluation. Those type of programs, we can monitor individuals to ensure community safety, but at the same time help them access services. And that's what the community courts will do as well. I think it's very important that the community get involved and people can be remanded to their community. A judge does not stand alone. This counsel does not stand alone. A prosecutor and a defense attorney don't stand alone. We're all part of a team. I've worked in almost every position in some form or another in the justice system. So I understand every team members role, and I'm excited to be potential. Part of the judicial team. Thank you very much. Councilmember DEMBOSKY will be asking question number two, followed by Councilmember McDermott, the question three. Thank you, Madam Chair, and good morning. Good morning and thank you for being here. I have the second standard question, and it's an important one, and that is this. How do you I'm sorry, how does and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? How does and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in the justice system? Every member of the justice system, starting from the citizen who calls the police to begin with. From police contact to prosecutorial discretion has a role in recognition of explicit and implicit biases which are in our system. As a judge, I am very aware of explicit biases. I think a good judge needs to have the courage to learn and to recognize and to call out implicit biases and to be aware of those implicit biases. I think the as I spoke before over the last three decades, our community, frankly, the entire nation here, which began with the war on drugs and has continued. We are in a situation now where entire communities have been devastated by socioeconomic issues and cultural issues, and there is a disproportionate number of people of color in prisons and in jails. What we need to do is be aware of that. We need to look at programs to get people out of jail, because what we forget is when an individual goes to jail, that not only affects that individual, it affects the family. It affects the children. It affects their ability to get a job. Which is why one of the reasons we're in the situation that we're in right now. So a judge needs to have the courage to make decisions, to call out implicit biases and to recognize them. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next question. And can I add one thing to that? We often hear that justice should be blind. Justice should not be blind unless and until we have addressed the disproportionality that exists in our system. We need to recognize that. Thank you, Councilmember and a German. Thank you very much and welcome. This court process is about 250,000 cases per year and judges consistently manage high volume case calendars. How would you approach a calendar where you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours by making sure that the people involved feel that justice has been done? Thank you, Councilmember. It's very important to me that every individual, number one, be treated with dignity and respect. It's important to me and has been important to me as a lawyer. And I have worked every calendar that King County has. In fact, I've made changes to some of those calendars. It's important to me that that individual before me, just as the individual standing next to me, understands why they're there. I worked high volume calendars as an intake screener. I've dealt with sometimes up to 30 kids being booked into detention in one evening, and I'm the one making that decision. I'm very good at multitasking. I can read a docket, I can understand a dock that I can explain. I explain to my clients why they're there in a very short period of time. So I have full confidence that I will be able to do that. And it and I've slowed calendars down, I should note, because I am aware, as some of my colleagues have pointed out, who are not lawyers, that judges and lawyers speak a different language, said nobody understands what y'all are talking about. So I I'm very conscious of making sure that that person next to me now as a lawyer understands why they're there for that two minute calendar. Thank you very much. You have completed the three standard questions. And so now we will open it up to follow up questions on the answers. Councilmember Balducci, it means by way of follow up to the last question, if you don't mind. So looking at your materials and as a former jail person, very thrilled with your experience. But I noticed that you have not served as a judge pro tem as yet. So can you just speak a little bit more about how you would make that transition to running a calendar? What would be your process for getting through that high volume calendar that you just described? And I have actually served as a pro tem, but only on one occasion, and that's due to my high volume caseload. And my clients come first right now. So I haven't had the opportunity, but I know those calendars. I read dockets and oftentimes judges have indicated to me, I'll hire you if I had my own court because I know the docket better than the judge does. So I'm very good at navigating through schemas and discus and judges and quickly reading a docket, getting to the issue. That day that I did pro tem out in Burian, I had a docket of 110 people. I read every one of those dockets ahead of time. I knew what the issues were. I was prepared to listen to both sides, which I did, and make a decision based on the presentation before me, as well as my knowledge of the issues that you had to deal with. Discus injuries as all the judges. Bless you. Okay. So anybody else have a follow up question, counsel? A member, Ambassador. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. Mine is the fallout crisis. Two, three in the fallout that you just had. And it's the hypothetic. Let's say that you were appointed, not elected to be a new municipal court judge. And Ferguson, Missouri, about a week after the Justice Department rulings and findings came out. And you already know that over the last ten years, the amount of money raised in Ferguson from simply imposing certain tickets, given African-Americans tickets in that town, had a five fold increase in the amount of money that was entering the pool of money in their municipal coffers. And you went into court that next day, and it was 39 African-Americans and two Indians and two whites. Business as usual. What how would you deal with it? And over half of that were in there for basic tickets, driving on a like suspended speeding. So financial issues. Yeah. First of all, I think as I've touched on before, I am aware of not only explicit bias and I would consider that explicit bias recognition of that disproportionality right there, but also implicit biases as to, well, here's what the population is, here's what's just happened in the community. And what I'm seeing in front of me is why were all these individuals stopped. That are all people of color? I would be aware of that. As a judge. I need to remain neutral and take into consideration all of what I've just mentioned, but treat every case individually. I am a firm believer that our court system should not be funded on the backs of poor people. And I've as I've already addressed, sometimes some communities have disproportionately disparately been developed due to a lot of biased issues. So I believe that socioeconomic barriers is a is a huge barrier to access to justice. It's a very complicated issue. And how we got to where we are is decades. So I would be very aware and would have the courage, I think, as a judicial officer, to call out biases. And if I had the authority to waive those fines. Thank you. Thank you. Any other follow up questions? Okay. With that, we've come to the time of your closing statement. Thank you. I again, I want to thank all of you. I want to tell you what's most important to me. And I've tried to live it every day of my career, as well as walking down the street. I was raised to believe and I do believe every individual should be treated with dignity and respect. The judges that I would like to emulate are those judges who do treat every individual before them with dignity and respect. But more importantly, a good judge should be able to distinguish and separate the individual from that individual's behavior. I believe that a judge, when disciplining, when sanctioning, if it gets to that point, should address the behavior but separate that behavior from the individual. I believe that every individual has the ability to do better. I've seen it in my work on a day to day basis. I've seen in access to justice issues. But I also want to say that I have seen people pick themselves up, face struggles and end up very successful. I want to be the type of judge that continues to treat everyone with dignity and respect, that continues to have hope in people that is able to hold people that are able to hold people accountable. And I believe I will be the type of judge that all members of this community deserve. Thank you for your time. Thank you. And thank you for your willingness to go through the process and to serve our people in such a great way. So thank you. So you're free to stay or you can go home and actually relax, whichever you prefer. Thank you so much. Okay. So our next candidate will be Andrew Simon, and so I will be bringing Andrew in. Andrew, just one thing to tell you that when you sit down, the microphone needs to be so close to your mouth you think you're almost eating it. So be prepared for that. Thank you. And as soon as you're ready, just go ahead and get your introductory statement. Whenever you're ready. Thank you. Good morning. Thank you for the honor of including me in this group of well-qualified candidates for District Court Judge in the West Division. There are three things that I could talk about this morning. Why choose me? What your expectations might be and what my what I hope to bring to the bench myself? So why choose me? I bring in expertize in both criminal and civil law to the bench, as well as exposure to the various circumstances facing Washington residents as a public defender. I fought for the indigent accused for ten years as an assistant attorney general. I have advocated for abuse, neglect of children, vulnerable adults and injured workers. And I've also worked to help Washington's work to keep Washington's workplaces safe. For me, continuing to serve the public interest as a judge would be an opportunity to apply the wisdom I've gained during the last 25 years of practice to an even wider spectrum of needs and people. And what might your expectations be at this point? Well, I don't know all of them. I know that I will promise to bring you a fundamental commitment to the rule of law, to the bench. And all the skills I've developed as a pro tem judge in my career, excellent listening skills, even temperament, openness to reasonable arguments and decisiveness. I would also bring to the bench as a public sector attorney, I've thrived in the midst of budget cuts and limited resources, as well as heavy caseload. And it would be exciting for me to participate in the technological changes that King County is pioneering. Finally, what I hope to bring to the bench, as I mentioned in my opening. My experience in both criminal and civil law. Uniquely qualifies me to be an effective judge in the district court. I will continue to work very hard to be fair and impartial and understand the individual circumstances of people who come before me. And I'll continue to advocate for improved access to justice, particularly for King County's low income populations. Thank you. Excellent. We're going to ask you a series of three questions and then some open ended follow up questions. So the first question will be from Gina Cornwell's file by phone right there. Question number two. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you very much for being with us today. My question is, what is your vision for the future of our judicial system and what changes would you advocate for and why? I think the judicial system in Washington is by and large, working is working well. I think the the perennial concern that Justice Madsen has brought out the last few years in the state, the judiciary has been funding issues. And, of course, that's sort of the elephant in the room that there just needs to be more more money, particularly from the state, to improve both the numbers of judges that we have at all levels, the availability of legal aid to civil civil people with civil problems, low income civil problems in the state. There are million low income residents in Washington that simply don't have access to justice because of basic fundamental funding issues. So I think those are going to be major challenges. My vision would be that there would also be enough judges at all levels for for people to have ready access to the courts or for prompt justice, for speedy justice. Those are the sort of issues that, you know, certainly we all aspire to for that. And I think that's something that would be achievable. But I think that it does need some some work at the state level on funding issues as well. And then I think also in terms of, you know, issues close to my heart are simply having better funding for for civil legal aid, because that seems to be in the areas of family problems, employment, housing. I mean, those are where people really are falling through the cracks in Washington's legal world. Thank you. Okay. Question number two, council member Mary Barra. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you again for being here today. Hello. Thank you. How does the and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in our justice system? How would you see the district court impacting racial disproportionality in our justice system? And by racial disproportionality in terms of number like disproportionate arrest and incarceration rates, that sort of thing? That's a really good question. And I think it's you know, as a district court judge, there's limited things that that a judge sitting as a judge can do. But there's also unique things that district court judges can do. I think the limitations are that you have to try the cases that are brought to you. The prosecutor's office and our law enforcement agencies have a lot more to do with who was arrested, who was prosecuted. And once someone's in the courtroom, then they need to deal with the case. That's before you. But I think being predictable, treating people who are particularly in custody of not be able to bond out with equal justice to those who. Been able to bond out. I think the structure of bail and bond is is is exorbitant for many defendants in King County. And many people simply can't get out of jail. And that affects a lot of what sort of outcomes they have in district and superior court as well. The I think that outside the courtroom, there's judges have a a peculiar, not peculiar, but a particular sort of influence that other people don't have. I think that people will listen to what judges have to say. So in terms of writing OP, Ed's the justice in the classroom programs the different judges have participated in, and I would very much like to participate in that. The, you know, speaking at conferences, supporting things like the limited, the loyalty programs can also help help with racial disparities of other low income issues that come up. So I think there's limited things, but I think there's also unique things that district court judges can bring to that question. Thank you very much for your comment. Again, thank you for your willingness to serve. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Councilmember about district question number three. Welcome and thanks. I had my thanks for your willingness to do this. Good to see you again. You're welcome. Thank you. So the third question is district court processes around 250,000 cases per year and judges consistently manage high volume calendars. How would you approach a calendar when you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours while making sure that the people involved feel that justice has been done? That's a really good question, and I've actually done that. So I know I know I can do it. It's the very first time I pro tem. There was probably at least 50 cases on the calendar. I think there are two big things. One is listening carefully to people and also, you know, the the role of prosecutors and defense attorneys is is critical in district court in terms of them getting their cases together, getting cases ready. I think being able to prioritize cases, not being afraid necessarily to continue them if necessary, although like I said, I've rarely had to continue well, I've never had to continue cases because of a docket running out of time. You know, I find that people if people feel like they're being listened to and that you are you're being empathic with them and that you understand with the issues before them that that actually makes things move along more quickly as well. I've been working in, you know, as a public defender and assistant attorney general. My stock and trade has been high volume, high intensity practices for 25 years. So stepping into heavy dockets was not something that was a a shock. It was just a it was a different sort of high volume, high intensity world for me to follow. Okay, great. So that completes the standard questions. And so now we be able to go on to the follow up questions on these. And the first will be council member at the Grove. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks for being here. Very welcome. I just wanted to get a little bit more of. A sense about you as a person and wondering if you could share either an. Event. An experience or a relationship in your life that was formative in shaping your values and in. Particular has helped you understand folks who are different than you. Yeah. I think a couple of different people come to mind. You know, certainly my wife, she we've been married for 11 years now and her she comes from a Polish background. Her parents were, you know, off the boat. And and so having an entire, you know, ethnic heritage of a universe I'd never experienced before has been obviously very influential. I think also when I was in the public defender's office, I, I had a number of clients where in the process of working with them and defending their cases, I would go out to their homes and meet their families, be in their living rooms, watch their kids, you know, cook things and play. And I think there was, you know, just being introduced to an entirely different universe of of a life that I had not experienced growing up. I think those were also very, very important. Okay. Councilmember and Tim wrote about the. Other councilmember was. Bass. Yeah, I just spoke to them because they're like. Three and a half year anniversary here on the. Trail. Lambert calling you ride the train, call me four months now. I'm Amber Rudd. Well, thank you very much for being here and for your willingness to serve. And we actually mean that because it's a big undertaking. I'm wondering, Andrew, in your 25 years of practicing law in a number of roles as a defender. And on the prosecutor state side and also as a judge. Is there has there been a case or a client where in hindsight you feel like I got something wrong on that, or I made an error and kind of judgment or tactical decision making or in deciding and how have you squared that? That's a good question and a really hard question as well. Two things kind of mind. One is they tend to put more of my energy into the cases that I've got and that we're worrying about what's happening in those moments. You know, but having said that, there are a couple of cases where as a public defender, I made I had defenses. You know, the old adage, you don't want to write to horses as a defense, you want to have one defense and run with it. That public defending criminal defense is not like a law school exam question where you lay out all the possible defenses you have, you actually need to pick one and run with it. And there have certainly been a couple of cases where I had two viable defenses available and it wasn't really practical to try to run both. And so I chose one and one case in particular. I chose an alibi defense as opposed to other sorts of defenses. The ultimate, ultimate outcome was okay, but it was it was one of those things where, you know, if I could have gone back and retried it with a different defense, knowing what I knew and knowing what the what the jury's initial verdict was, then I think that that would have been a change. I think also I probably would have taken more risks in things, in aspects of jury selection with some of the bigger cases. I've had a you know, you get, you know, like the first murder case, you're probably a little more nervous than a second murder case. And there are things I think I would have done in in voir dire that might have brought up some of the issues better, perhaps. But no, I really feel like I have given my that I really gave my all and gave my best to that work and certainly in the AG's office as well, where we have to retrials, you know, the stakes are monetary and there's a civil and civil universe. No one's going to jail at the end of the day, hopefully. But there's, you know, there's there's that sense that you really want to advocate for your client and do a good job for your client. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Gossett. Thank you. I'm out of time. I'd like to join my colleagues in thanking you for participating in this process. I'd like to delve deeper into the issue of racial disproportionality in our entire criminal justice system. In the year 2007, Michelle Alexander, a black lawyer, wrote a book that became immediately a bestseller but extremely controversial. Matter of fact, all the judges in our King County Courthouse have now read it. For the most part, it's called the New Jim Crow, where she made the case that our judicial systems are quick tracked and incarcerate and create an almost slave like system for black males in this country and her. But Cornell West, who is considered also a very controversial black intellectual but also very popular, said until we get to the root cause of this horrific racial, there's a portion out there. What he said is capitalism and racism. We cannot change it. Do you agree or disagree with him? Why? Well, I I would fundamentally I think he's got the fundamentals correct. I think that there is I think ever since President Clinton, the the drug and drug laws passed back in during the Clinton 84, 94, that the prison population just jumped at that point. And you can see it. You can see in the graphs, you could see in the incarceration rates. And they were largely linked to making crack cocaine drug offenses more serious than powder cocaine drug offenses. And certainly as a public defender, I saw I saw those sorts of disparities as well. You know, I think that that is a those are I think those analyzes are correct. I've read reviews of Ms.. Alexander's book. I've not read the book myself at this point, but I've certainly it's on ice. It's certainly on the list. And I think that she from what I've read of that, I think I would agree with much of the analysis as well. You know, it's a it's it's a. Judge Justice Madsen has referred to some of these problems as being intractable, not in the sense of being unsolvable. Not unsolvable. Well, that was the word she chose, not unsolvable, but persistent and stubborn. And that they've been persistent, stubborn problems for, you know, in our country for 150 years. And certainly Clinton, President Clinton, there were some exacerbations and some of the crime laws were passed. So I think those laws those laws need to be changed. I think there is there's certainly a need to for education at law enforcement and prosecution levels. You know, once again, it's frustrating, as I'm sure you you see as well, that judges are stuck with the cases that come before them. So there's a certain amount of that in court. You want to be fair and you want to be just. But I think there's also a need to recognize that to be advocating for changes in laws that will they will begin to chip away at that disproportionality, because it really it is it is real. It's a real problem. And there's to to try to argue or believe that it's not a real problem, I think just exacerbates that problem. Thank you. Welcome to you. I'm actually going to ask a follow up question. Caseloads are down right now. And so tell me why you think we should have more judges if the caseload is down? Well, I may be at this particular particular moment in history that they may be down. But I. I know that district courts handle 90% of the caseload in Washington state. And the and the population is increasing. King County is certainly population. King County is increasing as well. In any given day when I pro-tem, there's been at least 50 or 60 cases on the docket. So I'd be curious as to what what the actual numbers are over what period of time. But even so, I think the the amount of caseloads that the district courts have become accustomed to doing are probably more high perhaps than would be good. I think lower caseload in general spread over more judges would be a good public policy avenue to pursue as well. The fact that, in other words, the fact they've gone down may be a good thing and perhaps keeping them down is also a good thing from public policy as well as access to justice. Great. Well, we've come to the end of the free flowing questions. It's now time to give your closing statement. Thank you. Thank you all for taking up time this morning. I appreciate the questions and I appreciate the time to be able to present this morning. As I mentioned at the beginning, I bring experience and expertize to the bench in both criminal and civil law. I've also protested in King County District Court as well as Seattle Municipal Court, and gaining invaluable practical experience as a result as a district court judge. I would continue to advocate for improved access to justice, particularly for King County's various minorities and low income populations. The issue of of of making courts more accessible to more people, particularly low income people, is is close to my heart. And I know it's close to the King County Council's heart. And I would work very hard to continue to make those efforts improve and increase in King County. So thank you for your consideration. Thank you so much. And we really appreciate your willingness to serve. And you are free now to either join us or even go home and relax. All right. Thank you. Sir. Thank you very much. With that, we will be bringing on our final candidate. Our candidate's name is Samir Singular, and so he will be next. And this will be our last one. Following that, we will have an executive session. Right. Right here. Right here. Okay. And I made it disappear. Welcome, Mr. Single. The microphone needs to be almost dangerously close to your mouth, so be aware of that. Okay. Thank you. And when you are ready, give your opening statement. Good morning, Council Member Lambert and members of the committee. My name is Samir Singla and I am seeking a position for King County District Court. I want to thank you for considering me as a finalist for this position. I'm truly humbled and honored. I also want to thank your committee staff and your individual staff for shepherding us through this process. They've been extremely patient with us. I have worked very hard to prepare myself for this position. I have been a pro tem judge for over half a decade. I've served over 200 days as a pro tem judge with thousands of hours. I've covered almost every single calendar imaginable in King County District Court. I have served as a prosecutor, as a policy director, as a trial instructor, and currently I'm in private practice as a civil rights litigator. I want the district I want to be on the district court because I want to effect a positive change in my community. I believe that a judge should be accessible, should be able to be make a connection with the people that appear in front of them. We should make sure that people are participants in the process not being processed through the judicial system. I believe I bring a unique perspective and fresh energy to this position. As some of you may know. I'm an immigrant. My family moved here from India when I was 12 years old. My father, who was a judge in India, had a great career, but he found himself in a position in Punjab during the 1980s. There was a lot of violent activity and he had to try cases of accused terrorist. They tried to bribe him and that didn't work. So they ended up threatening his life and then his family's life. So he chose to retire after 20 years of service and moved to a small town in Othello. Washington, Othello. Washington. And that experience that experience, what it taught me was the value of hard work, persistence and perseverance. And it impacted me so much that it set me on a path to be on the judiciary. And that's what brings me here to you today. Excellent. Thank you so much. Your first question today will be asked by a council member at the Grove. We have three prepared questions. And the first is. What is your vision for the future of our judicial system. And what changes would you advocate and why? I think we have a lot of different challenges in the King County district court system, and one of the challenges that we have is providing adequate access to justice. Let me just give you an idea. Serving as a pro tem judge, I have to handle about 30 to 35 cases in an hour and a half. And these cases are with defendants who are facing some of the same challenges that you're facing, challenges of addiction, challenges of homelessness, challenges of safety. And these are the same challenges that you're struggling with now. I have as much time to address those cases as I have to answer this question. So think about that for a second. Our public defenders and prosecutors work really, really hard, but at some point we have to figure out how do we make people who appear in front of us actually participants in the process? And that is something that we're going to continue to challenge, continue to deal with and about the budget as a barrier to that challenge. So what we can do is look to expand on the programs that have been working. Some of the great successes that we've had in District Court is with therapeutic programs, with with mental health courts and with veterans courts. And we can expand those programs to include some of the issues that we're dealing with here today. Successes have been made in other other jurisdictions with community courts and with restorative justice programs where they're applicable. Well, we have to learn to do is we have to learn to do more with less. And what I mean by that is use what's been working and use technology that's been working and use it more effectively. Some of the things that we can do, and I call this really low hanging fruit, is being able to text message or email reminders to the participants who are going to be in front of us. What we see a lot of the time is people don't show up to court and there is a warrant that's issued for them and they're subsequently arrested on that warrant. That requires now three different agencies that you have to manage the budget for being involved. You have the King County Sheriff's Office, you have the jail and you have the court system. And when we invariably see them again, ask them, why didn't they didn't show up to court. They said, either I forgot or I lost the piece of paper that was handed to me telling me what my next court date was. And we can use the system and it has worked in other jurisdictions to be able to text message or email them so they're reminded because that is where the next generation is going. The other thing that we can do is make the court more accessible. I'm here. We're being livestreamed on King County Network. My mother and father are watching me. We can do the same thing with our court system. It's an open court system. One of the other things that I hear all the time is that people don't know what the process is going to be and they're always afraid of going to court because it's a mystery to them. Live streaming the court system again makes it more accessible so you can actually figure out what a traffic ticket hearing is going to look like or an arraignment is going to look like before you show up. Thank you very much. If you're in the middle of a sentence, don't worry about going over. Yeah, we're just giving guidelines there. Okay. Question number two, Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Madam Chair. And good morning, Samir. Thanks for being here and thank you for your willingness to serve. This is the second base question that we've got, and that is how does and should how does and should the district court have an impact on racial disproportionality in our justice system? Well, Councilmember Dombrowski, this is a question that that's very personal to me. And I do believe that we can take a look back at this point over 200 years and see that there is a racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. And it's borne itself out at this point through a number of means, through studies. And quite frankly, had I interacted differently with police officers when I was pulled over for wearing a hoodie and driving a nice car, I might be part of that statistic. But I was a lawyer and I knew how to interact and I knew how to handle myself. So what do we do that we recognize as racial disproportionality? Last month, the Department of Justice came out with a letter addressed to all district and municipal courts nationwide, encouraging them to take a look at the system of legal financial obligations and the burden that places on them creating essentially debtors prison. People are being imprisoned because they can't pay their fines. That, again, leads to racial disproportionality. What we can do is that the recognize that the issue is real, that exist. And what I mean by disproportionality and discrimination, it goes beyond just that issue. We we have issues of gender. We have racial issues of sexual orientation. We have issues of race, we have issues of poverty. And those are all amalgamation of what what the real issue that we're dealing with here today is. My goal is to make each individual that comes in front of me an important part of the process. My goal and I do this every time when I am a pro-tem judge is to let people know that the reason that they're in front of me does not need to define who they are moving forward. We work together to make sure that they recognize that this is a circumstance that they've found themselves in. It's not a definition of who they are. What we can do is we can find alternatives to incarceration. We can find whether work crew or a community service works better to improve that system. We can address these issues before people even enter the system. We can, as judges, go out into the community and serve as role models. I think it's important for the for the types of issues that we're dealing with is to have judges go and share their own stories, share their own stories of what's happened to them, their own stories of their upbringing, to serve as a role model, to show that there is somebody that looks like them, that understands what they've been through, that lives in their community, that can then help them get through the process. What I have done, and I've spent a lot of time in my work and that's why it's personal to me in addressing these issues. I've served as a board member on Washington Appleseed, where we've written reports about the effects of suspension and exclusion in two schools, which has led to reforms in that system. And what we found when we did our study is that it did disproportionately affect students of color, and it did create a pipeline to the prisons. Okay. Did you finish my question? Okay. All right. And so then the last question of the canned stage questions will be Councilmember McDermott. Question number three. Thank you, Madam Chair. Though I find it hard to categorize as a can do question district court process around district court processes, around 250,000 cases a year, and judges manage a high volume calendar regularly. How would you approach a calendar when you have to resolve 50 cases in 2 hours while making sure that the people involved feel that justice has been done? You know, I'm glad that you asked that question and we've been talking about that. I think I gave the example of just as long as it takes me to answer this question is what we're talking about in the process, what the most important part is to make sure that the individual rights are protected and that they're being served. What I have learned through this process is trying to understand the triggers of what's happening. What I can tell you is asking questions, and I'll give you an example. I was I was serving in Esquire District Court on Monday, and there was a young man, 20 years old, African-American, who was being who was under review and was going to be sanctioned for discharging a firearm under age. Here's a 20 year old young man. The recommendation in front of me was for him to serve ten days in jail. And I'm looking at him. And the simple question I asked is, what's going on? How are you doing? Explain to me why we're here today. It's simply that question. What I saw this young man would do was slump his shoulders down and get a relief, as in somebody was actually going to listen to what they had to say. Now, you asked me the question was, how do we do that with the 50 cases you're facing? Using those triggers, understanding what's going on, understanding why they find themselves in this position, whether it's dealing with issues for driving while license suspended, issues of poverty or issues of addiction, and doing doing what we need to do in in the district courts, which is a rehabilitative it's a court of rehabilitation, as our our goal is to make sure that we set them on a path for success, that we don't find them in this position again. So really working with them to get down to the to the heart of the issue and it's those triggers of how are you doing today? Every time I've asked a asked a person who's in front of me, how are you doing today? Good morning. And they get a smile on their face because all of a sudden it's not lawyers and judges talking to each other. It's a judge who's talking the person that we're actually want to effect. The other thing that I always say is I want to set you up for success. If there's somebody that's going to count on you to succeed, you can count on that person to be me. I've had the great opportunity to serve in in district court for a while now, so I have to have the opportunity to see the same individuals appear in front of me over time. For me to remember who they are. I remember you from last week or last month. And remember we talked about how you were doing. You don't you promised me that you would come back with your treatment form. And I see that here. We're just missing one more part. What are we going to do to work on that? That takes a lot of work and a lot of preparation from a judge beforehand to recall that case. But once you do that, you develop that connection. And that connection is what lasts for such a long time with the defendant. I've had defendants come to me and say, I know, Judge, you told me and you promised. I promised you I was going to do this and I'm going to hold you to and I say, I'm going to hold you to it and I'm counting on you. Thank you. That is completion of our three basic questions. And now we're going to the follow up questions. The first final question will be Councilmember von Rainbow by Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. No. I did not have a chance to meet with all the candidates, but I did have an opportunity to meet with you 1 to 1. And I appreciate that opportunity. Particularly because I think we have a very clear understanding. Of your professional resume by reading the paper. But when I met with you, what impressed me most was your personal resume and the conversation we had about the person who has had such an impact on your personal life, your father. And I know that we have all before us a written paper. But I like. To take advantage of the fact that your father's watching us. And I remember our private conversation. But I think it's worthy. Because this is a public. Medium to understand that behind the robe. Behind the decision is a person. What are some of the lessons that you learned from your father that you share with me the other day in our office? And I'd like to share that right now. Go ahead. Don't cry. So. Yeah, I plead with you. Hear me cry? My father is watching and he and I had a conversation about this last night as well. You know, the very first memory that I have of my father is him, me asking him why he worked as hard as he did as long as he did, and him coming back and reading his briefs, his handwritten briefs. And I was five years old in India at this time and telling me why this was important and the type of work he was doing and and me watching him go through the process of transitioning his entire life, a life of promise and prestige to come here to this country where we started with nothing. We started with no money, no skills on how to run a farm in a small town with very little opportunity. And what I can definitely tell you is that my father never gave up on us, and he instilled us in the value of hard work, the value of education, the value of always looking forward. And we, we, my, my, my, my brother and sister and I look back now that we've grown up and we have our own kids to where we were when we were growing up. He never made me feel like I didn't have anything where I know. And this is something that I can share with people that appear in front of me where I know for a fact a $200 traffic ticket caused havoc in our lives of $50. I recall conversing with my sister about this. A $50 graduation gown for my sister was a big deal. We had to figure out how we were going to pay for that. But if you talk to my father, he would never let me see it. And I can't tell you I can't. All I can say is if I could ask for a dial a friend, there's no better person than my father. And I got to call him Dad every day. Thank you, Madam Chair. I wanted to get that on the record. I know we have all this paperwork in front of us, but for some reason I have a mutual friend and I had an opportunity to get to know him. Through his. Mutual friend. And the story of his. Father is something that his friends are also private as well. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilmember. This is next. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. I appreciate it. I, too, like the opportunity to meet Samir in my office and he set up the appointment. And all I need to say. I concur with me about the way that you came across as a positive person, profoundly impacted by your family and your circumstances, particularly over there and below where you faced a lot of racism and overcame all that. My quick question has to do with getting a deeper understanding on your perspective on disproportionality. Cornel West, the famous Harvard and Princeton prof. Former professor, has been consistently talking about the impact of the Clinton 1994 crime legislation that extended the building of jails, hired 100,000 police, and began to reinforce and significantly expand the use of mandatory sentencing and what impact it had on our society and on racial disproportionality, particularly as it impacts blacks. But in a recent speech I saw him make, he said, There's no way we can get to these problems unless we're able to make significant, radical change. And the capital is a racist system under which we live. I just wanted to know if you agree or disagree with how and why, just getting your perspective as a potential judge. I, I had a chance to to catch some of those comments from Dr. West at one point. I do agree I do agree with the basis of the Clinton administration's focus on the war on drugs and also on on the sentencing guidelines at the federal level. That did create a and I think the Department of Justice has also recognized that and is trying to trying to at least focus on those mandatory sentencing guidelines that do create a level of disproportionality. To answer directly your question, I do believe that courts of limited jurisdiction are in a lot of ways on the front line of how we go about addressing this issue. And the reason I say that, Councilmember, is that the types of issues and the types of crimes that we deal with and this is not not only extensive crimes, but it also extends to civil matters as well. We get to see firsthand how an individual is impacted by these types of crimes and what circumstance brings them in front of us. We have been we as as a district court have been working on one of these issues is driving while license suspended in the third degree. We've had diversion programs and relicensing programs we've amended. There has been a statute amendment which I was a part of, to reconfigure how we actually suspend someone's license so that they're not they're not suspended for a particular poverty based infraction, but they're suspended for a safety based infraction, for example. So if you your license will now be suspended. If you don't pay your insurance ticket, your license won't be suspended if you don't pay your registration, because those are the issues where people can't afford to pay pay those tickets. But that's that's just only one of the issues and looking at a broader and global perspective. We have to we have to take into consideration the circumstance that that brings an individual in front of us and what is the motivator and the driving factor of why we see them today, why we see them here today. With that being said, the discretion that a district court judge has to be actually involved in changing some of those behaviors is great. We have a broad discretion. We're not limited by is sentencing guidelines were limited by discretion of having a carrot and stick. The carrot coming obviously first really getting involved and working with individuals to ensure that they're going to reach the level of success and up here in front of us. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. And I guess I'm going to ask the last follow up question. We actually have a couple of extra minutes. The follow up question is this If you were presiding and the judge next door came by and for some reason didn't like something that you said or the way you did it and came to you and said, I, I have an idea for you, blah, blah, blah, blah, how would you deal with that? Oh, well, I can tell you is I am I have learned from the role models that I've had and I'm not lucky and I'm fortunate to have some great role models who are Supreme Court justices and superior court justice judges. And some of them I've been period in front of, and they have held me to a very high standard. And I've had to live up to that standard at times when I didn't think that I either wanted to or was able to, but they forced me to it. And this is what it taught me, is that I need to be humble, I need to be fair, I need to be just and I need to be civil. And those are the lessons that I take with me as a judge to the bench every time I'm a pro tem. And those are the lessons that I practice as a lawyer. So if a judge came to me and said, I didn't like the way that you did something and here's I would how I'd want you to do it. I will always welcome those comments because, quite frankly, it's it's an art form being. Being a judicial magistrate is an art form. It's not as it's not simple. We're making life changing decisions. And I am always able to learn. I'm a lifelong learner. That's what I know how. That's the only thing that I know how to do. I can't imagine myself being stuck in a certain position because again, somebody may have an idea on how to connect with a participant in this process that I didn't think of or that I wasn't privy to. And it's those things that I need to know to improve myself. I would welcome anyone to come to me and tell me how I can improve my practice. That's something that I cherish and actually look forward to. Excellent. You know, I'll come to the time when you get to give your closing comments. Okay. Says these were the only two periods that you could actually prepare. So. So I want to thank you, first of all, for giving me the opportunity to be here. Like I said before, I'm truly humbled and honored. And I believe that I have a broad base of experience that would make me a good King County District Court judge, and I hope you appoint me. Some of you may be wondering about the disparity in some of the ratings that I and some of our other colleagues have received. I'm honored to have been qualified by some agencies and especially honored to have been qualified exceptionally well qualified by other agencies. I can't tell you the reason for the disparity in the process. I wasn't privy to those conversations. What I can tell you is that they all had the same materials that you have in front of you in my application. They had all the same references. What they didn't have and that I'm proud to present to you are the letters of support that I received from Supreme Court judges and judges from Superior Court judges, from municipal court judges, from court administrators, and also from King County court clerks. I do respect that process. I can tell you that as well. Some of the qualifications that do separate me from my other colleagues, I believe, as I have actually served as an interim presiding judge in Des Moines Municipal Court, where I've had an opportunity to administer an entire court system, handle our budget and manage the court administrations . And that's an invaluable experience I have. I believe that my commitment to community service is great. I have served as an advisory board member for the Boards Children's Clinic. I'm a board member for building changes where a goal is to reduce or eliminate homelessness for families. I have also spoken about the perspective that I have and I do believe that I bring a unique perspective. There's two things that I tell my two young daughters that my father has taught me. They know that single girls never quit, and they always get up when they're knocked down. Those are the same lessons that I bring to the defendants that appear in front of me. If I'm appointed, I can promise me. Promise you you will get the best from me every day, because that is what I've grown up doing and that is the only thing that I know how to do. Thank you very much. Thank you. It's good to see you again. It's here. Thank you. So you have the option of sitting or you don't? Actually, you have no option. You have to go. Thank you very much. Okay. With that, we will go into executive session and we will be able to discuss the candidates qualifications. When we come out of executive session, we will entertain motions to take action on our three agenda items, which are the three appointments. The grounds we would be going into executive session are to evaluate the qualifications of candidates for appointments elective office as provided for in RTW 42.30 .110 Subsection H. The committee will now be in executive session for about 15 minutes. We need to go longer. We will and that will take us just shy of noon. And I'm going to ask the clerk to post the doors to that effect. And I must now ask the members in the public who are and county employees were not directly necessary for this discussion to please leave the council chambers. Thank you very much. As you know, we can keep the microphones on so we can hear each other. So I guess we'll go back into executive session for. You know, when we're out, we're out. Okay, great. So we're now at an executive session. And before we talk about anything else, I just want to say thank you to everybody. This has been a very busy process. It's been very thorough. We've learned a lot about the process itself, about the underlying law. And I know that it took me over 12 hours of just reading the packets, so I know that took you a long time also. So thank you for taking the time to do all that. And I especially like to thank three people who came and participated in the earlier process where we got it down from 15 to 7. And so I'd like to thank Councilmember Gossett for his work on that committee. Member Beth Balducci and Council member Tim Belsky for all your work and pointing out that all of you spent a lot of nights and time outside of this process, in the interview process. So thank you very much. So with that, we are going to move the first motion. The first motion is the one for Southwest Division, and that is proposed motion 2016 0218. And because it's Southwest, we are going to have a Southwest Councilmember Council member at the Grove. Thank you, Madam Chair. I move the proposed motion 2016 0218 be adopted. Thank you. Would you like to make a motion of filling in a name? Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would move that the name of Laurel Gibson be inserted on line 18. Thank you very much. All those in favor of the. So I speak to it. Yes, please speak to it first. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Madam Chair, this is really an honor for me. To be able to nominate Laurel Gibson to the Southwest Division District. Court. She got her undergraduate degree from University. Of Washington and her. Law degree from Seattle University. She's been practicing criminal law for 12 years. And but most. Importantly and what stands out in my mind is she brings four years. Experience both as an administrative. Law judge, but as a pro tem in this court on the Friday calendars. And the folks she worked with, the current bench and the staff have nothing but praise for the work she's been doing in the district court right now. I want to also mention how much I enjoyed listening to the remarks this morning of Brian Todd. He brings a tremendous life experience and commitment to people who are disadvantaged, and I hope he stays engaged and we get to see his name again in the future. And so we were blessed to have many excellent candidates, but I think we will be very well served in Southwest Division Court with what I hope to be a Judge Laura Gibson, and committed to you. For your support. Thank you very much. Any other comments? Can I please ask our clerk? Yeah. Okay. So the name being built into I treat that as an amendment and we vote on that as an amendment or since it was already a blank, do I just go forward and do it as just so I think we'll treat that as an amended motion? Okay. That's what I that's where we will report it. Okay. That's what I was going to do. But I want to make sure. Okay, good. So, Councilmember Domestic. Thank you, Madam Chair, of be very brief. I wanted to echo Councilmember up the Grove's comments in support of Ms.. Gibson as the appointed judge for the Southwest District. Really excellent job in the interview is a great background, great recommendations. But I also wanted to recognize Mr. Todd. I thought he did very well and made a very compelling case, really appreciate his service to the community at El Centro de la Raza and in the community legal clinics. And I want to note that the most compelling recommendations for me were for Mr. Todd from court staff bailiffs who sometimes don't up bailiffs wrote in in his materials. And to me that was very telling about Mr. Todd as an individual, as a person, as a human being, how he treats the court staff. And it wasn't just one, but there were multiple letters from court staff. And I think that we'll see. Mr.. Todd again. Thank you. And that also tells our bailiffs we care about them. So thank you for pointing that out. Anybody else? All right. So before us right now is the amendment, oral amendment, to put the name of Laura Gibson in to this motion. All those in favor of the amendment, please say those opposed. Nay amendment is on. And so now before us we have the underlying legislation 2016 0218 Any questions or comments? The clerk please call. Did we push? Do okay. Call for the roll. Okay. Please call the off. Thank you, Madam Chair. You didn't I remember Dumbo Knight Councilmember Dunn Knight. Councilmember Gossett. Councilmember Toll. Well, I've. Been a councilmember. Experiment, all right. Which remember. The girl? Navajo Code Council councilmember of the girl, I think. Councilmember. Brown right there. Madam Chair, I don't know who is Ada. Mike Bowers Excellent. So that one will proceed to Monday. And we want that on the consent calendar to want to talk about it. We want to talk about it or not. Do you want to consent for us to say a few words? Okay. So it'll be expedited, but not no consent. Okay. So the next two motions that are before us to 2016, oh two and nine and oh to 20, we're going to move those together. So would you please move both of those at the same time? Thank you, Madam Chair. And I'm pleased to move adoption of 2016 219 and 2 to 0 to the full council unexpired basis Monday. And we've had a good discussion. We've had good interviews. I think members still want to have time to consider these qualified candidates and continue to check background and and resources and recommendations. And so at this time, I wouldn't expect to offer any motions to amend these two motions, but we've moved them with that recommendation today. And that would be fine. Any questions or comments? All right. With that clerk, would you please call for the vote? Thank you. Madam Chair comes from our beloved council member. By. Councilmember. Don. Gossett. Councilor Coles councilor in the. McDermott. House. Member of the Grove. Councilor I'm right there. I know. Chair The seminar is no nos in council members. On my cards. Excellent. With that, we have completed our work for today. County is very fortunate to have so many qualified individuals who are willing to serve their communities as a district court judge. And we are 4 minutes beyond the time that I thought it would take us and just we had to take a recess for our recess, friends. We were right on track. So with that, the meeting is adjourned. Thank you all. ", "output": "A MOTION making an appointment to fill a judicial vacancy in the west division of King County district court."}
{"id": "king_0b082bc5-f2b6-427f-9c37-6862c4371017", "input": "In the community, the whole four hour March 17th, 2021 meeting. And as we started today, I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the traditional lands, the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We think these caretakers of the land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial. I'd also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians in King County who have brought their cultural ways of life here and greatly enrich our local community. And I would also like to wish you a happy St Patrick's Day today in light of our public health emergency. The governor has issued a emergency order suspending the portion of the Open Public Meetings Act that requires that we have a physical space for people to watch our meetings. We have several items on today's agenda. We'll start with a briefing from the Director of the Department of Performance, Strategy and Budget on the county's COVID 19 response. Take up legislation that would ban fireworks in unincorporated King County and then take up three appointments of nominees to positions within the county. Two Housekeeping Notes. As we get started to help us manage the meeting, I'd ask the public, as well as executive and council staff to please keep your video off until just before you plan to speak. And additionally, if you're connecting to the media meeting via cell phone, then you wish to provide public comment. We would ask that you try to connect, if at all possible, through the Zoom application. If you're connecting without using the zoom out, we may have trouble meeting you. There may be a delay making testimony challenging. With that. Madam Clerk, would you please call the Royal? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell, did you hear? Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Councilmember Dunn. Here. Council Member Cole Wells here. Council Member Lambert. Council member of the ground. Council Member Von Richthofen. Here. Council members I. President. Mr. Chair. Here. Mr. Chair, you have a quorum. And I believe Council Member Lambert is now in the meeting. Indeed. Cheers. We want with that jersey and we want our council member van right through what county he's actually in this morning. Well, now we'll now turn to Mark Clarke. Mr. Chair. That's the right answer. Council member, if that's the right answer. Well, now turn to public comment. Madam Clerk, I know we have people on the line today, so let me go ahead and review for everyone both the procedures for how we manage public comment in a virtual meeting and the general rules for public testimony. Public comment in the committee. The whole. First some ground rules. Public comment must be related to items on today's meeting agenda. It must not be used for the purposes of assisting in any campaign for election of any person in the office or for the promotion or opposition of any ballot proposition. It must also not include obscene speech, and if a speaker fails to abide by these restrictions, they may be ruled out of order and may be required to exit the virtual meeting. Now I'll just try to describe the actual process for use all members of the public time as they join the meeting room automatically muted. We can see your name or the last three digits of your telephone number. Our committee clerk will call the names. Your name or your number when your name or the last three digits of your phone number is called. Staff will unmute your line. Please make sure that you also unmute your phone if you have muted yourself on your end as a courtesy. Please do not use the Henry's function. Everyone will be called on during public comment today. A reminder that if you are calling in from a cell phone, we recommend that you use the Zoom application and before you begin your testimony once your name is called. If you would start by maybe saying your name and pausing so that we can acknowledge we hear you and we know we have good audio. And then if you could begin your testimony by saying in spelling your name. So we have it accurate for the record and we would very much appreciate that. And if you would like your video to be turned on for your public comment, you can request that at the beginning of your testimony. As usual, you have 2 minutes to speak. You'll hear a timer go off. When you've reached your 2 minutes, you can certainly finish your thought, but please wrap up your comments to allow the next person to speak. If you go much past 2 minutes, you may be interrupted and asked to wrap up or be muted. If you're listening on TV or online, we ask you to please mute that feature so we don't have feedback when you're testifying and. With that. It would also help us a bit manage the call, as if after your testimony, you might monitor the rest of the meeting by either watching the meeting on Channel 22, King County TV or streaming this online. You can find the livestream at WW W dot King County dot gov backslash counsel and then clicking on the ever popular Watch US live button will now begin the public comment reminder when your name or the last three digits of your phone number is called, please say your name and pause so we can acknowledge we hear you when we have a good audio connection and then begin by spelling your name for the record. Without Madam Quirk, would you please begin? Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first person is listed as Barbara's iPad. Please go ahead and unmute yourself. And is this Barbara talking? Yes, it is. It's Barbara. Barbara Gaskin, DOB in. Thank you. Go ahead. I'm calling in on ordinance 2021, dash 0057 and requesting that the council please vote to support a total ban on fireworks in unincorporated Kane County. I'm a resident of White Center. I also serve on the board of the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council. A partial ban or any type of appeasement for the businesses that sell fireworks in our community does not work and will not work. And I feel it's nothing more than an insult to this community as the businesses profit on the firework sales. It's on the backs of our community with the noise, the pollution and. How could a partial band work? Our deputies are supposed to know what is legal and illegal fireworks. With the total ban, it will give our deputies tools to address fireworks where people can be warned or fined if they don't comply with the ban. These businesses have over a year now. Are these nonprofits to look at raising money in other ways they need to move on from the sale of fireworks. You know, we suffer with this every year. And the thought of going forward year after year with this is not an option for this community. I really hope this council will support a total ban. I mean, what does what will it take another home burning to the ground, another loss of life? And I just cannot stress how harmful the fireworks are in North Highline. Please move forward with the total ban. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Brant Havlicek. Please go ahead and mute yourself and proceed. I've asked you to yourself. Oh, go ahead. Sorry. Thickets of technical difficulties there. Brant Sadler, check with Western fireworks, spelled b orian t paiva l i c e k or Western Fireworks is a licensed and importer and wholesaler in the state of Washington. I did have public testimony at the last hearing before deferred to today. So two points of interest that I think maybe not necessarily were stressed at the last public testimony of all parties involved, the first one being and the point that I stressed was education and within fireworks and educating people on what fireworks can be used and where. And I think following up to that is that we as a society try and have done that for years. In other parts of our society. I'll use Mothers Against Drunk Driving. I was a very young man when that was started a long time ago, and education processes like that in our society and in our community have gone over time and we still work today to try and educate against people doing things under the influence that obviously have its own dramatic issues that follow that. Second thing that I think is very important to the council members and the chair is is the tribal entity. And then my question is, have at this point, we have any communication or dialog with any of those entities within King County, because I think that that's important, number one. Number two, if there hasn't been as you move forward, they're going to continue to do what they've always done. And that is not going to help this issue. It is not going to help the nuisance issue because that pipeline is still going to be there. And so those two points are what I hope the council can consider today, in addition to what have previously said and also sent any correspondence. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person is Mark Thompson. Please go ahead and mute yourself. Good morning, council members and happy St Paddy's Day to the true Irish and those who want to be Irish today. My name is Mark Thompson. T h m Pierce. Twin Fire Commissioner and President of the King County Fire Commissioners Association. And I'm speaking today and half on behalf of support of the. Fireworks ban representing the King County Fire Commissioners Association. We've been supportive of and encouraged fireworks bans in the future many, many times and to no avail. And today, I again urge you to listen and hear the voices of those who have been hurt by the trauma caused by the so-called safe and sane consumer retail fireworks and whose property has been damaged or destroyed by safe and sane fireworks burns of innocent citizens caused by safe and sane fireworks in King County. And here, the pain and the frustration. Safe and sane fireworks have caused many residents and family members listening to the fire and EMS personnel who have who must respond to the horrific incidents caused by safe and sane fireworks. The irony is that the root word in fireworks is fire and fireworks caused fires, many brush fires, grass fires, wildland type fires and house fires and caused serious burn injuries and paramedic injuries to many. It's ironic to, too, that many cities in King County have already instituted fireworks bans many, many years ago. Those elected officials at the time exerted courage and leadership to make the right decision to stop the carnage and losses in their cities. Well, King County has kicked the can down the road, not hearing the voices of those who desire to stop the carnage, loss of life and property, and compromise of the public safety of all and unincorporated King County. By listening to those who profit from the sale, use and discharge of consumer fireworks, fire knows no boundary knows, no compromise. It hurts people and property of everyone of all races, creeds, colors and ages in the communities of one incorporated King County. Now is the time for you, our elected officials, to stand for what is right, what is good public policy? Vote yes for a total fireworks ban without compromise. Vote yes on the term fireworks ban with a do pass recommendation to the full council. Your leadership. And yes, I can ask you to wrap up, please. Okay. Here are the voices of reason, voices of those who have suffered and have been scarred or really maimed by fireworks injuries . Not the voices of those in the industry who make a profit on the sale of use of fire. Consumer fireworks. Urge support for a yes vote. And stay safe. Everyone, thank you very much for your time. Thank you. The next person is David Freberg. Please go ahead and unmute yourself and proceed. Good morning. This is Dave Freberg. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay. Well, I appreciate everything that everyone has has contributed so far. I've been a operator of multiple locations for AT&T over the years, since 1985. My family's been involved in the industry, but I'm going to speak today as a consumer who also has experience going to these tribal locations to see what that situation looks like as far as purchasing fireworks and the class of fireworks available there. And I can tell you that it is it is completely different than the experience we provide as operators in King County. And that is up there. You'll be encouraged by or, you know, suggested to purchase the larger, more dangerous class. And as an operator, I can tell you, every time someone comes in, if they have questions, I ensure that they are educated on everything they are buying. They are also provided documentation as they depart. And I would be more than happy to again assist in any way. As far as training and providing permits or whatever is needed. But there is a compromise to be had here, and prohibition will not solve any of the concerns that have been brought forth so far. All it will do is force the consumer to the tribal outlets and they will purchase a more dangerous class. And you will still be facing the same concerns we are discussing here today. There is a safe and sane class of fireworks that can be provided, can be educated. And I think we owe it to our citizens to to be the ones in charge and choose to be educated. And I can tell you this last July was one of the biggest seasons we've ever had, and everyone was asking for that type of firework anyways. It's it just seems logical for us to compromise as opposed to pursuing prohibition. It very, very seldom ever works out in any industry. So I strongly encourage the Council to please consider a compromise. And why would we want to take away jobs in an economic climate like we are facing right now? Thank you. The next person is Jason Trout. Let's go ahead and unmute yourself. Go ahead. Can you hear me? Oh, yes. Thank you. Great. Good morning. My name is Jason Trotter with AT&T fireworks. I appreciate all the effort that the council has put into this. I know that it's a very, very it's a very politicized and very important decision for you guys to make. So I don't want to take up too much time. I think all of you know the points that we've all made in the past. I just want to reiterate, you know, fireworks are already banned 364 days a year in King County. So, you know, taking one more day away, you know, from everyone I think is a difficult task. So I'm just asking that you guys, you know, think about a compromise rather than a complete ban altogether. And, you know, taking the fundraising efforts away from the nonprofit organizations is is is really difficult. And frankly, they they aren't even able to replace them. So thank you very much. Thank you. The next person is Julie Hiatt. Hello. My name is Juliet H i 80. I am a fire commissioner with the North Highline Fire District, which, as you know, as white center area, we are about three and a half square miles, an unincorporated King County bordered by Seattle and Berrien, which I know, you know, unfortunately, with the Bay Area bans in place in Seattle and Berrien, what happens is most people condense into our area about three square miles. The challenge we have with this multi fold, as we know, we had a fatality fire a couple of years ago from a firework, an illegal firework, I believe they weren't exactly sure that it went off to a neighbor's home. We've also had I've had the opportunity to ride along with our crews on the 4th of July, and it feels kind of like a war zone. It's very difficult to get down the streets. Most all the streets, people are lighting off fireworks in them. They build tables. They build different areas to shoot off for in the middle of the streets. It's very difficult to get our rigs downtown when we go to different calls on the parties on that have been on they've been more medical calls. But the challenges people are lighting off fireworks all around our rigs while we're trying to work on some of the people that are having some challenges. And it is so condensed in our area. The problem we have is if there's any fireworks allowed, it's almost impossible, as Barbara mentioned, to tell the difference for anyone trying to enforce this if it's a legal or illegal firework. I actually the only way to really understand this is to come down here and be here in White Center on the 4th of July. And I actually invite everyone on the council, come to my house this 4th of July, and you can witness for yourself what we go through. This is not I enjoy fireworks. I'm not trying to take away any jobs. What we're trying to do is save lives. And so I'm not sure what else to say. I know you guys have heard all this before, but it is a true invite to any council member who would like to come to my home on the 4th of July 2021, the fire commission with North Highland Fire District. So you can find my information and then you can witness for yourself what it's like and what we go through on the 4th of July. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Katrina Dorn. Hi. Look. Oh. Okay. My name is Katrina Doan spelled Katrina d0h and. And I am asking you, I'm imploring you to not ban fireworks. And I want to be very clear on why I think there is one reason to not enact a ban, and that is, as long as we have tribal land, we are going to have fireworks. We can ban the safe and legal ones. But what that does is push everybody up to go to the tribal lands where they're enticed with the dangerous, the illegal, the ones that have been shown to be the more erratic, to cause the dangers that people are referring to. I think we are probably not as far apart in position as people think. We all want safety for people. Nobody argues that. But by banning people's opportunity to buy the safe ones, we're pushing them to buy the more dangerous ones, which I believe has the reverse result. You have more fireworks injuries because you have more dangerous ones in people's hands. I was in a community last year on the 4th of July where fireworks were legal and they were going on. People were happy having neighborhood activities. I came home to my own community where they are banned and it was to use the phrase of the person before it was like a war zone. They were banned, but it was far worse and the level of the detonations were clearly the banned fireworks. I would like to propose something different. I don't want to just come here and complain and say don't ban them. Because, again, I think our goal is the same. We want safety for people. And I would suggest that most people want families to be able to enjoy celebrations instead of banning the safe and the least likely to cause problem fireworks. What if the council worked very hard with the local fire districts to enact an amazing safety campaign, a creative, comprehensive safety campaign, acknowledging that we are going to have fireworks and come up with some creative ways to promote safety, be a trendsetter. Think outside of the box, work with the fire departments, work with the fireworks folks, and see if together we can promote safety so that the non-profits continue to have their their fundraisers. People continue to have their 4th of July fun. But we can encourage safety. Nobody wants anybody injured. I did just kind of an informal poll with people talking to people from different communities and said, okay, you have a ban. I'm sorry if I could ask you to conclude. Okay. And my conclusion was just that people who live in communities where they're already banned, I said, do they did it stop? And they said, absolutely not. So instead of doing more of the same, let's think out of the box. Let's all work together on a safety campaign, keep everybody safe and enjoy fireworks. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Kenan Gordon, the Colin. Please go ahead. Morning. For the record, Quinlan McCain with Jordan Ramos PC. We represent Jigsaw Fireworks, nationally renowned retail and wholesale distributor of quality fireworks. You know, we've been here before, Jakes. Still respectfully request. The committee declined to adopt a motion to pass proposed ordinance 2020 10057. This point most of the issues are before the committee for an excellent testimony from the members of the public regarding the negative impacts of this proposed ordinance. I'd like to focus my testimony on a few select points and also to direct the committee to our written public comment, which should be before you as well. First, we need to consider the intended goal of this proposed ordinance and whether this ordinance will actually achieve that goal. Jakes does not believe the ordinance will achieve the county's desired goal of reducing nuisance impacts of fireworks, while also ensuring the safety of King County residents. There's ample data establishing that consumer fireworks are not responsible for an appreciable amount of injuries each year. Importantly, most dangerous types of fireworks, including rockets, firecrackers and eighties are already illegal under Washington law. Nonetheless, the broad proliferation of these types of fireworks in King County during firework holidays still exists. Adopting this proposed ordinance will not change that fact. Personally, I'm a longtime resident of unincorporated King County, specifically the Snoqualmie River Valley. In the more rural areas of the county like this, fireworks ban will not stop the usage of these types of fireworks or any type of fireworks. Jakes believes that King County is better served, focusing its efforts on outreach, education and enforcement of existing state and local fireworks laws. Second, can counties adoption of this ordinance will eliminate the primary driver of funding for many local civic groups, including churches and nonprofits. These organizations count on the revenue raised from the sale of consumer fireworks and the central component of their annual budget. In light of the financial strain and impact October 19 has had on these local community organizations, Jason and I believe that now is the time to do away with these organizations primary revenue streams. To do so would negatively impact the citizens of King County by taking money out of the very organizations that help to fuel the community. Jakes also has several other significant concerns regarding this proposed ordinance, including the impact the ordinance would have on the tribes and cities of King County that show fireworks and issues of equity. Regarding the proposal to increase fines for firework violations. A written public comment extrapolates on these concerns in detail. The national leader in the fireworks industry, Jake, recognizes the essential role fireworks play in supporting our local communities and American self-expression. We respectfully request the committee declined to take action on this proposed ordinance. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person is Marissa. You can unmute yourself and provide your full name to us. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Okay, great. My name's Marissa Hancock. My last name is H and S.O.S. K first name. And they are. I say, I've been a resident of White Center since about 2009, and I'm a parent, a pet owner, and a landlord within White Center. And I would ask that you approve a total ban on fireworks in our area. As other people have testified numerous times, living in White Center during the couple of weeks around the 4th of July is just a total nightmare. The main reasons for a ban, I think, have also been stated. But just to reiterate, the the debris that is all over the the streets for days and days after that are the unsafe chemical material, air pollution, harm to the environment, harm to animals. And then, most importantly, you know, the health and safety of residents in our area, fire hazards. And then, you know, I want to speak specifically to the way that this impacts our mental health. I'm a therapist in private practice and I specialize in trauma. And, you know, humans are mammals and we have nervous systems that operate automatically without logic or reason. And when a person is living in a zone where fireworks and explosions are going on for 1 to 2 weeks, it takes a serious toll on our mental health. It provokes anxiety, symptoms, insomnia. And for people who have preexisting PTSD, it activates those systems and those symptoms. So it it's an extremely stressful experience that I'm only I'm thinking about, you know, how our nervous systems have already gone through so much during COVID and, you know, to know that it's going to impact so many people and animals and environments, please ban fireworks in our area. A total ban. Thank you so much. Thank you. The next person is Peggy Shepard. Hi. Thank you for letting me speak. My name is Peggy. Peggy y. Last name? Shepherd. S. E. P r d. I live in Snoqualmie City Limits and I am a city council member. I support a ban on fireworks. Sadly, I do not represent the other council members, mayor or fire chief on this. I lived in Southern California for years where fireworks are banned and the annual fires are devastating, followed by heavy rain and then landslides where homes are lost. And in California, Pacific Gas Electric Pygmy has been sued for causing fires and filed for Chapter 11. And now California's rolling blackouts. Rolling blackouts as one of the outcomes of ongoing threat of fire. I support a ban in unincorporated King County because the city is surrounded by an unincorporated King County. If a fire breaks out in unincorporated King County, it will impact the city of Snoqualmie. Last summer is Snoqualmie. During COVID 19 lockdown, we had smoke. That was so extreme. I bought two plans for our home, strapped with filters to filter out smoke coming from Washington, Canada and California and the city limits of Snoqualmie, there have been two homes that were burned to the extent that they were uninhabitable. One of the homes caught fire in Snoqualmie Ridge twice. Each time the home had extensive damage. The firefighters came from other fire districts. In addition to the local fire department, local firefighters were injured. When firefighters arrived, the home was engulfed in flames and the firefighters. Focused. Their attention on saving neighboring homes, which also sustained fire damage. One fire started by fireworks in Snoqualmie City Limits. The home had a metal roof which made it more difficult to fight the fire. And Snoqualmie Our fire hydrants have not been pressure tested. The last significant fire, the nearest fire hydrant to the fire wasn't used initially for some reason. So Paul Me doesn't have a ladder truck and the home that burned to the ground was five stories tall on the backside on a steep slope close to neighboring homes. Soledad, this picture. In front of the front of the house has two stories. The letter truck from Redmond for the fire and other trucks that blocked the road and was unable to be used. I believe that about 20 firefighters were involved in fighting the fire, if I recall correctly. After the first fire of the home caught fire from fireworks, the homeowner was out of town. After that, a neighbor's home had extensive smoke damage. The home took over a year to rebuild. It was while the home was being reconstructed that the home caught fire again. Fireworks caused fires that are devastating with all our budget concerns. Fire can be the largest cause of the. Fire with you. Specifically ask you to conclude, please. Yes. I am for the complete ban of fireworks. I don't think there's an excuse of waiting for other jurisdictions to do it before one jurisdiction decides to invoke a complete ban. I think we need to ban fireworks. They're extremely dangerous. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Ray Pettigrew. Good morning, councilmembers. My name is Ray Pettigrew. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. And the assistant chief and fire marshal for King County Fire District two. We provide fire protection, emergency medical services for Bear in Dorothy Park in the North Highline area. Elsa represent the North Island Fire District. Thank you for the opportunity to speak on the ordinance. Proposed ordinance to ban consumer fireworks. Each year we respond to many fires around July 4th caused by fireworks. Looking at over the last four years, I've seen an average increase of almost 40% for the 24 hour shift that our firefighters work over the 4th of July compared to other days throughout the year. When you consider that the majority of the fires related to fireworks occur in the four hour period between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m., the increased demand placed on our firefighters is even more dramatic. Many of these fires are caused by fireworks that are currently legal to buy in Washington. Many of the fireworks are lit off in the street or in public parks. Roads are often blocked by people lighting fireworks such as fountains, spinners or Roman candles. And many of the people affected by the fires caused by fireworks are those in our society that can least afford the losses. A band's do work environment where fireworks are not permitted through education enforcement. We have seen a decline in the amount of fireworks used. This Horton is once fast will make our communities safer. A complete ban will support enforcement efforts and allow the issue of the non-state legal fireworks to be addressed. I ask that each of you support this proposed ordinance without amendment. Thank you for your time and efforts. Thank you. The next person is Rebecca Wells. All right. My name's Rebecca Wells. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. Okay, it's our b c c a w e l l guess I am a resident of unincorporated King County and White Center. My reaction to the proposed amendment. My first reaction was I felt insulted. Mine felt like my intelligence was intelligence is insulted because it's essentially keeping the existing fireworks status quo with the same negative effects they already experience, including excessive noise, often for weeks before and after the 4th of July. Air pollution affecting those with respiratory issues, traumatizing pets, wildlife, and people with PTSD and fires, injuries and litter on the ground with debris after the events. Even the relatively tame sparkler has its risk. It's the most common source of fireworks related injuries. Did you know that according to the report from the Consumer Fraud Safety Commission, that sparklers lead to more injuries than any other device and that kids under four and under are the most likely age group to be injured by sparklers. I felt that the equivalent see one of the previous speakers made about education campaigns about mothers, Mothers Against Drunk Drivers is a false equivalency because alcohol is related to people 21 and older. But fireworks are often purchased by adults for use by children. And children don't have the same kinds of good judgment that adults adults have. And frankly, some adults don't have great judgment either. But it's tragic when little kids are holding sparklers get serious burns. Legislatures. Legislators in favor of passing bans on sparklers cite incidents such as the tragic death of a four year old in Wisconsin over the 4th of July window in 2017. Okay. So as another previous speaker mentioned, the White Center is between Seattle and Berrien that have all banned private fireworks. And people coming from outside of our area come here and it becomes very compressed. And it's like a war zone, like everybody has said. I believe that. Allowing any consumer fireworks creates confusion about which fireworks are permitted. Include, please. Okay. Just also saying that allowing certain fireworks that some people consider to be safe and sane, like even sparklers, creates confusion. And I think it's a liability for legislators to do that, because if somebody is injured, it is partially on them. So I don't think it's much. Okay. Thank you. To the next person is Zachary Spence. Hi. I'm actually technically challenged. This is his dad, Ken Spence. I don't know why I came up on the zoom is that I live in Maple Valley, in the city of Maple Valley, have lived there for a number of years. Fireworks have been banned for about the last five years. And I can tell you firsthand, bans don't work. Whether it's a Seahawks win, whether it's New Year's, whether it's this 4th of July, all the fireworks that are there are coming from the Michael Shute Reservation. And they're all fireworks that aren't sold by the nonprofit groups that used to sell in the Black Diamond Maple Valley area WI. Every year since the ban have been trying to be lawful citizens. We go up to our my my parents house in fall city and we light off fireworks legally. If this is to take effect, I would be the first to tell you that we will be joining all the other crazy people that are in our maple down here setting off fireworks that are legal, illegal coming from the Michael Chute. So also these bans for sure don't work because a number of years ago, I remember when Carnation Band that year, they had the biggest fire that they ever had because it was set off by illegal fireworks that were bought probably at the reservation. I assure you that you're not going to stop anything that's going to happen. These people are going to be buying merchandise that is more powerful, that goes up on people's roofs, that starts fires that are the problem. I think that people should have the right with their families to celebrate Little Italy. And I think one of the people said it's one day a year and if people are lighting off fireworks for, you know, any time other than that one day, then that's a violation. And it should be noted and they should be prosecuted for it. I just I just hope that you guys look at this and realize that you might be doing what you think is right to be promoting safety of your residents. It's not going to do what you intended. So thank you and thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person is listed as cl0utierc. Yes. Can you your full name, please? My name is Chad Cloutier. I live in King County and I'm a resident of King County. I live in town of Visigoth. I just would urge the council not to, you know, both this ban on fireworks. We even though the city I live in, Issaquah, is a banned city, we read a side of Issaquah. There are unincorporated areas where we are allowed to purchase fireworks. We don't set them up in the city of LA, but we go to our family and friends houses throughout King County and use them at the 4th of July. If this ban passes, we wouldn't be able to support the church that we do down the street and purchases. We'd end up having to go to the reservations or somewhere else and then probably having to find elsewhere to go outside of King County. There aren't many places left or family and friends that live in areas. And just be nice if we could continue to do that. Thank you. Thank you. And the next person is cell phone number listed as area code 206 plus three digits 824. I've asked you to mute yourself if you'd like to speak. Go ahead. I tried again to ask you to unmute. Mr. Chair. That's the last person. Everybody else. Oh, wait. Hello? Oh, yes. Go ahead, please. Can you give us your name? Did it work? I'm sorry. My name is Liz Gilbert, G. I, B.A. and I want to thank everyone who spoke in support of this ban. And I would like to respond to the man from Esquire who just spoke, because what he said was very important, because they are banned in his city. He goes to unincorporated King County to indict and discharged them. That is why you really need. To. Support this ban. He's not alone. Lots of people do that. People from affluent neighborhoods come to our neighborhood and wide center, north high line and people are killed and the animals are killed and homes were destroyed and people are traumatized. And it seems to me that all of that balanced against some fun on two days a year and this money. I think the reasons to vote to ban are. Very, very heavy. And I ask you to do two. To support this band and to also expand the knowledge that Auburn and North Carolina have the highest level of lung cancer and asthma related issues in King County, according to the Board of Health. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Every guest in this meeting has had the opportunity to speak. Thank you, Madam Clerk, to ensure that we've given everybody the opportunity. I'm going to ask you to unmute all the lines in the Zoom call and ask anybody who is present and wishes to testify and has not had the opportunity to do so, to say their name. We'll take names of anybody who hasn't had the opportunity and then call them one at a time to offer testimony. So if you please. I mean everyone. Mr. Chair, I just asked everyone to unmute themselves if they please. Thank you. And now, is there anyone on the line who has not had the opportunity to give public comment? And we'd like to today. And he went out for public comment and didn't have the opportunity. Thank you, Madam Court. I'd ask you to please remove all the lines. I'll be ready to meet myself. Okay. That has been done, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. We will close the public testimony. And council member. Don, I would ask for a motion to approve the minutes of our March 3rd meeting. Or someone on his behalf. I'll move it the other order. Thank you, Councilmember Dombrowski. The minutes for a March 3rd meeting are before us. I see no discussion. All those in favor of approving the minutes. Please signify by saying I. I opposed. Nay. The ayes have it. The minutes were approved. Thank you. Our first business item on today's agenda. Not counting the minutes, of course, is a briefing from Dwight David, the director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, who will update this on the county's COVID 19 pandemic response. Mr. David, welcome to The Light is Yours. Good morning, Councilmembers. Councilman McDermott, I thought you probably could see it very clearly, but in honor of today's holiday, my wife made Shamrock Facemasks. And so if we were in person would be wearing this when we were doing our presentation. So thanks for having me. My Irish tri color face mask is upstairs next to the front door. Excellent. So for things to cover this morning, some of my things are quite interesting information about revenue and economics in our state and our region. So let me start with one very technical matter. We are right now in the process of closing out the 2020 CARES Act as CRC grant programs. We ultimately had 103 different grant programs that the Council approved, and we need to get all of those, all the accounting done by the end of March. 27 of them were done as of Monday. The rest will be done as of March 31st because then we would start to move into the federal audit phase, where even though it's called the federal audit, it's actually the state auditor who does the work. And they will start reviewing a selection of those grants as part of their regular work. And typically, that audit is done in the late summer or the early fall. So obviously we won't have any results any time soon. But I just wanted to give you an update that we are now closing those out. And once the council takes action on that COVID six ordinance that is before you, the accountants will create a whole new series of grant projects and will begin the process again. We are clearly more familiar with how to do it this time, so it should go a little more smoothly. But I did want to give you that update. And so sometime in early April, we'll have a final accounting of by each of those grant programs how much money was actually spent. And I will be happy to share that either here or at the BFM committee or whatever it is that the council's preference. So let me just pause there and see if there's any questions on that one. And Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. Will that accounting be done by area, by zip code overall? How about the compiled? So the councilmember. It'll be done by Grant. So, you know, we had what? We had food grants. We had the grants to the chambers of commerce, etc.. So we each of those will be accounted for separately. In many cases, we will be able to identify a geographic distribution or at least a rough geographic distribution. So once we're done, if you have specific ones you want to ask about, we can certainly do that where we have the information. There'll be a few that are probably difficult to do. One, for example, should be really easy is in the Department of Local Services. The grants we did to unincorporated area businesses, they have very good data about where those businesses were located. So if you want to give some thought to the specific ones you'd like to see, let us know and then we can start getting that information for you. Thank you so much. Congratulations on getting all those done. Yeah. No, don't congratulate me. I just sit here and report to you. It's the. The accounting staff in the key departments and in the Finance and Business Operations Division who get credit for that. They're the ones doing all the hard work. Other questions, colleagues. Mr. Dagli. Okay, we moved on to item two. So yesterday we got the final unaudited revenues for 2020. There's always the chance that some of these might change a little bit, but these should be essentially done at this point. And I just want to pick out a few highlights and lowlights, just to give you a sense of how different the impacts of COVID were on different segments of our economy. So starting with one of the worst pieces of news, transit fare revenue was down 72% from the forecast for 2020. You know, partly that was because there was a period where we weren't collecting fares. But a large part of that is driven by the obviously much lower ridership as major segments of our economy shut down and people shifted to working from home. So that was a very, very large revenue loss. Fortunately, as we have discussed, the federal government in three separate programs has provided funding to transit agencies that basically allows them to keep going despite declines in sales, tax declines in fare revenue and so on. So from a financial perspective, that's something that's been mitigated. But I did want to just give you a sense of the magnitude of how much that's down. Another one that doesn't get much attention is the Roads Fund receives some fuel tax that's allocated through a very complicated formula from the state. And because people are driving a lot less, that revenue was 18% below forecast for 2020. It's not a huge amount of money. It's a couple of million dollars. But as many of you know, the Roads Fund is desperate for every penny it can get. So even though the dollar amount is huge, I thought it was worth noting that that was down that much. It's the second largest revenue source for the Roads Fund. Obviously, that property tax is far larger than that. And then the other thing I thought I would just mention to you, just bringing down to closure the sales tax conversations we've had over this past year. So if you look at the taxable base of sales, so this isn't any actual particular sales tax or not the Metro sales tax or the mid sales tax, but the base of transactions across the entire county, the base was down about 10% between 2019 and 2020. So 2020 was about 10% less than 2019. But the results were highly variable. So again, not surprisingly, the three biggest losing areas in terms of of sales tax were hotels and motels was down 79% from the prior year. And when you recognize that January and February were essentially normal months in 2020, that tells you the impact in the other ten months of the year. So that was down 79%. Restaurants and bars were down 49%. And again, he had two normal months in there and ten bad months. So that was the second biggest hit. And then the other kind of large segment that was way down was clothing stores were down 33%. I can tell you in the last year I've worn a suit three times. And so my expenditures in that category certainly reflect a decline of more than 33%. And then on the upside, just there are some very interesting ones as well. Again, nothing here. That's a big surprise. So electronics and appliances, as people were buying more equipment to work from home, that was up 15% over 2019. Building materials and garden supplies and things like that were up 12% as people did more and more projects around their home, around their yards. The big box stores were up 10%. A lot of shift away from other retailers to them. And in what's called the non store retailers. So this is a lot of the ad delivery stuff where it isn't coming from. A local store was up 13%. So again, we had a very, very different impact depending on what segment of the economy we were in. So just by comparison, in the first year of the Great Recession, the overall impact was significantly worse. And while it wasn't absolutely smooth across every segment, every segment got hit. This was a completely different result where we have some segments of our economy that were very, very badly hit and other segments that are actually doing better than they normally would have. So as you think. About. You know, allocating federal funds, recovery strategies and so on, I just it's helpful. I have to remind myself of this. This isn't a normal recession that we have dealt with. It's a very different thing. And so as we think about what to do, I just would ask you to keep that in mind. And when I move on to my next point here in a bit, I'll give you even more evidence of how divergent these things have. That certainly pause there and see if there are questions. Mr. Daley, I know exactly what you're talking about. Erasmus sued for work a year ago today, and I last wore a tie for work a year ago today. You'll be shocked to learn it was this tie. Well, I noticed you were wearing one today. I was quite impressed. Has it been off? Any other questions? Any questions from Indianapolis at this point? Mr. Chair, I'll just say too many questions. I have a ton of quickly. It's all very interesting and I want to dig down deeper on the lack of questions online is not shouldn't indicate not lack of interest, but just jumping on the theme of clothing. I did dig through my t shirts to find anything green to wear at all. So, you know, just very, very, very little in the way of new. Clothes in the closet. It's it's it's I think we can all validate some of these numbers for things that we're personally buying and not buying. Customer recall wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I hope you all saw that. I sent out a very helpful PowerPoint presentation yesterday that had been prepared by Jay Roach, our economist. And based on the revenue forecast that the Revenue Forecast Council. I went over and approved on Monday, but I think a slide show really is very helpful and presents those in a very significant way and very readable. So I urge you to look at that. Thank you. I would second that. It was a very interesting and you could get through it very quickly presentation because it's very clear. Other comments. Mr. DANGLY Okay. So the third thing that I thought I'd cover this morning is some of you may have seen that the latest state of Washington economic and revenue forecast came out this morning, and it is amazingly positive. I think how I would characterize it. So I'm going to give you just a few numbers to just give you a sense of how dynamic the changes have been in the revenue forecast at the state level. And remember that the state general fund depends roughly half on sales tax revenue. So it's very volatile, very difficult to forecast. So when the state adopted their current biennial budget, their what they call the 1921 budget that ran from July 1st of 2019 and will finish June 30 as of 2021, the revenue forecast or what they call the general funds state budget. So this is the state's own general fund revenues. So not federal money that's involved. And in the state budget was about $49.6 billion for the two year period. So 49.6 right before COVID, their revenue forecast had gone up about $1,000,000,000. So it was about 50.6 billion. When they next get a revenue forecast, which is the same time we did one after COVID hit yet. So in June of 2020, we, you know, they had and we had very little actual information other than we knew the economy had largely closed down and so on. And so the revenue forecast went down to 46.1 billion. So in just four months, their revenue forecast went down four and a half billion dollars. All right. So that's the low point this morning when they did a revenue forecast for this current biennium, it's at $50.0 billion. So their revenue forecast for their current biennium is actually higher than they're adopted by. Which is any. A totally remarkable and totally unexpected, at least to me, outcome. And I thought I would share a little bit some of the things that are driving that that is in this report. And we just I need to find one particular number here. Uh. Let's see. Is it? So one thing that I thought was very interesting in the report is there's a new study out about the decrease in personal income since covered by state. And it turns out Washington State was one of the least adversely affected. So if you ranked the states from you know, most impacted on personal income to least impacted, we're number ten from the list. So there are including the District of Columbia. There are 40 states that are worse off in terms of declines in personal income than Washington state is. And so that's telling you, you know, something about the nature of our economy and the technology businesses and so on that are keeping us largely going despite what's happened to aerospace, despite what's happened to the tourism industry. So that's, I think, an interesting data point and explains a lot why the state's revenue forecast is as powerful and strong as it still is. A second thing that I think we're aware of, but when you actually translate it into revenue, it's quite remarkable. The real estate market has held up really well. Think all of us are aware that in the King County area we have one of the highest growth in housing prices across the country for the last year. And in a surprisingly commercial, real estate has actually held up really well. So at the state government, they take the real estate excise tax, the portion they get, and they put it in their general fund. So unlike cities and counties where the state has restricted it to certain kinds of capital expenditures, the state just puts it in its general fund. And between their November 2020 forecast and their March 21 forecast, the real estate excise tax, actual revenue came in $182 million higher. So that real estate activity is one of the reasons that their revenue forecast has gone up so much is they take all that real estate transaction tax and they put it in their general fund, which , of course, your county we can't do. And of course, we only get real estate excise tax in the unincorporated area. So that's another example of kind of the big drivers of what's keeping the state economy and the state budget doing well. I will note the one really bad piece of information in here that is frankly worse than I expected is the forecast of aerospace employment in the state. And they are comparing the actual employment in January of 2020, so a little over a year ago to what they forecast for the end of this year. So a two year time period. And now forecast is that the aerospace industry will lose 29,800 jobs in that period of time. And so that from a, you know, big employment segment where it's, you know, good wages and benefits, that's the biggest hit that we're seeing. And, you know, some of the other industries, the tourism industries and so on, the hotels, restaurants, there's an expectation of a, you know, slow recovery there. That is not the case for our aerospace segment, at least in this time period. So I just thought I would share with you from the states perspective, that's probably the single biggest segment of the economy that they do not see recovering in the near future. So there's lots more detail in there in their report. If you have time, you want to take a look at it. But I did think it would be useful to summarize those for you, and I'm happy to answer any questions, if I can, about what I read this morning. Thank you, Dwight. And we also received an email that I have not had a chance to read yet during the meeting from Mac Nicholson, our government relations staff at 940 this morning, members will have in their email as well questions discussion on this point. Dombrowski, briefly. Hi. Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and happy St Patrick's Day to you, Dwight. Thanks for the information on the real estate excise tax, the rate. There's a new one, of course, that, you know, a graduated real estate excise tax. And I wonder, do these numbers reflect any impact of that, either positively from a higher collection rate on larger transactions, or is it mostly driven just by a higher volume and higher values? And that's still the kind of residential market. Some said that that would put a chill on the big deals, you know, and reduce rate. There was that prediction. What what what happened. So I don't I don't have the details of the data. But from what I've read here, a probably a very large portion of the real estate excise tax increase is in that high tax category because a lot of that coming from King County residential taxation and commercial taxation, which is going to fall in that higher category. So it's probably a mix of both more transactions, but also, as you know, more transactions falling in the higher tax bracket. So I suspect both of those things are having an effect. And, you know, you could do an econometric study, I'm sure, and try to suss out whether or not the differential taxation made any difference in rate revenues, and probably it did at the margin. But certainly seeing these kind of increases would suggest that it didn't stop big deals. And in fact, the big deals continue to happen. Two men were in unincorporated King County. And and then I don't know if this is the spa, but maybe at some point in your presentation, you mentioned the 77 or something percent reduction with respect to Metro in our fare box revenue. Also, the federal investments at three stages, you had in a call with customer calls on our regular call, you said that our projections there were up 103 million out of the new revenue forecast for Metro. Maybe just at some point, a summary of Metro overall taking all of the factors, sales tax, fair box recovery, federal investment. You know, I think we've had a half a billion dollars or something of increased revenue from the federal. And new and new projections is kind of how are we doing at Metro collectively there? Yeah. So with the chair's indulgence, if you would like me at our next session to actually spend some time going through the plus and minus for Metro, I could definitely do that. I don't have all the information in front of me today. But, you know, as Councilor Dombrowski noted, you know, sales tax is down, but not as much as we originally thought. Their revenue is way down, obviously. But then we received these three infusions of federal funds. And so there's a plus and minus game that I think would be very interesting for the council to hear. So I'd be happy to come back at our next meeting, Councilmember McDermott, and go through that, if you would like. We we welcome that. Okay. I would be super proud. I think I put that together and have that for you. Amber. Amber Lambert. Thank you. Would you also compile the impacts of 18% decrease for roads and what that will look like? Yes. We should give you an update on the roads. Fine as well. Thank you. Further questions. Comments. Mr. Diebold, last point. Okay. Last point. And this should be very short. I think, as everyone knows, we had originally planned to transmit COVID seven tomorrow. I understand that the executive and Councilmember Caldwell's had a chance to have a conversation yesterday about holding that until midweek next week. So probably Wednesday or Thursday, there's still a few loose ends that felt like it was probably prudent to work through before we transmit. So I believe Councilmember Caldwell's has reached out to her colleagues about this, but that that's the current plan that I'm aware of. So just kind of for the record and for any members of the staff or public who are on that, we're expecting we would be doing that tomorrow, will actually be doing it at some point next week. Great. Councilmember Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Yes, I have alerted people and we will be sending out a memo this morning about the refinement of the schedule for our deliberations on the passage of Code seven. Thank you. And as their other questions. See no other questions. Mr. Jiverly, I want to thank you very much for joining us again today, and the information is very late. We'll look forward to seeing you and at our next meeting. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. And colleagues. That takes us to item six on our agenda. This is proposed ordinance 2020 157, which would ban the sale and discharge of fireworks in unincorporated King County. We will receive a letter from council staff and we received a full briefing at our February 17th meeting and will receive a briefing from Jake Tracy. Just a brief update in a moment, but is the sponsor I wanted to offer some initial comments and then introduce Mr. Tracy in July of 2019. Mr. Roland, Sonny Kennedy, a 70 year old veteran, and his two dogs were killed in a house house fire in White Center. It was caused by fireworks. In addition to the tragic loss of life, two homes were destroyed and 12 residents were displaced. While there are plenty of reasons to support an Army full ban on consumer fireworks in unincorporated King County, I'm motivated to do so because of my center's loss. We never want this to happen again in any community. The injuries, death and destruction caused by fireworks year after year are preventable. The overwhelming majority of jurisdictions within King County cities, park districts in the national forest understand this and have already banned fireworks. It's time for King County to do the same. Residents in unincorporated King County deserve to have the same protections that the majority of their counterparts in incorporated areas already enjoy. We've heard from residents and from first responders across unincorporated King County, overwhelmingly expressing support for banning fireworks. They've told us again and again that they're fed up and they want our help. And the King County Fire Commissioners Association has been clear. It expressed their support for a full ban on fireworks. And I know that representatives of the fireworks industry have voiced their opposition and concerns and are trying to tell us that a full ban won't work. I'm not surprised they benefit from financially from the sale of these products that don't have to deal with the fallout from fireworks have on our residents and first responders. It makes sense that they try to confuse the issue but urge you to see through those tactics. I look forward to our discussion and our work today. Mr. Tracy. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jake Treacy, council staff. The materials for this item begin on page ten of your packet. Since I gave a D. Can you hear me okay? You can. And, Mr. Tracy, if I can also interject, in addition to the package, we have a council amendment package that was emailed out this morning. I would call the members attention to it was sent by Ms.. Stedman at 807 this morning. So if members haven't already, I'm hoping that in front of them I would call their attention to that. I'm sorry, Mr. Tracy. No worries. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, since I gave a detailed briefing last time, I'll keep this short. Proposed ordinance 2020 10057 would prohibit the retail sale and discharge of consumer fireworks, as defined in our CW Rule 70, 77 and unincorporated portions of King County. These consumer fireworks are shown in the handout on page 49 of your packet. The legislation would raise the fine for fireworks violations from $250 per violation to $1,000 per violation. It would also move standards for public displays of fireworks in unincorporated King County to a new chapter, align definitions in state law, and limit public displays of fireworks to two per property per year with permits from the fire marshal. As I mentioned last time, council members previously provided amendment concepts for super review and public notice. The concepts are listed on page 13 of your packet. If this legislation were to move out of committee today, I would need to be informed of any additional amendment concepts by close of business this Friday, March 19th, so they could be included in that council hearing notice. I would like to note an error in the staff report. My apologies. The correct date for the deadline of concepts is this Friday, March 19. There are also two amendments for discussion today, but I will pause there for any questions first. We also have Jim Chan and Chris Ricketts from permitting here. Questions for Mr. Tracy. Seeing none. Mr. Tracy. Okay. Amendment one starts on page three of that amendment packet that the Chair just mentioned. Amendment one would allow for the sale, possession and use of fireworks that are defined as ground and hand-held sparkling devices in the Washington administrative code. These include. And if you go back to that handout that I mentioned, that is on page 13. Those are on page 49 of your packet. You'll see some of these listed there. So the ones that would still be allowed under Amendment One are the wire, sparkler and dipstick. Cylindrical fountain. Cone, fountain. Illuminating Torch wheel. Round Spinner and flitter. Sparkler and toy smoke device. Other consumer fireworks, including aerial devices and multiple tube devices, would be banned for sale and use. The amendment would retain regulations that are proposed to be removed as part of the ordinance that pertain to fireworks stands and would also retain existing code language and limits on the dates and times during which fireworks can be sold. So to summarize, this amendment would retain existing quota balance for the sale and use of ground and hand-held sparkling devices, but would ban aerial devices and multiple tube devices. If the amendment is adopted, there's a title amendment to one that would go along with it. Would you like me to bring Amendment two or pause there? Let's pause there. We don't have anything. We have no motions before us at this time. Are there technical questions on Amendment One that Mr. Tracey has just briefed? See none. Mr. TRACY If you give the a the same level of briefing to Amendment two and then we'll take up the legislation. Sure. So Amendment two would make changes with references to penalties and enforcement. It would retain the existing $250 fine for fireworks violations, which is proposed to increase to $1,000 under the underlying proposed ordinance. It would also delay issuance of penalties for violations of the ordinance pertaining to use or discharge of consumer fireworks for one year after the ordinance was effective during that one year period. Warnings and education would be given to violators rather than monetary or criminal penalties. Finally, the amendment would request that the executive conduct the study on and make a recommendation for a way to provide an immediate, unarmed non-police response to fireworks violations during the 4th of July season. That study and recommendation will be due by June 30th of 2022. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Any technical questions on Amendment two? Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. We had this discussion years ago when we were talking about not having police due enforcement of handicapped parking places. So this is not a new discussion, but who would we get to do the enforcement? And that that would be the question about who would have the authority to do that and under what code would we be able to give them that authority? Thank you, Councilmember. So the objective of this amendment, as it is written, would be to have the executive do that study and come back with a recommendation and possibly code amendments that would, if necessary, to allow whoever they recommend to do that work. So it's not identified in this amendment. It's just requesting that the executive study that and come back with a recommendation. Well, they might want to look at the body of work that was done before because it came back with some very interesting results. Thank you. Any other technical questions of amendment to. See none are without a recall on Councilmember Bell duty to for the purposes of making a motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move. Adoption of Ordinance 2020 10057 with a do pass recommendation. Thank you. Councilmember Bellevue, she's moved adoption of ordinance 2020 157 amendments. Councilmember Yvonne Roukema. I believe Amendment one would be in order. But, Mr. Chair, I'm sure I'm sure this Councilwoman Boesky, a lot of questions asked that wasn't of a technical nature. Okay. I understood the opening to be of technical and leave. So it would now be an appropriate time, is it? What I was doing was what I was trying to do is encourage the actual debate and discussion about amendments when they were before us. If if you but you're welcome to ask your question now, I would expect both amendments to be offered and fully debated and discussed. Again this is in the regarding the underlying legislation and in the staff report. Just I'll just ask it to my head. Mr.. Thank you. And you've been very good about this idea, and I think it's been a trend that we're trying to do here, and that is to include equity in social justice analysis in terms of impacts of legislation in our staff work. The legislation here would impose a new criminal penalty. And I'm just I didn't see in the staff report any analysis of the impacts of that from a from a racial and social justice perspective. And I'm wondering if it's there or not. There was no ESG analysis done on this legislation. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the debate. Thank you. Councilmember Councilmember by Rick. I thank you, Mr. Chair. I move adoption of amendment number one. Amendment one is before us. Council number one right there. And thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I want to thank you personally and professionally for your work with this issue. I think it's an indication of how sensitive you are to your district and how you responded to the bystander tragedy. There's not one of us on this floor or on this podium, which does not feel that what happened there was a tragedy and we never want to see it repeated again. And I thank you for responding so quickly to the center issue time and time again during our discussion this morning. Many of the speakers talked about their Community of Rights Center, and they clearly have a great deal of pride. Today, we're not just dealing with White Center, however, we're dealing with Kane County as a county. Ever since this proposal was introduced last year before COVID 19 struck. I've been working with concerned parties on both sides of this issue, including constituents, nonprofits, first responders and the fireworks industry. In fact, I was on the phone late last night with a local fire chief as well, who is very much supporting what you're trying to do. I feel that this amendment strikes an appropriate compromise that is workable for all parties. As you know, Mr. Chairman, my district has both unincorporated urban and rural areas. I have Auburn and Better Way who have two different directions dealing with fireworks. We frankly frequently hear from constituents who complained about fireworks around the 4th of July, as well as during Seahawk games. Let's hope this season is also going to be an opportunity for fireworks on the field. The complaints are almost always directed out loud. Aerial fireworks often shut off during the time of year where they are or are not permitted. My amendment would allow for the continued sale and use of only ground based fireworks. Boughton wheels ground spinners in unincorporated Kane County during the current permitted period for sales and use. Which sale is June 28? The July 4th use is July 4th. My amendment does not include aerial fireworks such as roman candles, mortar shells or parachute, resulting in those aerial fireworks being banned in unincorporated Kane County. The amendment as drafted is modeled after the city of Auburn in my district. After consultation with Mayor Bacchus and others. This proposal currently allows for ground based fireworks during specific times of the year. In addition to the city of Auburn. Leigh Ann Geer in the City of Civic also and my district commit ground based sale during conversations with the community and colleagues alike. I've heard a variety of concerns and I feel the same with the concerns raised. But enforceability is important. While still there, there will be enforcement challenges. This proposal clearly distinguishes between what is allowed, ground based and what is not allowed. Aerial. Response to community organizations and nonprofits. And if ever there was a time we've needed the help of the nonprofits to provide a safety net for so many good causes in our community, it's been during COVID 19. They rely on fireworks sales to raise money for their organizations by allowing for the continued sale of ground based fireworks during that period of time frame. Mr. Chair, again, I want to say to you, you've done yeoman's work in trying to bring this issue to the forefront. I believe this is a positive step forward. We want to do good, not just feel good. We want to do good, not just feel good. And I believe this amendment does good. Thank you. Council member of Great Power. I appreciate the work you've done in crafting this, in talking to so many people throughout the community and bringing it to us for discussion today. However, I do need to oppose it now. Ask my colleagues to join me in not supporting it. It essentially allows the continued sale and discharge of what the industry might term in some conversations. Safe and sane fireworks. What I might refer to is so-called safe and sound fireworks. Many feel that these products might be safe, but there's certainly evidence to the contrary. Smoke bombs with which would be allowed under this amendment, supported the 2017 Eagle Creek Forest Fire in Oregon. It burned nearly 50,000 acres and cost an estimated $40 million. The fire destroyed several structures, including homes where residents lost everything. Hikers had to be rescued in the fire, which happened during the peak of the tourism season, negatively impacting businesses in the area in 2000. Just last year on the El Dorado Fire in California was started by a smoke bomb used to the gender reveal party. This fire resulted in 23,000 acres burned, multiple homes destroyed and the death of a veteran firefighter. And even some of the products that we think of or people want to believe is the most safe. Sparklers. According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, sparklers are typically heralded as safe and sane. They make up 12% of firework related injuries. They burn at a temperature of up to 2000 degrees Fahrenheit, which is hot enough to melt some metals and ignite clothing and cause third degree burns in a matter of seconds. And a partial ban continues to compromise the safety of our first responders and our residents. I believe it's really essential that we listen to fire commissioners, first responders, medical professionals who deal with this every day. And in fact, we received a letter last month from the South King Fire and Rescue that covers much of unincorporated and urban areas in South King County. They say this city they cover said away in Des Moines, among other cities. And in the letter, they say these cities, like many others in King County, have banned the retail sales and use of fireworks. The lack of a uniform regional approach to this problem causes confusion in our population and reduces the compliance in areas that are actually banned. So I would ask members to join me in not supporting this amendment. Further discussion. Other councilmember closed debate coalition base, please. Yes, unless you want to finish your for me. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thank you again and again. You've done it. Really. And I hope people in the White Center area understand that, because I was speaking from the heart. We both are strong advocates for our communities. We've been in politics because we know that that's our job, is to be an advocate for our community. And you have truly done that on this issue. But time and time again, I heard the folks from White Center talk about their community. And I am very sensitive to their committee and I make sure that the commissioner is home on July 4th. That said. This is a county wide proposal, and it works collaboratively with the industry to find a workable solution that does not result in a county government legislating small businesses out of existence. Most importantly to me was the addition that one of our colleagues pointed out. It's about the opportunity to educate the public and a full commitment from the industry to partner with King County, to sponsor a safety and education program to better inform the community on the difference between aerial fireworks and the proposed safe and shame ground based fireworks and deregulated novelties in closer fields of proposal as a workable solution. It's enforceable because it deals with ground based as opposed to aerial, and it improves community safety but does not result in undue hardship. Itinerary. Nonprofits or small businesses in unincorporated King County. Thank you. All those in favor of Amendment One, please signify by saying hi. All right, I. Those opposed nay now in the opinion of the cheering the needs of it provision. The provision. Madam Quirk, if I. If I could have the clerk, please call the roll on Amendment One. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember WG now. Councilmember Dombrowski, i. Councilmember Dunn. I. Councilmember Coles now. Councilmember Lambert, I. Council member of the ground now. Councilmember Brown right there. I council members online. No. Mr. Chair. No. Mr. Chair, the vote is for EIS Council members Dombrowski, Dunn, Lambert and Bond mate Bauer and five no council members. She called Wells up the ground for her line. And McDermott. Thank you. The amendment fails an amendment to. Council members are alone. All right, that's for me. Thanks, Mr. Chair. I've grappled with this issue a lot ever since we first heard it last year. I've always said repeatedly that the public health aspects of this are super valid and that everything that Councilmember McDermott has been saying has been true in my district as well. I hear from countless residents about the pollution, the noise, the impact on pets and veterans. But the other side of this has been the concern, essentially that Councilmember Dombroski brought up, which is the ESG concern, and specifically the increase in law enforcement contacts between law enforcement and communities of color, the high fines and fees on a low income community, the interferences with cultural practices, and the revenues that are that our nonprofits and churches would take. My amendment would fix all of these things entirely, but it would be a step in the right direction. First of all, it reduces the fee from $1000 to $250 to just make sure that we're not having insurmountable fees for potentially low income people in that area. And also, it requests that the executive create a plan for using non-police, unarmed enforcement. And we don't know exactly what that looks like yet. It could be code enforcement officers. It could be something else within the sheriff's department that's unarmed and civilian owned. But I think we have to be really careful, especially in light of the environments we've seen in the past year or more about creating more contacts between police and communities of color, especially for something that may not require an armed response. And this, of course, would only apply to the things that we as King County are making illegal. If there are state level things that are illegal, like firecrackers in the eighties, the things that make cars shake, we don't have a say in who enforces that . So the law enforcement sheriff's department would still be able to enforce that. The other aspect of this is the fact that it would delay enforcement by a year. So in the year where this would otherwise take effect, instead of finding people or giving them criminal penalties, we would request that our sheriff's office do an educational campaign instead . So instead of imposing penalties, go around with informational information, informational packets, and telling people about this new regulation and the impact of fireworks. I think it's a compromise legislation. I don't think it addresses all of the ESG impacts fully, but I do think it's a step in the right direction. And I ask my colleagues to support it. Councilman Rizal. My staff is suggesting that you should formally move adoption of the amendment. Don't move. Mr. Chairman. Sticklers on things like that. Thank you. Council members. Hello. The concerns that you voice and the voice you bring of your constituents is true for people across the county. And your amendment does it, I think, does an excellent job in addressing the concerns both of of fireworks in that that we've heard from constituents, but also of fair enforcement and equitable enforcement in grappling with how to do that better than we've done it in the past. I appreciate your amendment very much and look forward to joining you in supporting supporting it today. Their Council member, Lambert. I will be supporting this amendment. I do believe $1,000 is a very high fine, and I do like the idea of making sure that people have some time to get used to it. 4th of July Fireworks. This is a tradition that people have enjoyed for many, many years, and it will be difficult for everybody to know that there's been a change. So I like the but for a year I am concerned though and so I'm okay with it being a study, but it needs to in that study, look at what would be the issues that come up when you are taking something away from somebody. And I know that there are people that spend thousands of thousands of dollars on fireworks. And when you tell them you can't do that and you take it away, it has to be somebody that has some authority that is respected. So I'll be interested in seeing who that group is. And also in light of the experience we've had before when we tried to do something similar. So I agree this doesn't solve everything. I wish the First Amendment had passed, but I will be supporting this. In discussion. Council Member Col Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I answer in supporting this amendment. I think it's a smart one that applies the sensible equity lens to enforcement energy commission around the new regulations. But I think even more so. I think it's clickable to people across the unincorporated King County. I have had some real concerns about enforcement, and I believe that the way that Councilmember Sol Hawaii has presented the intent of his amendment really satisfies me that we will be able to reach a good solution for this kind of vexing issue on enforcement. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion. And Dombroski Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The increase in interaction between law enforcement and young people who I think are the primary users, I would say, of these fireworks, has been a grave concern of mine with respect to this legislation and the additional criminalization of of contact and increasing young folks connection to our criminal legal system. And the adverse consequences that to often follow has been a real concern of mine. And so I think this amendment, which, as I understand it, would decriminalize the offense of violating the ban in terms of discharge, convert it to. And I'd like to be correct ma'am wrong is just a civil infraction fine of $250 plus the additional study for non-police response is helpful because my customer one right. Bauer's amendment also did to that and in a little bit of a different way. I still think that the response of when folks will call 911, assuming the spangles into effect and the police will come unless we come up with another system from the study. And I think that concerns me in terms of what follows from that, in terms of increased interaction and with our young people. So I'm definitely happy to support this amendment. I think it goes a long way, if not all the way in addressing some of those concerns. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski requested that the this amendment would keep the status quo, which is a $250 fine and or a misdemeanor. Oh, I see. So it would still be a misdemeanor? It could potentially be charged as a misdemeanor, yes. Okay. That is what is in the existing law today. And that's what would continue with this, with the exception of that one year period in which there would be no fines or criminal penalties. All right. Well, I'm going to support the amendment, but I think that continues to be a serious concern of mine. On adopting the ban Is the criminalization of this conduct primarily engaged in by young folks during a limited time of the year? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the discussion. Council members are allowed to close. I urge your support. Thank you. All those in favor of Amendment Two, please signify by saying hi. I call on those opposed nay. The ayes have it. Amendment two is adopted. Discussion on ordinance 2020 157 as amended. Councilmember Banducci. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I, as you know, join Don as a co-sponsor of this measure early on. And this is I know that this is challenging for some, but for me, this is almost a no brainer. Prior to serving on the King County Council, I served as a city councilmember and one of those cities that has had a ban for a number of years. In my district, almost all of the cities have bans, and about the only place where there isn't one is the unincorporated Sammamish Valley. And so and there's a reason for the bans. We've heard about it a lot. It's and it's about public safety. The statistics have been quoted by our fire commissioners, by you, Mr. Chair, by others. And the anecdotes are tragic and happen every year somewhere. They happen to use or using fireworks. Property damage happens every single year. There are dozens of fires in Washington. Thousands of injuries started. And there's an argument to be made that this kind of restriction is even more important in unincorporated King County, which tends to be more forested. And this activity happens during a dry time of year when outdoor fires can be very easily sparked. The psychological impacts, quality of life impacts, and just the list goes on and on. And there's a reason why many, many cities in King County and elsewhere have have enacted these bans, except they do not ban public displays. They allow for permitted displays, but not the kind of unregulated use that leads to the damages that we've seen and heard about year after year. I've heard the arguments and I've listened carefully. I've read all the emails, all the letters. I've listened to everyone who's come to public comment. This has been pending for quite a long time, so we've had very ample time to think through the ramifications. And I will say, the idea that people can still buy fireworks somewhere else is not really the point. The point is that we need to try to make sure people don't use fireworks in a way that is dangerous and damaging to themselves and the community. The idea that prohibition doesn't make a difference is just simply not true. It's just not true in our experience in cities where there have been bans. The amount of fireworks don't go away. And crime doesn't go away because we have laws, but it goes way down. And I especially like that we're thinking more thoughtfully these days. And one of the things I like about this legislation that differs from the one in the city where I used to serve is that we're being more thoughtful about how to address making sure we get the benefits of the law, how to educate people, how to do emphasis and engage with the community to to achieve compliance and the benefits of compliance without necessarily making a criminal case out of it. And I really appreciate that that part of the amendment that we just passed and the idea that there's not enough enforcement has been raised. If you do rely on sheriff's deputies or place to enforce and, you know, it's such a targeted activity that happens in certain places at certain times, I think it would be very easy to do emphasis regardless of whether you have a whole police force at your disposal or not, if that's the way people choose to go. After we receive back the study that we've now included asking the executive to do to think through other ways of compliance, I've heard people talk about jobs and the loss of jobs, and that's real. And I hear that, and that is compelling to me. But at some point you have to take a balance when you have to look at the balance between jobs and the safety of the community at large and say that the safety predominates. And in this case, I believe that it does. And then finally and this this really this really was meaningful to me, hearing about nonprofits and the challenges. I mean, we know nonprofits are suffering. Councilmember Yvonne, right. Our speak Ellen spoke eloquently about that. I agree with him completely on this point. We now have a fair amount of time between when this would take effect and today to allow for some some real lead time, too, for nonprofits to look for other ways to raise money. And we should take that seriously and we should be engaged in our districts if there are organizations that are truly going to suffer to try to do what we can as leaders in our communities, to try to help them. But it's not going to happen this 4th of July. So there is quite a bit of time for folks to adopt adapt. Yeah. And for all those reasons, I've been a strong supporter of this legislation from the beginning. I remain so and I'm proud to cosponsor and I will be voting yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you for the discussion. Dombrowski. Thanks. I didn't want to jump in. This is a closer call for for me on this chair. I've heard and listened carefully to the debate and looked into it pretty deeply as well. And the concerns raised by residents like Ms.. Dobkin and others from White Center and North Highline are resonate with me. And the risk is certainly there and there are injuries and and things like that. And so when we have a public policy problem like that, I wonder what is the answer here? A proposal is to to ban them. And I agree with Guzman about to achieve that. A ban on say on discharge will likely reduce their use. But I don't think it eliminates that. I mean, I live in a city where they are banned and they go off, you know, all the time. I supported Councilmember One right by his amendment because I thought it was aimed at the most egregious of these. You know, the the new fireworks, I call them new. They're relatively new. We didn't have when I was a kid. The aerial murders, I think, are what really people are bothered by the PTSD in our veterans, if you will, the harm to pets and the jarring nature of those. That's a relatively modern advent in fireworks compared to when I was a kid using them in the cul de sac in unincorporated King County. We didn't have those, you know, we had the little cones, sparklers and things like that. Or if we went down to the reservation, you'd get a bottle rocket, which were which were illegal, of course. So I like councilman one requires precise amendment there to say, let's get rid of the real nasty, dangerous ones and but keep the the on the ground ones I don't think because of just observation around for July were as you say a majority of the cities I think in our county but not all have banned them. That that it eliminates that. So I'm not sure it's it's a totally effective solution it might help at the margins but got to weigh that against the other impacts and whether it be it was increasing fines and sanctions from our roads division which I opposed to, you know, Councilmember Dutton's zoombombing legislation where we took out the criminal penalties. This is an activity where young people primarily do it because we grow out of it. So we get older and the response is going to be 911 calls with police showing up and a new criminal penalty. And I at the end of the day, I think I'm in just a very different place on that. And I think that the harm that results from that increased interaction is is something I'm very concerned about. Councilmember Xilai's amendment really helped got us going in the right direction. But I think that maybe this should be decriminalized entirely and maybe I can get to a yes or council if we can continue to work in that direction . I do think also that this, you know, with respect to bands not working, the Eagle Creek Fire, which has been mentioned a couple of times now started by smoke bombs, was started in September. In Oregon when a ban was in place. So, you know, as to that's an example of the efficacy of bands, you know, not solving the problem. I looked at, you know, Snohomish County, where they have a live band and then an urban part where there's denser housing and more concentration. I think that that could be something here that might help. In my district in Bothell, it was put to the voters a few years ago. They voted to keep them. They did not vote to ban them. Other jurisdictions have it's kind of a split question. So primarily, Mr. Chair, because of the concerns about the efficacy, my concerns that folks, when you can't go by a safe and sane firework and under councilwoman right bars amendment, which would have been limited to ground stuff locally, you will go folks that want them will go to our tribal communities and then they will have the full panoply, the aerial rockets and mortars, the stuff we really that are problematic. I think that and really with the criminal penalty, that's that's a deal killer for me on this legislation despite my concerns and sympathy for what is bringing forward the legislation and the motivation for it. I understand what you're trying to do. So for today, I'm going to be a no. But maybe if we could decriminalize this, this new conduct that we're outlawing for council, I could be a yes thanks to I'm trying to share my perspective. Lambert. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I agree with everything the previous speaker said, and I am very concerned about the criminalization. I am concerned about a lot of things here. You know, we just had a horrendous fire in my district, which took out an apartment building, displaced many families. And it was because of cigarets. We not too long ago had another tremendous fire that was horrible. That was started because of a candle. So we're not banned. Can't banning candles and cigarets. And it's kind of a personal responsibility to educate yourself and your family members about how to do things in a safe and sane way. I appreciated the work that was done by council member by night. Also, prohibitions haven't worked in the past and I don't think it's going to work here. It's a tradition and I'm sorry to see so many American traditions being wiped out. So I would like to see us do two things before a final vote at council. One is to decriminalize. And secondly, it is to potentially limit the number of days when you can shoot off the fireworks. I think if it were limited to just the 4th of July and just New Year's Eve, that that would make their animals or dogs or horses our safety. And I think that that would really help a lot in reducing the number of days. I'm not that you can sell even some of those days, but the discharge being limited. So I think there's work to be done between now and Tulsa, and I hope that we can consider those ideas . Thank you. Further discussion. I too close. I want to thank my colleagues for their thoughtful work over the more than a year since I first introduced legislation to accomplish this goal. And our work in discussion today. We're here because Mr. Kennedy shouldn't have died. His death was a tragic accident and heartbreakingly preventable. After after learning about what happened in North High Line, I was determined to introduce this ordinance banning the sale and discharge of consumer fireworks in unincorporated King County. Fireworks are dangerous. That's why 25 jurisdictions across King County have already banned them. And the King County Fire Commissioners Association and others who serve on the front lines during the 4th of July holiday have been clear. Ban all consumer fireworks. That bright line would help with the public's confusion in enforcement and with enforcement itself. And I'm not naive. I don't believe that it will stop every firework. I live in a city with a ban. There are fireworks that are ignited around my. In my neighborhood. Few very few laws, if any, have 100% compliance. But the risks posed by consumer fireworks are too great for us not to act. And there is a demonstrated reduction in fireworks use in jurisdictions with bans. We actually heard somebody today offer testimony that they live in a jurisdiction with a ban and they travel to another jurisdiction hours without a ban in order to ignite fireworks. Further compounding the issue in unincorporated King County. We have a therefore, we have a responsibility to send a clear message to residents that fireworks are banned because they're not safe. And I want to emphasize the risk to family, neighbors and the environment for a minute. I've heard some people claim that it's not fair to be told what they can shoot off fireworks in the run on their own property. But it does affect the entire community. The chemicals in the smoke and fireworks may affect people with asthma and other respiratory issues. It affects people with post-traumatic stress disorder, veterans, refugees and others. We've heard from someone who is a mental health counselor in today's testimony speaking to that very point. The need to address. This is real and this is the opportunity for us to step up and to be look provide the same level of protection for our constituents for whom we are the local government. But so many others have. Throughout King County previously, I think members for their work on this issue and recognize that we'll have more conversations before we bring it up in full council. Just over a month from now without Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member Banducci. I can't remember Dombrowski. No. Remember? Done? No. Well, I. Council member Lambert now council member of the group of. Councilmember Yvonne. Mike there were. No. Council members on the line. I. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is five eyes, four noes. Those voting no are council members. Dombrowski, Dunn, Lambert and Von. Right there. Thank you. By your vote, we have given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 157 as amended, which will be sent to full council on it. If there is a 30 day notice requirement so on, it will not be even recorded, of course, but after a 30 day notice is given. And again, I'll remind colleagues what Mr. Treacy has said, that when we take this up in April as part of the advertising, we need to advertise amendment concepts. So please have those amendment concepts to Mr. Treacy by this Friday, March 19th. That takes the status of seven inches. Today's agenda motion 2020 131, which would appoint Janice Case as the deputy director of King County Department of Elections. Ms.. Case is here with us today. But first, Randall Randall Askin from the council staff will provide a brief staff report. The one is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and good morning, Council members. For the record, Randalstown and the council staff and the materials for this item begin on page 51 of your meeting packet. As noted by the Chair, a proposed motion 2020 10031 would confirm the appointment of Janice Case as the deputy director of the King County Department of Elections. Ms.. Case has worked for the department for many years, most recently since February of 2020. She has served as the interim deputy director of the department. Prior to that, she has also served the department as an election operations supervisor, a project or a project program manager and an election services manager. With regards to professional certifications, Ms.. Case is a Washington State certified election administrator as well as a national certified elections registration administrator. Additionally, she received a bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Oregon State University. I'll wrap up by noting that county code requires the appointment of the Deputy Director of the Department of Elections to be confirmed by the County Council as such approval of the proposed motion. Before you would fulfill this requirement and we are joined by Ms.. Keith as well as Julie Wise, the director of the Department of Elections. And, Mr. Chair, that concludes my remarks. Thank you. Director Wise, would you like to make any introductory comments? And can Mr. Chair and members of the Committee for the Record, Julie Wise, your King County Director of Elections, I am exceedingly happy to come before you today to present Ms.. Janice case for confirmation as our elections deputy director. With over 15 years of election administration in both Washington and Alaska State, she brings an incredible amount of depth of knowledge and operational experience to this position. To be frank, she is one of the most talented individuals I have ever met. Janice has served us so well this past year, which surely was the busiest, most challenging and strangest election cycle to date. It truly is Janice's leadership and her organizational skills that kept everything together. Her ability to see both big picture and literally millions of details is astonishing. She is fiercely driven. And always looking. For us to improve. Her creativity, knowledge and dedication are unparalleled. Unparalleled. I simply couldn't think of an individual better suited to serve in this role, and I'm truly grateful I get to work with her every day. I hope you'll confirm Ms.. Janice Case as our King County elections deputy director today. Thank you. Thank you, Ms.. Case. Good morning and welcome. Thank you for your patience. And a few words in your defense, perhaps. Yes. Good morning. For the record, my name is Janice Case, deputy director, designee for the Department of Elections. I'd like to thank my council member, Councilmember McDermott, for sponsoring this motion. I am excited for this opportunity and honor. Director Wise has selected me to fill this role. I discovered my passion for working in elections early in my career, and I'm excited to continue to work with Director Wise and the elections team to continue to remove barriers to voting, increase voter engagement, and ensure our elections are secure, accurate and transparent. And I'd be happy to answer any questions. Questions in this case. This case, what you think might be some trends or things for policymakers to be aware of and watch in elections in particular will election administration. I'm in the coming years. I think one of the biggest things we're looking at right now are signature alternatives, alternative options for validating. You are who you are who voted. Young people are very unfamiliar with signing things, and we've also seen discrepancies in signature challenge rates in communities of color and would like to come up with alternatives for for validating signatures. That's more fair and equitable, you think? That's one of the biggest things. And then also, obviously election security and ensuring that people have correct information about how our elections are processed in a secure and accurate manner. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was member done. Thank you. Thanks so much for painting the house today. Thanks so much for your willingness to serve as deputy director and a very fine elections director. We all respect you out here in District nine, partly because she lives here. One of the things that I wanted is a serious question. Normally, I would have given you a heads up on this, but I want to hear your thoughts. One of the things that happened as a result of the election of 2020, the presidential race is, you know, one candidate screamed from the rooftops that the election was stolen and certain media picked that up and promoted that either message. And and, you know, I have a long history of working with the Department of Elections. I've served on the canvasing board. I've walked through and inspected the cages. I've seen a lot of elections there. And I worked closely with your office over the years. I have a lot of confidence in the department. But there are people right now out there who don't. And for right or wrong, there is a significant trust factor that's gone on there that I think that your office needs to be sensitive to. For example, if you're talking to a certain political party right now, they don't have faith or confidence in it. I've done my level best to sort of explain, you know, my experiences there, but they're not necessarily believing it. And so the question I have for you is how will you reach out to certain groups that don't necessarily trust right now the elections generally and more specifically, King County elections to do what you can to earn their trust back? That's my question. I think we've done a lot of work over the years and will continue to do so and in building the trust of voters and the integrity of the election that we have. We're always happy to invite people into the elections office to watch the process. We have our webcams that are displaying the election process 24/7 so folks can watch from home and watch that we're accurately and transparently processing their ballots. And we also have a fantastic communications team that helps get the word out to everyone about how we do process their ballots. So educating them on what our process is and of course, always inviting that feedback and that conversation to have with individuals to help build their trust in our elections process here in King County. Member. I can't move Daniel on you. Sorry. Sorry. Thanks. I'm almost done. Thank you for that response, Kathy. You could be next. I just have a suggestion. Kathy Lambert and I were on a call. Was it last night? Night before? Anyway, one of the things that I think would make sense is if the election senior elections leadership met with both political parties and. And really get gave them an opportunity to walk through the elections, building in the election processing centers yet again to answer questions, to kick the tires, and for you guys to be responsive. I think that would be really good if, for example, we allowed Joshua Freed and the delegation come through there and just begin to build trust again in the process, and it will just help everyone feel more confident in the next series of results. And I think it's a positive step and I hope you consider doing it. Thank you. Member Council member LAMBERT Thank you. So we have been on numerous calls with people that have concerns, and a lot of it has to do with educating what does happen, what the rules are. When I was on the canvasing board, one of the things that really made me pleased was when there was a vote that should have gone Democrat. It was usually the Republicans that were fighting for the Democrat to have the vote and when it should have gone to the Democrat Republican, the Democrats were saying, yes, that's a Republican vote. And it happened so many times that I was so impressed. And when I when they commented about it, they said, the people who are on this board are so interested in making sure elections are fair, that that is the prime goal here. And I saw it playing out time after time, and it really gave me a great feeling about that. That is not how everybody feels right now. And so I think that that's really important that and I know Julie already does this that she needs on a regular basis. And in our conversation she offered it to happen, to continue to happen with both the chairs of the parties. So I thank you for doing that. The one suggestion that I would make is I know you give an annual report and in the annual report, there is no place that I see for a minority opinion. And I know that there was the minority opinion this year, and I think it's important for our voices to be heard . And so I think there should be a minority opinion section so that it alerts us to where are places where there are concerns and whether they are totally valid or partly valid or invalid. They are still concerns and need to be addressed. So I would propose that we have a minority opinion on decisions that would be in the annual report. Thank you. In this case that he cut. Any response? Any comment? I will add that Director wise and I need monthly with both parties and have for the past few years. And we absolutely value our observers and value those relationships and will continue to have those meetings. Colleagues for their questions. I had one, Mr. Chair. Ms.. Director Wise, thank you so much for the great leadership of the Department with respect to the November election. You reconcile every ballot that comes in and we've held in the past 100% reconciliation. I mean, we're talking millions of ballots, literally. How did we do last time on your reconciliation percentage? Councilmember Tim Bousquet. Do you want me or do you want our damage in this case to answer. Whoever whoever wants to high. Janice congratulations the James go for it. It's it's it's. Exciting. I we reconciled once again. Our department has an amazing history, as you said, of of reconciling. And we were also really excited to have more than a million ballots tabulated on Election Day, far surpassing our previous records. And with that many ballots, so completely reconciling is a huge accomplishment for our team. And they did a fantastic job, as always. 100%. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Mr. Chair. You're very welcome. Further questions. I will obtain a motion to approve ordinance 2020 131. We have before US Ordinance 2020 131 appointing Janice Case as Deputy Director of the Department of Elections. See no further discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the wrong. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember. Did you i. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. I. Councilmember. I. Councilmember Cox. Hi. Councilmember Lambert. I. Councilmember up the grill, I. From number one right there. I. Council members are high. I. Mr. Chair. I. Mr. Chair, the vote is no, not zero nos. Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 131, appointing Janice Case as deputy director of the Department of Elections. Thank you very much for joining us today. We will expedite that to full council and barring objection, we'll put it down to consent as well. It'll be on consent. The consent agenda for council a week from yesterday. This coming Tuesday. Thank you. Next item is proposed motion 2021 12, which confirmed the executive's appointment of Taylor Atkinson to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee. The application materials were sent out to council members separately. Three rows from council staff would provide a brief staff report. Then we'll hear from Ms. Atkinson, who is with us today. Ms. Rose, the call is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Cara Rose, Council staff. As the chair noted, Agenda Item eight concerns the appointment to the King County Solid Waste Advisory Committee, or. SWAC. Proposed motion 2021 12 would confirm executive's appointment of Taylor Atkinson as a citizen representative to the SWAC and the materials begin on page 80 of your packet. Briefly provide some background on the committee and then briefly introduce the appointee. State law requires each county to establish an advisory committee to assist in the development of programs and policies concerning solid waste handling and disposal, and also to review and comment upon. Proposed. Rules, policies or ordinances prior to adoption. Under King County Code, King County SWAC is composed of at least nine and not more than 20 members representing a balance of interests. And these interests include interested citizens, local elected officials, industry and public interest group representatives, among others. Code also requires that the committee shall include one representative from each of the two bargaining units representing the greatest number of solid waste division employees and one representative who resides within a mile of the Cedar Hills Regional Landfill. To provide some brief background on the appointee, Taylor Atkinson is the owner and operator of Atwell Design, which is a real estate agent company. Ms. Atkinson's application notes that she is passionate about zero waste, highlighting that she runs a zero waste household and a business with zero waste at the forefront of its vision. According to her application, she also. Serves on the board of. The Real Estate Staging Association and is useful. Platform. To bring to life waste in the industry. Staff have not identified any issues with the proposed appointment. It appears consistent with the requirements of King County Code. And as you noted, Ms.. Atkinson, the appointee, is here today and we also have Kate McLaughlin, Solid Waste Division Director, available, and that includes my remarks. Mr. McLAUGHLAN, any opening, any introductory comments on your part? Well, thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to say that we are on a mission of zero waste, as we've talked about many times before. Most of what goes to the landfill every day doesn't belong there. 70% of the truckloads of material that will go to the landfill today could be and should be recycled instead. So we have huge opportunities to divert those resources, get them back into the economy and truly live a zero waste lifestyle such as Ms. Atkinson is demonstrating both in her personal life and in her businesses. And we're excited about the prospects of having Ms. happens join the swag committee and help us really think through the policies and practices and the partnerships that will get us to zero waste. And so I'd be happy to to endorse this candidate and answer any questions that you may have. But as you're going to get to know this. ATKINSON She's really a stellar candidate for this purpose. Ms.. Atkinson. Good, good. It's still morning. Good morning and welcome the morning. Thank you for having me today. You're very welcome. If you'd like to introduce yourself and speak to your your interest in serving in this position. Yeah. I mean, Terry's pretty much touched on everything pretty good. But I would just say that I am also passionate about public education because I believe that once you know something, you can't unknow it. And the more informed public will also make better decisions. So I am excited to have talked about that kind of a roll out of the zero waste campaign, because that is like my personal passion. That's what I try to teach on our social media for my business. And I also believe that businesses and government entities need to work together and educating the public and making change across the board. Thank you so much. Taking questions. Ivan. It's good to see I want to see a bottle native coming on board, Mr. Chair, but they can't all be Indians. I would entertain a motion to approve give a depart recommendation to motion 2021 12. So moved. The motion is before us. See no further discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Excuse me. Thank you. Chair Council Member Bell DG i council member DEMBOSKY. I Council Member Dunn. I Council Member Chorus. Council Member Lambert. I council member of the group. I. Council member. Gone right there. I council members are high. Hi. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The US is no nice hearing us. Thank you. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to Motion 2021 12 appointing Taylor Atkinson to the Solid Waste Advisory Committee. We will expedite that and put it on consent so it will be before a full council this coming Tuesday. That brings us to item nine on today's agenda. The proposed motion 2021 114 which would which would confirm the appointment of Patricia moss to the Forward Culture Board of directors. Application materials for this item were also sent out to council members separately in their crackers up from Council South will provide a brief staff report. Then we'll hear from Ms.. Moss, who was with us today. Ms.. Crackles IP, the line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good morning, council members. I'm the aircraft goes off the council staff. The materials for this item begin on page 85 of your packet and the proposed motion would confirm Patricia moss to the for Culture Board of Directors for the remainder of a three year term expiring on December 31, 2023, and for culture is governed by a 15 member board of directors who are to have a demonstrated commitment to and knowledge of cultural resources, be active and experienced in community and civic issues and concerns, and have the ability to evaluate the needs of cultural constituencies in the region as a whole. Directors are to represent a range of talents, experience, backgrounds and viewpoints. Ms.. Moss resides in Council District nine and was appointed by Council member Reagan Dunn. She is the founding president of the Black Diamond Arts Alliance. She's an artist, and she's also an educator and counselor working with diverse populations. Ms.. Moss's appointment is consistent with the criteria established in the Ford Culture Charter, and staff has not identified any issues with this appointment. That concludes my staff report. And as you indicated, Ms.. Moss is here. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Ms.. Moss, would you like to say a few words and introduce yourself. Sir? Hi, everyone. Thank you. My name is Patricia moss. Thank you for your introduction and council member Dunn for your appointment letter. I'm really honored for this. And in addition to the information that was shared. I've worked in the arts for about well, in and around the arts for about 30 years. My my first degree that I didn't finish in college was an arts administration degree. And I understand how art can impact economy. And I think that now is the perfect time that we can tie those needs of the artist into the needs of our communities to help build our economies in our areas. So I think that we can do that by supporting opportunities for exhibitions, for public displays, cultural events, education and professional development for those small businesses and for artists and in the education sector as well. Miss Moss, I don't I don't know how much experience you have in painting, but if you'd care to critique Councilmember Dunn's house painting he was working on today. Well. Let's see. But hold on. Is this awesome. Purple, cool green carpet. And blue over here. It looks like Miami Vice. And it blew up in the eighties. And it definitely has an eighties vibe. I would agree with that. I feel so comfortable in it for some reason. Thank you for your interest in doing this work. We appreciate it. I cannot tell you, miss, how happy I am. It is you we are appointing not council member done. Councilmember Diane, I would entertain a motion to give a do pass recommendation to motion 2021 144. So move, Mr. Chair. With pleasure. Thank you. We have motion 2021, 114. I may have asked for the wrong number, but for 114. Appointing Patricia moss to the Fort Culture Board before us, I see no further discussion. Mr. Chair, I neglected to mention there is a small technical amendment for this one. It is a grammar error. Can you walk us through that? That's moving them at one, Mr. Chair. Amendment One is before us. Anybody supporting technical corrections, please say i, i, i. People opposing technical corrections. Please say no. The ayes have it. The amendment is adopted. We have motion 2021 114 as amended before us. See no further discussion. Madam Cook, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Barghouti. Hi. Councilmember Dombrowski, I council member Dunn. I council member calls. Council member Lander. I can't. Like. Councilmember of the ground. Council member by night. There are high. Council members online. Hi. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is 880 nos. Member of the graphics cast. By your vote. We have given in to pass recommendation two motion 2021 114 as amended, and we will send it to full council expedited and on consent. Madam Clerk, I don't believe we missed any votes due to technical or any other issues today. Is that correct? No, not for Mr.. Mr. Chair. Except for this last one with Councilmember of the Club excuse. Very good in. Not seen him here. No. And he can address that through the end of the day. I what if we have no other business to come before the committee to hold today? I want to thank everybody for participating in today's meeting. And with that, that's a wave goodbye. Right? Councilmember Dombrowski with Councilmember Dvorsky is best wishes. We are adjourned. Thank you so much. ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE relating to fireworks regulations; amending Ordinance 3139, Section 601, as amended, and K.C.C. 12.86.500, Ordinance 4461, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 20.22.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 331, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.08.040, Ordinance 10870, Section 548, as amended, and K.C.C. 21A.32.110, Ordinance 13332, Section 43, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.360 and Ordinance 17682, Section 48, as amended, and K.C.C. 27.10.580, adding a new chapter to K.C.C Title 17, repealing Ordinance 6836, Section 1, and K.C.C. 6.26.010, Ordinance 6836, Section 2, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.020, Ordinance 6836, Section 3, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.030, Ordinance 6836, Section 4, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.040, Ordinance 6836, Section 5, and K.C.C. 6.26.050, Ordinance 6836, Section 6, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.060, Ordinance 6836, Section 7, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.070, Ordinance 6836, Section 8, as amended, and K.C.C. 6.26.080, Ordinance 6836, Section 9, and K.C.C. 6.26.090, Ordinance 6836, Section 10, and K.C.C. 6.26.100, Ordinance 6836, Section 11, and K.C.C. 6.26.110 and Ordin"}
{"id": "king_d491afb3-2c4a-4a98-9a99-2b609f60a678", "input": "Committee to hold meeting for Tuesday, April 21st, 2020 to order there. This meeting is being recorded. I'd like to begin by acknowledging that we are on the traditional lands of the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We want to thank the caretaker of the land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial. I'd also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians in King County who have brought their cultural ways of life here and enriched our community. And today's meeting, where you're going to hear two briefings, one updating us on the county's pandemic response, and another updating us on the needs assessment work that the council has undertaken. Well, then turn to two pieces of legislation concerning the pandemic response. In light of the public health emergency, the governor has issued an emergency order suspending the section of the Open Public Meetings Act that requires us to have a physical space for the public to watch our meetings when meeting remotely. We are limited to matters. We can take up to those that are necessary and routine or necessary to respond to the COVID 19 outbreak and the current public health emergency. The matter is on the agenda for brief interaction today have been determined to meet those criteria. I will I will note that for those wishing to provide comments at today's meeting, we'll be taking public comment up. Following the first briefing on our agenda. So please stay on the phone if you wish to give public comment at this point, I am going to pause for translation of that last point. Okay. I mean, I can't say everything I was planning on yesterday as a borrower by state or by applicant, as there is not only on by barter. I thought of it as political equivalent debt. But I think I don't inquire as dumb or Promethean though I information I circa that considers consequently there is no there wasn't done anything that think that without that information of circa 1911 proposal because I referred in almost letter that there are probably a probable interpretation that when you were so present there came a nonrecourse. Okay, come. Okay. She's not pregnant. Don't pay $11. Okay, that's it. Thank you. With that. Angelica, will you please? CALDERON Thank you, Mrs. Councilmember. butI here. Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Here. Councilmember Dunn. And some of the coral here and some of the lumber here and some of labor up the road. In the article here. Council member, Bongi Bauer. Here is Councilmember Salam here. Mr. Chair. Here you have a phone. Thank you. CALDERON That takes us to approval of the minute. I've entertained a motion to approve the minutes of our April 7th, 2020 meeting. So moved. It's been moved that we approve the minutes of a previous meeting. Seen no discussion of those in favor of please signifies I've been i i i. I may. The ayes have it. And that's what approved Mr. Chair. Quorum for first for a village council member gone regular. Yeah. Again, I would recommend I recommend that we affirm when someone says we have a quorum that does not say who's been called. So I would specifically request to make sure that we all were counted. There you say who is not counted? I'm sorry, but I want to make sure that we all get work. If we're going to be present, we should be recognized as present. And saying that there's a quorum does not indicate who was here. I mean, you're right. I understand your point. Council member of record in while we were going to be very careful about acknowledging votes, you're right. We didn't acknowledge the roll call. I heard everyone except for Councilmember Dunn and we are reaching out to him in multiple means to make sure he has the proper information to connect to the call. That's correct, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And with that, we'll move to our first briefing. And as I noted a moment ago, we're going to take things out of order relative to the way we would normally structure our agenda with public comment in comment coming in after the first briefing on the agenda. I'm Dwight David, the director of our Office of Performance Strategy and Budget will be giving us a preliminary briefing on budget impacts of the pandemic and other updates on the county response. We're taking this item up before public comment to accommodate Mr. David schedule constraints. Mr. David, the line is yours. And it's Mr. only himself because we can hear you. Councilmember Dunn, as you know, on the line. Now. Councilmember McDermott, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Good. Thank you. Good afternoon. This is becoming something of a ritual every other week, and I hope it is being useful for you. I have five topics to cover today. I think at least three of them will be quite brief. And what I'll do is what I've been doing in the past with these briefings and simply pause at the end of each item. And in fact, with the third item, I'll probably pause several times. So if there are questions, Council member McDermott can recognize them and we can discuss it. So the first thing I'd like to share with you today is the latest estimates of costs that the county has incurred to date in response to COVID 19. As we have discussed previously, there is a significant lag from the time we actually incur the cost until we get the bill and we pay it. So the numbers I'm going to share with you should be seen only as approximations. And the actual numbers that will happen, say, a month from now will probably be somewhat different. And let's put this into two categories. First category is we have, as I think all council members know, acquired a variety of facilities either by purchase or by lease or by development that are available for individuals who are affected by COVID 19. We have to date spent in excess of $15 million, five 0 million acquiring those facilities, leasing them, remodeling them in many cases, and beginning initial operations of them. The at this point, we are not planning on acquiring more facilities unless we see a further uptick in the number of cases. So that number will grow somewhat as we finish out work on the facilities. But we're we're probably well past the growth peak. Our facility costs. On the second part of this is operating costs, which are harder to know because they're more spread out, you know, in different departments with incremental payroll costs and purchasing costs. And that. But my estimate is we are at least at 25 to $30 million of things in that category. So we likely have spent to date somewhere in excess of $75 million in responding to COVID. Just to remind councilmembers, we expect most of that and perhaps in the perfect world, all of that to be reimbursed from state and federal sources. A lot of the facility costs we know are eligible for FEMA reimbursement. There is also the $200 million that the state set aside that we will no doubt get some portion of that. And then my second point we're going to discuss today is the Federal Cares Act money, which will also be available to cover these costs. So while the number is large, I want everyone to understand that a very modest amount of that is likely to have to come from the county's own resources. So I will pause at this point and see if there are questions. Thank you. I want to, first of all, acknowledge Councilmember Dunn. You're on the line now. Hi, Mr. Chairman. Thanks. Great questions for Mr. Avery on this point. Lambert. Councilmember Lambert. You had to think of my name. I want to know what you mean. Right. Hello, by the way. By development. In what way? Development. Oh, hello, Councilmember Lambert. That development I'm using for the facilities. Well, we basically started with an open field and then have built something on it. So the two obvious examples of that are the what we call a CRC, the assessment and recovery facilities, one in Shoreline and one in East Gate, which basically we took large open spaces , brought in very large tents, and then have set up facilities in them to house people and provide medical care as needed. So that's what I meant by development. There are other sites, for example, the Elliott Avenue site in Seattle where we took a piece of county owned property and are bringing in the marginal units that we purchased a couple of years ago and are developing that particular site. So as a follow up, Mr. Travers. Okay, the ACR is that you mentioned the shoreline in the estate. I've been on the weekly calls on both of those. And if I understand correctly, neither one of them. Well, first of all, it's not completed, but shoreline is also empty. So is it correct to assume that neither one of those has any human beings located in them at this point? That is not correct. So starting I believe late last week, there have been people at the shoreline facility, not a very large number yet, but we are using that facility. If that facility nears capacity, we will then start using the East Gate facility. Okay. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Further questions. Very. Nunn Mr.. Gregory. All right. So my second of five points is the Federal Cares Act funding. So we've talked about this before, but just to refresh everyone's memory, the federal government in their third COVID appropriations bill included about $150 billion for state and local governments, which is split up by a formula. And in that, governments in Washington state will receive about $3 billion. The act goes on to describe how there will be direct allocations to local governments, meaning cities and counties that have populations of over 500,000, which in the state of Washington is five jurisdictions King County, Pierce County, Snohomish County, Spokane County and the city of Seattle. I think I would read the act and certainly our lawyers read the act as saying that the allocation to King County should be based on our entire population of roughly $2.2 million. However, the Treasury in DC decided that since the city of Seattle also is eligible for funding, their funding share should in essence be deducted from the share that goes to King County. So just coincidentally, the city of Seattle's latest population estimate is almost exactly one third of King County's. So instead of getting about $390 million, which is a straight read of the legislation, King County is only going to get 260 million. So we are still expecting that money to arrive this week. It is not going to be treated like FEMA, where you apply for funds and then receive them later on. This is money that is being sent to us immediately and directly. And so it will, assuming it arrives as it's supposed to do this week, we will have it in our own bank account. The federal government has provided little guidance so far about this money, about how it can be used. We know it cannot be used to reimburse for lost revenues, but we know it can only be used for incremental costs associated with COVID response. But whether there are any other stipulations or restrictions is unclear, and they have not even said for sure that they will provide additional guidance. So we are operating a little bit in the dark about whether the federal government will impose restrictions on how we use the money and that they could wait two months and then tell us retroactively that, oh, you can't use it for this or that or the other thing. So we have some risk here, but it seems like the intent is to give us a great deal of flexibility in how we use the money. So having talked with the executive, we are going to propose to the council that we work out a process jointly between the executive and the Council about your high level policies, about how to use this money. And so I would encourage you to have a conversation when you are ready about how it well, first of all, whether you would like to engage in that process, and then, if so, how? Because I do think it will be helpful before we start spending a lot of it, if we have some general policy guidance from the Executive and Council about what to do. So I will pause at that point and see if there are any questions about the federal money. Colors. Patricia, this is quite a. Councilmember. Claudia. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for coming. Every other week and giving us these updates, it's helpful to keep track of where we're at. And there's this through line. So we've been talking about this funding for a while. I have two questions for you on it. One is I picked up somewhere I don't recall as it was in media news reporting or elsewhere, that there might be some discussion in a future federal package that they would potentially retroactively allow this money to be used for revenue Miles. So my question is, are you hearing anything like that that seems to make it very difficult to set priorities, if so? And the second question is, is that at this point or at some point in your report, if you could talk about what we're hearing from smaller jurisdictions, some of them are in quite a bit of distress right now, mostly due to lost revenue, it seems, and and the rest are likely to follow. I mean, I think it's just a matter of time. You'll see some of the early hits on, especially jurisdictions that are heavily reliant in their budget for sales tax. And if you could just talk a little bit about what discussions are ongoing with them to try to advocate for funding for other subordinate levels of government? Okay, great. Thank you for those questions. So, Councilmember, I had not heard the version that there might be retroactive allowance of using this money for lost revenue. I do know that there are proposals in the Senate and in the House in Washington, DC informing proposals to appropriate additional federal money to cover lost state and local government revenue . You certainly could imagine that as a compromise they would retroactively allow this money to be used to cover lost revenue, which, as you said, you're exactly right, would be a great additional complication. It'd be nice to have the flexibility, but it would make decision making even harder about how to spend the money. To your second question, the executive had a meeting with the Sound Cities Association leadership, I believe it was last week. And they pointed out, as you did, Councilmember, that many of the suburban cities are suffering significant revenue losses. And so we are planning on reaching out to them later this week. To follow up on that conversation, we need to remind them that this federal money cannot at least now be used to cover revenue losses. We do know that there are at least some of the cities. Kirkland, I think perhaps is the best example that have incurred significant direct costs for COVID response. So one of the things we discussed with the executive yesterday and he approved is my office is going to develop a form and it will be a simple form that we will send to all of the cities other than the city of Seattle. It's a if you have a direct incremental COVID response costs, please let us know when you characterize what they are and what the amounts are, what the time period is. And we'll probably do that on a monthly basis as obviously this is evolving. And then after the council and executive have developed policy around the $260 million, we then can consider using some of that money to cover the direct expenses of cities. We may or may want to go a little further and look at whether some of, for example, the fire districts have incremental costs. I suspect they might, but they're probably pretty small. We haven't yet decided whether we're going to, you know, poll them or survey them in a similar way. I would also just point out that the state is going to receive about $2.1 billion from the same source that we're receiving, 260 million, and in essence, received the $130 million that we didn't get because it was left in the state share rather than coming to King County. So we also need to be working with our legislative delegation and the governor's office about whether some of the states money can be used to help our other local governments. Thank you. Dombrowski Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Mr. Chair of. Okay, Dwight, just to follow up on point, with respect to your fire district's question, I have talked to some chiefs in my district and I know they were incurring added costs to acquire, you know, keep. And things like that. And I would just, if it's not too much of a burden, be a voice to encourage the executive power, our fire districts, and consider our public hospital districts if there's a reason to, in your survey, increase costs. Thank you, Councilmember. That that is a good suggestion. That's information I didn't have and not surprising that they are incurring some costs. I think we can certainly reach out and survey the fire districts as well. The hospital districts are an interesting situation because there's also direct federal money that is supposed to flow to the hospitals. And it's my understanding the legislation that is before Congress right now includes a significant increase in that. I have no idea how that's going to be allocated across the country. So we're going to be in a place where there are all these different streams of funding with different rules and different restrictions and different priorities. And just sorting that out is going to be a challenge. And so I'd encourage us to hold off a bit on the hospitals until we have a better understanding of the direct federal money that's going to flow to that area. There is an entity called Wells. Councilmember. Thank you, Mr. Chair. To my colleagues, I will be sending out a memo to all of you and your staff within a few days pertaining to this issue and request from Dwight, as he has mentioned about the executive working with the council in terms of the process as well as the substance of what we would want included . So look for that. Thank you for the Girl Scouts member of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And thanks, boy. Well, a quick comment and makes the most of the comment and suggests in the comment is I, I agree it's important with the state. I think there was a time early on or at least communicated from our federal government relations team that there was some level of expectation that the significant funding provided to the state would also be a source of potential funding for local governments that were below the 500,000 threshold. So I don't know that that burden should fall entirely on the county share, although I think it's important to work with our local governments to make sure that they're not unduly impacted. And then secondly, I'd encourage us to take a unique look at the jurisdictions and neighborhoods within them that are hosting our response facilities. And a number of those are beginning to identify increased costs and needs in their jurisdictions because of the work that we're doing there. And I think in particular, Renton, we have 200 of the homeless folks from across the street from the courthouse are now in downtown Renton and they have identified things. For example, even though meals are being provided at the hotels, some of the individuals have gone to their homeless shelter that they operate in Renton. They're seeing increased demand. There are also seeing a need for increased law enforcement presence due to the high concentration of people there. And so whether it's Renton or whether it's any of these other jurisdictions using this source of funding as a way to just go above and beyond in terms of mitigating the impacts would be something that I hope we can discuss when we get to the policy. I guess I'm putting an early plug in for for one of my interest as we get to that policy discussion. Thank you. Any other questions on this item? 39. Please proceed. All right. Thank you. Alright, the third item and this is the last one that I think will take some time, is I want to describe the second covered emergency supplemental ordinance that we plan to transmit on Thursday. So just as a reminder, our intention is to submit an ordinance once a month that is restricted to COVID related items, and there are items that need additional appropriation authority. And so let me just pause for a second and say, for example, the money that Metro is receiving from the federal government, which can cover their incremental costs and their lost revenues, we don't believe will ever need to be appropriated because it, in essence, is replacing revenue that they're losing from sales tax and fares. And so they we believe they will have sufficient appropriation authority. So even though that's a very substantial number, you probably will never see that in an appropriations ordinance. So the things that I'm going to describe now are things that are beyond our existing appropriations and for which we will be seeking your approval to spend. So I'm going to divide this into three categories. The middle category is the most complicated, and I'll give you a high level summary of that. And then if you want me to drill down into some of the details of that, I can. So the first category are the facilities that we've already talked about, so the isolation and quarantine facilities and the ICRC facilities. And so we are seeking a $3 million additional appropriation for those facilities, which is mostly capital cost, but a little bit of facility operational costs. And that is in addition to the roughly 15 million that we got in the first monthly supplemental. So that's Category one and I think is pretty straightforward. Category two, which is the more involved one, are a series of ideas to support economic development and our community as they are being affected by this. And some of these are items we have discussed previously. Some of them are new items in several cases inspired by council member ideas or questions. So let me start with the ones that I think will be most familiar. There is $8 million. That is an advance on the lodging tax money that would be used for tourism promotion after the COVID crisis is over. We have talked about that, I think extensively. There is $4 million of support for arts and culture and science and arts, education and music venues that would be split between some money that for culture would administer and money that my office performance strategy and budget would administer. And the reason for that split is some of the funding is not within the charter of our culture. So the arts education support, the science support and the live music venue support, which is a total of $2 million, would go to my office and the other 2 million of arts, culture and heritage support would go to for culture. There is, in addition to that, $1,000,000 also advance from the lodging tax for homeless youth programs. And as we discussed previously, that does not have to be capital that can be and is intended to be services. Now, a couple of new things that we haven't talked about before. I'm sorry. There's one more thing that should be familiar. Customer Azali pointed out that we have about exhausted the million dollars that the council added to the first COVID emergency supplemental for community outreach. And we are going to include an additional million dollars in this supplemental ordinance to continue and expand that work. That may not be enough in the long run, but since we're doing this monthly, it felt like we should do it in increments so we can figure out how much we actually need over time. All right. And then the two newer things are $2 million in total to go to the Department of Local Services for, in essence, small business support. We're proposing that most of that would be for operating grants to small businesses, but we would take Councilmember up the Grove's idea of reaching out through smaller chambers of commerce and similar organizations that would be funding them to help small businesses kind of navigate the complex system that has been set up for applying for federal aid or state aid, etc.. And then a small amount, but we think a sufficient amount for interpretation services for businesses that are owned by people whose first language is not English and has that additional barrier to being able to access this kind of support for their businesses. Obviously, we intend the grants to be focused solely within the unincorporated area. We recognize that the Chamber of Commerce or other organizations support probably would also support businesses in some of our suburban cities. And then the final category of what we're proposing to send over is appropriations of the money I think you are familiar with are around community development block grant and emergency solution grants that was included in the Same Cares Act. It's about 3.3 million of CDBG and about almost a million of ESG funding. We are still working through the rules around that. Some of you may know that that money we receive is not just our money. And also many of the suburban cities, in essence, have a share of that. And so it's currently allocated through a committee process, and that takes some time to figure out how to spend it. And we're trying to determine whether that process applies here or whether it doesn't. And then the third and final bucket of this is sort of internal costs to the county that are not direct response to COVID, but are caused by it. And in that bucket, we have some premium pay for people who are going to be working at these isolation and quarantine facilities that is, frankly, above and beyond the kind of job they were originally hired to do. We are requesting about 400,000 for DG, for body scanners, for the two adult facilities. This has been something we've talked about for several years. We included it in the Children and Family Justice Center. And given the health issues around COVID, having body scanners instead of having to do strip searches seems like a very rational thing to do . And then finally, speaking of antiquated technology, you may know that our assessments and Treasury units still are working with a mainframe program that was transitioned over to servers a few years ago, to all the property tax assessment and billing, and it's not easy to access. So we actually had to spend a little less than $100,000 so that our staff who are now working from home could actually access that system. So those are the three buckets. Facilities is pretty straightforward. Economic and community support, more complex, lots of individual detail. And then these last three things that are really workplace adjustments for King County operations. Okay. And I will now pause at this point because I'm sure there will be questions. Council members. But below councilmember up the. Thank you, Mr. Chair. A process question to the policy question. Process question. When will we have a chance to look at it and when? That would be for Dwight and then for the chair, when we're expected to take action on it. I'm nervous about a. Well, it's shaping up to be a pretty tight turnaround for our ability to digest an and consider and develop amendments, that kind of thing. And so it's a process question and policy question on the community outreach, the idea of additional expansion. One is I had heard third hand the 200. And so this may be a chance for you to correct the false rumors or confirm it that of the previous million that 200 K was diverted to the coast to the Seattle Foundation for. Just the COVID response funds. I want to make sure that wasn't accurate or if it is, I understand why that was done. And secondly, we'd like an opportunity before that goes out to talk about the distribution process there. Much like the some other of these emergency processes, when we're moving quickly, it can create some equity issues and some communication challenges and people left behind and would love for us to have a conversation about. The process for driving money out. And we're doing it in a hurry with this this outreach fund. So those are my questions. And come couple councilmember, let me ask you had two questions for me. So the first one, your question was when are you going to be able to see the details of this? We intend to have it to the council on Thursday. I believe Aaron Rubel, our budget deputy, is already communicating with Andrew Kamm of your staff about the details of this. What I just went over. We certainly are happy to share that now because we are we are simply now in the process of making sure all the documents are right. The executive's proposal is not going to change at this point. So we can get that information over to your staff if we haven't already done so immediately. To your second question, I don't know the answer to this, but I will track it down about the $200,000 out of the first million for outreach. I have not actually seen a summary of how that million dollars was spent. So I will get that and get it to your staff. That would be great. Thanks. Councilmember Lambert. You are so good and kind of clairvoyant. Thank you, sir. Couple of items I think we should have as council members a work session. And going through all this is a lot of money. And I think as a council member at the fair said, it's coming pretty fast. I was very concerned about the Sierra Foundation really issues because the half of the county, the eastern half didn't get very much and has lots and lots of needs. And also I thought we had moved off the mainframe totally that the tax assessor's office was the last one to come off the mainframe, but I thought we had gotten that done last year. So I'm really surprised to hear that. And then I would like to see a $1 million, the whole breakdown on how that was spent. I think $1,000,000 and outreach in a month is pretty amazing. And I have been on many of the outreach calls. So those other than employee salaries, $1,000,000 is a lot of money. So I would like to see also that breakdown. So I guess for Dwight, the main thing is, aren't we off the mainframe? Yeah. So customarily and let me answer your two questions. So I am not simply going to get the $200,000 Seattle Foundation question answered. I will get a list of all the recipients of that first million dollars and then I'll provide that to you. With respect to the mainframe, you weren't remembering correctly, but maybe not all of the details. So the count just going back, particularly for newer council members, the county was one of the last jurisdictions or last organizations that I'm aware of that still was using an old mainframe computer. It literally was falling apart. There was a circumstance about three years ago, as I remember, where someone reached in to repair a circuit board and it crumbled. And so we spent quite a bit of money getting the last applications off of the mainframe onto servers. And the last two applications were the big ones were the property tax assessment system that the Assessor's office and the Treasury unit use and the jail management system. What we did with each of those was to in essence translate the code over to a language that would run on a server, but we did not replace the program . So we are still using for both of those systems, 40 year old programs that now are running off of a mainframe but are still running as if they were mainframe programs. Both of those systems have a major project underway to replace them with a new jail management system that should be done next year and with the new property tax assessment system that I believe will be done by the end of this year. But until then, people need to access those old systems. And this was why we had an incremental cost for the assessor's office to be able to continue to use that old system. How well do you have rapport? Pollack Council member. Member. Just that I was there through that whole process and it was painful and it took years. And I remember when we allocated the money for what he was talking about. There was a celebration that we had gotten to this point. I had thought we had finished it. So I'm glad to hear that it will be finish according to what you said by the end of 2020. Is that correct? So the the last I heard and I would have to check on this, the property tax system was due to be completed this year. The jail management system is due to be completed at some point next year. Well, I think we can have the golden spike at that point and put a spike in that program. It'd be good to see it gone. Thank you. Yes, very much. Well, Mr. Lee, if if it would ever help to replace hardware. I do have my original Commodore 64. A computer is still in my parents attic, and I'd be happy to give you any parts you needed. Well, at the rate we're going, we may be needing those computers pretty soon. Council members, so I wouldn't be offering it. Anybody else. All right. Council member Belushi, followed by Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to add my voice to my colleagues who spoke previously about the importance of although we are in an emergency and we need to move quickly to be deliberate and thoughtful about the policy choices that we make around expanding the kinds of money we're talking about, the federal money, as well as this next supplemental. Just to add to the public discourse, I know you've all heard this already, but, you know, in in normal times when we're distributing human services, resources of the Eastside, sometimes just my district will put in something north of 30% of the revenue and gets back 12 to 13% worth of support. Which is not that is not there. There's you can see some rationale for that because of how our resources are distributing the county and how needed to distribute in the county. But in the first round of resources for COVID response, both through the Seattle Foundation and some of our money, that number has plummeted to somewhere close to zero. There's been virtually no county distributed support that has made its way to anywhere in East King County. And I just feel that it's important to continue to remind our colleagues in the in government and in the public that there are people in a great deal of need and is King County, many of them. And when we don't support the nonprofits and others that provide support for those folks, what we're saying to them is, you don't belong here. You don't belong here. It's too expensive for you. Go somewhere else where there's more people who make lower levels of income. And so that's just it's very distressing to me under normal, normal operating conditions. It's going to be very additionally distressing to me now. And we're just when we're going to have these discussions, we need to think carefully about how we're doing distributions. We need to be nuanced, we need to be equitable. I don't think any clear formula like sub area equity actually works, but we do need to find a way to fairness somehow and supporting all of the people throughout King County who need our support. Thank you for letting me just lay down a policy statement, if you would, Mr. Chair. Yes. And Councilmember Colwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a question for Dwight to clarify one item that was mentioned. I think it's still the case that the $1 million going toward the homeless youth services would be distributed in other parts of the county. Then Seattle. Seattle would not be included. And I understand the rationale, but is that the case? So because we know this is going to be one of the questions that you and your colleagues need to think about. So the we have two different well, we have more than two, but I mean, we have multiple sources of funds at work here. So the homeless youth was conceptually part of the lodging tax advancement proposal. And as I think everyone knows, lodging tax will be when we start to get it next year collected from everywhere in the county except within the city of Bellevue, which is a function of state law. So that's not within the county's control. So you could make an argument that the money should be distributed everywhere in the county, including the city of Seattle, for homeless youth. It is also true that. We may be able to. And depending on your ultimate policy decisions, use the CARES Act funding instead of the lodging tax advance for this particular use of funds. In that case, the money is coming conceptually from the federal government for everywhere in King County except the city of Seattle, which then you would make a logical argument that we should not spend any of the homeless youth money within the city of Seattle. So you can argue it should be included and you can equally argue it should not be included. And I think that's just a discussion that you all need to have around this, this particular funding and any other funding that, you know, you're eager, including out of the Federal Cares Act. Thank you. Premier. Hello. I'm sorry. Hello? Hello? Please. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just wanted to speak on the outreach around funding as well. As we all know, COVID 19 is a force multiplier. Every single issue that we face in King County is going to get much worse after this crisis is over. And so when we're thinking about the communities that before COVID 19 hit were already under-resourced, already had disparities in health outcomes, already having disparities in access to housing, already had disparities in homelessness. $1 million to go out to the organizations that are serving those communities is not a lot at all. So while I support the request for documentation of how money is being spent, I'm always in support of transparency. I just want to throw out there that $1,000,000 for organizations that are serving marginalized and under-resourced communities in our region who are providing outreach and services to hundreds of thousands of people, is is not that much. And, you know, you can look at one example where an organization called the Alliance, which is, you know, 17 organizations start money and I believe they got $100,000 split up among them, not only around $5,000 each to provide the critical services that they're doing. So I would just be mindful that, you know, I'm looking at this at these pots of money that are going out. And consistently the ones that go out to communities like these are the smallest pots of money. So I just want to throw that out there and give some rationale to why I support providing more money into these bucket. Thank you. Lambert Clarification. Councilmember Lambert So I thought that the $1 million wasn't for service delivery, but it was for out for outreach, not service delivery. Did you clarify? So Councilmember, is that a question for me or for your colleagues? For you? Okay. So let me get the best way to handle this is to get the list of how the money was actually allocated and for what purposes. And then that we can see how much of it was, you know, communication related, outreach related, service related, etc.. I think it's the easiest way to have this follow up discussion. Thank you all. Further questions. Mr. Devlin. Well, it's all right. My last two things should be very brief. So the fourth one on my list is just giving you an update on property tax receipts. I think many of you were aware that some of our other jurisdictions who depend on property taxes, most notably school districts, fire districts and hospital districts. We're concerned about the potential impact of the one month potential delay in when people needed to make payments, particularly because many of those districts have debt service payments that they make in early June. I wanted to let you all know that as we expected, the mortgage companies who end up paying a very high percentage, more than half of the total property taxes that we collect have followed through on their commitment to make their payments on time. And in fact, many of them paid early. So we are receiving a very large amount of property tax revenue now. And there should be no cash flow problems for any of our special districts that depend on property tax revenue. That's great news. All right. And my last point, number five is, as I think I've mentioned to at least some of you, we are tracking the county's investment pool on a weekly basis to make sure that we don't have any investments that become impaired because they are, you know, organizations that are now encountering financial difficulties and may or may not be able to pay their debt back on time. I receive a report on that every Monday. Yesterday's report was fine. We have have had no problems whatsoever. We continue to have good access to the markets. We can still make investments when we need to. We can sell investments when we need to. We don't have any of our investments that there's any indication right now that there's a problem ultimately being repaid. So I would in our conversations, I will keep you regularly updated on that. I'm not frankly too worried about this at the current time, but I think it's important for transparency that you are aware of the status of those investments, and that is the extent of my report. But I'm happy to answer questions if I can. Thank you, Mr. DeVere, for the questions. Paul Wells. Temporarily close. Thank you. This is not a question per se, but I just wanted to inform my colleagues that the Quarterly Executive Finance Committee meets this Thursday. So I will report back to all of you what transpires at that. Tim RUSSERT has never divorced. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dwight, thank you for the regular updates that are helpful. We talked before about wine sales and have done some work recently in the last year or two. So we're starting to work with respect to making sure that the rating agencies were satisfied with our financial structure. I'm wondering about your dialog with our financial advisors and rating agencies. What you're saying I see that the Federal Reserve came out in it support yet for the first time or maybe the first time in a long time. What is the state of the market and the county's position with respect to our ratings and our finances and the debt markets? All right. So customer diversity, I had a hard time hearing you. I'm going to repeat your question. I think I got it right, which is basically what is the status of the county's bond ratings and access to the debt market? Is that a good. That's a lot more concise than I was. Exactly. Okay. Thank you. So as you know, we had been scheduled to do a multipurpose, limited PAX general obligation bond sale fairly soon and decided to postpone that, largely because most of the uses that we intended were now in question about whether they were going to proceed. So the biggest part of that was going to be for Metro Transit's Capital program and given financial turmoil there in right now, they said we don't really want to commit to borrowing that much money right now. So what we did is postpone that sale probably until something like June or July. Our expectations, at least if things are like they are now, is that we would still have good access to the credit markets. We have, you know, highly rated debt and investors are looking for relatively safe investments. They're one of the rating agencies has put a negative outlook on all municipal debt, just given the uncertainties about what's going to happen with the economy, what's going to happen with revenues. And so we are not singled out by that. Everybody that's every state and local government has that same issue. I I'm sure that when the time comes to issue debt, we will get rating reports that talk about the impact on our reserves, the impact on our revenues . It is certainly conceivable that we would get slightly downgraded. But again, these things tend to be treated as comparative. And King County generally, I think, will be looking better than many of our other governments, sort of because of our financial structure, because of our revenue structure, because of the financial policies we have in place and so on . The only other thing I would note, you're right that the Federal Reserve has come out, I believe, for the first time in its history and said we are investing in municipal bonds, we are basically providing a liquidity facility. If a government is unable to access the credit market in the normal way, they seem to have indicated incredible flexibility as this crisis unfolds. So that may be another thing that we could use if we needed to today. I would not expect that we would need to do that. Thank you and brief follow up, Dwight. You talked earlier about the property tax collections and looking ahead to an agenda item later on today's agenda. But upwards of 50%, I think government residents, King County are renters. And obviously whether property or property taxes paid at least most apartments are not viewed as well. But how important is the county's reliance on property tax collections across our base, your commercial and residential to maintaining a strong credit rating on our debt? So King County for various reasons, I think mostly frankly related to the the overall wealth we have here has had a remarkably high timely payment of property taxes way above what similar jurisdictions like San Francisco have for reasons that they really can't explain. Even in the Great Recession, we saw most both residential and commercial property owners continuing to pay their property taxes on time. I think we maybe got down to 97% timely compliance instead of 99%. So I would expect that we will see a decline in that percentage from the 99 down to, you know, something else in the high nineties. But it will still be a positive reading attribute for us because compared to our peer groups around the country, we're still going to be really high. So, Mike, I just want make sure I understand what you're saying is that the regular, timely payment of property taxes is seen as an attribute that's important to maintaining our top rating, which saves a lot of money for taxpayers and ratepayers. Yes, you're exactly correct. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. There's a number done. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And, Dwight, can you hear me? Yes, I can. Okay, Dwight, thanks again for your work in leadership here by presenting, as I've been doing weekly to another city council tonight. This time tonight, it'll be the city account, as well as the mayor and the city council. And they are having some significant challenges as a result of the revenue streams, some of which were line item veto out by the governor most recently. Do you have any indication of how if, if at all those revenue streams, property, the sales tax subsidy, that sort of thing would ultimately get fixed? Or is the city of looking at a hard cut with no wiggle room? Or is there more to it federal or state subsidies in years then? So several answers to that. Councilmember. Whether this is a good idea or not is a different question. But there are revenue tools that are available to cities that in many cases they have not fully utilized. So unlike the county, which has now faced no revenue flexibility, but most of our cities do. Again, it may not be a good idea to use that flexibility, but they have some of their own industry that is already in control of the allocations that they make to local governments for sales, tax replacement, etc.. But there's nothing I can do about that on their own. Councilmember Boushey shared with me earlier that there apparently is some level of federal commitment that in the next Colvard bill, not the one they're doing now, but the next one, there would be money for state and local governments to replace lost revenue and how much that would be, how it would be allocated. I think probably no one has given thought to at this point, but that may be something that some of our cities that are really hard hit could have a potential to access in the next few months. Dwight, can you hear me now? Yes. Okay. Thank you for that response. I appreciate that. I harken back to 2000 a 2009 timeframe, Dwight, where we saw. Counties, municipal governments across the country begin to fail. And the one that comes to mind, most notably, is Orange County, California. Do you see the possibility for a municipal government to fail across the country, and why would we not be one of them? Council member. I think the idea that local governments may go into bankruptcy in the next two years is very real. You know, the city of Detroit went bankrupt. The city of Stockton went bankrupt. There were other cities in California that went bankrupt. Lots of small governments ceased to exist or went bankrupt. So I think that possibility is very real around the country. I would say that one of the last governments that would face that reality would be King County, Washington. That is in part because we have a very diversified government. We have many different functions, some of which have their own revenue sources that are within your control. And those functions would certainly continue. Our general purpose government is largely supported by property taxes, which for all of the limitations they have, they are a generally reliable and stable source of revenue. And because of the wealth in our community, that will still be there after this. The ability to pay that tax is still there. For most people, there are exceptions. So I know we may shrink. We may not be able to provide the services that we are currently providing in all cases today, but we're going to be here. And so I, I have great confidence in that. That's not to say that the path is going to be easy or that the next budget is not going to be without its extreme challenges. But compared to governments that are much more dependent on business taxes, sales taxes and utility taxes, our revenue base and our reserves are going to help us be there a lot longer than many others. Thank you both. A very good answer and I'm glad to hear that. Apologies for the questions during the run out. So I was unmute a customer. Remember? Thank you. I just want to say thank you to Dwight for your leadership and your integrity. You've got us through 2008 and nine budgets that I'm sure will look pleasant compared to what's ahead. And if it weren't for the principles that we've been living with all these years, we wouldn't be in this good s shape. So I just want to thank you for your leadership and for the principles have been put into place to make us in this wonderful. Not wonderful is as strong as we could be at this point. So thank. You. Well, thank you, Councilmember. I really appreciate that. I didn't get here until 2010, so I didn't help, you know, 2008 or nine. I do want to say that I you know, as difficult as it is sometimes I love my job. I love working for the county. And one of the things that I am proudest of is the partnership that we have built between the executive and the council and the trust that we have built, particularly around budget issues. We we certainly have our policy disagreements. That's what a democratic process is about. But the fact that we are able to openly communicate and we are able to use the same numbers and we are able to share information is one of the reasons that, in my opinion, our government works as well as it does. And so that's a reflection not just on the executive, not just on me, but all of you on the council, all of our other separately elected officials and obviously the staff and directors and that of the rest of the government. Thank you. It felt like you were with us in spirit. We made it through these last few. Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Ms.. Chair. I just want to second Councilmember Lambert's statement there. I've been thinking a lot about Dwight lately on a personal and professional level, and that just I sleep a lot better than the residents of this county. Should sleep a lot better knowing that we have you in charge of our finances on the executive side. We are just so fortunate to have you. And I want to personally, on behalf of constituents I represent, extend my sincerest and deepest appreciation for your leadership, your compassion, your integrity and your smarts. Thank you. Well, thank you. Any more praise for Mr. Daly? No, I can't handle any more. Thank you. Okay. We don't get to do proclamations anymore, so this is it. Well, I do appreciate it. It's genuine. Thank you, Dwight. All right. And thank you for joining us today and for the presentation that takes us to public comment on today's agenda. Having a entirely remote meeting is relatively new for the King County Council, and I want to make sure that everyone who's called in is familiar with the rules for public comment and how the process will be managed. First, some ground rules, and if you're hearing them for the first time, I apologize because they can sound over the heart. But unfortunately, over time, we've found it necessary to have them in place. The ground rules for public comment will include that today's meeting, the testimony today may not be used for the purposes of assisting the campaign for election of any person in the office or for the promotion or opposition of any ballot proposition. It must also not include obscene speech. And if the speaker fails to abide by these restrictions overall, the Speaker out of order require them to exit the virtual meeting. Now I'll describe the process. As all members of the public joined this meeting, they were automatically muted. I can't see your names on your phone numbers. We will first call on people who have signed up to speak in advance via the online form. And when those people have spoken, we'll call on the remaining people by the last four digits of your telephone number, Mrs. Stedman, our committee staff will call the names and numbers. When your name or number is called, staff will on your line so we can hear you. Please make sure that you also own your phone. If you have muted yourself during the call and before you begin your formal testimony, please say your name and wait to be acknowledged. So we know and you know that you're off mute and we can all hear each other. And then start by saying and spelling your name so we can have that accurate in the record. You will then have 2 minutes to speak and share your comments with us. At the end of 10 minutes, the timer will go off. You can certainly finish your thought, but please wrap up your comments to allow the next person to speak. If you go far past your 2 minutes, you may be muted if you're listening to TV or streaming the meeting while on the call. Please turn that function that volume off otherwise for your feedback on the line when you're speaking. If you are disruptive to meeting of will our staff to terminate your call and have you leave the meeting and then please hang up after you've provided your comment to make it easier for us to manage the call. You can follow the remainder of the meeting on King County TV Channel 22 or stream online. The link to stream online is on the council's website, which is WW W dot King County dot gov backslash council. And then click on the watch what is live but have a Spanish language interpreter on the line to provide interpretation if needed during the public comment, and anyone needing the interpreter will be given twice as long for their comments. The interpreter will now repeat the instructions for public comment in Spanish. I lost my business out of it. I mean, nobody wants to go take a look at the lens or China's undercover stuff they wanna know and I guess there's there's not only more of them but I don't think that I'm down without it and I'm not gonna high glass but I think in the process they let a Colby and Dallas persona square for work get their opponents with the left or not and go after one does it a principle upon immutable but actually as I find myself where they can last but I want I got a comment that is one of the best is something that can be available at the ample pocket almost specific amenity but for their camozzi on this one. Want us in fear skipper whether or not I so no for them wasn't like that for us and that if I think what my something is going as a theater but is where they go I think I need to see it the last for my show. And you're kind of being generous and I think it was, but that I didn't find myself either. From up with the eight under, they're still on the hot dresses, so thanks. Thank you. Well, now begin the public comment period. A reminder to please wait to be acknowledged to be so that we can hear you and Mr.. Then go ahead and begin following the names and numbers of the public for comment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This first caller will be Marcus La Larrea. Okay. Go ahead, Mr. Little Mario, you're unmuted. Yeah, I'm present. We can hear you. Please proceed. Okay. That's a market scenario. And they are CEOs. I wrote a column speaking on behalf of Seattle Restaurants United. You know, one of the bigger issues we're finding is about the rent abatement or rent freeze. And one one issue we want to come up with is there is a way for the folks who are renting these properties . If they if they do need to walk away because they haven't got a loan, haven't got any help, and they're just with and can't afford rent a way to let them break their lease without any, you know, unscathed so they can walk away without it affecting the future opportunities for them. So they not have to file bankruptcy because a lot of these shops just can't afford and don't have the capabilities to get these loans. And also just if they can walk away, they can possibly start another business again at some point. So, you know, we've learned that there's a lot of people that have their mortgages up on these houses are going to lose their houses because they can't pay their rent, they can't pay their bills. So we just want to wait and see if there's something that can be done or how to proceed and try to bring it upon us here. Thank you, Mr. Land area. Our next caller is anniversary. So go ahead, Mr. Purcell. Sir, you're unmuted. Hi, this is Aaron versus the President. Thank you. We can hear you. Please proceed. I Aaron versus the first name. Aaron and I stay in Brazil. So Venus and Victor are the same myself. Also, just as Marcus mentioned, I'm representing my own small business archipelago restaurant in Helmand City. I also sit on the Seattle Restaurants United Board as well. And just to piggyback on Marcus's testimonial, just just now, I think what as a restaurant owner and certainly as someone that is looking for help in alleviating on the rent side of would that be abatement or freeze? I think it's important to consider, too, as a shelter in place is listed that most restaurants are if they're still around will be capacity is at 50% which in those even on those margins most restaurants will be probably a lot of them have seen numbers, about 75% will be gone. And so as we think about certainly the taxes, whether it be property or what that a lot of our landlords or landlords have to face themselves to to to understand that that's changed from those that are holding the leases. I mean, as Marcus mentioned, whose houses are and and such are online as well to consider that but also to consider the long term in terms of the bridge to vaccination and how long that could potentially take as it pertains to the budgets, if there's any kind of any kind of help in terms of abatement for small business, particularly in restaurants. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Proviso. Our next caller is Jennifer Al Abood. Go ahead, nurse. Alberta unmuted. Hi. This is Jennifer, our birthday present. Thank you. We can hear you. My name, sir. My name is Buddy and I e r last name. L hyphen. Any bb0ud. I would like to echo the concerns of the previous Congress and this also regards. Agenda item number seven, the rent and Mortgage Moratorium Motion. We small business owners, particularly the smallest family owned businesses, they those with personal guarantees on their commercial leases, could lose their homes if their brick and mortar businesses closed permanently due to COVID 19. Small business owners need more gasoline waivers for COVID related business closures and am wondering at what level of government this should be addressed and whether council support measures that would protect commercial tenants from mortgage lenders leans on their homes or their home equity upon the sale of their home. We have very little the smallest of small businesses have very little access to federal funds, and this will result in business failures. And the last thing these these small business owner operators need is to risk losing their homes on top of losing their businesses. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next caller is traffic minder. I heard you are unmuted. Hello, Mr. Model. Your unmuted. Please proceed. If you'd like to make comments. We're unable to hear you, Mr. Madaya. You could check to see if you're muted on your end. I will move on and call that number in the future. Our next caller is so cool. Go Tina Kobina. Just. And it looks like that caller has disconnected their call. We will move on to Jeanette Fuentes. Go ahead, miss. The point is, you're unmuted. I cannot see Fuentes present. Thank you. Please proceed. Many stodgy and Itie last name is, as I ask you. And P.S., I'm a renter in Seattle and a property manager for several apartment buildings in the Seattle area. I'm here to address the much needed rent mortgage freeze. We need a city, county and statewide rent and mortgage freeze during this COVID 19 crisis. Many of my renters jobs have been affected by the COVID 19 shutdown. These are people that already live paycheck to paycheck and struggle to pay these high rents in Seattle. I've been a property manager since 2001, and I've seen and have seen how property owners and investors have flourished with rising rents in Seattle and King County since 2010. While renters and lower to middle income homeowners saw the short end of the stick after the 2008 recession. I've personally seen how ten plus 10% plus rent increases after a recession have driven people to homelessness. We cannot let the poor or the working class or small business owners that are feeling the financial effects of the shutdown the most get the short end of the stick once again. While large multifamily property owners and investors will come out of this crisis with homes to live in, funds to survive and reinvest. Many renters, lower income homeowners and small businesses are terrified that they will not be able to catch up on their past, due rent and other expenses after the rent moratorium is over. My best friend, who owns a hair salon in Pioneer Square, has applied for every grant and business loan offered for the COVID 19 crisis and has not been granted any of them due to lack of funds in these programs and is struggling to figure out how she herself will pay rent. Small business owners, especially the restaurants in my area, have been the glue holding our communities together by serving for serving food for free to those in need. We need a rent mortgage freeze that will benefit renters, small businesses and small mine landlords. We bailed out the banks in 2008 with our tax money and it's time for the banks to take a back seat on their profits to help us. Councilmember Dunn stated, quote, A rent mortgage moratorium would set a very dangerous precedent by harnessing the power of a public health crisis to undermine the basic free market principle of supply and demand, unquote. And I would say that the free market of supply and demand in the housing market has not worked for the poor sleeping out on the streets or the workers that are now considered to be essential, whose rents are 30% or more of our income. The free supply and demand market has long supplied the affordable housing. But here's so much of Seattle and King County over the last ten years. It's the free supply and demand market for housing hasn't helped. If the free supply and demand market for housing has not worked for the poor and lower wage working folks, in normal times , it's absolutely necessary for us to take drastic measures that will support us, especially during this out of the ordinary public health crisis. It's time that our city, county and state do the right thing by the poor and working folks in our community with a rent and mortgage freeze during the COVID 19 shutdown. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Our next caller is to this Sanchez. I had Ms.. Sanchez here unmuted. Hi. Good afternoon. My name is Julissa Sanchez to you. I have a first name. See, the age is the first name and I am a tenants rights educator. The tenants union working predominantly with a South King County Latino immigrant and refugee community. And I would like to ask you to implement the rent and mortgage freeze as the majority of the Latino immigrant population work in service jobs, industries such as restaurants and hotels that are closed and probably won't be open for a while now. And the moratorium in the state of Washington is now extended until June 4th, but even before all of this has have been going on. Many of these renters. Who. Do not qualify for unemployment and who are taxpayers were already very vulnerable to discrimination and harassment from landlords. And in these times, even more, even more, they tripled of of their vulnerability during those times and able to access, help and services. Many have been denied a lot of their services. They have applied for funding due to lack of funding and high demand, and they are very afraid from the Hotline's calls that we get. They are very afraid to be 6 to 10 grand in back rent and fees. Have homelessness. After after all of this moratorium is done with and many of them do not speak English. So then getting notices of 14 day, ten, ten day or any. The landlords who are very racist sometimes can and really take advantage of this and and intimidate them to leaving their homes within the ten days. So I just feel that I need to lead by example for other people and we need a referees and hopefully that can be implemented safely. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. I am going to go back to classic murder and try that number once again. Go ahead, Mr. Riddell, you are unmuted. Hello? Can you hear me now? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Please proceed. Okay, great. I was hitting you earlier, but for some reason they don't work. Anyway, my name is Tawfiq, while the first name is isn't Tom A.W. okay. Last name, Amazon Mary, EU Years and David H. I am a tenant living here in SeaTac. I am here to ask the King County Council to pass this resolution, calling on the Governor to issue a moratorium rent payments, and calling on the federal government to issue a moratorium on rent and mortgage payments. I live blocks away from SeaTac Airport and I am a member of the MLK Working Families Party. It's a multi racial group that's a chapter of the Working Families Party. We organize to build grassroots power for working families through issue campaigns and recruitment, training and election of progressive candidates. I talk every day to my neighbors and friends here and see that families are struggling to meet rent. Many of my neighbors have lost their jobs and income before the pandemic. Most. Most of my neighbors have two jobs and many work at the airport. Many of us had small businesses which are now closed. Now my neighbors cannot work and have no income. The loss of income is devastating. I am personally struggling to make ends meet. I had a small business like many families around me. My family lived check to check to the impact of COVID 19 of the final closure and displacement of our communities is a real threat. A pandemic undermines the stability of my family and my friends and neighbors, and instability of our communities undermines the health of our community. We look to King County Council to step up and show leadership when it comes to the impact of COVID 19 on our communities. City Council members preventing and reducing bills. Leadership to say and pass a resolution supporting the governor's moratorium on evictions while the rest of the council fails to stand up for the many in our communities. We need leaders who stand up for the many, not the few. And we need leaders to take bold steps, to take bold steps, to stand up for what is right. Stand around me. Live in fear and anxiety, not knowing if they will be able to keep their housing or driving to the street. Please vote yes on calling on the governor and federal government to support rent and mortgage moratoriums. This is an important step for leadership and justice in our community. Thank you. Thank you for your comments. Know. Mr. Chair, I believe that if all the callers on the line. The. I'm sorry. It helps if I knew myself. Thank you, everyone, for offering your public comment today. We appreciate hearing from you and it certainly informs it. And that is our deliberations this afternoon. That brings us to over 62 days agenda, a briefing on the COVID 19 response needs assessment that will be presented by Patrick Hamacher. Our council's special initiatives director will provided an update on the work related to the Needs Assessment Project we heard about last at our last meeting with Councilmember Year. But before I call on I'm Mr. Amateur. I'm calling Councilmember Bell duty to further introduce the item. Councilmember Bell Duty. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. And thank you, colleagues, for for hearing this item again today. I think what we just listened to in public comment and what we've been hearing from our communities and our representatives is a really important example of the reason why I requested that we do this kind of a review. I think we all are keenly aware that COVID 19, the disease and the response to the disease of social distancing, business closures, etc. have caused a great deal of need and hardship in our communities. And this is going to go on for some time. It's not just what's happening right now. It's going to probably be with us for a number of years. And so I asked our central policy staff to work with us and create a needs assessment view that will kind of compile as best as we can what all the various big categories of needs are. It would be, I think, impossible to do a detailed review because it is just unprecedented the level and depth and breadth and number of needs that are out there. Patrick will have a few documents that he will describe to you. All three of them went out with the packet and the last one came out today and was in your email this afternoon. So the source for this review was a survey of the nine officers. And on the theory that the members we are in touch with our districts and our communities and the needs in our communities are we would be able to fill in a lot of this. Typically when a human services or human needs assessment is done, it's a multi multi-month large stakeholder there and obviously we're in a big, big hurry now. So we did the best we could by surveying what we all know. It's also a work in progress we tried to stick to like the larger, higher categorical level of needs rather than very specific details. As we embark on this conversation. I will say this a few times. Please keep in mind that this is a survey of needs, not of resources. So just because we've identified and identified a need doesn't mean we have an obvious way to meet it. In fact, as we heard from Dwight little earlier in the meeting, our outlook for revenues is going to be very, very challenging going forward. But we do have opportunities, right? We have ways that we can repurpose revenues. We already have, as we have done already with some of the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Act money that we moved to child care for emergency responders and essential workers like grocery store clerks, etc.. And as we're about to talk about doing with the lodging tax, so I'm going to pause there for a moment and ask Patrick to walk us through what we should have in front of us and where to find it all and what it what it is. But I'm going to just plant a seed for the discussion that follows. And that is what would be really helpful is if we can, as an organization, show leadership, as we were just challenged to do by identifying the areas where our level of government can have the most impact, because we are the right level of government to address a problem or because we have a particular resource that we can bring to bear and give that direction to the staff today or shortly thereafter so that they can get to work on Digging Deeper, because this is not a deep dove, this is an overview. And with that on pause, Mr. Chair, and go ahead and introduce Patrick Hamacher, our counsel government initiatives manager, and he'll walk us through the next step. Thank you. Council members, are you able to hear me? Yes. Great. So it's all about duty. Noted in your packets for this committee meeting, there were three fairly robust documents that were created by the policy staff. The first one, beginning on page 13 of your packet, is a tracker of the federal legislation that had been passed to date as of Friday related to COVID, and that has been assembled by and tracked by Jenny Giambattista and Matt Nicholson from Central Staff. The second document, beginning on page 21 of your documents of your packet, is a similar tracking spreadsheet, but relative to Washington State. So all of the various actions that Washington State has taken in response to COVID and that has been compiled and maintained by April Sanders in the final document is the same type of document only for all of the local governments in King County, the cities and Special Purpose Districts. And it begins on page 39 in your materials. So when you start thinking about ideas of what other governments have done, those are going to be very valuable resources. And a lot of work and effort has gone in to creating those and keeping them as up to date as possible. The last document is the one you noted councilmember about duty that was created by surveying of the council districts. And I'm going to present my screen and bring that document up. And that document is what was emailed today. So it was not in the packet. So hopefully you should be able to see that document. Now it's a little bit bigger than my screen, but if I shrink it down too much, you won't be able to read it. And so I'm going to leave it vague and I can scroll back and forth as members would like to see what's in this document. And so I'm just going to actually I'm going to give Councilmember Belushi control of this document because he has requested that. Let's see if that works. And I will let her navigate through. I will just highlight kind of the big picture items that are in the document, which is that the far left hand column is the type of need that I'm sorry. That was a mistake. I gave it back to you. I have it. I now have it back. That's no problem. So the far left hand column of your screen is the type of need that was identified and, you know, shorthand terms just to make it usable. But the type of need that very the middle third is whether it's short or long term projected need and average is an acute early into the crisis or is it something that's likely to be with the county for some time or that or the community for some time or both in many cases. And in the final two columns are who's doing work around the item? Are there primarily non county entities or is there a role for the county? And as we go through the document, you'll notice that some of the some of the boxes are blank. It it's not clear that anyone is doing work in the area or it's very limited. And those are areas where it might be appropriate to consider whether that's something the county would want to find a role in or not. So I think that's the overview. I just wanted to highlight once again that the work that had been done by my policy staff and Mac Nicholson in compiling all of that, I don't know that all of those documents have gone to members, but you'll see when you're going to go through them. They're quite extensive and a useful resource if you're trying to look backwards and find out what's been going on. And so I'll stop there and I can kind of drive through. I'll do the driving through this document as customer value to walk through it or as the discussion moves along. And I'd be happy to answer any questions point you would have as well as member of LGC. Yes. So there's a lot going on in the screen right now. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. I wasn't sure if I unmuted. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So as I said at the beginning, we identified these areas of need through surveying of the offices, and I'm just going to roll down through them pretty quickly. Now, you can read, but for purposes of those who may not be able to see it, who may be on the phone, so we broke these out into categories of public health response. You will see there are blanks here. Sometimes the blanks mean it's too complicated to fill in. That was my sense of the PPE section. There's a lot going on in PPE, personal protective equipment, as you know, cloth masks. That is an increasing area where we are hearing from our own employees, but also the need for members of the public. We've been asked to require, for example, members of the public riding our transit systems to wear masks. And perhaps one way of dealing with that is to provide masks to people. Ever want to write, try transit, that would be an expense. And then tests under small business support and assistance. We listed the federal and state small business loans. This is probably a good line on which to specify, to amplify the fact that because there is a role listed under either. Other. Levels of government or other entities or our own does, it means that the resources that they have provided are sufficient. In fact, I think we've learned that most of the need is so great that most of the resources are not sufficient. But so far, the small business support and assistance has come largely from federal and state funding, nonprofit support and assistance. We've heard a great deal of need in the human services areas, agencies that are helping people. Domestic violence, arts and culture and tourism. This under tourism. That's actually one of the blanks I want to point out. There you see the lodging tax proposal listed in the column. That would be the county role as a theme for arts and cultural organizations. And I think that the Tourism Blank under the column air is that that's a that's an important plank there that says that there's not an obvious other level of government or other level of organization outside of private philanthropy that funds that. And so it identifies a gap, if you will, under homelessness and housing. We've got shelter operations during COVID. That's some of the intensification work. But even the ones that don't need the intensification have a real challenge with operational funding, youth homelessness. We've talked about a couple of times recently eviction protections and rental support. Then we've got topics under historically marginalized communities, immigrants and refugees, communities of color, native people, LGBTQ, plus a large number of needs underneath that were identified from culturally appropriate mental health services assisting, accessing services. We've been hearing in our district, and I'm sure you all have as well, that there are community based organizations that could help marginalized communities access resources that are available, but they don't have the resources themselves. And the more mainline groups are, the more majority sort of ways that information is pushed out to access resources. Does it reach it doesn't reach the communities it needs to quickly enough, as we saw with the small business funding, which dried up so quickly. Support for immigrants, especially undocumented. Until yesterday, it wasn't clear that any of the resources coming down from higher levels of government was going to be available to residents who are undocumented. Yesterday, the state made an announcement that they were making some resources available in that area for their disaster. Funding translation and culturally appropriate food were all identified as issues by members. Food security is a big issue. I think we'll hear about more of that as time goes on. People unable to access food, period, let alone healthy or culturally appropriate food, computer and Internet access for seniors and students was identified as a as a as an issue with social isolation and education now being entirely online, financial assistance to people who don't qualify for stimulus checks probably could have gone up above under the other category, but that is a category of its own. Responding to bias and hate crimes. You see some of the needs. There are people with disabilities. I'm going to go faster because you can read some legal aid, city and municipal services and then the idea of economic recovery in the long term. So you can see just surveying the nine council officers, we identified all of these areas where we could potentially have a role, whether it be advocacy, regulatory or funding. That doesn't mean, as I said at the beginning, that we have the resources to have that role. And I guess I will stop speaking there, Mr. Chair, and just kind of lead us with two questions. And I think the first question is, is there anything major that we're missing? And if so, can we capture that verbally here or via email or something to keep this as a living and growing document? And then are we ready to start having a conversation about where we are to place our efforts? Obviously, we've seen some of that already. We've seen members step forward with work and forthcoming proposals on some of the tourism and cultural arts proposals. You've homelessness we heard about we heard about small business support. And of course, today we've been talking about housing and, you know, rental assistance and mortgage assistance. So. There. That's it's meant to show us a sweep of the land. It's daunting and it's very scary to think about what this means, what these words mean in terms of human need and human worry and suffering out in our community. But I would love for us to be able as a group to coalesce around maybe the places where we fit in the best and can do the most good. Thank you, Mr. Chair, for that extensive time. Thank you. Councilmember Builders in Mr. Hemminger. Thank you for the concept and the work in compiling this list. One thing that occurs to me, and it's in part because it's been particularly on my mind during the stay home, stay healthy order from the governor is immediate, sits under human services under nonprofit supportive guidance assistance. Or maybe it is a category bullet line item every time that's not here yet. And that is people who are in recovery, recovery communities who in many ways rely on meetings and social gatherings to provide support for one another and who with the support they need and they're meeting their work now is online, if at all. But it's not happening in person. It's happening. I have to be writing notes, Mr. Chair. Certainly, colleagues. Council members. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, thank you so much, Councilmember Bagchi and Patrick, for putting this together. This is incredibly helpful. I was just wondering, from your perspective, Councilmember, if she did anything jump out as some of the greatest needs? Just your interpretation of the findings of this. Where where do you see as having been identified the largest needs and the largest gaps from from this research? This is your comments. Please. Thank you. Yeah, that's a great question. We actually didn't ask for an assessment of the size of the needs. Could that be a follow up question? Because one of the reasons it would be great to sort of see if we can coalesce around a shorter list of places to put the next effort is not to say that we wouldn't work on all of these at one point or another, but the next effort might go to doing a deeper dove on some of them and finding out what is the breadth of the need, what is the kind of need. So, for example, today I thought it was fascinating to hear people talk about small businesses losing their business, becoming a housing problem. And of course, that makes perfect sense when you hear it. But it wasn't something I had thought about or heard of in quite that way before. So doing a deeper dove to see where the gaps are and what we can do, I think would be a great thing. I can just speak for myself coming from my district. I'm hearing a lot about small businesses going out of business and not being able to pay their employees, not being able to pay their rent. I'm hearing a lot about housing and people being able to keep a roof over their heads, but also just the ability for people to access the resources that are coming. Because although there's a tremendous amount of money being spent, I mean, we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars coming down from the federal government to our county in various ways. How does that money get connected to the people who need it the best? Like the methodology for putting the funding out is really important. First come, first serve has been the method for a number of these federal funds. And that's that can be very inequitable. That can really favors the folks who are have better relationships, are more established, have, you know, banking cronies, etc.. So I don't have a I don't have a short list. I have the things that I that I've seen myself. But I think that the wisdom of the nine of us will will be will be very helpful leaning into what is the larger community needs look like a that probably wasn't a really helpful response. But there you go. Thank you. I believe they also heard Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, sir. Yes, you did good hearing. I agree with everything that Councilmember Bell did. He said as far as the order of small businesses, especially the very small ones under ten employees, and they are very much feeling that they could get back to work again and alleviate a lot of the suffering and the fear that's going on, I think, under the category of food security. I think we could add something about farms and helping the farmers get the food out to people. A lot of the farmers are concerned about the marketing of their foods, so that would be a good one. And then under local government, I think having a category that specifically says that we continue to provide our local government services to our local government because there are concerns about some things that are happening and we're trying to enforce laws such as people staying home and not coming and doing things that have been asked by our executive and our governor to not be doing. And also under that category, the impacts on ginger taxing districts. I think we need to be very concerned about that. And I'd like to put up another group that I think that we should be engaging in this, and that is the faith based community in the human services. And they are an important asset in being able to help families in their communities. I think networking better with them. I know we have a faith based task force which meetings I have been attending, but we're not asking as much partnership there as I think that we we could and should. So those would be my suggestions. Thank you. Colleagues. Hello. Seven members of the line. Thank you again, Mr. Chair. I wanted to also put out a word for previously incarcerated people who are going back out into the world. People who were serving for nonviolent offenses, who are now, you know, being released for public health reasons. Do they have the services they need to properly reintegrate into society? I think thinking through that category is important as well. And of course member of the growth are we are weighing in on kind of reiterating what we've heard as doubts that what you're looking for comes from Oluchi. Yeah. So the two questions I think, are there gaps that were not listed and is there any sense of coalescing around the top priorities? Maybe that might be too much to ask for this discussion. It's it's a challenging way to do it. But those were the two questions. Well, I would weigh in more on the second one I think you captured. I've been it's kind of how I've been spending my time here in isolation is. Reaching out to folks than doing, you know, Zoom calls with different cultural communities in my district with folks were Iraqi community center, Ukrainian community center leaders Latino community small youth family service is kind of asking these same questions, asking what they're hearing from families they're working with, what are they seeing as gaps? And I would really say housing, housing and housing the. The folks I think who I'm hearing from families is some of the people who've been impacted the most are folks who are kind of already on the margins, the folks who maybe were working two jobs, our job on the side for cash, already struggling to pay rent, that kind of thing. Just folks in the service industry whose jobs quickly went away. And the. Ability to access the state unemployment, particularly the updated unemployment opportunities for contract workers, particularly down in South County, a lot of drivers and part time employees and say those rules are are just now getting updated, if at all. And so there's a lot of people what I hear is fear, even when the moratorium on evictions is lifted, making sure there's rental assistance there to help people get caught up over time or having programs in place. So I would say there the rental assistance is a number one priority. And then just accessing. The services that are there. I think you were right, Councilor, about I don't know to what degree we can influence that as a county, probably around the margins. But for example, nonprofits are eligible for the paycheck. There was paycheck protection loans that turned into grants, but they just disappeared like that. And I hear from lots of the very small businesses and entrepreneurs, and they couldn't access that because the larger institutions for various reasons end up all the money. It's cheaper and easier for a bank to administer a couple of big loans than a bazillion small ones. And so there's some inequity in the application of the federal funding. So those are kind of the areas I would focus on are rental assistance and accessing benefits. I would put a plug in for some feedback about the challenge of getting culturally appropriate food. In some cases, that's been a challenge, and the food pipeline in South King County has been a little unsteady, although I think that's getting worked out at the state level with the large providers like Northwest Harvest. So that would be my interest in order to prioritize. Thank you. Oh, well. Councilmember Carlos. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think an item that is of particular importance with regard to food security, and I think we really could benefit by looking at other sources of revenue and may come from the federal government. But people need to have food. And we've seen, I'm sure, all of us, the video coverage on television of long lines, of cars, of people waiting to get to food banks. I think one in Texas had about 10,000 cars waiting. And I have not heard of that happening here. But we know we do need to get more money into helping our food banks. And Councilmember Lambert and I am looking at what we may do to help our farmers who may be in the position of having to destroy their crops. And this is happening elsewhere in the country. I don't believe that's happening here yet because of the nature of the crops that we grow here, but in the harvests that take place. But I'd like to see us really prioritize this one. Thank you. Hello, gentlemen. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry for all the comments. The big categories. I want to make sure that we include everyone. And I want to echo. I want to echo everything Councilmember Lambert and Caldwell's and the group have said about food and renters and housing, for sure. I also want to put in a plug for anything we can do for providing more PPE, more personal protective equipment. That may not be exactly in our wheelhouse, as I understand that the state is responsible for that. But if we're able to help provide funding, especially to help protect our frontline workers like our metro drivers, we're hearing a lot from metro operators saying that they're afraid for all the people who are getting on the bus with them without PPE. If we can help provide a system where we provide people masks and gloves as they as they enter our busses, I think we can go a long way to protecting our residents, as well as our bus operators, Dombrowski and Glover Dombrowski. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and great comments and I appreciate the spreadsheet and the work that went into it. I don't know if it belongs in the public health world or maybe in the Human Services supports for partners. But the county public health department, including to our best work, has expanded our presence in high school public health clinics in recent years. And one of the key services that I think is important is women's reproductive health services. We do that in our public health clinics as well. And Councilman calls that a good news update addressing some of these issues. But I think it could be an area where there's a county nexus and expertize and a need with the closure of schools to make sure that of public health services. But with, I would say, particular emphasis on or at least inclusion of reproductive health issues be considered as part of our topics that we look at. They see. I'm not the only colleague. Councilmember Caldwell's in his list. Well, I got the hot replies. Mr. Chair. This is Claudia. I am going to take all of these comments and any other ones will update the chart to add the good ideas that that have been brought forward. I heard a few and then maybe make a proposal based on what we've heard around where we can take the next step and put that out for reaction to people. That might be easier. Sounds great. Any other parting thoughts from colleagues? All right. The next two items on our agenda today concern legislation related to the pandemic response. The first is a motion that would call on the governor to impose an immediate moratorium on rent payments and urging federal legislators and the Trump administration to impose a similar moratorium on rent and mortgage payments. We have April Sanders from the council, several staff to hear here to provide a brief overview to Sanders. Hello is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record. April Sanders Council central staff controls for this item begin on page 77 of your packet. The proposed motion, as the chair indicated, and we call on Governor Inslee, federal legislators and the Trump administration to impose an immediate moratorium on rent and mortgage payments. For a bit of background, on March 18th, Governor Inslee issued emergency proclamation 2019, which prohibits evictions based on a tenant's nonpayment of rent through at least April 17. On April 16th, under increased terms that were hearing through the 4th of June and added some additional tenant protections. However, rent payments during this time are still due to the landlord and who lawful detainer actions may be initiated after the emergency proclamation expires. If rent payments are not up to date. Similarly, mortgage payments continue to be due on the regular schedule. When additional tenant protection and. Gov. Any please. Extension of the emergency proclamation is the prohibition that landlords hate unpaid rent and charges as an enforceable debt. Unless the landlord demonstrates to a court that the resident was offered and refused or failed to comply with a reasonable repayment plan. To date, the federal government has not imposed a rent relief program, though Freddie Mac has issued mortgage forbearance guidance for single family homeowners, and that guidance remains subject to individual being decide if and how to implement. On March 30th, the City Council passed a resolution calling on Governor Inslee to impose a similar moratorium, as is proposed here . Calling on Inslee, the federal legislators and the Trump administration. And that brings me to the end of my staff report and happy to answer any questions. And there are amendment. On policy questions for Ms.. Sanders. Hearing none. Ms. Sanders and me and customers council members. Hello. Would you prefer to speak to it now? I'm ask April to speak to the striking amendment. What would be your preference amendment? First, please, Mr. Chair. Thank you. All right. Case, speak to respect an amendment that was emailed out earlier today as well. So striking amendment act one would add an additional whereas statement to reflect Governor Inslee's extension of the moratorium on evictions that I spoke to earlier. It would also add that the moratorium on rent and mortgage payments would be for low income individuals, specifically who have lost their employment or a significant portion of their income stream due to government closures and orders related to COVID 19. And it would also add language asking Congress and the Trump administration to direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to establish and fund a rental property relief fund for residential landlords. And that is it for the striking amendment. Questions on the Second Amendment. All right, members, what you have to. I'll give a little bit of context first. So March 15 was one of the hardest days of my professional life. That was the day the governor announced expanded limitations on large gatherings and closures of certain small businesses to slow the spread of COVID 19. Immediately after this order came down, my email inbox and social media channels were flooded with the messages of terrified King County residents. We heard from some of them in public comment today, and I actually get choked up just talking about it. I heard from restaurant owners saying the restaurants they had operated for generations were in jeopardy. Beauty salon owner is wondering how they could continue paying their commercial rent. Uber drivers facing imminent financial demise. In the ensuing weeks, their fears became reality. Hundreds of thousands of people were laid off across our state. People were now telling me that the loss of income had upended everything they had ever worked. Work. Renters were on the verge of eviction and homelessness. Small landlords, whose tenants had been laid off, lost the income stream they relied on to make their mortgage payments. Small business owners who had lost months of revenue were closing shop forever. I want to emphasize that none of the messages I've received across the past several weeks have been critical of the shut downs or stay at home orders themselves. Despite the sudden uncertainty in their own lives, people have been fully supportive of the actions taken by our governor. They know he and our public health officials have been some of the most effective leaders around the nation. I share that faith. From a public health standpoint, it's clear that our state and local government have been second to none. We should all be grateful for the thousands of lives their decisions have saved. It's also clear that our solutions to the widespread economic hardship resulting from these affected public health decisions have been insufficient. The eviction moratorium, small business loans and federal stimulus checks do not go nearly far enough to keep Americans from financial ruin. Furthermore, as eviction moratoriums are eventually lifted, thousands of Washingtonians with middle income and no savings will lose their homes and small businesses. Deepening our preexisting homelessness crisis and widening our extreme wealth inequality. Every issue we have ever faced in King County will intensify if more people become unhoused and small businesses go under. With that being said, one of the most powerful steps we can take to secure our collective well-being is to freeze residential rent, commercial rent and mortgage payments during the coronavirus emergency. King County Council does not have the authority to do this. We cannot halt mortgage payments during the months of this emergency. But we believe our state and federal governments really have the authority. That is why Councilmember Jeanie Caldwell and I have introduced today's non-binding resolution calling on our highest levels of government to enact resolutions to pause rent payments, pause mortgage payments and establish a relief fund for small landlords to cover losses from canceled payments. This act would ensure people stay housed during this public health crisis while saving thousands of small businesses. Small landlords who depend on rental income would benefit from actions to pause mortgage payments, delay property taxes, and enacting the private rental property relief fund. We know that some of our colleagues are opposed to this resolution and they have very valid concerns. There are no easy solutions here when we're trying to prevent total economic collapse, collapse. But we hear those concerns. And Council member Cal Wells will speak to the some of the language in this resolution that may ease these fears. Councilmember Caldwell. Councilmember. Oh, sorry, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chairman, you recognize the council member? I'm sorry about that, Colonel. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one end of people have questions of council members right before I speak. Oh. No. Okay. So I'm very pleased to be co-sponsoring this legislation with council members. Hello. And I think we all know that it is of no help to individuals, that they are not able to stay in their homes because of not being able to afford their rental payments. The last thing they need and the last thing we as a country needs need is to have more people enter homelessness. We know that low income individuals pay a much higher proportion of amount of their income to rent. I've always heard that one should not pay more than 20% or maybe even 30% at best for their housing costs. Yet we know that a large number, very large number of low income individuals and families pay 50% of their income to rent if they don't have income. How are they able to pay the rent if they also have no savings? And I remember vividly that during the Great Recession and the very large amount of foreclosures that took place for homeowners because they were unable to keep up with their mortgage payments. I think we all remember that. So what we're doing here is to, first of all, in our striking amendment, acknowledge the concerns we've heard from our constituents, from others, from some of our council colleagues here, that people who earn high salaries should not be able to access this provision. And we don't believe that our concern workers who are the high paying ones or any workers who make a lot of salary should be eligible. We are referring to low income individuals and families who are really unable to pay for their rent. We're also talking about landlords who are maybe the small mom and pop type of landlords, the seniors who count on the rental income in the duplex they own and the small apartment building that they own for revenue that they depend upon. We've added language qualifying the scope to people who lost their jobs or lost significant income through no fault of their own if they've been laid off, for example, from a restaurant, from a non essential business, and they have not the means to be able to pay for their rent. We know that unemployment insurance will be covering a lot of the people, but in many cases that amount will be inadequate. As small landlords, again, who depend on rental income would benefit from the actions that the US Congress and the President could take, as well as the Governor of our state being able to order. So we're talking about pausing mortgage payments, delaying property taxes and being able to access a rental property relief fund, as proposed by the federal legislation co-sponsored by Congressman Congresswoman Pramila Jayapal and others that would provide qualifying landlords the resources to cover lost payments. Let's face it, if any landlord has a tenant who is unable to make the rent, then their landlord is not benefiting at all. So this is something that we encourage and we thank you for your consideration. Thank you, colleagues, for the questions of the co-sponsors. I don't think. Councilmember McDermott. Oh, Councilmember Dunn. Thank you. I got cut off a little bit when April was discussing those amendments. Sounds like it was limited down to low income and also those who lost their jobs. That is correct. Are there any other amendments there? So it also adaware as statement to reflect the moratorium extension and add language asking Congress and the Trump administration to direct HUD to establish and fund the rental property relief fund for residential landlords. Okay. All right. So has there been any analysis on whether there's a Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution takings class or the comparable state constitution clause has been analyzed? And if so, is there a fiscal note on it terms of one? Because the government. Because this is a motion, it didn't go through legal analysis and we'd be calling on a different jurisdiction to make these make this decision. So the underlying constitutional problem here hasn't really been addressed. We're just pushing it up to the state government and the federal government to determine whether there is, in fact, a constitutional challenge. Yes, that is correct. Okay. That was my question. Thank you. Dombrowski related question for member Dombrowski And the answer may be the same, but I wondered about with respect to the state constitution for a rent and a farmer or a contract or a lease, some contract or mortgages or contracts. You know, we have in our state constitution a contract impairment clause. And I wonder if that if any consideration has been to whether that would be a trigger or prevent the relief that is requested in this motion, which is to cancel the obligations. Same answer to that one councilmember. No legal analysis has been was done in the drafting of this. However, I'm more than happy to follow up on on both questions with our legal team. Cole Wells. Councilmember Calvo. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a reminder, this is a non-binding resolution. It is a request to the governor and a request to Congress from the United States president. We're not taking any action ourselves to freeze or, as we said, pause rental payments and mortgage payments. Thank you. WG Councilmember Balaji. Thank you, Mr. Chair, on the same topic. So what we're being asked to do today is to vote on a non-binding motion that calls upon a different government to do something. I would like to know, before I take that vote, whether what we're asking them to do is possible for them to do, because if it's not possible for them to do because it's against the state and federal constitutions, I think all we're doing potentially is giving people some false hope or making ourselves look good at the expense of other levels of government. And that that troubles me a little bit. So I'd love to know if we have any attorneys around who could give us their read on this before we have to take a vote on it. That would be helpful to me. I see Mr. Cohen. I see Mr. Cohen in the room mood cut in the call. I don't know. Can you hear me? Mr. Chair. Please. This is morning. COHEN So temporary suspension of rent or mortgage payment may might be constitutional. However, there are issues addressed by the council members. There could be issues with the US Constitution's contract clause which prevents the state from breaking private contracts. There could be interference with those contracts or else also with the takings clause, which would prevent the state from depriving a property owner from all economically beneficial or productive use of their land. And then there's also the issue of whether or not who would pay for it in the end. So we haven't looked into it in complete depth. These are some of the legal issues and consequences that could occur. However, as also mentioned, this is a motion which is non-binding and does not have the legal effect. May I follow up, Mr. Chair, please? Yes. So, just to be clear, the question is framed as if, you know, and so this is why this is not an executive session, because we're speculating on the legal advice that one would give to a different government, not us. But what? What would your assessment be of this proposal if it were adopted by the state or the feds? You've identified some questions, but is the analysis that it would more likely than not be unconstitutional? Very almost certainly unconstitutional. Probably not unconstitutional. I mean, where do you land on? It's important to my vote, honestly, to know whether we're just making a statement or whether we are advocating for something that could really happen. If it's a full suspension of rent and not a suspension, but a complete just saying that people do not have to ever pay for their rent or mortgage, that would likely be unconstitutional. Allowing people or allowing the government to suspend rent with the intention that it will be paid in the end. May not have the same constitutional challenges. That is helpful. Thank you. Caldwell Council Member for Wales. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Well, council members who are in close and I have discussed this, but the thing that really is important to emphasize here is we're talking about pausing, not an outright forgiveness. We're talking about people having the opportunity. If Congress were to enact the legislation that was identified, that would provide grants. Now almost all of what is coming out of Congress is in the form of either grants or loans to help out people to get by. I think it's especially important to emphasize that we're talking about people who do not have the means to pay their rent. And what are they supposed to do? So we're proposing, again, a request to Congress, a request to the president, a request to the governor to pause rental payments, pause mortgage payments, establish a relief fund. And I believe that at this level, this is something that is really needed. It is really necessary. People are frantic, especially those individuals who have been laid off because of the COVID crisis that we are experiencing and who, through no fault of their own, are not able to work. And have the means to pay for their rent or pay for their mortgage. It's a very scary, even terrifying situation that people are in. And to make this request to our governor and to Congress and the president is something that I think is very reasonable to do. We're not asking the council to do any of this ourselves. It's simply a matter of a request and something that is very, very, very urgent to so many of our constituents. Again, Apollo. Thank members. Hello. Thank you all. And I'll speak. This will be the final time I speak. So I'll address some of the things I've heard, which, again, as I mentioned before, these are valid concerns we're hearing from our colleagues and I thank them for their input. So in just in case to hammer at home to the public was hearing because I think some people may not have gotten it before of the public this is a non-binding resolution that means this proposal would have no legal effect even if our council passes it today. Our goal with a resolution that has no legal effect is to uplift and amplify the voices of our constituents who are struggling the most in an economy that has grinding to a halt. Also, this non-binding resolution allows King County the opportunity to join a larger national movement, a movement of local governments around the country who have been asking their respective states and the federal government to provide the greatest form of economic relief possible, which is to keep people housed and to keep small businesses alive. Council members have called for this in Boston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, St Paul, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, as well as unanimously by our largest city of Seattle. We have also seen complementary proposals at the federal level, co-sponsored by Congresswoman Jayapal, which shows that there is an appetite for this at higher levels of government. The last thing I want to address in the concerns, the valid concerns from people around the economic impact of these actions and the constitutionality. My response to these valid concerns is the following. Number one, we heard some of the mitigating strategies that Councilmember Caldwell's with said, and we hope he addressed some of your concerns. And number two, government actions like the shut downs and stay at home orders have also had major economic health consequences. And by the way, they have also deprived people of the economic value of their property and their labor, which are the main constitutional concerns that we're talking about. Our government actions, our shutdowns are limitations on gathering. These have deprived countless small businesses of their income and led to major layoffs. But we universally support these actions because of the cost of these shutdowns. The cost of lost revenues, the cost of lost income pales in comparison to the cost of inaction. That's what we're saying here with this resolution. We're making a similar argument. We're asking for bold government action because the cost of inaction is monumental. And we hope our state and federal government will take the bold action is required to help people stay housed and to keep small businesses alive. Thank you. On on bar. So to move on. Right. Thank you, Mr. Sharon. And I want to thank both of the co-sponsors for the intention of what they want to accomplish. We say it's a non-binding. No solution. But in fact, if I vote for it, I bring my name to a resolution that we have not vetted. I can't put a I guess the expression. I heard Jay talk about putting a pause. I can't put a pause in the due process that I usually do to find out if something I vote for is legal. So I'm going to vote against it until it's been vetted by a legal counsel because I bind my name to the intention here not knowing. Not getting confirmation from a legal counsel, and I can't put a pause in my conscience to vote for something that feels good but doesn't do good. Never. Remember. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So I appreciate the evaluation that council members Ocala did, because that's exactly what we're hearing in my district, too. And I think probably everybody in the entire county is hearing very similar things from their constituents. My interest here is to know what is different that is in this ordinance, because originally in one of the statements that we read, it talked about the forbearance. As I'm looking through that, the title doesn't say anything about forbearance. The conversation hasn't said anything about that. So there's some uncertainty here as to not being all in sync. So are we saying that this would have forbearance or not forbearance? Will they be responsible for their debts after the pandemic is over or not? That's a legal question going. If they are asking for it to be paused. And there's an expectation, according to Councilmember Corrales, that there would be programs in place for it to be paid. Then that would be not a it would be a moratorium, but the fund would still be would be paid in the end. So there's. Potential that the temporary suspension may be constitutional. However, if it was to. For Bear and not have any responsible for payments, then that would likely bring a further constitutional problem, an issue. I'm done. Councilmember Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I do want to commend Councilman Rizal and D.A. Wells for the intense spirit of what they're bringing forth today. Clearly, a lot of compassion and a lot of thought going into the fact that people are hurting out there right now and that the quick disappearance of jobs and the expensive nature of the rent in our area are leaving people with a lot without a lot of answers. I want to I'm going to oppose this motion, but I want to suggest that there are ways, legal ways, constitutional ways that we can help a subset of the folks out, that this motion is attempting to help lower income people who have lost their jobs, that also, after in good faith, negotiating with their landlords, are unable to come to a resolution and also have debt piling up in ways that are are deeply troubling that could force bankruptcy. I think there are ways, including creating a subsidy with some of that federal money or partnership with the state to provide some rent rental assistance. Expanding Section eight vouchers is another way a landlord incentive program is yet a third way. I think those are all constitutional ways we can get to a very similar outcome. But the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that private property should not be taken for public use without providing compensation that the US Supreme Court extended that also to include personal property. The state quashed the state constitution over 100 pages and I read it once when I was getting ready to run for attorney general is much more prescriptive and challenging, and the issue with the constitutional challenges are that it's government action. And if government takes the action and then it turns out later on that it is unconstitutional action, whether it's the county, the state or the feds, it is government that is on the hook to pay the damages. And so that is the concern that I have here. I would point out to legal counsel that this motion says very specifically that no debt shall be accrued during the time of the enactment of this or of this legislation, whether it be at the state of the federal level. So right there, you're saying they don't have to they would get rent free and they also would not have to pay any of it back. They're either taking real property from folks or you're taking personal property in the form of cash payments. You're also potentially tortuously interfering with contractual rights. Those are big ticket items that cause me concern legally. I think there are other ways to get to an answer here, and as a result of all those factors, I'm going to be voting no. Thank you. For further discussion before I ask the sponsor to place the motion before us. Oh, well. Can someone recall? Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd just like to give one reminder that this is a motion. It is perfectly legal and within our charter to be able to make motions to the federal government and to the state government, to the president, Congress and our governor. And that's what this is about. We have listed we have included concepts that we would like to have dealt with. They in no way would anticipate that the governor or the president or Congress would follow our recommendation to the letter that they would work within the constraints of our state and federal constitution. But we think this is very important to be able to communicate, as is happening in many jurisdictions around the country and apparently a growing number of jurisdictions. That is one way that we can communicate to federal and state leaders about our values and our priorities and what we believe needs to be done in this tremendous national, state and county local emergency. Thank you. Thank you, gentlemen. Council members. Hello. Would you like to make a motion? Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. Thank you to all of my colleagues for hearing this and voicing really valid concerns and for also allowing public testimony and hearing directly from people who are struggling during this crisis. I move to take a vote on the proposed motion. Council members all those moved. We give it a do pass recommendation the motion 2020 166 other amendments. Mr. Chair sounds. A member of the world. So I move the striking amendment. Council member Cole Wells has moved adoption of striking amendment S1 and discussion. And said that it is motion 0165. I think you said 0166. So the notes I'm working for, say six six, I'll go with six five and S1 is before us discussion on this one up the Grove Councilmember of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Kerry, for clarifying. I apologize. I don't have the document in front of me. And the conversation got confusing in the striking amendment. Does it. Continue to. Say that we support the federal government not requiring folks to ever pay the rent? The thing that our attorney said was likely unconstitutional. Is that still what we're asking for in the. In the striking amendments. So don't move the language around. That does not change, but it is fairly vague. It says that such that no Washington resident should be required to pay rent during this health emergency or accumulate debt for that unpaid rent. So it is left somewhat ambiguous. But I believe Councilmember Caldwell's articulated the intent that it would be sort of deferred until later on. Paul Wells in council member call Wells You're right, I actually have been notes all over my desk and was reading the wrong number. Rest assured that all records are the same as most in 2020 165, and please proceed. Thank you. I do that to say understand. Yes. And I think that well, as we were developing a striking amendment and as we went back and forth on a lot of the language, this is the committee of the whole. If this legislation were to get a majority report out, we could certainly have another striking amendment at the full council meeting next Tuesday that would achieve the language that would be able to be perfected to meet the concerns that both council me. All those in favor of Amendment One, please signify by saying I, my people, those opposed me. Yeah, I. I'm going to ask the clerk to please take an oral vote. According to Jim Council member Lucy High. As a member, Bishop was a councilmember in Boston. No. But then basketball? No. As a member? Dunn No. As a member, Dunn was not council member. Cowell High Council member. Cowell was a councilmember. A number. Council member, Lambert was not council member of the role. I don't I'm. Not. A voting council member from Darwin. No. Councilmember Bongiovi was not councilmember for. Hello. Hi. Councilmember Farhat. I was a researcher by. Thank you. The Second Amendment has one Kerrys. It goes by one of five, eight and four, not count. Councilmember Zollo, for a total amendment. But what is it that I'm member? Council members are. Hello. Would you be kind enough to just move adoption of a total amendment to one? So sorry about that. I was on mute. I move for the title amendment. Thank you. Title amendment to what is before us. See no discussion of those in favor. Please signify by saying I. I oppose me. The title amendment is adopted. This is Motion 2020 165 as amended and final passage. Comments. How did she? Councilmember Balducci. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So this is a really this is a hard one for me. This is the hardest non-binding statement of intent I think I have had to vote on. It's. On the one hand, I agree with absolutely everything that has been said by the sponsor and the co-sponsor about the urgency and just the the fear , the the very real challenges that our communities are facing, as so many people in our communities are facing. I am very empathetic with the public comment that says, you know, we should stand up for renters and we need to stand up for keeping roofs over people's heads. And we should we absolutely should. We should help people to keep a roof over their heads. We should do everything we can in the middle of a once in over 100 years crisis to keep people who live in our jurisdiction from spiraling downwards and all the outcomes that will that will land the most heavily on the people who can least afford to bear them. I feel all of that and I want to say yes to that. I want to say yes. I want to side with the people who need me to side with them. But the concerns I have had since the beginning with this proposal remain, and that is I don't know that it ever does anything other than act as a statement of encouragement or support. I think that I have been very concerned that we could actually do harm with this proposal because people will hear it and read about it and get and just hear here wind of it somehow and assume that because we took this vote, they can start paying their rent and they can actually make decisions that will harm them in the long run. Because this isn't rent relief. We're not voting on rent relief. The state has got nothing teed up to vote on rent relief any time soon. The feds have got a proposal, but I. I am not hearing that it is actually constitutional, not in the way that we're asking here in this motion. And so I really don't want to harm people. I wish we were voting on a proposal to pay rent subsidies for people or to help them out in some way, that that would make it more likely they would be able to keep their roof for real as hard as it is. I just am concerned about the fact that this is a it's a statement. It's a statement that can't actually result in any good and could actually result in harm. And I want to really thank council members. I particularly have been so generous with understanding the concerns of, you know, myself and others who have concerns with this proposal while also being extraordinarily right and passionate about the need to support the people in our community. And so I just appreciate that attitude that you bring to this proposal very much. And I actually want to support Councilmember Sala and I. But but I am just very concerned that by voting yes to something that can not make a difference or or it is very unlikely to be able to make a difference. We are sending the wrong message. I mean, we heard from the people who testified that Seattle restaurants are having trouble paying their rent and they're walking away from their rent could permanently damage their ability to do business, that people could lose their homes because they have mortgaged their homes to pay for their businesses and they could lose those mortgages that people are unable to pay their rent. And we need a county, city and statewide approach. We need to put the needs of people in poverty first. And I heard quite frighteningly somebody say, implement this. What we do today will do nothing for any of that. It will not help those people. And I don't know that it will actually force another level of government or encourage them to be able to help those people. I think we should get to work doing something that will really make a difference. And so I am just it breaks my heart, but I am reluctantly going to vote no at committee. If it passes out of committee and comes to full council, I will gladly work with my colleagues to try to do something that I think makes it more meaningful. But I'm a very painful, reluctant no, because I just think it doesn't work for folks. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And by asking Councilmember Dombrowski, he was chair in listening to the dialog today, I believe that there is a consensus around expressing some support for those who are struggling to make mortgage payments and. And the intent behind that is maybe not entirely reflected in the language of this motion. Mr. Chair, we are operating with limited opportunities for interaction and dialog among members, and I would now like to make a privileged motion to lay this on the table or to continue it in our terms to a definite time. And a definite time would be the next meeting of the committee of the whole. The reason for the motion is to perhaps allow an opportunity for better language to come forward that could garner consensus and support those who are struggling financially. Councilmember Dombrowski has moved to table two, a date certain to be in the town meeting two weeks from today. Ms.. Cohen, can you confirm that the motion is debatable? It was. I think it's debatable. It's not debatable. Then I will ask the court to call the wrong Mr. Chair. Council Member COLWELL. I have a. 20 point to point of information. Yes, the point of enforcement. I was there too. Please proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I was actually going to provide a comment on what Councilmember Bell do, Chin said, and then Councilmember Dombroski made his motion here. So am I correct that I am unable to comment any further on the motion that was already before us? That's correct. We have a motion before us. I would, out of courtesy to my colleague, hold if possible, hold that motion in abeyance and take it up pending completion of her comment in response to our well duty. Councilmember Dombroski, I heard you withdraw your your motion more. Suspend it. Make it a contingent motion. Mr. Chair, I heard you. I heard you withdraw your motion that you may offer again in a moment. Councilmember Colwell So that was. Thank you, Mr. Chair. There may be others who wish to speak, too. I appreciate the remarks of Councilmember Balducci, although I think it's really it's not a zero sum game. There are obviously other things that we can do, because this is an enormous issue for so many of our constituents, so many residents and business owners and property owners and our council in our county. But we do have a situation in which there is some urgency. But this is a symbolic motion. It is not going to change anything here, and it would be up to us in how we communicate the passage of this legislation if indeed the parts are were to pass. And I don't believe that are going forward with this today with would signify that people are going to misconstrue what we're doing and have their hopes up and think that they aren't going to be paying rent. But apart from the motion that will be made momentarily by Council member Ken Barsky, we don't have the opportunity to go forward with this, to improve it, to protect it. If we do not have five votes. So apart from Councilmember Dunbar's motion, I just encourage people to think about that, that we can always percept if we keep this alive. And I think the goal, the objectives are very worthy of being able to have this continue, even for a symbolic measure. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. This is Councilmember McDermott speaking for myself with the motion before us at the moment. And I would say I would point out that this motion there greatly improved by the striker continues to be flawed. And I do want to emphasize how much improvement I think the striking amendment that we've adopted today does bring. However, it still, as we've discussed, does not suspend rents and mortgages. We don't have the actual authority imposed on federal and state officials to do so. And we've heard some discussion of the legal and constitutional concerns, but I would vote in favor of this motion today because of the larger system's fatal flaws that are that far outweigh the flaws in this motion itself. There is no social safety net in our county and our state and our country that measures up to the need in the current pandemic that we're responding to. We heard today in public testimony I've seen in my email and I've seen in conversations with constituents, people have a real concern and we've seen that recently in the unemployment figures. The most recent unemployment figures I can find are that 22 million people nationally have filed unemployment claims. That's a level not seen since the Great Depression. And in Washington state alone, 585,983. Let me say that again. 585,983 people have applied for unemployment in the state of Washington. That's twice the number of the peak of the Great Recession. And when additional federal benefits for self-employed people went live on Saturday, the state system crashed. So that number isn't reflective of any increase since then. The county numbers. We don't have to come up monthly. They'll be out in about ten more days. But we know that the rental assistance program that's been sponsored by United Way of King County has been suspended because the applications have outweighed the funds raised to date. And at the same time, I've heard direct pleas from the Interfaith Council on on trying to respond to homelessness, who had gathered money in April to it to assist with rent and are now concerned about their lack of IT ability to raise even a matching amount for yet another month of rent. The need is real that we've heard the while this motion might have its flaws. The system, the overall system it's we're trying to respond to is fatally flawed. And that's why I'm supporting the motion today. Mr. Chair. Caldwell Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I believe this would be appropriate to do. I'd like to move that. The striking amendment as amended, the motion as amended to go to full council without recommendation. That would give us the opportunity to process the language without having to delay until we have another committee of the whole meeting in two weeks. Council member Col Wells has asked that we amend the motion to without recommendation. I be willing to accept that as a friendly amendment of the makeup of the original motion would accept it. Mr. Chair. I accept it. Then barring objection, I'm going to accept that as a friendly amendment and have the motion as amended before us to go to full council without recommendation. Further discussion or perhaps emotion. So we have a motion on the table, Mr. Chair, and it was just amended with a striker title amendment and then a friendly amendment. So at some point you to vote on the underlying right. We have we have a motion now. We have the original motion that was introduced. We've adopted a striking amendment and a total amendment. And by friendly amendment, we have just changed the recommendation. So it would be without recommendation to full council. And I am pausing to see if there is a motion that was withdrawn earlier. I don't want to for to. The maker of that motion from having the opportunity to do so again after allowing conversation to continue. Mr. Chair, I'm just ready to cast my vote. Thank you. And so I would ask council members. Otherwise, anything too close. Oh, that's all for now, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much to everybody for your comments. Madam, first I'd ask you to please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. By voting no. Yeah. Doesn't I wish it was not Councilmember DEMBOSKY. No councilmember than basketball? No. Councilmember Dunn. No. Councilmember Dunn But not Councilmember Colwell. Right. Councilmember Colwell Both. Councilmember Lambert. Yeah, yeah. As a member of both. No. Councilmember Article. II. Councilmember Abigail. Okay. And of Bandido. No. Council member Van de Boer was not. Council member Sally. I can't remember. Starlight. Both I. It's a chair. I. Executive Orders for ICE finals in most years. The motion is not adopted. That Texas item on today's agenda. This is the second piece of legislation that would request the executive create a blue ribbon panel of experts to address issues related to the economic recovery. We have Cliff Cory from Council Central South to provide a brief high level overview. Mr. Cory. If you please proceed. Thank you, Mr. Chair. This discussing career of council staff. Good afternoon. The materials for this and begin with the staff report on page 83 of your packet today. Basically, this proposed motion would call on the executive to establish a blue ribbon panel named the Corona's A Coronavirus Recovery Economic Task Force, or the Cure Task Force, which would be made up of enumerated state and local government leaders, along with business and industry representatives and other leaders, to identify issues and make recommendations for the economic recovery to the COVID 19 pandemic. The motion establishes the membership, and it also would require that the executive begin the establishment of the task force by May 15th and be prepared to report to the Council its recommendations within three months of the effective date of this motion. So basically, assuming action on this, it would be within three months, with the concept being that the industry leaders would come together along with other governmental leaders, union leaders, members of the community who are affected by the pandemic to discuss what would be needed and recovery efforts very similar to the recovery from any major disaster. Those recommendations would be formulated and would be ultimately form the basis for the recovery plan for the county looking for both economic recovery and other recovery. And with that, Mr. Chair, there is a striking amendment that incorporates format and technical changes recommended by the Code Advisor and makes no substantive changes. And if there are any questions for me. Thank you to my staff. Thank you, Mr. Curry. Questions for Mr. Curry. Hearing no questions from Mr. Curry Council member Dunn as the maker of the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, great. Thanks. And I wanted to first commend Cliff Curry for his work on this in a very quick turnaround time and in his work doing it mostly from home as well. What the your taskforce seeks to do is put a blue ribbon commission together. As Cliff indicated, that would be of local and state government leaders combined with various labor and other communities of interest representatives, as well as the business community. The idea is that we are going to be dealing with COVID 19 for a while, but as it recedes, we're going to be left with a substantially down economy. Given the sheer dollars, federal stimulus dollars and other moneys from both state and local governments being put in. We want to be among the first communities in the United States to emerge, and it will be all about the jobs and it'll be all about the economy. As we saw 2000 and 2009, the top three issues were jobs in the economy and jobs in the economy and jobs in the economy. We're going to be there soon enough. And so what we want to do is create a working group of individuals from all the communities. We have to really prime the pump and get the economy moving in ways that maybe we don't think of in our limited stovepipes here at local government. Maybe Microsoft doesn't think of in their stovepipe, the health care sector, in their stovepipe. But together, collaboration will generate the ideas we need. I have been talking with executive staff. I've been talking with the chair of the King County Council chair about duty. And we are going to come together, I believe, also with Team Caldwell's Sierra budget, to further refine this basic concept. And I commend Chair Balducci for her leadership on the needs assessment. That's a very, very important document. And what it is what it does in part is to sort of look internally at the needs, but also externally. What this would do is look very externally and long term at jobs and the economy. And how we dovetail those two together, I think will be an important role for all of us moving forward. So that's just kind of the primer. I'm not expecting a vote on this matter today and look forward to improving this particular motion as we move forward. But thank you for the discussion. And your share. This is quite a. Councilmember ability. Validity. There's always answer that the way I answer the phone, I yeah. I want to I want to add my thanks to Councilmember Dunn as to the previous motion to the making of the previous motion. There's just a lot to do. And and we are going to be struggling to come out of where we are today, where we're going after this. I think there's a question of a real debate, but how we get there, we definitely will need to work with representatives of the different sectors. So I did talk to Councilmember Dunn and others, and I think part of what we need to do is get our arms around the lay of the land a little bit. There are a lot of tables convening right now. The governor has several sector tables with the construction industry, the restaurant industry. They're talking to the automotive industry. And there's an effort coming together at Chambers of Commerce and business groups, having to do with large businesses, different ones having to do with smaller businesses, different parts of the county. And I think that it's really a good idea to have a discussion with a delegation from the council, as Councilmember Dunn described and the executive, to just wrap our brain around where we're going and how we work together, what is the lane of the county can occupy? I will just share my $0.02. I think there's two ways you can go with this. You can go big or you can go small and big is we try to coordinate everything county wide. I don't know if we're in a position to do that, but if there's a coordination role that's missing, sometimes that is our role and smaller is that we consider what are the county things that just we can do that only we can do, for example, as the health orders start to ramp down because we we continue on the path that we're on and maybe are able to start gradually loosening health orders without seeing a big rebound. What does that look like for small businesses without looking for restaurants? What does that look like for people to start coming out? They'll need more guidance than they probably got going in. So I suppose. The idea of having a further conversation across branches and then coming back with either a striking amendment or some other proposal as appropriate . And again, thank us, everyone, for being flexible with this and joining in conversation about how we can do something as Matt, how we really fix this. That's how we fix. Ultimately, people's ability to pay the rent is to get the economy going again so people can work and make money. And I'll stop there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, colleagues. Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Balducci, I want to thank you for introducing the legislation and kicking off the discussion today, and we'll look forward to more work and further action. That concludes the items on our agenda for today. Before we adjourn, I want to make sure that technical difficulties didn't prevent any council members from voting. Ms.. Calderon I don't believe there are any members excused for missing some votes. Can you confirm that for me? Yes. As a member, there was all the votes were recorded. Thank you. And so with that, I want to thank everyone who participated in the briefings and legislation today and with no other business at our adjourned. And I'll remind members that there is a Zoom session into practice, that technology in anticipation of using it for April 28th Council meeting. There will be no business conducted. This is a purely a test of the technology itself. With that, this meeting is adjourned. They? ", "output": "A MOTION calling on Governor Inslee to impose an immediate moratorium on rent payments and urging federal legislators and the Trump administration to impose an immediate moratorium on rent and mortgage payments."}
{"id": "king_13096f13-dfcc-4e78-bbf3-ccc67da40e3c", "input": "Afternoon. I'm King County Council member Joe McDermott reconvening the committee of the whole for Monday, February 24th. And as we begin today, I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the traditional lands, the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We want to thank the caretakers of this land who've lived here and continue to since time immemorial. And I'd also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians in King County who have brought their cultural ways of life here and greatly enrich our community. Councilmember Up the Grove. I'd welcome a motion to approve the minutes. Thank you. Mr. Cherry moved that the minutes of February 11, 2020 be approved. Councilmember up the Grove has moved to February 10th. 10th. I was jumping ahead to our next meeting. February 10th, 2020. Be approved. The minutes are before I see no discussion. All those in favor. Please say I oppose. Nay, the ayes have it. Minutes are approved. That brings us to public comment. Do if anybody signed in today for public comment. We do have one person signed in the East. Standard rules are in place for public comment and I would invite Kasich anybody to come forward. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Through. And this is the story of America and television in the same. And to a woman and the hundred hundreds of letters. Kid gleefully parish. Priest said by the three parentheses, be beat when Francis pulls her clothes. Close observation of current events and the his independence independent duty means members of his family with actors. On big owns great. Storage there with consequence in the South Carolina Cubans and sons. Who become from judiciary figures. In England instances of. It and. Boston. With a fatal. Party. Part of it is made in Italian and. Political life or current or. Violent means could appeal. This letter said. I think poor. Public both. Of them in the. Mean eyes. Of relative I recall I don't allows an insight and advance this information. So here he is. Is ice might be always. And insight and and independence information so here I might. Be a. Color. Ice. In. Through it watch through. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else who would like to offer public testimony today? Anyone else? See, no one will close the public hearing. And that takes us to our first item on business item in today's agenda. We have a motion confirming the executive's appointment of A.S. Peterson to the Council District six seat for the For Culture Board , actually, who resides in Council District six to the full culture board as an executive At-Large member for the remaining remaining three years of a unexpired term that would end at the end of 2022. Miss Peterson is an active community member and has a background in the arts meeting the criteria for board members established in the charter and to open the presentation council. Staphylococcal zoghbi. Ms.. Crackers IP. Thank you. Good afternoon. Council Members Amelia Crackles IP Council staff materials for this item began on page seven of your staff report. As the chair stated, this motion would confirm the appointment of A.C. Peterson to the board culture board of directors. And just a quick briefing, a quick recap of the board culture board. It's board culture is King County's Cultural Public Development Authority. It was created in 2002 to administer King County's arts and heritage programs, and it's governed by a 15 member board of directors. Directors are to have a demonstrated commitment to and knowledge of cultural resources, the active and experienced community and civic and in community and civic issues and concerns, and have an ability to evaluate the needs of cultural constituencies in the region as a whole. And directors are to represent a range of talents, experience, backgrounds and viewpoints. Directors must be residents of King County and are chosen to reflect the geographic and cultural diversity of the county. And directors are appointed by either King County Council members or the executive and confirmed by the King County Council. So Miss Peterson, who sits beside me, lives in Kirkland, and she's a resident of Council District Six. She was appointed to fill a vacancy for the remainder of this term for Position 13, and she was appointed by executive Dow Constantine. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree in architecture and recently recently retired as the communications officers for UW Libraries. She's produced numerous works of dance and choreographed both locally and nationally, and the proposed motion would confirm her appointment to the board culture board for the remainder of this three year term, expiring December 31st, 2022. And her appointment is consistent with the criteria established in the Fort Culture Charter or called for park board members. That concludes my Stack Report. Thank you. Senior Questions. Leia, Welcome. And on. There you go. Hello. Hello. Good afternoon. Thank you. Just to piggyback onto my introduction. Numerous day jobs have been in arts administration at Northwest Asian-American Theater and on the boards contemporary performance presenter Before I most recently went to UTEP Libraries as a communications officer. My volunteer work also includes narrating at the talking book and Braille library, where I specialize in pronouncing Japanese words and names. So they select books for me for that. I guess I welcome any questions. Are you already participating in the Forum Culture Board? What interests and passions have you found before the board already? I've served on the Arts Advisory Committee for six years and what I'm really most passionate about is inclusion for people and artists and administrators of differing abilities. And that is already part of the mission and has evolved as part of the mission most recently and representing geographic diversity as well. I grew up in Seattle, but I've been living in Kirkland since 2003, so I'm getting a different view of the county. Also, as an arts, a reviewer for sustained support, I've traveled really all over from federal way to to Duvall to Snoqualmie, to review, to observe arts performances and review them. Wonderful. Yeah. Thank you. Any other questions of the council member up the grove? I didn't want to interrupt your theme song. I know. Like Councilmember, it's walk up music. Okay. Welcome to. Walk up. Music. I think it's slow motion music. Yeah, well, first, let me say thank you for your willingness to lend your time and talents. Obviously, you have a fantastic background. Well, you maybe go a little deeper on this kind of question of geographic balance. It's something that we've always struggled with. And it seems that historically and it makes sense there are large regional institutions are in the population center historically and in Seattle. And as transportation gets more congested, it's a little tougher for those on the outside to get in the city. Also, with the gentrification we've seen, the diversity and the poverty in some of the folks who would benefit the greatest from arts and cultural investments are getting further out. So how do we you know, how do we sort of balance that tension? And are there opportunities to have regional centers and other growth centers around the county or, you know, kind of what? Any thoughts or ideas? I think we're all kind of struggling with that question. Yeah, no, I think that's a really good question. I mean, I grew up in Seattle but moved to Kirkland because it was what I could afford at the time. One of the things that poor culture does that I see them doing is outreach and going to different neighborhoods. It's called Halo for culture, so and encouraging people to come to various places to ask them and inquire and learn about funding opportunities. I think part of it also is, you know, the definition of arts and culture and and it has been evolving from traditional Western based arts over the past, you know, centuries to, you know, what is art. There might be community that's doing something. And they would they might just say, well, you know, is this art? This is this is just art, traditional dance. This is what we do. So I think reaching people where they live is really important and just expanding, expanding the definition of culture. I think that's great. They've been down in my neck of the woods down south for culture staff on several occasions this last year in different cities, doing part of their assessment of of kind of listening to what community members want. And I agree that's the important first step. But anyhow, thanks again for your willingness. Councilmember Bell duty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I don't know what part of Seattle you lived in, but whatever district that was is losses. District six is gains. So we're very glad that you're in Kirkland Electric Physics as you as you embark on on being a board member for this really indispensable in my mind institution. What do you what do you thinking about like what we do well that you want to continue to support or what we could do more of or do better that you would like to see us change. You said, what do you what do you bring? What what thoughts and passions do you have as you come to the board? One of the passions I have is accessibility, and I want to expand on that to artists of different abilities. I took American Sign Language while I was at the while I was working at the U for a year. And I sort of I learned that the deaf community sees itself as a linguistic minority. And when I go to theater, I try to go to things that are ASL interpreted. And I also just see how it's it's sort of an invisible community for those of us who who are are speaking. And hearing and for whom spoken English is the first language. So that's just something I want. That's one in particular that I want to include. And just to sort of recap, it's not just for audiences to have ASL interpretation in large print and Braille, but how do we involve people at all stages of making and supporting and producing and being up in the higher levels of organizations? Yeah. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I mean, is very similar to what Councilmember at the Grove asked you out. And I'm glad you said Duval, and I appreciate that. And we had a big celebration last night for last in Duval about some potential for developing a place to have arts that doesn't exist. We now have the foundation and the plumbing. Now we just need a building to go on top of the foundation. Right. So but getting those steps is very difficult for three or four people to do. And so I'm thinking about how far culture can bring in, like a general contractor or a navigator that could help. Okay, you've got this spa now. This is what we can do to help you. And really looking at not only in Duval that's gotten the foundations already done, but in other places lately we've been calling the Far East of this county to be able to help people who haven't done these kind of big projects to get the expertize. So how will you help us to get to the place where we have the expertize here working it out in other parts of the county? Mm hmm. One of the recent panels I sat on just last month was with local arts agencies and working with in this case, it was with artists who could advise them on or partner with them on planning. And then it could that could extend to actual maybe construction in this case or whatever it is, if it's a if it's a performance or if it's a building or something. I can't speak to all the details of that, but that's the way of partnering people. And it's it's it's it's up to that the community to they I think they can get a recommendation from for culture about who they might consult with and if there is a local arts agency. I know there's several throughout the county that for culture will partner with. We are doing a pilot right now just in the very beginning with historic Seattle having the jurisdiction to work in Ball City on a project. And if that turns out to be as wonderful as I hope it is, yeah, I, I've been very impressed with the expertize and the willingness to flex and bring the expertize outside of Seattle. And if it turns out wonderful, I think we've got a prototype, so that would be wonderful. That's great. I think what for culture does really well right now is identify some of the resources and people that are out there and partner with them. It's not always working in a traditional role with the originating artists or with, you know, somebody. It I think it's developing. Is partnerships great that they can prove valuable. Thank you. Thank you. See? No further questions. I did entertain a motion. Councilmember Belushi. I would like to. Although 1/2 move. Proposed Ordinance 2020 0074a motion 2020 007 for with the do pass recommendation. Councilmember Bell did she's moved to give a do pass recommendation to motion to 20 2074. See no further discussion. Madam Cook, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Country of origin. I remember the. The. Council member, Don. Miracle worker. But remember, this member of the group kept. Their phone records. I can't remember the number. Hi, Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the vote is eight ays no noes, and Councilmember Dunn excused. Thank you. By unanimous vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to motion 20, 20, 74, and we will advance that to full council at the regular pace. On the consent agenda seem no objection. So ordered. Thank you. Congratulations. Provided. Provided you still have the support of full council? Yes. And that takes us to item eight on today's agenda. That is Motion 20 2005, which would accept a report on gun violence among youth and young adults submitted to council pursuant to motion 15234. Which is a fancy way of saying that in summer of 2018, the Council adopted several pieces of legislation that constituted the Gun Safety Action Plan, one of which was a study on youth and young adult gun violence. And this is the report that the council asked for that will be presented today. Ms.. Porter Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sam Porter Council Central Policy Staff. You are correct. This would accept the motion requested, except the report requested by that motion. The motion described the procedure for development and contents of the report, which included engaging and collaborating with King County children and young adults and their families, in particular those who are at risk or have experience with the issue of gun violence. To participate in the development of the report that at the minimum should include the following a comprehensive inventory of existing programs that focus on youth violence prevention and intervention, and other community based efforts in the county, such as best starts for kids, community corrections, juvenile Justice Data and the Family Intervention and Restorative Services Program known as Firs Gang Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiatives and the Gun Violence Prevention Initiative. The report should also include methods and findings from the interviews and focus groups with youth, young adults and their families and providers who work with youth and their families on issues related to gun violence. The report should inform recommendations and strategies to prevent youth and young adult gun violence, and it should be presented to specific groups, including youth and their families who participated in the focus groups. The King County Gun Violence Prevention and Intervention Committee that includes representatives of law enforcement, civic groups and the King County Prosecuting Attorney's Office. Existing King County programs that focused on youth violence prevention and intervention. And other community based efforts in the county that impact youth and young adults such as best starts for kids and youth detention. The Juvenile Justice Equity Steering Committee and the and other county committees or task forces charged with issues on this subject. The executive was requested to develop the recommendations on how the county can support and strengthen community based organizations. Efforts to curb gun violence and expenditure restriction. About $180,000 was included in the public outdoor public health appropriation during the 2019 second Supplemental Budget to support the development of this report. The report includes the five main components as requested, and we have two representatives from public health today, Marguerite Row and Vanessa Quince, and there are two providers in the in the field and then one individual who participated in the focus groups that are here. Come on up. Thank you. And invite Ms.. Ro, Dr. Quince and team forward, please. Welcome. I don't know who wants to lead off and make introductions and understand. One of you has has to leave perhaps before the presentation is done. So who wants to go first and I leave it all in your capable hands. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Marguerite Rowe. I'm your chief of assessment, policy development and Evaluation and director of Chronic Disease and Injury Prevention at Public Health. And I just want to say thank you for the opportunity. As many of you know, we continue to do work on gun violence through collection of data and the lock it up effort that we have through public health in our we do a lot of work on quantitative data, but it was very important for us to work with you all on filling in the gaps. And this is really hearing from the voices, particularly of those who are directly and most impacted, and that is the youth and young adults themselves. We we're also really fortunate today to hear from our service providers as well and others who have been working in our community to address this issue. So with that, let me turn it over to Dr. Kritz and then we'll go from there. Okay. So hi. My name is Vanessa Quince. Thank you all for having me here. Thank you for your continued work to gun violence. I also want to thank the three panelists, Beverly, Raquel and Mardy for coming here to share your experiences within the community with us. So I just want to be open about the fact that we do have a panelist that needs to leave early today. So I'm going to cut the presentation short because I want to be respectful of the time of the panelist. And if there's more information that needs to happen afterwards, we can have that discussion, but we want to make sure that we hear from the panelists. So my name is Vanessa Quince. I am a social research scientist in EPD, which is in public health. So I have experience working in or volunteering at juvenile detention facilities in my home state, New York. And I also teach at Monroe Correctional Facility within Washington State. So the issue of gun violence is important to me, both professionally as well as personally. In this presentation, I will present the findings of the Youth and Young Adult Gun Violence Report, and then we will go to the panelists and then we will open up to Q&A once again, due to time constraints, I'm not only cutting the already short reports short, but once again, we can go in depth if there is a need to go further. So I will get started. And once again, thank you for your time. So this project was in response to a council motion which asks the executive to gather the perspectives of youth, young adults, family members, as well as service providers on the protective and risk factors related to gun violence, and then gather their perspectives as well as develop some recommendations from the community as well. So basically before going into the findings, we take a step back and thinking about why should we care about youth and young adult gun violence? So firearm violence affects and impacts King County youth and young adults through both homicide and suicide. So what we have here is the number of firearm related deaths and forms of homicide and suicide from 1999 to 2017. In King County, youth and young adult suicide occurs in all places among all races. Basically saying that suicide among youth and young adults is not concentrated, whereas fire homicide rates tend to be concentrated in communities of color. So who we spoke with between June and August 2019, the research team and I, it was me, two other social research scientists and then a practitioner conducted 14 listening sessions with youth, young adults and families for a total of 80 youth and young adults participants. And then we also had 26 family member family members participate as well. In addition to the youth and young adults, we talked to ten different service providers. So they were either King County staff, different community providers as well as researchers. We kept the identities of all the participants. Confidential confidentiality was the main thing that was important to us throughout this research project. In addition to conducting the focus groups, we conducted a demographic questionnaire at the beginning of each listening session just to get an idea of who who we spoke to in terms of age, race, gender and other types of demographic information. We also asked participants to check all that apply, to look at youth proximity to gun violence. So participants were asked to check whether or not they, knowing someone that owns a gun, knowing someone who has been shot by or injured, witnessed a shooting, been shot or shot at, carried a gun or been part of a violent group. So that explains the chart that you see on the side. So this graph summarizes our key findings, which I will go into further detail later on, but I'm going to open up to the panelist right after I discuss this. So basically used described everyday circumstances and their environments as strongly influencing their decisions to engage in gun violence. And we categorize these findings into the macro, local and micro context. So in this report, we talk about the different contexts is which youth are engaging in, which then influences their decisions to engage in gun violence. So first we have violent imagery and societal norms. This speaks to social media, mainstream media and news messaging about gun violence. Then we talk about community conditions. Through our report, we find out several different community conditions that either mitigate or contribute to the likelihood of youth engaging in gun violence. Next, we have mental health, brain development and masculinity. So how these different things interact with the violent imagery as well as community condition conditions ultimately shapes individual decision making. And then while all these different contexts matter and affect the decisions of youth to engage in gun violence. D is easy access to guns regardless of who we talk to. Socio economic group demographics youth describe being easily able to access guns and that contributing to their decisions to engage in gun violence. So I'm going to open it up to the panelist and we asked them to prepare answers for three questions. So first, I would like you to provide your name and give us a brief introduction of yourselves. Second, why is the issue of gun violence important to you? And then the third, talking about the recommendations, what are some of the recommendations from this report that resonated with you the most? So I'm going to start with or your own recommendations as well. So I'm going to start off with Beverly and then work our way down. Thank you again for coming. Thank you very much. I start off with a thread. I talk. My name is Beverly Fletcher Roberson. I'm a come to this work through two organizations, one, Grandmothers Against Gun Violence, where I'm on the board and have been on the board there for four years. And now with Grandmothers Against Gun Violence Foundation, which supports research in the area of gun violence. The other organization which I come to this work through is community passageways. I'm also on the board of that organization of helping them work through various infrastructure opportunities to improve. My background in general is I'm a retired corporate executive from Weyerhaeuser Company. I lived on the East Side for 40 years. I'm originally from Ohio, and the issue that I had to come to grips with was I was a survivor and am a survivor of gun related domestic violence. And and the conditions under which that occurred were the conditions which I believe many individuals find themselves dealing with it today. And that is in a home where there's lots of trauma, historical trauma. My husband was a Vietnam vet, came from a broken family and a number of other issues which instigated several domestic violence related incidents. And in addition to that, I adopted a newborn infant at the age of 42 as a single mom, young, African-American, male, and even living on the east side, there was this issue of trust and fear. And that's really why this issue of gun violence is important. One of the things that I believe is that and one of the things that came up is the importance of having a trusted adult in one's life. And the reason why that is, I believe, is many of our young people of color don't feel safe and they don't feel safe in their homes. They don't feel safe in their schools. They don't feel safe walking down the street. And they don't believe that they can depend on our community service organizations excuse me, our community safety organizations, to provide them with a safe environment. And so one of the things that I resonate with community passageways in particular, is the fact that they provide a safe adult, a trusted adult to work with kids and young adults coming through the justice system. And they walk with them one on one throughout the process, allowing them to make mistakes and come back from it, even though these individuals aren't family members. Family is really important. So one of the things that I realized, the issue of broken families contributes to gun violence. Okay. And the issue of broken families in trauma. Okay. Having other family members that have been killed, incarcerated. Divorce, abuse is a key issue as to why why these individuals are unable to. Many times self-regulate. Yeah. So one of the recommendations that I believe was here was to be able to provide. Mental health services to these youth. And the type of mental health service that's really important is healing their trauma. Trauma healing. Everything else is a temporary Band-Aid. So I highly recommend that we have mental health for the entire family, a treatment for the entire family, but not just the traditional mental health, but something that allows these individuals to heal their trauma and self-regulate . The second area that I would recommend on your support and your recommendations is really having community places where these kids can go to. I identify them as safe places. Well, one of the key issues also is these kids don't feel safe in their homes. So when there's domestic violence between a parent and a child in the home, which often occurs, the kids get kicked out and they don't have a place to go. And I've had that experience of having brought in a young man of Ethiopian descent into my home who was adopted by Caucasian parents. And there was just tension and there was no place for this child to go to care. And he was highly traumatized from his home country. So we need to have safe places for these kids to go, not just for recreation, but also for the fact that they need temporary shelter. There is no youth shelter in South Seattle. For these kids to go to. And so a lot of them are kicked out in the street and they find their their tribe in the street among street gangs, people who they believe are can be trusted. Okay. And so I'm going to end there. Other than to say that our police officers play a key role in this resolving gun violence in our community. We get up in arms about the 1%. I come to grandmothers against gun violence because they were in. They were involved in mass shootings and interest in mass shootings. I call that the 1% of this movement. Okay. And so I tried to bring into the organization understanding that 80% of the gun related homicides occur among men of color. Okay. And in particular, because they don't depend they can't depend on the police officers to keep them safe or to resolve the issues in the community. So there has to be an increase in police trust as well, which does not exist in our community. So I will end there. There are other things that I certainly can't say, but I want to give my other panelists an opportunity to just be. Thank you. So Beverly is leaving. So we have 3 minutes left with her here. If there's any questions for Beverly before we take it to the next panelist, that would be welcome. I think we're struck by the specific recommendations you lay out, the needs you articulate from both your work in the community and your personal experience. Thank you. Thank you very much. Council Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Beverly, thank you for being here. I wish you didn't have to leave already. What you brought out is really compelling in many ways, and I appreciate the recommendations that you have put forth. What if you could boil everything down to one thing that you would like to communicate to us as being the most essential and elemental? What would that be? I believe. The most important thing that we have to do is really heal the trauma and to walk alongside of these young people, not just temporarily, and throw money at programs six months, eight months, but have a program that allows them to understand how to self-regulate and help the family heal the trauma over several years. Hey, continual economic support for being able to address the trauma that eventually leads to gun violence. Yeah. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. More than welcome to come back. But you probably already see Dominic enough. One more question. Yes, sure. If you have to leave, no problem. I can ask. Please. Please. Thank you so much. I wanted to ask you because your report was so amazing and touching and thank you for your work. Thank everybody on this panel for your work, especially because asking the people who are most likely to be impacted by gun violence, what their solutions are is the most effective way to get things done . And in my opinion, and I'm sure you feel this way as well, can you all confirm that these recommendations laid out in this report come from the youth and young adults who you interviewed? Is this from them or was it screened and changed in any kind of way? So I can answer that question, yes. So first, these recommendations reflect like if you three young adults said that they wanted more of something, that is something that is reflected here. We also had a specific question in the room, in the listening sessions, what are some of your recommendations to curb gun violence? That is also reflected here. And I think one of the last ones very much is the development community supports and government alignments. That's less from the youth and young adults and more from the service providers and how they articulated one of the ways to address the issues. So I would say there are three different ways how we generated these supports. We also did the motion required that we do community report backs. So I went back to community, went back to stakeholders, went back to groups that participated in the report to present the findings. And generally they're like, Yup, that's exactly what we said. So I think they're consistent. Yeah. So a couple of weeks ago I went to a listening session at New Holly Gathering Hall that the community had called to address gun violence. And they had these focus groups sitting in circles. And one of the focus groups was just youth and young adults. And I sat there for most of the time and listened to what those young people had to say. And it struck me that they said the same things that are listed here, and none of them said they wanted more police or more courts or more jails as a response to gun violence. And if you really think about that, that's powerful, because the people who should be most afraid that they are going to be shot and killed are not saying they want more policing resources. And that's not to say that effective policing doesn't have a role, but it speaks to what you're talking about, Miss Beverley, which is lack of trust that's going on. So any time these shootings are happening and there's a spike, our first reaction is to deploy more policing resources to a group of people who don't have that kind of trust with them. So could you speak on that a little bit? What is it going to take to gain more trust? And is are we responding the right way currently? Somebody else. Would you like me to answer that? Okay. All right. It's it's interesting you should answer that question, because I've been in contact with the chief that Diaz, Assistant Chief Diaz and Chief Best specifically on the subject of increasing police trust in the community. And the key thing is to really, like anything else, have people that are in the community on a regular basis that aren't seen as enforcers. Okay. To to really develop a rapport. We talk about putting a community service office in Pioneer Square, where the businesses are as a result of the last shooting down there. Why don't we do something similar in South Seattle or in the other areas where these officers officers are sitting there to be of help, of service, of support, that there is you know, and they are people who look like them. We all work best, unfortunately, with people who look and think like us. Yeah, that's just the way the world runs. Okay. It's not the way that it should be. But in, in, in. And I'm really emotional about this because I think we're just missing an opportunity to create community. Okay. And that's what we're really wanting to do. These kids, youth, they have been displaced either from their home country. And so they have no community. They've been displaced from the South Seattle area due to gentrification. Okay. They have no sense of community. Many of their parents have been incarcerated, killed. They don't have the generational support and report. And that goes back to my first thing, having trusted adults. And so, no, I don't believe that putting more police with driving up and down the street hunting for someone to do that. It's more important, really, to have them there, to look for the good and to help people, young people, figure out how to do good. Okay. I'm. I'm verbose. Apologize. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you very much for sharing your time with us not only today, but in developing the report. Great again. And well, come back anytime. I appreciate your having me. Thank you. You're welcome. I recall the yield to Marty. You go first. Hi. My name is Marty Jackson, and I have a number of hats that I wear today and every day. I'm a practitioner with the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County, so that specifically the Southeast Network Safety Net program. And I'm also a core team member on the Raider Beach, a beautiful, safe place for youth. I'm a community member from the Rainier Valley area and from Skyway. And so there are a number of I'm also a mother of four young people and one grandchild. So I'm a mother and a grand mother as well is another hat that I wear, not just personally, but also as a practitioner. Wise woman once told me, You bring who you are to what you do. And so I find it impossible to not be a mother, a grandmother, a sister, a daughter of two public servants who served here in King County for over 30 years. And so this is work that I grew up in, but also came back to work in. And so when I am speaking about gun violence, I was just actually speaking to a colleague of mine. There have been a number of these conversations happening pretty much weekly, and I'd be remiss if I didn't say it's all starting to run in together now. And so today, in speaking about gun violence, really, as I was listening to Ms.. Beverley speak, I have to take it first, not from a practitioner because I have the fortunate, it fortunate for me that that I have an advantage to talk with young people every day and young adults that I work with who are the most marginalized and vulnerable people within our city, the city of Seattle, but also in King County. And so every day, instead of there being a focus group for me, every day I have a focus group. Every day I come into contact with young adults who have been harmed by the system, who have been disenfranchized by our school systems and public institutions, and who are hurting and needing assistance. And unfortunately, at a point in their life due to the circumstances, not just in their environment and in their neighborhoods, but also because of the disconnect also from law enforcement and some of that historical harm which has caused us to have to create healing circles for our young people. About two years ago, my daughter was a victim of gun violence. And so this is very personal for me. My son has been getting involved at the age of 16 to the age of 20 and is now currently incarcerated. And so this work goes beyond me as a practitioner. I have unfortunately had to experience the unfortunate harm. Of the systems that I work in and the systems that I trust. And so when I think about gun violence on a personal level, and I think about when my daughter was a victim and when she was not the intended target, but an innocent bystander. I think about what didn't happen as a follow up to that incident. And so in speaking about the disconnect, law enforcement as a parent, that was that incident was never resolved. Even though I'm a practitioner, I've worked in this community for over 20 years now. And I've worked specifically with gang involved youth working on gang violence prevention. Violence intervention. And I've been doing this for a number of years. And so it is unfortunate for me to have to come from that, but that is what's most pressing for me right now, is the fact that when I had conversations with law enforcement, that disconnect. And almost spilling accused. Rather than being a. Citizen and a resident of the neighborhood of whom I've dedicated over 20 years of my life to work with the very young people who may have been at the hand of my daughter shooting. It's been very traumatizing for me and my family. But what it has done, it's allowed for me to experience it on a personal level. But I never thought that I would experience before so that I can help the young people that I serve daily. And so instead of this becoming a barrier for me, it's become a mission for me. It's become I've redirected that because it's so important for our young people who are disconnected. Gun violence is just a symptom. It is a symptom to what is very deeply rooted in our young people as it relates to trauma, not just individual trauma, but historical trauma of our communities, of our families as it relates to our interaction in our relationship with systems. And so, unfortunately, I had to I had an opportunity to experience firsthand the system failing me and my daughter and my family. And it was very disheartening. And so how do you come back from that? How do you continue to work as a practitioner and get back to the neighborhood of neighborhood where you're a young person? My daughter was only 15 years old when she was shot. And so in looking at some of these. Questions around what the resolution is. Again, I've been in it for a while. It was a part of the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative in Seattle. And when that started, our organization was very, very critical partner and stakeholder over at the Raynor Vista Boys and Girls Club because of the history that we have with marginalized families and communities of color. And so. What recommendations resonate with me? I think on a larger scale, I do believe that young people do not feel safe. I do believe that if I as a practitioner and someone who is connected as I am to the community. Parent who are public servants and also was a public official. But if I was able I experienced what I experience with law enforcement as it relates to the incident that happened with my young person. I can only imagine what's happened with other families. And so I have to ask myself, why do young people feel unsafe? Yes, there is the environment and the conditions of our community. Poverty. Yes. All of that economic. Economically. I understand that those are also factors. But if our young people do not feel safe. As it relates to law enforcement. And I think our a lot of our young people are taking matters into their own hands. And some of their family members as well. And I have to say that prior to the incident that I experienced personally, I didn't quite fully understand. Why young people don't feel safe and why they feel the need to carry a gun. After post the situation. I get it. I get it because I have two young people who are both have PTSD. I get it because to a certain degree I have PTSD. And so I get it. If law enforcement and analysts and all our law enforcement, there are other systems also that I think contribute. But if our young people are. Running around all I don't want to say running around the community, but in their communities traveling and they don't feel safe because they don't feel like something is going to happen as a result of them talking to law enforcement. Then I understand why we have. Well, while we still have this issue. Another thing that I am going to speak on more as a practitioner from young people, I'm hearing mentorship. From young people I am hearing. We need to keep the programs in place that are working. And and we need to hit the reset button. This is not just this is an issue that has been an uptick and on the rise, but growing up in the community have grown up. Unfortunately, historically, we've experienced gun violence for some time now. And so I am amazed and I am hearing from community members and from youth why when it happened downtown. Is it now a problem for our city and our county? Why? Because it happened downtown. And I'm hearing kids say, as Marty. We've been experiencing this all our lives. Gun violence has been prevalent in our neighborhood for years. I grew up in that. Kids are immune to it now. Right. And so the question is why now? I mean, these are questions I have to I have to have I have to provide an answer to to my young people. Right. And then the other part is in developing and increasing the alignment between government and community supports. We tend to continue with research and with reporting around certain research, but we aren't looking at what historically has worked in the past so that we can kind of continue to add to that. Even though our community has suffered as a collective. What I will say is this. There's a tremendous amount of genius in our young people and in our community. There's a tremendous amount of resource, human resource. There's a tremendous amount of resilience, which is what combats trauma. Right. And so the answers lie within our communities. So how can we align our systems better so that these resources are funneled in a more holistic way rather than piecemeal, so that our kids get something instead of nothing when our babies deserve a lot more time at. Thank you. It's my turn. Right. Good afternoon, counsel. My name is Raquel Jones, and I'm a targeted program director for Southeast Network, working out of Boys and Girls Clubs of King County. My vantage point, I feel very fortunate in that we recognize that your traditional community centers and our Boys and girls clubs, all those types of things do not lend the safe space needed for our young people. And so I've had the pleasure of working on the contract with the City of Seattle for Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. About myself, I am a victim of gun violence. I am a community member in southeast Seattle. So gun violence is going on around me on a regular basis in terms of why this issue is important to me. It's important to me because. It's important to me because I've had to bury my kids. I have been. In this work for 20 years. And there's nothing like watching counsel make decisions and all of these millions of dollars being thrown out there and all of these answers, if you will, and standing at the foot of a kid's casket. Something about that feels a little bit different. You stop asking yourself about what works. You start asking yourself about what does not work. I'm here to tell you about what does not work. I will tell you that as why V.P. has been effective in leveraging resources from different community organizations to ensure that young people receive mental health help, that they receive mentorship, that they can get an internship if they're too young to get a job, that they're able to get employment, that there are mentors that are available and accessible to them, that as community hubs, our organization being one of those hubs, that they would have an established space that we then recreate the program so that it fits the kids and not in the reverse. Right. Most of our community organizations are guilty of, hey, this is the space and whatever kids fit into it, they come in, right. We were charged with re reforming that space. We have been successful in that. We have not been successful in providing a safe space in the event that gun violence is coming. One of our young people's way and I have to go home at the end of the night what has to happen for this young person? And so rather than sit here and rattle off a bunch of recommendations that I feel are just also wonderful, right? I don't feel that I have the answers. I well, I can tell you the things that I've seen work. Instead, I'll tell you about Mohammed and Josh. If you ever have an opportunity, please Google him. He's very important to me. He also was the individual that was going to rewrite Lebanon. I was going to be a part of this work going forward. This is a young man who has been a Boys and Girls Club member since age ten. Statistics have shown that if a young person is engaging in an after school program on a regular basis, that there are chances of being involved in gun violence are are decreased dramatically. Right. He comes to the club every week. He sits down with me. And if I'm not there, he sits down with Marty. And if both of us are busy, he comes back, right. And you sit and you talk about things that are completely on work related. Right. And you talk about the things that he needs and what his dreams are. And he talks about some of the troubles that he's experienced in the industry. Well, this particular day, Marty was having a meeting. He comes in, he says, whereas Ms.. Marty Schneier does not talk to you for a second. I said, Yeah, he calls me out. We go into the wellness center, sit down, and he tells me, I need you to help my brother, my sister. I said, okay, what do you mean? Well, I'm not going to be here. I'm confused. What do you mean? Artie. I got into it with some people and they're going to get me on the first one. I think you. You protect yourself. You. I mean, the idea is we're going to encourage them to get a lock box and they're not going to have access to parents weapons. I am here to tell you, I don't know that that's the answer. What happens if you're on the street in the dark and it's just you and they have a gun and you don't? What does a lock box do for my day? You protect yourself, nephew. You're going to be okay. And two weeks later, we're at the Cedar Brook Lodge in a retreat, having a great time. And they call us to tell us they decided. I should have took them home. I don't know where I could have taken them. I should have. Actually done something. But there is nowhere that I can send him. The county, the city. No one is paying for safe space when a young person is in that situation. How do we fix that? Right. Law enforcement. Yeah, great. I do believe that it is a separate issue. It is a separate issue at the end of the day. Our young people have literally stood there at work for eight years, talking kids off of the ledge. I know for a fact there are people who are still breathing because I said. Don't do it. Proving to him that you're not a punk has to be that. Not as important as how you feel about you. You write your own narrative. I know that young people need those people. But being that person that day, I had nothing for him, nowhere to send him. That's why it's important to me. That's how it impacts me. Our organizations connection. I feel like I've made that very clear in terms of the recommendations. I agree that it's important that you align these systems because there is no one organization that can carry the entire torch the folks, the community passageways that are providing legal advocacy. I've never heard of that before. That was a whole. And help our kids when they fall into trouble. How do we help them to to navigate those systems? Because we know that statistics show that once they're engaged in those systems, it's very difficult to get them out of it. Right. We recognize that as Boys Girls Clubs of King County, we can provide mentorship. We can leverage the resources to ensure that as a as a hub, we can send young people the resources that they need for housing, for internships, for anything that they may need. Right. Wraparound services. But, man, if we don't have a safe house. Man if we don't have a safe house. The conversations that are had with young people and their mentors are beyond anything that I can begin to write for you. They need that. They need a safe place to go to our community centers. God bless everybody's heart. We're failing. I sat back working on a contract with a brand beach, a beautiful, safe place for youth. And a lot of what we do is I mean, yeah, we break up physical altercations in the rain or beach complex, but a lot of what we do is sitting down with adults and helping them to understand how their institutional construct is not creating safe space for our young people. Advocacy. A great deal of the work that I do was outside of my job because those systems that we are all agreeing we can we need a community center is not the same as it was before. It is not a safe place for our young people. I will say that in our work with Raynor Beach, a beautiful, safe place for you, it is key that you do have a team like Safe Passage deployed into an area like a rainier beach complex where you have a concentration of crime to ensure that you have folks that can mitigate that kind of have established relationship. We're hiring individuals that are indigenous to that community and often gang involved because they can tell you what the issues are better than we can. Right? I do think that it's important that, yeah, that law enforcement has to be involved, but it also has to be on a non arrest approach. Right. Like the sweeping way to reach a beautiful, safe place for. That's one thing that they have in common that I sit in agreement with. At the end of the day, I'm very intelligent. I'm hilarious. If anybody ever has any time, come see me right. Gab laugh. I know I could work anywhere else. I do what I do because I care about my kids. I do what I do because I truly believe in the work that is happening. And I think that it needs to be built upon. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for both of you, for what you've shared about the investments you have in the work that you take on every day, well beyond a report and recommendations. But the personal investment you have. Thank you. So I think at this point, we're actually going to turn it back to you, Councilmember McDermott, and the rest of you to, I think what it feels for me right, to acknowledge what we've heard and also to give you an opportunity to ask questions or just further reflections. And then we're happy to answer any questions you have about the report. Thank you. I have heard loud and clear that the need for safe space, for a safe space, for youth, when they know it, they need it and they can identify it and call it out and how lacking that is in our communities. We covered a little bit more directly on Thursday in the Board of Health, but it's on the site now. Some of the things that might begin to point in that direction. But Ms.. Jones, you've also made very clear that. It still falls short of that safe space you're speaking of community centers, mental health services, skills training. I'll have value. And today I've heard the clear call for safe space. Council members are. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to thank you all again for your work. Marty, it's good to see you again. I've also lost two close friends, people that I grew up with this year. And it's only February due to gun violence. And I know how hard it is to come over here and talk about it. And the way you funnel that emotion into a powerful, clear statement is something that's very inspiring for me. So thank you for that. Thank. I've been working with people like Dominique Davis this year and others to see what is missing in our responses. And he'll tell me things like, I know two young people right now who are very at risk for either being shot or shooting. And if I just had the resources right now to handle it, we could bring down our gun violence in Washington state by 10% for this year, just by handling two people and responding in a in a very clear way. But it doesn't seem like we have the infrastructure in place for that yet. It feels like if we have a natural disaster in our county or Washington state, we have very quickly deployable resources in response to that. But as I'm working with somebody like Dominic Davis and I'm running around where where can we take this young person out of this like hot area right now? And just until things cool down, how can we quickly pay you and the outreach coordinators to do their work because they don't have enough resources to to do their jobs right now. It doesn't feel like that kind of quickly deployable resource machinery exists for gun violence like it would for a natural disaster. But gun violence is a disaster. Yeah, we don't need to wait until set points in some appropriation period in the budget to respond to an emergency. And so that's something that I think us as a council should work on. We should work on that. And with the Executive and Office of Gun Violence Prevention, where we see something spike up and we can act quickly to support those outreach people who are doing their jobs. If we have other places in the county where we can take people into a safe space while gang activity or whatever it might be cools down, do you think that would be a good effective idea? I think that is an extremely effective idea. And I think that even if it doesn't fix it 100%, it's more than what we have now, which is nothing. Can you speak? Do you have any resources that are that come from our local government that you could tap into to quickly give you the resources you need to respond to gun violence? No. I can honestly say that I can have a conversation with you prior to I can ensure support, service, support services and wraparound services over there so that you have more more at stake. Right. But whether or not you. Choose to respond. To someone else's threatening behavior or not in that moment, being able to help them with that split moment decision making. Right. My hope is that the information that I've given you, you will use as a resource. But when things get terrible and they get terrible, right. Because I can say it to a thousand kids, if two of them don't catch it, that that those are two kids that are going to shoot someone or someone is getting shot. What is my recourse then? No, nothing. That's something we have to work on. Yeah. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. Well, thank you for your powerful testimony. And I would like to meet with you later. Absolutely. So we had a meeting on this very topic this morning and the Community Health and Housing Services Committee on how we're going to do exactly what you just talked about. Okay. So that's why I'd like to talk to you more about it. We actually do have a place. It's not a popular place, but it has kept kids alive for several years. Okay. And that is in the King County Youth Detention Center. We do have beds in there for kids that would not be alive if they were not in there. So when you see the numbers of misdemeanors that are in there, some of those are in there because if they weren't, they wouldn't be here. So that's not the best place. But it is a safe place. And so I just wanted you to know that maybe we can work on some systems right away for some of those beds. But we are going to be going on a tour in a couple of weeks, looking at some other options to say, I want to talk to you about that. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Bill Dutchie. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just kind of taking this and it's really impactful what you're saying. And it's as you say, we sit here a lot and we hear problems and we come up with solutions and we have this kind of logical thought process we go through. It's hard to do that with this one. It's hard to just take it in and think real logically. But I want to offer just a thought that I had while listening to this discussion after hearing what you all had to say. The county did pilot an approach to preventing homelessness. Among it started with victims of domestic violence, and it's called the Youth and Family Homelessness Prevention Initiative. I think everybody here is probably familiar with it. And what was new about that program? Different issue, of course, but what was new about it was typically grant money comes from the government to an organization for a purpose, and then it's limited. You can only spend it on that purpose. And the initiative said, What if you could use it for whatever you need it? What if a person comes in and says, Yes, I'm a I'm a I'm a domestic violence survivor, but my car broke down and I need a few bucks to fix my car. And if I could just fix my car, I'm not going to lose my job. I don't lose my job. I might be able to move out and get my own housing and and stabilize. And so they could just hear fix your car like it was it just flexible funds is the term right? And so when I hear this discussion, I think, do we need a whole new bureaucracy which is going to come with all its own? Like where was ban $100,000 on the people just to to staff it? Or do we need to think about maybe a flexible funding mechanism where we can find people like Mr. Davis in the in the community who are doing this work and say, what do you need? You need something. Here's the fund for you, whatever it is for that kid in that moment. And so I wonder if that's the sort of discussion we might want to have. And I just offer that as my first thought that I had sitting here today. But I really appreciate you reliving the things that you've lived through. I looked up Muhammad while you were talking and just looked like a really wonderful young man. I know a lot of people are hurt having lost him, and so I thank you for really that for us, so that we can feel it, so that we can think about ways to stop it from happening in the future. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Councilmember Coles. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm glad that council member council chair Bell did she blurt out about our Youth Family Homelessness Initiative? But I'm curious about something. And this is in no way to deny all that you're saying. I happen to agree with it. Do you? Have you received notices of birth starts for kids funding opportunities? Because much of that starts for kids as put forward to the council by council by our executive Doug Constantine, a number of years ago and which the voters approved, is to get at issues and situations that you've described to prevent them from happening and to work with kids, to be able to get them into other opportunities and also to have safe conditions for them. I mean, do you get those notices of funding? If not, we should make sure that. We do get the notices of funding. But typically those kinds of incidents that come up aren't typically around as far as funding allocation, whether or not that it's flexible in that way to use it for certain things. I don't know that that's the case. And so I think this is an issue with all funding streams, kind of that flexible spending around certain incidents that are occurring, software at the same space. It might be, you know, something as simple as and that's a start, a starting point, a hotel, you know, somewhere offsite. And these are all temporary fixes. And so I think what we're called bringing up this issue comes up a lot with us and other service providers. So it's not just I think what we're thinking is it's typically your highest risk kids. It's not always the highest risk kids who are in these predicaments. Sometimes it's assaulted. Sometimes it's their kids who are not necessarily have never been arrested or have a background at all. And so these instances come up periodically, more often than not, for service providers in general. We're working with a vulnerable population, and the funds don't don't necessarily allow for much of that kind of spending, if that answers your to appreciate that. And that's important for us to hear. And certainly nothing in bad starts for kids is a panacea for what you're describing. Everybody's just curious about you. Thank you. You're welcome. Councilmember up the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I think some of this is a discussion among us as much as a response to your comments and feel. And Dolores, my I guess my comment or question was kind of along her line, the lines there, if we all sit as we hear these as elected official. Okay, what, what do we need to change? What leverage do we have that we can pull and which policies, which budget items? And I think back to how we drive out funding now, we're really lucky. The progressive voters, this county voted for that property tax increase. So we as a county government, it's like almost unheard of, are putting like $70 million a year into youth and early childhood stuff. And counties don't normally do a lot of that. So and 35% of that is for kind of youth and young adults, it's about 25 million a year. Then we went out. We. I can't take credit either. Our agency went out and did a bazillion community sessions with different cultural groups, different geographic areas to figure out what are the best strategies to invest that money in, and then took what they learned and put together a kind of a citizens led expert panel that helped develop the strategies. And then we put those out in organizations apply. What it sounds like is we have gaps in those strategies that there too, there's concern about duty said maybe too specific and too constrained. And we are going to be updating circle wells, maybe know that that levee is going to be up for renewal. And when we do that, I think we're doing a systems evaluation and then an updated plan. And I think it's going to be important to have your voices there to figure out. Why? Why are we missing the mark here and kind of fleshing out some of these ideas so that we have strategies that are effective? And so it's it may not be just an issue of needing new money. It may be. I mean, we can always use new resources, obviously, but also a question of we've set up this elaborate mechanism under this tax levy and something is not connecting. Still, I'm hearings that worries me some and I'm excited to work with you and my colleagues on how we how we get that aligned. That's more of a comment and discussion here. But I wanted to at least express my willingness to engage with others up here and find out how we how we make that work. So I can talk to that a little bit. So one of the recommend the executive recommendations or what county can do is like help community based organizations obtain funding to support existing programs. So that becomes like it's not necessarily trying to continue the cycle of government funding these different organizations, but kind of trying to expand the different funding streams that community based organizations have. So they have that flexibility on their own, right? So it's not just something that becomes top down and prescriptive, it's something that's bottoms up where they're able to use that money and those resources in the ways that they see fit as well. Mm hmm. Thank you, Councilman, for your your comment. I wanted to say we welcome an opportunity to sit down and talk with you at any moment. Right. I do think that the point that Beverly referenced is key in terms of being an organization, a community based organization that's providing this work and has been in this work for eight years. It is frustrating to watch us gain momentum and then, oh, it's RFP time, right? And so how do we best utilize our historical data to support what systems are have already been in place that have worked? Where are the holes? Right. I can say that that data is is is out there. The city has done it. We have done the research with Rainbow Beach, beautiful, say a place with George Mason University. The research has happened with the city in terms of SYP API. And I can tell you right now what I know works for our young people. Right. I also can say where the holes are. So I welcome an opportunity to be able to work out the kinks, so to speak. And I just want to add, there are a number of evidence based models that we've used, and I'm almost evidence, evidence based, modeled out, place based. And so, again, I've been in this for a long time. And I think what I'm hearing, I mean, because the challenges this right, these efforts work, certain parts of it works. And then there are parts that don't work. And then we tend to throw the baby out with the bathwater and then we hit the reset and start all over again. And then you have folks who have been in it, depending on how long you've been doing this, you sit back and you eat your popcorn and think, Well , we did that one already. I wonder when they're going to find out. Like the flaws in that particular model ceasefire has been used before as it relates to Chicago and other cities. I've been getting symposiums all across the country and it is what was really, really surprising to me is that everyone at a point in time this was back in 2013 was trying to get to the model we were at. And I think it has to do with that authentic collaboration. I think we have done some great equity work around inclusion for grassroot organizations. But the answer again, recall that no one organization can handle or do all of this work. And so it is going to take a collaborative effort. And I would say one thing that was helpful, even though I didn't care for it at the time through Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative and the current contractual obligations made us work together. We all will say I can pretty much better. All 1314 organizations would say it sucked at first. However, when it came down to it and were not being forced to work together and then eventually liking to work together and then eventually saying, Wait a minute, we're getting a lot more bang for our buck together. Like this kid is better off when we're all surrounding this kid. Right. And the family and giving them the supports that they need and again, not smelling it, but really giving them all of what they need holistically and seeing the outcomes of that. It's been phenomenal. And so I would I feel pretty confident in speaking for a lot of organizations and saying that we're definitely better together. But it is going to take this partnership with the county, with the city, with government in order to put these infrastructures back in place. Because since they have been dismantled, if we look at crime data, that's when it started to increase. That's where you see the upticks. But from the years from 2008, when those first five young people in Seattle were killed between the ages of 12 and 1817, there were not any more homicides following that until there was the dismantling of a system that was created, which was in 2015. And I've been following this data every year, and I would challenge you all to take a look at it, because we'll see, not just in Seattle. Seattle usually is where we kind of lose the usually at the forefront of it. But then you'll see in out King County and other areas, it actually started to increase crime among 25, 18 to 25, which is what that resource didn't cover. And so I say that to say I didn't create the initiative, so I'm not like the spokesperson of it. I can only tell you by operating in it what worked and what didn't. We didn't have mental health services, and that was a huge need. And the only thing I'll say about mental health, we've got to do it differently with kids of color, with communities of color. We've got to work, destigmatize them, because I'm a big proponent of mental health, but it's got to look different. It can't look the same because I don't believe it'll work. Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and thank you to each of the panel members for a very compelling and informative presentation. Just to add to the discussion here, I really what resonated with me was that the reset button. You try and then it's RFP time. Here we go again. That is a good reminder. A few years ago, the council adopted, after a big community process, our County Youth Action Plan, which is kind of a guiding overall document for youth and young adult policy here at the county. Now, you know, maybe getting a little stale, I don't know. But one of the key recommendations in there, which was recommended by Janice Avery, the former recently retired Treehouse executive director, was to county should adopt and we did a fundamental principle of ending the youth to prison pipeline or I think as I like to refer to it better creating the youth to opportunity pipeline. A more positive deal. And I bring that up because then what followed was the significant best starts for kids program where we added to that funding stream, which was initially going to be for Little Tots only. But we added that that 5 to 24 bucket of funding that councilmember up the grove mentioned to what we called then sustain the gain right make those early investments in young people and then stick with them as they grow through young adulthood. I just said all that. I mentioned all that because I think there is some general framework between the Youth Action Plan, the funding streams, which then gets into the at grant time. What are the strategies and programs to implement those strategies that we want to fund? I think in our framework, which I think is always open to update from community suggestion, but I think within our general broad framework outline there there's room and should be room to make the kind of investments that you have brought forward today that would be helpful. So I think there's I pointed out from folks interested in working on this that I think we are partway there. In fact, the table may be set to be there. And councilmember up the gross remark about getting ready for the renewal of best starts for kids provides an opportunity to check those strategies and programs and make sure we have enough funding in the proposal to to fund them. So I would be supportive of working with you all on those things and want to just extend my personal appreciation for the courage you've had today in sharing your personal stories and for the work you've done. I love the Boys and Girls Clubs of King County. You're on the front lines. And, you know, he said a lot of lies. You've made a lot of lives better. So thank you. Thank you. I want to thank you for coming in and offering your personal insights and your perspective to the value based work that you've engaged in on this topic. And I want to thank Dr. Cranston as well for the report on the structure that brought about this conversation. As you've been able to hear from the questions, the conversation you've spread among my colleagues and I. We've had real conversation about what we're doing and what we're not doing and how we can better step in and make sure that the needs are being met. And that's exactly what we asked, what we wanted to be able to do from asking for the report. I couldn't be more grateful. Thank you. If anything, the close Marguerite Doctorow quote said. What I would say is thank you very much for the the the thoughtful discussion that you all have had and the ideas. I do want to note a couple of things. One is that the board of the next Board of Health meeting, I believe that Patty, our director, Patty Hays, as well as Derek Wheeler Smith, who is leading the zero youth detention work, will be coming back to report about what they have been doing and what they are planning and how this may also intersect with this work around. You've been young adult gun violence issues and then just for the record, wanting to be very transparent that I am the King County executive's representative on the Communities of Opportunity Governing Group, which is also funded by Best Search for Kids, as is Marty Jackson, who is also one of our governing group members on communities of Opportunity. It it is we need to do more. It's clear that we need to do more and that we still have many gaps to fill. So thank you. Mr. Chairman. Sorry, I forgot this, but Dr. Rowe reminded me when I first came here on the council, I served on the Mental Illness and Drug Dependency Advisory Committee, the Mid Advisory Committee, and we were coming out of the recession that's a 10th of a penny sales tax. So the dollars were down. There again were a number of adopted strategies. And what I recall from that time, and I think my successors on it May, was you mentioned mental health services for young people. The strategies that were not funded out of the mid because of limited funds were those for youth and young adults. They did not. Get funded. I have a request for information. How often have we rectified that? As the fund has been enhanced with sales tax receipts, are those mental health services for youth still in the mid program? And how are we doing given the testimony today? Thank you. Thank you. And we the presentation actually today is in support of a motion adopting the report. I ask my colleague, council member Cole Wells, who helped who introduced the gun safety action plan with me to make the motion. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that a proposed motion number 2020 0005 be approved. Council member will do pass recommendation. Council member Caldwell's has moved that we give a do pass recommendation the motion 20 2005 16 No discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember NOGUCHI. Hi, Councilman. Didn't back down from the gun. Well, I can remember. I can't remember anything. Right. Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the vote is seven days zero nos and Council Dunn and Van Rensburg excused. Thank you. That do pass recommendation and move to full council. And unless there's objection, we'll place that on the consent agenda as well. With that. I know of no nothing else to come before the committee this afternoon. We are a. ", "output": "A MOTION confirming the executive's appointment of A.C. Petersen, who resides in council district six, to the King County cultural development authority (4Culture), as an executive at-large representative."}
{"id": "king_b1a9338e-cef3-44d4-9d02-13fc5aae9ea5", "input": "Or we have a lot of folks signed up to testify today. We'll see what we can do to get through them all. Let's see. Let's get a sense of who's here for what. If you were here for the confirmation of the public defender, raise your hand. Okay. If you're here for the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Act here. Raise your hand the question. I am not calling it that. I if you're here for the Harborview Warrants issue, raise your hand. Okay. That's not so popular here. If you're here for the consent agenda, raise your hand. All right. That is. That's. That's helpful. Okay. Very good. Why don't we do a roll call? And I know other members are coming and joining us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Baldacci, Councilmember Dunn, Councilmember Garzon, Councilmember Colwell, Councilmember Lambert, Councilmember McDermott. Here. Councilmember of the grill. Councilmember, phone own right there. Mr. Chair, here. Mr. Chair, you do not have a quorum. All right. We will get one, I think. And why don't we turn then to public comment and we'll start. I'll call the names as I've got them signed up here. And let's given the number of folks signed up, we're going to set it to one minute. There will be a one minute timer. It's going to be a suggestion. Normally we do 2 minutes, but a suggestion. So if you're a lawyer, let's really test your skills on conciseness here. Okay? All right. Now, let's see if we can't get through this so we can get to our business. I've got Brian silence, and I'm going to make some mistakes on some of your names. I apologize. BRIAN Silence. Then. Leslie DeSoto, Mark Putnam, Don Raines, Matt Griffin. You can come to either podium. Good morning. Good morning. Hi. My name is Dr. Brian Simons. I'm a professor at the University of Washington and Department of Pediatrics and at South Children's Hospital, also a resident of District one. Actually, I'm here on behalf of the C, where I be the Children Youth Advisory Board and the co-chair of that board. It's where you can be in 2016 to provide input regarding the Youth Action Plan and best starts for kids. But today, I want to talk a little bit about the Puget Sound Accountability Tax Tax Accountability Account and see where they considered over the past summer ways that we feel we can have input into that funding stream. And we strongly support the investment in the construction rehabilitation, maintaining facilities to support early learning programs. We support co-locating early learning centers with affordable housing. And we encourage these investments include tax flexible, mixed based uses. In addition, we're very concerned about spaces that are available for youth 9 to 15. We feel like these youth are left out of some policy decisions and want to support the construction of facilities that support programing for these youth. So we've encouraged the developing these facilities and thoughtfully encourages you to consider that and we look forward to working with you on those policies. All right. Thank you. Thanks for your service on the board. Good morning, Leslie. Good morning. Good morning, Chair. Members of the committee, my name is left Minnesota out here, speaking out on behalf of the Early Learning Facilities Stakeholder Group. Our group includes a broad range of stakeholders from individual early learning providers to parents of young children to large nonprofits, running a range of programs to parent advocate groups, affordable housing entities . The State Association of Head Start, kneecap, childcare resources, housing authorities, partners in school, aged care and others. We overlap with homeless foster care, school age and post-secondary interests and recognize and value a continuum approach to education, specifically working to address the needs of those historically furthest from opportunities in our system. To that end, the Early Learning Group has been providing the staffing and capacity to coordinate the state legislative work to protect these funds overall and ensure they reach children and youth in King, Snohomish and Pierce Counties. Our group is engaged in ongoing technical work and ongoing stakeholder engagement to make sure we're consistently informed by community voices. We support grounding this work and racial equity principles that allow for transparency and community engagement. And we appreciate that. Our strategy assessment record reflects a recognition that investing in early learning facilities addresses an area of high need, and that investing in the early years is where we can have the greatest impact on education and life outcomes. Thanks so much. Thank you, Leslie. Okay, Mark, how are you doing? Good morning. How are you? Good. Good to see you all. My name is Mark Putnam. I'm executive director of the Accelerator YMCA. Today I'm here representing a group of King County nonprofit service providers focused on homeless youth and foster youth. Accelerator Wide Tree House, Mockingbird Society, Youth Care, Friends of Youth Team, Child Center for Children, Youth and Justice, the College Success Foundation and Roots and others. We believe the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account. As a as a considerable opportunity to support proven programs and innovative new strategies to improve educational outcomes, particularly for vulnerable children and youth in King County. We're excited to be working with the Council and County on shaping this collectively. We urge the Council to make the educational needs of young people experiencing homelessness, foster care and or the juvenile justice system. Central to your consideration of any proposal. These young people and the people we work with experienced trauma and loss. Unfortunately, their outcomes are worse than many others 50%. Fewer than 50% of foster youth graduate. Fewer than 50% of homeless youth graduate high school on time and for youth with juvenile court dispositions, the four year graduation rates around 23%. So given these outcomes, we encourage the Council to focus on these populations and each of your decisions regarding this account. Rodney. Thank you. Thank you very much, Don and Matt. Jerry Weber. Lucien Jordan. Hi. Good morning. I'm Don Reines, chief policy and strategy officer at Tree House. I, too, am here representing a group of over a dozen King County based nonprofit service providers and advocacy agencies that work alongside young people experiencing homelessness, foster care or juvenile justice system involvement. We urge you to ensure that these most vulnerable populations of youth are at are the primary beneficiaries of pastor funding. In addition, we believe that if you prioritize these most vulnerable young people, you will also center the educational needs and outcomes of youth of color. Given that youth of color are disproportionately impacted by homelessness, foster care and juvenile justice system involvement. Recent data from Schoolhouse Washington indicates that of the 9500 students who experience homeless homelessness in King County, 82% are students of color. At Treehouse, 63% of the foster youth we serve with our intensive graduation strategy are youth of color. And over the coming months, we encourage the county to take the consultant step report one step further and meaningfully obtain input from communities of color, from community based agencies that serve these populations, and from youth and family themselves to determine how best to spend these funds for services and programs that work for these populations. Thank you so much. Thank you, Don. Okay, Matt, haven't you been wearing one of those layers? You can see this wouldn't work in my day job for sure. You wear it well, I get it. I'd get an ocean sighting for sure. So again, I've worked with a number of you on things for Best Art for Kids and for the YMCA, and I'm very interested in those kinds of programs for young kids and here today in particular to talk about preschool and early learning kinds of questions. And I'm part of the group that would like to advocate strongly for money for the fund from the SG three funds to go for those early learning facilities. It's a good match up. We know that basically they have the best are app high bang for the buck. The Thompson study shows them as a high priority and I think that the one time funds matching up with capital expenses is a good match. So I would encourage you to think about that and help us sort of get out in front of helping these young people in our community develop the skills that keep them from being homeless and keep them from helping them find good jobs. So thank you. All right. Thank you. Matt Kay, Jerry Weber, then Lucien Jordan and then. Yeah, yeah. That's an opinion. I'm sorry. I know. I'm asking that up. Jessica. The Barrows and Community Passageways. You know I've got Jerry. Okay. Good morning. I'm sure I remember president of Bellevue College, and I'm honored to be here to represent the many deserving students who would benefit immensely from a King County promise. More than 100 stakeholders have engaged in this process to bring this plan together students, parents, K-12 and college administrators, leaders of local nonprofits, representatives from the business community and government officials and the Puget Sound Coalition for College and Career Readiness has fostered this plan. The whole region is in both economic and demographic transition. Bellevue College exemplifies this. In the last ten years, we've gone from a predominantly white institution to one where it's 50% students of color. And each year, we have a greater percentage of our students from low income families. And they're the first in their college to attend in person, their family to attend college, including Dreamers, immigrants and refugees. And so as we take that, we have students. We have students who are here. They have to go part time because they don't have the resources. Some of them are very fortunate, fortunate to be able to go. But at Bellevue College and at other King County colleges, we have this program, support programs and services we need. We've done the research. We need the resources to scale this up. Companies are looking for these students to come up and fill these jobs. Thank you. Thank you. The president. We're okay. Lucien. Hi. My name is Lucien Jordan. And as you may or may not know, now is the time to vote. And I feel when people vote on issues and representatives, a college education can provide a much more, better understanding and context of our system and understanding underlying social and economic issues. College also often exposes people to ideas and people of different backgrounds that are different from this. So taking down a barrier such as money for college would be a great first step. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Yeah. How do you say the. Opinion? Help me out here, sir. You listen. You can call me a. Now, he said you listen. You listen. All right. Thank you for being here. Go ahead, sir. You know, I never really come prepared with a plan or who I'm with, but I do know is when it comes to college, it's great for you to be free, because most of the time, being born, being born poor doesn't come with color or anything. You just have the hands with your dealt with it. Whether you have certain things actually have like, you know, free clothes on your back, food a to things that you don't have, you know, not worrying about going to school or your parents paying for school. It's not something that would be appreciated. You know, if you want to be a doctor, you have that opportunity to become a doctor. Or if you want to become, you know, a councilman, like one of you guys will have that opportunity as well or to become a president of any association. Then I'll be able to have that ability with the knowledge of through college. Thank you. Excellent. All right. Thank you, sir. Jessica. Tomorrow and then community passageways. Then Pat, you and me meet Laura Lee and Lisa Dugard. Morning. Learning terror and members of the council. My name is Jessica Burrows and I serve as executive director of communications, government and public relations with Puget Sound Educational Service District. We represent all of the school districts in King County, as well as Pierce County, 423,000 students. And I'm here today commenting on the county's needs assessment and strategy for the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account. Puget Sound ESD is excited for this unique opportunity to invest in and make deep and lasting impacts in the lives of students across the region. Puget Sound ESD strongly supports targeted investment in early learning facilities, youth empowerment and the college promise. Puget Sound Isd's end or mission is success for each child and eliminate the opportunity gap by leading with racial equity. We really believe that investments and pasta could be a driving force for educational equity, and that's why we support these three targeted strategies. We also urge the Council to use a racial equity lens in determining the potential impact of each pasta investment. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Community passageways. Because we're a group. Do we get more than a minute? How about a couple? That'll work. All right, I'll take what I can get. First I had a couple. Very persuasive. Did see how you did that? Yeah. Hey, negotiation. First of all, I want to say that community passageways in the community that we represent is in full support of Anita. We are. We work hand in hand with her. We work shoulder to shoulder with her. We work side by side with her in the courtrooms. And we have given a lot of young people second chances and opportunities to be successful. And I just want to throw our support behind that. Now, the other agenda I'm here for, and I see everybody staying away from the work turn. Pastor So I'm using, I'm gonna call the pastor. So the pastor funding, right. We been lucky enough to be invited to sit at the table on this consortium of organizations for the last few months and have been meeting with them. But we're the only representation of the community of color, small group organizations, small community based organizations at the table. Right. And so I'm watching this process and learning a lot from this process. But in that when this report comes out and when the report was being done, no community of color organizations were represented at all in this report. And I'm saying there needs to be some equity and it needs to be some transparency to our community so we can be part of this process and not just a box check and part of the process. I mean, we want to be part of the main process. This is how our communities get the crumbs. When money comes out, we end up getting the crumbs in our community. We're out here on the ground with our sleeves rolled up doing the work, and every youth that we come across, we come across fits every category that we're talking about today. Right. And so I'm saying that we need to think about how are we going to get these black and brown small community organizations involved in this process at a deeper level so that we can build the capacity and have the resources to be more effective and have our own facilities operate out and align our work with other organizations on the consortium at the table. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, good morning. This is my first time doing this, but my name is Earl Barrington and I just recently was released while exonerated on the charge. But I was facing a life. Sentence and it was very rough for me. And since I've been home, I've been working with community pastors twice and I'm trying to do as much as I can in the community to make sure that the youth doesn't have to go down the path that I did and trying to stop the crime rate. So like, I mean, here, you guys, you know, I'm just trying to help them get funding for that. So thank you. Thank you and thanks for what you're doing in the community. I've got Pat, you and then me. Laurie, it's hard to see on DPD than Lisa Dugard, than Connor Moore on pasta. Any of those folks. Come on. Come forward, sir. Doesn't matter. The order. Pat U is on Densmore Avenue for DPD. That's you. It's a V. Of course it's a V. About my first pair of readers last week, and I should probably get them on film. Okay, let's see. Let's go with Pat and then here. Hi. My name is Pat Valerio, and I've been serving as a public defender for 30 years, so I've seen the evolution in the system. It used to be that if we went in and we did a good job in the courtroom, our job was done. But society has realized that people become our clients because of a system and we need to advocate within that system for our clients. The county has gotten behind equity and social justice. That's wonderful. Because of that, sometimes our voice in the system will agree with others. Sometimes we will be the sole voice for our clients, which is our job. And most council has done a wonderful job at that for a long time. There's been a void in the department and the office in actually stepping out and taking what might be viewed as unpopular positions. Our clients don't really have a voice. They don't have access if they manage to get their voice in the mix, particularly these days, they are discounted, misunderstood, ridiculed. We can't let that happen to our department. So I strongly support Anita and I hope that you will as well. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Pat. How bad did I messed it up? Bad. What's your name? Connor. More. Connor. Connor? No, I was just holding several things and. All right, then write it down. And then Lisa. And then there's still a mia Lurie on DVD with no address. But go ahead. Okay. Hi. My name is Connor Moore, and I've been going to ROTC for a few two years now. I mean, they're bachelor's program, and this is an opportunity I would not have had had there not been grants and funding available for low income students. I was I actually moved here from Montana and there my family also was very poor. And so I've been on like food stamps and financial assistance of that kind. And coming out here, there's already far more opportunities that have been presented to me simply because there's more money out here. But also I have found that the community really does care about the education of its students, and the movement from high school to college is becoming more and more key to having successful careers, especially in the more tech focused industries that are out here. So I think that this is a really good investment. Excellent. Thanks, Connor. Okay, Lisa. Morning. Good morning. My name is Lisa Dugard. I'm the director of the Public Defender Association, which no longer provides public defender services because the Department of Public Defense for King County does that as of 2013. I've worked with Anita Kendall well for many years in both places. I was briefly the interim deputy director at the Department of Public Defense when it first launched. And I just want to remind us that back in 2013, when this major shift happened, after 40 years of public defense being provided by independent nonprofit law offices, one of the main concerns of this counsel and others was that the strong , independent voice on policy issues be preserved. For decades, we had raised up issues that occasionally were we were alone. Occasionally we were at the forefront of building policy, and there was concern that that might not continue in an in-house executive department. Anita will carry forward that tradition and you'll have the benefit of hearing important issues that arise through the community and through representation and the ability to blend that in your policy directions. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Lisa. Okay. Me locally, DPD. I'm sorry. I'm not getting that right, but if that sounds at all close in, come forward then. I've got Ana Bonilla on pasta. You made me say it, Joe. I've got Dana Henry, Dustin LAMB, bro. Leslie Summers, Dean and Tara Ewers. Hi. Hi. Good morning. My name is Anybody. I'm with Enterprise Community Partners. I'm also an active participant in the Early Learning Facility Stakeholder Group, as well as the coalition that is collaborating across the cradle to college and career continuum enterprises at the table because we recognize the critical importance of access to quality, safe and affordable early learning and how its impact grows exponentially for both the child and family when they have a stable, safe and affordable quality of home. We chose to focus on early learning because there is overwhelming evidence to demonstrate that quality early learning education pays dividends over the lifetime of a child. Kids that are enrolled in quality preschool programs are less likely to engage with the criminal justice system, more likely to graduate high school, less likely to experience substance abuse as adults, and are even more likely to attend and complete college. Yet the lack of financing for facilities and capital improvements hinders our ability to increase the access to early learning. This issue is highlighted as a high need in the strategy assessment report that you'll be briefed on today. So in my final thought, I wanted to say that the pasta count could be a driving force to foster partnerships at the intersection of affordable housing, transportation, accessibility, educational needs, and to close the opportunity gap for children and youth in King County. Thank you for the support thus far for the county past the process. And we hope that the Council continues to support the targeted strategies that leverage investments that can help meet critical needs. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Hi, Dustin. Morning. Can I go? Yeah. Okay. Well, good morning, Mr. Chair. Members of the council. I'm Dustin Lamoreaux here today on behalf of Teamsters Local 117. As you know, we represent over a thousand employees here at the county, and one of our newest groups are the managers and the supervisors who work at the Department of Public Defense. And their life has been really chaotic the last number of years. And they they self-organized and worked under the previous leadership, worked together to raise their concerns about their work environment, about morale issues in the department under the leadership of the former director since Anita was was appointed by the executive as the interim in the last number of months. Our members have reported increased morale and open door policy from the director's office. And and we want to see that continued because we know from as a union, we know when workers are happier, that they're better, they're more productive, and they're going to be a better service to the county. So increase strongly encourage you to support Anita and confirm her as quick as possible. Thank you very much. Thank you, Justin. Hi. Good morning. Hi, Leslie. SOMMERSTEIN. I didn't prepare anything, but I just think it's important that I'm just a line attorney. I've been a line attorney with the Department of Public Defense since I graduated law school when it was near it. I've seen a lot of support changes, and I think you all would know that DPD as individuals, we haven't supported a lot of people that have. We don't support anybody until Anita. I mean, like, if we're going to be honest with you. But you got a little. Bit of a reputation. But I mean, I think that that speaks to like how she has earned the respect of everybody from legal assistance to line attorneys to management, which is not an easy thing to do with us. And I mean, we it's not our job to agree with you all. It's our job to represent the most marginalized people who don't have a voice. And she gives us a voice as well as our clients, which is not an easy thing to do and not something we let people do very frequently. So I think you should let our support speak for how impressive she is as a leader and confirm her. It's pretty important for us, I think. Thank you. Go ahead. Hi, I'm Tara IRS's. Good morning, counselor. I'm here to express my support for Anita Condo while as the director of the Department of Public Defense. And I'm here to speak actually as a person who spent my career in family defense, representing parents and children in the child welfare system. That's a state funded system. But we as county employees represent those parents and children who come through that system. And I want to say a little bit about one issue within that system that has not had a champion until Anita Condor became our leader. And that is the issue of run warrants in our state funded child welfare system. The state can incarcerate children who run away from unsafe foster placements. When you become a foster child, you automatically become marked for incarceration in a way that ordinary children who run away from home are not. That's an issue that we can't litigate on an individual basis in our cases, because for individual children it's much easier to admit to the contempt and go to jail right away rather than going to trial and contesting it. So it's an issue that's gone without representation and without advocacy for a long time. That's until Anita became our public defender. And when she has, she's partnered with the executive and she's used her role as our leader to advance that issue and to advance the needs of children who face incarceration in this county. I urge you to confirm her. Thank you. Thank you. So it's not a Dana or Dana. Henry Dana. Dana. Okay. And I. Dana Dr. Amy Goings and Dr. Kevin Maxie McCarty. All right. Good morning. My name is Dana Henry, and I'm here today representing the members of the Sound Alliance and the Society of Health and Physical Educators. I'm also an elementary physical education teacher in South King County. We believe that Project Engage Educating the next generation activity is the gateway to equity supports both coalition and King County values. We believe we can make a difference. Working by working with the Council to ensure a portion of the passage of funding is to support delivery of high quality, comprehensive physical activity and physical education programs. A Comprehensive School Physical Activity Program is a framework developed by the CDC to support the development of the whole child. It's an approach by which schools use all opportunities for students to be physically active before, during and after school with staff, family and community partnerships. Physical fitness is associated with improved school attendance, improved classroom behaviors, a greater ability to focus and better cognitive performance. We serve children who are in foster care, who have parents who are incarcerated or have been deported or experiencing homelessness, or are operating under different adverse childhood experiences. All of our students deserve access to high quality programs to gala's which school they attend. As an alliance, our members are passionate about this cause and are prepared to dedicate the time, energy and commitment necessary to support this initiative in the long term. We look forward to working with the Council to ensuring that this funding stays secure and that the investment in all of our young people becomes a reality. Thank you. Thank you, Dana. Okay, Amy. Good morning. Good morning. For the record, I'm Amy and Goings, president of Lake Washington Institute of Technology. I wanted to underscore my good colleague, Dr. Webber's comments that the Coalition for College and Career Readiness College Promise proposal is robust in its support of underserved youth. It will put forth an unprecedented level of scholarship funds, as well as campus and campus student supports at our community technical colleges. Passive funding represents a once in a generation opportunity to serve our underserved students. But we realize that we cannot rely on past of funds alone and will work proactively in partnership with you to raise other public and leverage public and private funds to make this promise a reality. Please note that as you consider directing funds toward this promise opportunity, that our state's community and technical colleges are not sustainably funded. Currently, we are funded on a per FTE level at 2009 levels, and our advising ratios are 800 students to one. With that said, this is a tremendous opportunity to serve our youth. And on behalf of the King County Community and Technical College President, we're ready to make this promise a reality. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. Okay. Dr. Kevin Artsy. Well, thank you for the opportunity to again address the Council on the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account Funds. I'm Kevin McCarthy, president of Renton Technical College and co-chair of the Puget Sound Coalition and clearly have poor handwriting, like my colleagues, Dr. Goings and Dr. Webber. I'm here to support these funds being employed on a few big ideas, and in particular to fund a King County Promise program, which is well aligned with the goals of improving educational outcomes for historically underserved youth and furthering the county's equity and social justice goals. As a joint K-12 and higher education proposal designed as a public private partnership, our comprehensive plan will support students most in need with tuition assistance, supplemental grants, and crucial advising and services in high school and college. This, of course, will supplement what students are already putting into their education. The King County promise is a natural expansion of the Seattle College promise. We've worked closely with the Seattle colleges to make sure the efforts are coordinated. It's no secret that low income communities are being pushed out of Seattle into other parts of the county with the council's help. We can make sure that the promise doesn't stop at the Seattle city limits. This will help many students transform their lives and strengthen our communities and economy. It'll have generational impact. Thank you for your time. Thank you, doc. All right, let's see. I've got Kyle Lachey on post. Eric Lopez, Diana. Burch Comfort Maria Comeau from DPD, Surrey and Juliana Fettig from Carnation. Colleen Lang Hi. Good morning. My name is kind of Lackey. I'm the director of post-secondary readiness at the Puget Sound Educational Service District. I was born and raised here in King County, and I've worked on behalf of young people in our region for the past 13 years. And unless we do something very different, we should expect to continue to see our current rates continue, where 29% of each ninth grade cohort earn a B.A. and AA or a technical certificate. We can and should do better, and we cannot wait. That's why hundreds of students, families, education leaders from K-12, higher ed community organizations have invested over a year to design the King County promise and believe that this ambitious plan can actually shift the current scenario, especially for students who are most currently underserved. Three things that I want to make sure to note today regarding the impact the King County promise is highly targeted to support historically underserved students and as well aligned with the positive priorities regarding affordability. It's really designed as a public private partnership with numerous funding sources and regarding need, there's a high need to help more young people who grow up in King County complete a post-secondary credential. When 2500 students were surveyed last year, 95% of them wanted to attend college, but currently only 29% do. We thank you for your leadership, and we look forward to partnering you with you to make a sustained change in our region. And here's there's additional details here on the on the brochure. Okay. Do you. Do we have that brochure? We've got it. Okay. Thank you. Good morning. Hello. Hey, everyone. My name is Eric Lopez, and I am here. I'm a full time staff member with the University of Washington Dream Project. We work with middle schools and high schools. With us are with all seven school districts in the road map region. And here to vocalize my support, the King County Promise Scholarship with a lot of the young people that we work with, a lot of our undergrads that go into these schools and support these young people. One of the biggest barriers that we see and we hear from these young people is financial, it's finances. And so within our program alone, within the past year, we've shifted our model. We were originally a very much a college access college heavy program, and we've shifted our language and our purpose to be more post-secondary planning. Just because a lot of our students want jobs, they want to engage and move forward and go to vocational technical schools, community colleges. And so we one of the biggest barriers, like I said, is finances that we hear back with in narratives and also in feedback and data that we collect. And so I'm here from a program to vocalize my support. Thanks, Eric. Thank you. Go, dogs. All right, Dana and then Maria, then Julianna and Colleen. Put that there. Good morning. No, the first one, politics. Do not put anything on your head. Well, it's doesn't stay on. All right. Good morning, council members. I am part of the early learning stakeholder group that is supports the allocating of the P. S T tiaa. Funds. For early learning facilities. I am the Executive Director of Child Care Resources and have worked there for over 28 years. Child care and early learning are my passion and my dream. We serve thousands of families across King County who are looking for child care, and we also work to improve the. Quality of. Care through coaching. The almost 2000 licensed child care providers that are in the county. The lack of licensed care in the county has become a crisis for. Many families who simply can't find. Care. Especially families who are homeless, families who are low income, and families who have children between the ages of birth. And three the most important years of. Development for children. The lack of affordable, licensed space in our county has made it such that quality child care programs can't find places to expand their businesses, and new potential providers can't find space to lease utilizing these funds to create capacity to meet the needs of these children in this way. Not only supports. Our economy so that families can go to work, but it meets the children's need in. Support of their education. Now. And in the future, which is what this whole. What everybody's talking about. So thank you so much. You came, Maria. Hi. Hello. My name is Marcy Como and I'm a senior attorney at the King County Department of Public Defense. I'm speaking on behalf of myself, and I'm asking you to confirm Anita Kendall was King County public defender. I spent most of my career also representing parents and children in dependency and termination cases. Cases in which parents are at risk of permanently. They're losing their children. For a year I represented Charlene allows and her loss impacted me greatly. Anita is the kind of public defender who calls you a year after your client's tragic death, just to make sure you're doing all right and to see if there's anything she can do for you. Now, I work in the jail in the Seattle Municipal Court five days a week. I represent poor, often homeless, in-custody clients in front of the Seattle Municipal Court, judges and probation officers who have been advocating against Anita Khandelwal appointment every day. My job is to tell my client story so that their presumption of innocence will be honored and my clients might be released rather than being held on monetary bail. Our public defender can't just simply be a good lawyer. She has to have a vision of what good public defense can be. And Ms.. Kendall has that, and she's had that for our office, and she's inspired us to do the kind of work that I have wanted to do. And your confirmation of Anita will say to the community that you value my clients and the work that I do on their behalf. Thank you. Thank you, Marci. Juliana? Yes. All right. Hi. Good morning. Thank you for having me here. My name is Juliana, and I am a mother of four, and our family lives in Carnation. When I was pregnant with my youngest child. My fiance and I both worked full time and our three children went to childcare thanks to the childcare subsidy. The problem we had was during my pregnancy I developed a heart complication and because of that I contacted child care resources and they informed me we no longer qualified. And literally overnight, I was stuck in bed at 25 years old, looking at the potential of a life long heart problem. I was also looking at the potential of going into pre-term labor and having a child too soon. It was a very, very hard time in our life and somehow we were able to manage through it. We had a healthy baby girl and shortly after that we found out our family qualified for the program. We enrolled our daughter Sabella, who was a little bit older, and that year was life changing for our entire family. It became our research, our resources. It kept being became our strength. ICAP helped us learn our potential. He also gave us our family, the voice, which is what brings me here today. And not only advocating for my family and advocating for other families that have suffered similarly, like mine and for our family. Access to affordable, high quality, early learning has made all the difference in the world. So as a parent, I urge King County to open additional facilities so that families like mine can have better access to child care. Thank you. Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm calling playing with the United Way of King County. And I'm pleased to be here on behalf of the five year old through Young Adult Stakeholders Group and also as a member of Justin Farrell's larger to the Stakeholders Group. And I'd like to thank the Council for its focus on youth of color in a memo and the work that you have done in setting the framework for the consultants work. And I'd like to bring up the concern that the strategy report did not engage directly with community of color led organizations, that the consultants did not seem to have the opportunity or the time allotted to them to do that work directly and relied instead upon a lot of the work that United Way of King County had done and other organizations and were quite concerned because of the council's focus on youth of color, that this work is essential. And if it does not happen directly in the strategy report, that's going to undermine the way this work does. And I'm sorry that it takes a little bit of time to say this, but this direct outreach and the lack of that input, it just isn't acceptable. And I want to give an example of community passageways. It's a best arts grantee. It's a juvenile court diversion contractor and who have not even spoken with them. Who knows what other types of critical information is missing it. We just we won't know until that kind of outreach is done. I think we have time for another round of outreach to specifically focus on communities of color and get that kind of feedback and give that some equal weight in the final report. So that's the focus of my ask. I also would like to say a couple of other things about the report, and I don't want to take too much advantage of your time. So maybe there's another opportunity to submit something written where because I know I'm over time. So thank you. Okay. All right. Mary Keefe and then Mona's. And then Mike Heinisch. And then Olivia Smith. And then Fatma Cazares. Good morning. My name is Mary Keefe. I'm the business agent at Teamsters Local 763. I represent King County employees and City of Seattle employees, and I stand in solidarity with Teamsters Local seven excuse me, Teamsters 117 and SEIU 95 and their support of Anita. However, I am here to raise a concern about any of us who work on policy that impacts Teamsters Local 763 Amputee's 17 members of the City of Seattle. There's a budget proposal at the city of Seattle right now to gut the probation department that impacts 45 representative employees that will lose their jobs in the next three years at budget is approved. What I would ask is that King County say that directors need to work with labor, and labor will work with the directors to create policy solutions that will help our community and our workers. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Mary. No manners. Hi. Good morning. My name is Magnus, the shuttle. And I'm the executive director of Refugee Women's Alliance. In the past 33 years of working with multicultural, multi ethnic community, we have offered our services in an in more efficient and more effective way to promote integration and self-sufficiency of all the futures and immigrants. All of our services are designed to effectively and efficiently stabilize the clients and their clients and their families. I am here today to urge you to emphasize how important it is that a high percentage of the estate funds to be used to address the dire needs in this region for early learning facilities. I also want to express my support for your strategy to support the co-location of early learning facilities with affordable housing. Iran three schools in three different sites at our MLK office at our Beacon Hill, and now recently a Tony Lea building, which is located at Lake City Attorney Lee Building is a six stories Mr. Systems that's sustainably built and has a mixed use projects with 69 units of affordable housing and the lower level is contributed to our early learning center that that helps 8080 children and to about to receive grade education during their preschool years. It is critical and I believe it's a moral obligation that we give every child the opportunity, regardless of their socio economic and cultural background, background, to receive the quality child care in a space, an early learning center, in a space that fosters that education. So expanding access to preschool, particularly when co-located in affordable housing units, is the way to go. And I want to urging kind of the council to please consider that. Thank you for your time. Thank you, Eminence. All right, Mike and Olivia. Sure. I thought he had one more excuse. We might have a we hear from Mary. I may have missed. Are you there? No. I'm Fatima. You're Fatima. Okay. Go ahead, Mike. So, good morning, council members. Thank you for your time. I make this exact director count you to the family, sir. So I want to commend you on your work to date on this and your due diligence around it. It's a it's a very important issue. As you know, I want to give you a real underground example of what early childhood facilities can mean, major modification facilities in the Kent School schools where the primary provider of Head Start kneecap can't use the family services. Oh, seven years ago, we were able we had capacity for less than 20% of kids eligible for Head Start except in the. Care school district. With the support of the state. And of course the state has made a commitment to fully fund ICAP over the next few years. I think by 2022 or 2023 we'll be able to move that. Number up to about. 30% of the three and four year olds who otherwise qualify. We have witnessed about 200 today. I checked, we have turned down in the last three school. Years now. Contracts, additional capacity would provide critical services during our funding through the state of freak out because we can't find facilities. We don't there's no facilities that are payable. If you want to talk about an area that's rich with diversity, who would impact me? The populations that we all talk about when it comes to equity and social justice and bringing us to 50% of probably capacity us or some provider in Kent, that's a that's a tremendous stake in the ground of real advancement. I also want to advocate quickly for. The coupling of affordable housing and really child education efforts. We have a wonderful example at Birch Creek and Kent Bridge Creek Canyon Housing Authority and Green Bridge over and what awaits. There is another example. So I fully support that as well I think you. Hi, my name is Fatima Cazares and I'm the owner and director of a preschool in a slum. And I strongly believe that children should be able to have access to education, to preschool programs that work together with school districts and provide trainings and opportunities for teachers in order to offer the best care. Early learning should be available to all children before entering kindergarten to help them build skills, achieve milestones and love. Learning childcare is a burden to many families who are not able to pay, who struggle every day on finding care for their children. I proudly offer a subsidy for families with low income. It brings happiness and joy being able to help. But waitlist not always allows me to provide care for those families. Limited space has always been a problem and we need support in order to be able to provide to more families, these parents should be able to find a place where their children are going to be treated with respect, love, and have a safe and nurturing environment where they can thrive. I hope you will take the unique opportunity you have before you to invest in early learning facilities, and growing more space for high quality programs like mine will help more children in King County and thrive in their futures. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Olivia. Yes. Hello. My name is Olivia Smith. I'm a lifelong King County resident and community organizer. And I'm with the Washington bus. The Washington Bus is a nonprofit that works to engage young people in politics. And we're here to support the proposal to make college more accessible, affordable and equitable. For about seven months now, we've been at colleges and high schools across the county and have spoken with more than a thousand students and community members who are in support of accessible and affordable college. We've listened and learned that it's not just about getting support with tuition. Students need support in high school, navigating our education system and getting to college. They need support continuing navigating the systems in college, and they need support with living expenses. Other folks have mentioned the cost of living in our region is so high and so many people are being pushed out of Seattle into South King County and beyond . And right now you all have the opportunity to make it a reality for all students in our region, to get a quality education and to continue to live and work in King County. And obviously, this is not the best time for students to come to a meeting. But we just want you all to know that we are paying attention. We're sharing this information with the young people we work with, and we're excited to hear the developments you come up with for improving our education system. Thank you. Thank you. All right. That's all I have signed up. Is there anybody that I didn't call or who didn't have a chance to sign up that wants to present testimony? Renee, go ahead. Come forward. Good morning. My name's Renee Murray. I'm with youth development executives of King County, a coalition of 110 youth development programs in King, as Colleen also is. I'm on the five young adult stakeholder group and the larger group that Justin Farrell has been convening to have a united voice in supporting the pastor funds. And we do support facilities for early learning and encourage the council to look at that as multi-use facilities that can also incorporate youth development programs. I think we're also hoping that in the further evaluation, as mentioned earlier, there's racial equity is considered. And in fact we look at a fair distribution, distribution of funds from early learning youth development services from five to young adult in order to help people access secondary education. So we're very excited. Thank you so much for the opportunity to speak and for the work you're doing on behalf of this fund. BY Thanks, Renee. All right. Anybody else? Okay, sure. Come forward, sir. Good morning. My name is Matthew Covello. I'm a lifelong King County resident. I'm also a low level supervisor for the Department of Public Defense. I joke that I'm also a low level bureaucrat. I want to speak on that very briefly. The thing that I that all of you should be aware of is something that I, along with maybe 15 other people in the county, have a unique perspective on. Anita is a fantastic lawyer. She understands our issues. She understands the courts. But the other thing that she has that I have never frankly seen before with the six different directors I've had in my roughly 14 year career, is the ability to be a public defender in one shoe, but then also running bureaucracy in the other, that is, failings that occur with good attorneys. That's something that I'm learning. And one of the people I'm learning from is Anita. I can say that in the very short time that she has run DPD, she has been able to cut out middlemen in the bureaucracy. She has been able to expedite things in a way that my less experience attorneys have gotten the critical training they need within days versus previously. It had been months and sometimes not at all. So I'm going to leave it at that. But I want to make it very clear that not only is she qualified, but she can actually run a large bureaucracy in an efficient way. Thank you. Thank you. Sure. Come forward. My name is Teresa Collins. I'm a paralegal with King County Department of Public Defense. I've been there for ten years. I can tell you from the last five years have been the most tumultuous and frustrating and very dark time in our department. In the short time that Anita has been our director of Department of Defense, it was like a cloud lifted. This dark cloud went away. And instead of worrying about what was going on within the department, where we were going, what we were going to be, we were allowed to focus on our work and representing her and our clients. I can tell from personal feeling that Anita has inspired me to renew my efforts at doing what I do. She's given us hope, hope that we haven't had in a long time, hope that things are going to get better. And we are so confident in her leadership. So we ask you to confirm her as the Department of Public Defense director. Thank you. Good morning. My name's Keith. Has passed on from Community Passageways. I'm a community ambassador and CPC coach with Dr. Truman now at the University of Washington Law and Behavioral Sciences. I've been in five Illinois state prisons. I have 52 retail theft arrests on my background. I've been in juvenile ran away from home 13 times when I was six, seven and eight years old. And I go through all of this process to come to Seattle two years ago to work with Dominick Davis and all the great work that Anita and her people have been doing working with us. But it's one thing that I'm finding hard to understand. And and and I'm not trying to say anything crazy, but. It's a lot it's a few things that I don't understand about King County because I was looking at the sign and it says King County, and we had Dr. Martin Luther King's picture up there. And and this county is named after Dr. Martin Luther King. And I'm and I'm trying to figure out why. Is any black organization or people that's working with black organizations struggling to try to get funded. And another thing that that I've that I'm trying to grasp in my head around is if Martin Luther King walked in this door right now, seriously, if anybody has a clue about what Martin Luther King stood for in our rights and all of this and said right there in that chair, I wonder what he would be saying. I wonder how he would be looking at how people are reacting to the whole issue about kids of color that are struggling with their lives. Community Past His Ways is the greatest program that I have ever worked with, and all the people that work with our organization are the greatest people that I've ever encountered. Because I work with a lot of organizations in Chicago and and for for the work that we're doing, we need a facility and we have a facility, a multipurpose facility. We could we could set Seattle and Washington on fire with the transformation, the changes that kids can make to our story and to our lives. Just like Dominique said, when we're in a field, I get up from 5:00 in the morning to 10:00 at night, and I'm working with kids, I'm in homes , I'm in court. I have such a big influence on the kid can RJC court system. When I walk in there, they treat me like I'm an attorney and I got a GDR Southwestern Correctional Facility. But I'm really wondering what Martin Luther King Jr say if he sat right there in that chair is saying that black organizations and people that are working with black organizations are struggling for fun. Thank you, sir. Okay. Is there anybody else? I will close. The public comment will turn to a motion by Councilmember Caldwell's to approve our meeting minutes from October 1st. Some movements. To call in favor say I. Think. Those that are approved will turn to the consent agenda. Clinical call the role if councilmember call or put the consent agenda before us. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move the consent agenda and it's all down there. Would you like me to read each? No, I would not. Thank you for that offer, though. All right. That's items two. Five through ten. Clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell Dutchie. Councilmember Dunn. All right. Councilmember Gossett. Oh. Councilmember Cole Wells. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember one right there. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is nine eyes, no nos. All right. That's approved. And you need to expedite that. Leah. No. All right. We'll take it up next Monday at the full council. Turn item 11 today. Item 11 is a motion that would confirm the executive's appointment of Anita Kandel as the county public defender. We are joined by Jenny Jean-Baptiste. Our central staff will present the item, and then I think we're going to hear from the chair of the Public Defense Advisory Board and KC six Keller on behalf of the executive and Anita herself. A name? Yes. Oh, yeah. Casey. You can come forward as well. Good morning, Jenny. John Batiste, counsel, central staff. We're on page 121 of your packet. The motion before you is the motion that would confirm Mr. Khandu, while as the King County public defender and the director of the Department of Public Defense. I will provide very brief background information for you on this, and then I will turn it over to our speakers to introduce to you in more detail. Ms.. Condo So on page 121 of the packet, there's some background information for you on the code provisions that specifically spell out the process for the appointment and the confirmation of the county public defender. The process begins with the national recruitment of candidates by the executive. Then the Public Defense Advisory Board, known as P DAB, is then required to recommend three candidates to the executive and the executive must select one of those candidates for then recommendation to the Council. The Executive has the option to ask the board to recommend an additional three candidates and then choose from among the six. That option was not exercised for this appointment process. The executive's appointment is, of course, subject to confirmation by the Council on October 3rd of this month, following the selection process described at the executive announced the appointment of Anita Condo Wahl as the King County Public Defender and director of the Department of Public Defense. The appointment is effective January 1st, 2019, for a four year term. The reason why the appointment is effective January 1st is in order to match the term of the county prosecutor Ms.. Condo, while is currently serving as the interim public defender. Prior to serving as the interim public defender, she served as the department's deputy director of law and policy. She joined the department in November of 2015 and has been practicing law for more than a decade. She received both her undergraduate and law degree from Yale University. Her complete work experience is summarized in her resume on page 155 of the packet. The confirmation packet in your folder contains many letters of support. Those letters of support are on pages 136 to 152. Those include many letters from several letters from the Department of Defense, from labor and the supervisors. The packet also includes an H.R. D confirmation letter that confirms that the background check has been done and is clear, and there are financial disclosure forms as well. The questionnaire that the committee requires of all candidates is on page 169 of your packet. I do want to note an error in the staff report in the resum\u00e9 summary. It includes. It notes that Ms. Condo, while served from January 2016 to July of 2016 as deputy director and policy director for the Department. That should actually be July of 2018. To speak more about Ms.. Condo Wall and introduce her to the committee, we have Mr. Casey six killer here who's with the executives to our office, as well as Paul Harlan, to my immediate right, who is the chair of the party. Deb Journey, thank you very much. This is a bit of a unique appointment because of the structure in the charter that the voters approved. And you highlighted some of those things. It's a different selection process than has a specified term that's coterminous with the prosecuting attorney. And that was all by design to make sure that we had independence and this position. So Paul, thank you for your service as chair of the Biodefense Advisory Board. Would you you were integral in leading the initial steps of the recruitment process here, and you've also been a leader with respect to the PD, have been overseeing the Public Defense Department and some of the challenges that they've had and giving feedback and direction. So we appreciate you being here. Go ahead. Okay, good. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair, members of the council, I am excited to be here this morning to share with you the enthusiastic support that my board members have for this appointment. We have had the opportunity first to report, of course, to the executive at the conclusion of our search and then a subsequent letter that we submitted as part of the materials for this hearing, and both of which we tried to convey the what it has been like to work with misconduct while in this role, or her attention to detail, the way in which she makes strategic decisions about priorities develops. With high degree of consultation. Plans that will prove effective for meeting the challenges that the department faces. And then there was the simple fact that the way that she absolutely dazzled us in the interview, the combination of intelligence, vision, directness, humanity, it was it was just really incredibly impressive. And as I thought about that and having shared it earlier, I didn't know what I would say today exactly. I spoke with Ms.. Giambattista and she said, well, you know, the board had had a certain lens on the process and hopefully you could you could share that. And I was glad to hear that because as I thought about these remarks over the weekend, that image of a lens or multiple lenses came to me to describe what I need to bring to this position and what the petition requires, because to do this work, it really does require a full set of lenses, the telescopic lens , to see the future, to have a vision for the department that will take it beyond the immediate moment and make it the leading department in the nation, that it should be a wide angle lens to see the full field in which public defense operates, to recognize the multiple organizations, entities and individuals that must be included in the consideration of how to run the department. The microscopic lens. You heard about this from Mr. Cavallo a little while ago to understand case credits and FMLA and all of the the fine details that make an efficient department the read the race equity lens that one is implanted in her and she's never not using it. When you have a conversation with her, you understand how it is that the Department of Defense doesn't merely do the high quality work that all the attorneys and the rest of the staff do for individual clients. But the way in which they are championing the cause of justice through individual representation, through policy work at courthouses and through community based advocacy, the client lens is fundamental to the work of any public defender and then come at last to the staff lens. And the staff lens in this entity, in this context is itself multifocal. You've got attorneys and you don't just have attorneys, but you have the attorneys who are in-house, the employees of the Department of Defense. You have the assigned counsel panel who are equally important contributors to the work of public defense. And that is one of the areas that has been least well developed during this transition. And Miss Cantwell has been championing that cause, making sure that it gets the attention it needs, including during the current budget descriptions of budget discussions , I should say. But beyond the attorneys, the paraprofessionals, the clerical staff, the entire DPD team, they know that Anita thinks about what they're doing. She sees them, she seeks them out, she hears them, and they know that she has their back. And that is that combination of perspectives and abilities is what makes her the leader that the department needs at this moment. So again, I in conclusion, I just want you to know that the board is delighted to be working with her as we have been over these past several months, and we look forward very much to working with her over the next several years. Oh, thank you very much, Casey. Thank you for being here. Go ahead. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I had not. Planned to speak today. But to, as I always do, as be here to sit in and stand in support of all of our nominees that we send over to the council. I think that Paul did a fantastic job of of summarizing Anita's qualifications. And as you pointed out, the very unique nature of this particular appointment, given the process that the Public Defense Advisory Board goes through. And in presenting those recommendations to the executive, I think for the benefit of the Council, I think hearing from the nominee directly is probably the best thing to do. But I'm happy to answer questions. Later. If you'd like. All right. Good morning, Anita. Thank you for being here. Congratulations on your appointment. The light comes on when there's a little red light, which is sometimes hard to see. Go ahead. Good morning. I am honored and humbled at the prospect of continuing to work as a public defender in King County. King County is unique in important ways. Our county has a deep and shared commitment to equity and social justice that creates opportunities for meaningful collaboration and change. We have strong unions that make for a healthy workplace. We recognize the importance of strong and independent public defense, and we are committed to good governance, to making sure that we are responsible stewards of tax dollars. Now, I want to discuss each of these a little bit further. First, our shared commitment to equity and social justice has resulted in real and meaningful change for populations in King County impacted by the legal system. A few years ago, DPD partnered with Councilmember Up the Grove to protect young people in juvenile detention from being interrogated. More recently, we partnered with the executive to advocate with the state to stop jailing young people who ran away from foster placements. We've also partnered with the King County Sheriff's Office and community groups to develop a simplified Miranda warning, a warning that our young people are more likely to understand. The sheriff's office has implemented these warnings and the Seattle Police Department is now poised to do so as well. It is only because of our shared commitment to equity and social justice and to reducing the harms of the criminal legal system that we are able to make these changes here in King County. King County is also unique in its commitment to working with staff and unions to build a healthier workplace culture. In my time as interim director. I've had honest and respectful conversations with unions and staff about shared concerns and the best path forward. These conversations both make the workplace feel collegial and respectful and will also lead to substantive changes that make it easier for our staff to do the high quality work that they are so committed to doing. I'm grateful for the county's deep commitment to its partnership with Labor and that DPD staff are represented by strong and collaborative unions . And I'm proud to have such strong support for them today. I'm no less grateful for the county's commitment to having an independent Department of Public Defense. Our charter is unique in requiring the department to foster access to justice and equity in the criminal justice system. As you know, I take this responsibility very seriously as it is an integral part of my responsibility to ensure high quality representation for our clients. This, at times has led DPD to take positions that are at odds with our elected officials. I want you to know that I don't take these positions lightly. I consult with our staff and develop a position based on their knowledge and expertize and my policy experience. And while I've learned that it is important to communicate these positions, to communicate them early to council and other stakeholders, I have also deeply appreciated the fact that the Executive and the Council have recognized that taking these positions is part of my job. In the landmark case, Tinker V Des Moines Independent Community School District, the United States Supreme Court recognized that discomfort and unpleasantness always accompany an unpopular viewpoint. But the court wrote that we have to take this risk because this kind of openness, this is the basis of our national strength. Here in King County, we have all exercised our right to dissent and to advocate for what we believe is a better path forward in our community. In our community of openness. Views that were once at the margins have been allowed to take center stage. Just this month, the Washington Supreme Court found the death penalty unconstitutional on the basis that it has been applied in a racially biased manner. That view has long been held by members of the public defense community here in King County and statewide, and it is now made its way into the mainstream and into our laws. Similarly, our Supreme Court has recognized that youth is a mitigating factor at sentencing because young people's brains are not fully developed. They can't make decisions and judgments in the way that adults can. Again, this is a view that has long been espoused by public defenders and is now become part of our mainstream knowledge and approach. In King County, we have the space to have difference, to have different opinions, and that allows us to find the best way forward . Many places in our country would not tolerate a person like me, a woman of color, taking positions that differ from those of local leaders. But here in King County, a woman whose parents are immigrants who came here not speaking English, whose father worked as a parking valet, and whose mother worked on an assembly line in a factory . That woman can be heard and respected. This is only because of our shared values and commitments to the independence of public defense and to our commitment to equity and social justice. Finally, our counties committed to best run government, to making sure we are providing the highest quality services we can to the people we serve. This is critically important to our clients. Annually we represent approximately 19,000 separate individuals who face a deprivation of liberty, whether that be prison or jail, forced treatment or loss of parental rights. We stand with those clients and we support them for those who want to fight. We go to trial for those who don't. We try to find an outcome that is the least harmful for them, possibly an outcome that helps them address their underlying needs. We have much work to do to make sure we continue to provide consistently high quality representation. DPD Audit Identified Areas of opportunity for DPD in the years ahead. The auditors have flagged the need for us to ensure that all of its clients get consistently high representation. This is a goal we share with the auditor and we've already begun working towards this goal. To this end, we have updated and completed several practice area guides so that our attorneys and their supervisors have a standard standardized set of best practices on which to rely. We have set up trainings, training sessions for managing attorneys of the four divisions regarding how best to use the case management system and how best to get data out of that system. We review caseload numbers with our manager attorneys on a weekly basis to ensure that workloads for each attorney are, relatively speaking, manageable and consistent from month to month. And to ensure that all of our managing attorneys are looking at caseload numbers in the same way. We are committed to working with the performance strategy and budget and refining our staffing model to ensure that we have the resources we need and we are able to stabilize the department while still working efficiently. We have offered an extraordinary number of new trainings on topics that directly relate to the work of the office. These include trainings on topics ranging from felony sentencing to the Indian Child Welfare Act. And it's only by offering these trainings on very concrete areas that we can ensure that our staff are trained in similar ways and then able to represent our clients in similar ways and to have a higher quality and to provide high quality representation . If confirmed, I look forward to leading the department through a strategic planning process that will help us build shared goals and shared commitments to measuring our performance to make sure we achieve those goals. If confirmed, I will also continue working closely with our county's new Department of Human Resources. That department has provided us with vital support in this time of transition. They have helped us develop transparent policies and procedures in hiring, salary, step, placement and discipline. More importantly, though, H.R. is working closely with us to help CPD develop a healthier workplace culture. There is no better place to work as a public defender than King County's Department of Public Defense. The shared values of this county, its commitment to equity in social justice, its commitment to a healthy workplace make me incredibly grateful for this opportunity. All right. Thank you very much. We'll now open it up to committee questions. And Councilmember Lambert had the first question. She signaled me early. And that was the question for staff. I think you said early on something about that it didn't go through the process at six, that it was different. I just want to clarify what you said on that. Sure. The King County code and this is on page one, 21 of the packet, the paragraph that describes this, the King County Code provides that the Public Defense Advisory Board must transmit three recommendations to the executive, and then the executive selects one. There is an option in the code that allows the executive to ask the Public Defense Advisory Board for three additional candidates the for this appointment process that did not occur. So everything was done consistent with code. I was just pointing out that the executive did not feel it necessary to ask for an additional three recommendations. Okay, good. That's what I want to clarify. Thank you. Thank you. Other questions, Councilmember Up the Grove. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And good morning and congratulations on the appointment. First, I have to say, you know, my soft spot. Anyone who's citing Tinker in their opening remarks is as someone who's passionate about student press freedom in particular. Oh, you know, I have had the chance to work on you mentioned one issue, several issues where I think we've done some great things and we've agreed working to make sure juveniles have access to attorneys when they're being questioned, when they're in county custody or work to decriminalize fair enforcement. They're also we don't agree 100% of the time there is an issue this last year that we have different views on. And and you sort of alluded to that, but I wanted to talk about a little bit this morning, and you had signed the department on to support a position, but one that's been kind of high profile . And you knew the council was on the other side of it. And I welcome differing opinions. I it doesn't even bother me that much that an agency would take a different position. But what concerned me in particular was finding out about it in the newspaper, and I was upset about that. And I know other colleagues were too. I was I'm just tend to be very transparent person. And so maybe I expressed it more. So I want to ask you, how do you balance you? On one hand, you have unique independence under the charter, and even if you didn't, we would want to create space for people to speak their truth to power on. And then also, on the other hand, you've spoken about collaboration and sometimes to be smart and effective involve some collaboration and communication. So how do you balance that? And specifically, if you could share your plans to how you plan to work with and communicate with the King County Council in your new role ? Thank you for the question. I so if I look back at that and we'll just talk about the CFTC, the letter and signing on to the moratorium, you know, while I we don't need to do to to debate the merits of the positions here, the things that I do regret in that we're failing to communicate better. And, you know, I thought that I was maybe 20 or 30 days into the job at most. And so and while I have, I think, a lot of policy and sort of operations expertize, the politics of the job were very new to me. And so I thought very literally in terms of the organizational chart and I gave my my track report here notice and thought that I had done my job of communicating. And I've understood that the organizational chart is one thing, right? But there are a vast number of stakeholders within the county who need to know about this. When deputies want to take a stance like that. And so I've been going forward, right. My my intent and my hope. And in fact, I already have in other instances communicate if there is if there's an ordinance that there's an issue on which DPD has concern, reaching out to council directly and saying, here's my concern, and then we may not agree and then I may still take a public position that is contrary to contrary to the one that you're taking. But we will have at least had that conversation. Thank you. Councilman Arthur Grove, Councilmember Dunn. Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here today. And I am very impressed by your background and your willingness to serve. I don't think we've ever seen a a person prove up for confirmation, bring a constituency like this to the chamber before. So it's quite impressive. You know, the audit report that was relevant to your appointment just came out here on October 15th or just recently. And I understand it covers a period long before you were leading the agency, but some significant findings. And I kind of wanted to get your take beyond a little bit what you just stated in your opening statement. Give me a sense of it. The the auditor found the DPD and I want to quote here has not effectively managed just transition from four nonprofits into a unified, high performing department, unquote. And it made 13 different recommendations in a letter. It started October 11th. So I assume you got an advance copy of the audit report, is that correct? Yes. Okay. So, you know, I see your letter here. I mean, generally, I just kind of want to get your sort of drill down a little bit on is that a serious audit report? You take those findings seriously. Do you do you plan to implement them? The short version is yes. I think the first thing we really need to engage in is finishing our strategic planning process right? When they talk about our failure to have a high functioning, unified department, I think what they're talking about is our failure to build consensus, to collaborate with staff and unions on what high quality representation looks like and then how we measure for it. Right. And that's the first thing that we before we can do anything else, we need to do that. Right from there comes acquiring a case management system that allows us to pull data to see where achieving our our goals, right? So everything kind of flows from us. First, identifying what is it that we collectively at DPD think high quality representation looks like? So that will be my starting point. Is there anything in those 13 recommendations that you plan not to implement or you disagree with? I think the recommendation 13 regarding the structure gives me pause. I think that recommendation does not sort of recognize the operational realities of DPD. And so in their proposed structure, I think they have one very large division that takes a majority of the cases and then three smaller ones. And while that one large division would be possibly remarkably well functioning, you could have a unit of 1220 felony attorneys so that if one of them went out on FMLA, it wouldn't be sort of devastating because you would be able to spread some of that work among 19 other people. But then when you look at the other three tiny divisions and supposed to run and I have a felony unit of four people and one is in trial and one is on FMLA. What am I going to do with those four loads? I cannot put them on to attorneys. Right. And so the problem is great to how to theoretically have this one really high functioning division, but I also have to have three other divisions that are operational. And that's that's the challenge. And I think the orders they don't live in the operations of DPD. Right. And so they're not thinking about FMLA and trial and all the other things that pull people out of a unit and make it impossible for us to give them more work. And so I'm fully open to it. And the intent intend to have a conversation with PSP, which looked at the same question in 2013 and came to an opposite conclusion to see if anything on the on the ground has changed, to prove anything that that there is reanalysis but their analysis in 2013 it was sort of the transaction costs of this are high and it doesn't result in anything particularly meaningful. So that that's a recommendation that I have the most plausible. Structure that's fair, I think and I think it's good to have a dialog with this counsel as well as you think about that and the budget process so intimately tied to that, you know, as a federal prosecutor in three places across the country, Washington, DC, two and three crimes, Florida, South Florida do narcotics cases, and later in the U.S. Attorney's Office, Terrorism and violent crime unit here in Seattle. And the one thing I did learn is that if the Department of Public Defense or federal defenders aren't well funded, the whole process of justice grinds to a halt, the whole pipeline slows down and everybody loses across the board. So as councilmember now an elected office as opposed to a career civil servant, you know, it's really important that we fund across the board all of these. And if you block up in one area and don't in the others, then you actually grind it slower rather than faster, which is reverse the retention I saw. Speaking of money that in the in the audit report, the auditor found that the average cost per case increased by 93% without a corresponding increase in the number of cases handled. Do you see a way to improve that statistic or do you agree with it? I think that number is driven entirely by county salary benefits overhead. That is the result of the county pulling public defense out of the world of nonprofits and into county employment. Right. And it is wonderful that the county comes with benefits and pensions and higher wages, and all of that makes us more expensive. So I wouldn't expect us to be able to take on more cases just because we're now finally achieving parity with the prosecuting attorney's office. Okay, let me talk. Only since we didn't meet in advance of this and appreciate your effort to do to meet with me, I want to get a sense of sort of your management style, you sort of philosophy on on how to manage how well, broadly, I mean, let me hear from you. What is your overarching sort of management style and how do you how do you believe you should run that office? Broadly speaking, I believe in having a collaborative management style as possible. So when we talk about strategic planning and developing a definition of high quality public defense, that is something that we need all of our staff to have input on and to and to build some consensus around. Now, obviously, we're not going to agree to all things at all times, but where we can find consensus, we absolutely should, where we count. I will make a decision and articulate the basis for my decision with a recognition that some people will not be thrilled with my decision, but they will at least have understood why I made that decision. So I think collaboration and transparency would be sort of the two key keystones of my leadership style. And I think there's evidence of both in the policy positions we take. I talk to our staff before we go out and take a policy position, particularly because a lot of times the positions we're taking are difficult and unpopular. And before I go and walk out on that limb, I want to make sure that the people who are on the ground, who are in court, we're talking to the clients day in and day out, agree that this is the right way forward. And I take what the input that they are giving me and then act on that. Okay, great. I like to hear the collaboration. I think that's important. You know what? What about a situation where you have conflicts with other county managers? I mean, you're a significant cabinet level appointee nominated by exact confirmed by the council. What happens if you disagree with another cabinet member or an elected official? Let's say the prosecutor is doing something that you have a substantial disagreement with. How will you handle that conflict? The prosecutor and I already have many things that we disagree on. Any example? You know what I mean? But yeah, I mean, what do you mean? So it's great. The question is designed to kind of get a sense of how you're going to approach this. I mean, are you going to be an activist, an activist manager? A manager? Will you shift gears? I mean, there's a lot of different ways to to say you disagree with something that the elected prosecutor is doing. You can file a lawsuit instantaneously. You can do a slew of public disclosure requests. You can pick up the phone call and say, look, I have a problem with what you're doing. And I kind of want a sense of what what you will do, how you do it. Will you use all those methods? None of those methods. Preferred method. Preferred method is to pick up the phone and call and have a conversation. If I'm not having if I'm not making headway to pick up the phone again and say, look, I feel like we haven't made any headway, I'm going to do something more public or more serious. Here's my deadline. But we need to I need to hear from you that we're going to find some middle ground here or that we're just not going to, in which case it is okay for me to do what I need to do in order to pursue my issue. So you're comfortable picking up the phone? Maybe as the first salvo. I have learned that that is one of the most important things to do here. Okay, that's great. I'm really glad to hear you say that. I think that's important to pick up the phone and then, you know, gradually escalating. If you have a really substantial disagreement with the way things are done, it's kind of the fair warning thing. I mean, that things are going on. Everybody's busy. Your issue may not be the issue of the day for that particular person or manager. So starting there, I think is, at least in my experience, been the most effective. What about if you disagree with the will of the voters, like the older facility, how will you handle that? It's a little hard to talk in the abstract, right? I can disagree in principle with the will of the voters, because my the people that I'm responsible to. Right. Our clients, they're the poor people of King County who are charged with crimes. I'm not accountable to the voters more broadly. And so I make clear that when I take policy positions, I'm taking those positions that align with the communities that I think we are most responsible to. And so I can take that position. I've taken the position and I but it's not that I have done more to impede the construction of the building. It was important for public defense to have a position for that position to be heard by our clients and their communities. And we did that. You know, it's an interesting question. It's not a gotcha question at all because it's not designed to be or intended to be. It's just a really interesting question because there's a lot of autonomy given to your position in this job by the charter. And so what do we do in a situation where voters say X and you believe in the best interests of your staff and your clients? Why? And then how do we proceed forward? And so I don't know. I think maybe one of the ways to solve this issue is just maybe is in part and parcel with those audit recommendations, as you think about it, maybe formalize a little bit more how that structure looks, if there are going to be disagreements. I mean, I think I'm not saying you don't have the right to have a press conference in. Nothing like that. But I think there's a process moving forward that we could all get maybe comfortable with. It's sort of formalized, not really formal, but sort of informal, how that process might look so that we know, okay, well, this kind of how is this she's out there in this particular role that we've sort of understand moving forward. So it doesn't catch the executive off guard or the county council off guard. You know, and it may be something as basic as funding. I'm little concerned if we don't fund your agency in the way that you want. And what are we going to be looking at in terms of push back? So just trying to understand how that looks moving forward. Feel free to respond if you'd like. I could be wrong, but I thought the charter language actually explicitly excludes budget decisions from freedom, from interference. And so I have not treated budget as an area in which I have freedom and independence. How wise of us to do that? Okay. Well, you've answered my questions. I mean, this audit, you know, obviously just came out interesting the time right before your confirmation. I have started looking at it over the weekend. I have a few more questions. I don't want to hold up everybody here and their questions. And I'd like between now and the final vote of council, maybe to submit a couple of email questions to you or by letter or whatever you prefer, just to kind of take this conversation off line to get a little bit better sense of what your management plan will be moving forward. I had intended, given how quickly this is, sort of come up with the audit, to request a one week courtesy delay on moving this out of committee. But I'm I'm. Maybe willing to consider sending it out with our recommendation, not expedited. So I have a chance to have this dialog with the nominee, but we'll be happy to discuss this with the chair and other members of the council as they weigh in. Thank you for the time. Thank you. Councilmember Dunn, Councilman Boulder. Thank you, Mr. Chair. First of all, I just want to say congratulations and empathize with you as the only council member who's actually sat in that chair doing what you're doing right now. I have a bit of appreciation for how hard it is for us to be peering down at you, questioning you in this way. So good job so far. To get grilled. He has to get grilled to that, weigh down that they peer at you from three feet up anyway. Okay. So I just want to think. I had a hot seat moment down there to come onto the council as well. All right. I take it back. Not as a department head. Though. Many of us can empathize. We have had a chance to talk a couple of times in your acting role. And and I actually appreciate everything you've had to say today. And in those previous conversations about the idea of open communication and keeping in touch with each other on difficult issues, not only because of the element of not surprising each other, but also because I've been very surprised in my experience at how we can work together, even on things where we may start out thinking we are on entirely different ends of the spectrum. You can pull good out of that situation by not assuming how the other person will respond. And I feel very confident that you share that view and that you will be somebody who will who will work across many different aisles. We I don't know if you recall, but we've actually been in several meetings together years ago on issues around juvenile justice and different policies. And when I served at the King County Jail, we were still working with the agencies, not with the department. But I found it was very productive and healthy to have the we used to have the directors in once a month and we would sit and talk about different issues. It didn't mean we didn't have challenges. Some of you may recall policies around whether you can bring your cell phones into the jail or not, and how we would escort detention inmates to their court hearings in whether they were in shackles or not in shackles. These were some of the fun issues that we worked on back then. But but we worked through them and we didn't always agree. But we talked to each other. We heard each other. You always learn something from those conversations. So I think that that is a very important part of your role and important for you to then have the really challenging job of turning after having conversations with people like us or people like jail directors or sheriffs or prosecutors to turn to your colleagues and be able to share what you've learned about other people's positions, because all of this support is is remarkable, but it's also just a start. You're going to be in a position where you will have to talk to your your your staff and your supervisors and managers about things that they might not agree with completely as well. That goes in both directions. So I think that you've demonstrated the strength of character to be able to have those conversations in both directions. I think that's one of the most important things about the leadership of this role. My question is, as you know, one of my biggest concerns is the managerial challenge facing the person taking on this job is large as as I said when we met and I think people here may appreciate we're 25, almost 30 years into the merger of Metro and King County. And it kind of finally feels like one government right there 25, 30 years later. And this this merger of the Department of Public Defense has only happened in the last three or four years. So it's still very much a work in progress, and there's still many things to be done. My reading of the audit is that it is pointing out that fact that is not it's not the fault of anybody. It's just that this is a work in progress. And so can you just speak just a little bit more about your managerial path forward? You talked about building a strategic plan, but maybe just giving a few more details around how you will build a team to support you in this work, because no one leader can do this all on their own. Sure. But before I do, I do want to point out that the staff that are here are not from any one division. Right. All the DPD is in this movement. Right. Of the folks there. I know that I misspoke. I meant from the staff of DPD. I just meant that there are spaces right where we are moving beyond the divisions and have unity in the way we think about things. And I think you and I have talked about this or maybe not, but we see that in particular practice areas, especially in practice areas where where we are bringing in most of our new attorneys, we see a lot of alignment in in their practice and a lot of camaraderie and collegiality. And so I am hopeful that we are not going to be here with it 20 years. You said for Metro Transit that we're going to be here 20 years from now and say, oh, those four divisions are just starting to work in similar ways. I think there's reason for a lot more hope. Not I. I have my deputy, someone named Rick Lichtenstein, who I think is here, but who is a veteran of public defense in King County, worked at a nonprofit or TDA, and then came to the county. And I rely heavily on his nuts and bolts understanding of numbers and case loads to make sure that we are managing these cases in the same way. And the caseload management is, is in my mind incredibly important because it's where it all. It's where we begin to start building consistency, right? If we have divisions where some felony attorneys are getting 12 new cases in a month and some felony attorneys in a different division are only getting three new cases in a month, their practices are going to look very, very different. And we need to make sure that the work is spread in a in an equitable manner across the divisions, because that's that's a starting point for starting to have practices that look similar. We've also started looking at our felony credit youth and trying to develop more flexible parameters around how to earn those credits. And what's rebuttable limits on those credits could be recognized. If you're in trial, you're going to accumulate many credits getting a little bit into the weeds here. But the point is, it's in these weeds that we start to build that consistency of practice across the divisions. And so the plan is to work with Rick and others in management who have particular interest in looking at the numbers and the Excel spreadsheet that we spend our days staring at to try to figure out how to make sure the work is spread in a way that allows for everyone to engage in that same high level of practice. Hey, let's see, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So, first of all, congratulations on being a Yale graduate. Your resume is amazing. And I'm glad to hear you say that open communications is a really important thing. So I have three quick things I'd like to say and ask about. I was briefed twice by the auditor and the audit because it was surprising what was in there. The part that made me the most concern was the sentence that says The fragmented organizational structure and a weak management framework results in inconsistent case practices and caseload outcomes across the department's four divisions. So I had them come back and actually show me various criteria and how justice was different in the four divisions. That was startling to me and and frankly, a little bit disappointing. So I, I firmly agree that when it comes to the case, that there should be no interference with the Department of Public Defense. But when it comes to the process, I feel very strongly that we need to work together in the process. What I mean by that is sometimes a certain amount of paperwork or a certain way of doing something negatively impacts another part of the process. And in the Siege Council, where people bring their issues to the table, I have seen them say, I have a problem with X and another department say, Wow, I didn't realize that my doing this had that impact on you. How will you fit in to being able to listen to the process to see how you can help the process to work better? I think maybe the easiest way to try to approach this is a specific example. I know that there's been a lot of discussion right now about text messaging reminders for clients, and there are some concerns around the low enrollment rates. And we've talked to our lawyers about it, and I think there are sort of two possible fixes. Right. So one is that there's some reluctance to enroll because it could possibly be dangerous for a client to share their phone number with the court if it's connected to other things. If, however, Deped's case management system can find out those text message reminders itself, that poses no such problem because those communications are privileged and confidential and no one can subpoena those phone numbers from us. And so recognizing that text messaging is important to reduce FTA rates, what we're really working on is to find a quick way to get our case management system to try and send out those messages to meet that need. So it's been two years since we did the pilot on this, and as of last week, we were told that currently 14% of the people that are in the criminal justice system are getting a text message. And actually the quarter, the future conference that I went to six years ago, we still have not implemented all the best practices from the court of the future. That is disconcerting to me. We have a national group that talks about what we should be doing and we can't implement those in a more timely manner. So you and I have talked about this several times, and when one of the judges said that the 14% that are getting text messages are having a much higher rate of showing up in court, that's what we want. You don't want people getting more warrants. So I would hope in the future that when there's an idea that has comes from the court of the future or best practices or that superior court models, and it turns out to be good that you would find some way of making it work as part of the system, which obviously hasn't happened to date. The other thing that happened on Friday, that Thursday that concerned me was this and this is a handout that was on Thursday. And it was the little startling. 40.6% of the defendants were charged with a new criminal offense prior to resolving their original case. I was startled by that number. I had not heard that number before. And when I asked about it, your comment was pretty much. Well, tell me what your comment was on that. What do you think about that? What do you think about the fact that 40.6% of the defendants commit another crime potentially during their original case? Well, that's pending. I think it's actually really hard. This was a chart that this was a chart that we talked about. And you talked about also Thursday when you were sitting next to Judge O'Donnell and Judge and see who was sitting next. And Mark Larson, we talked about this particular chart on Thursday. All right. So this is Mark Larson's charge that 40% of the people who are accused are charged with a subsequent offense. I feel like insufficient information to really understand anything other than possibly we should be providing better services to people once we release them to help support them in the community. So it was, I think, Judge O'Donnell who said the data is very poor, that that's not collected data. And I think that even having that data out is disconcerting to the citizens. So my last question is what, if any, role do you have in protecting the general population? I think the role of public defense is very clear. We are accountable to people who are accused of crimes and it is our job to represent them and to pursue their goals when they are charged with a crime. I think as a policy matter, we can engage in broader conversations, but always with that lens, always with the lens of we represent the people, the poor people of King County who are accused of crimes. I think there's still plenty of room to talk about public safety because many of the things that we do to the individuals in the system are don't actually protect public safety. So I look at that number and it's the 40% of the people who are released are charged with additional crimes. What we also know, though, is that when you don't release someone, they are more likely to lose their employment. To have decreased family ties. To have higher rates of mental illness. And so even with that number, I can say as a matter of public safety, I don't think it protects the citizens of King County to needlessly detain individuals. While I am interested in having collaborative conversations about public safety, I can never forget that my job is the job of public defender and in my responsibility and my loyalties lie with the clients and their communities who are indigent and accused of crimes. So we you work with them, Judge? I think it was Judge Don. It might have been Mark Lawson. One of them said that we don't know exactly what percentage of that 40.6 is. A new misdemeanor is a new felony, is a new violent crime, although here it said 20.2 would be charged with a violent offense. But we don't really know that for sure. And we also don't know how many are a no show on another case or a case that was filed. But I think the overall citizens of this county need to know that when we release somebody that it isn't a 40, 60% chance that they will commit another crime and victimize the citizens of the county. So I do agree with what you said a minute ago about making sure there's more services around these people while they are out. But I think we also need to be aware that that is a very high number. Thank you. Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Nita. Again, we're all saying congratulations. And I can't remember being here with such an outpouring of support for a a confirmation hearing for an individual. And I think that really says a lot a great deal of the confidence that you're inspiring in your leadership thus far in the as the acting director. So very appreciated all that you're doing. And I've heard you say that, you know, you might do somewhat you might handle things differently in terms of whether you communicate and ahead of a press conference being held or, you know, that communication is very important. I'm I look at your resume and it's just stellar all your background and experience to prepare you for this position. But I'm wondering if when you've been thinking about this and going ahead, what might keep you up at night? I mean, what what is some or a challenge that you think is is really something that's going to be paramount for you, whether your personal attributes and experience will prepare you for taking on, or it's just something endemic to what is faced by the department. I'm just curious to hear from you on that. Hi for me, one of the my biggest gaps comes in the world of human resources. I don't have a lot of experience in dealing with H.R. issues. And when you have a department as large as ours, there are many of those. I've attempted to compensate for this gap, however, by leaning really heavily on the the new h, r d h r h r d I don't know the order of the letters, but the Human Resources Department, I have leaned on them heavily to give me and experienced strategic thinkers to help find the way forward in DPD, both on human resources sort of policies and practices, and then then also dealing with individual H.R. issues as they come up. I you know, there's rarely almost a day that goes by without my consulting with our human resources services delivery manager or or with Jay Osborne about some issue to make sure that I'm not that that I'm acting in a way that is sort of consistent with best practices, that I'm not creating liability, but that that is the area in which I have the least experience. What I'm very well aware of that fact. And so I lean heavily on the existing resources that we have to compensate for it. Thank you. And one other question. I hear different things about staffing needs, one, that there's a need for additional defenders, paralegals. There's just not enough currently there. I hear also that the public defense gets a lot more as compared to the prosecutors. Any comment on that one? I'm not independent of either budget, so I won't go into any particular details. But the prosecutor, unlike public defense, does not have caseload standards at the Washington Supreme Court, have set caseload standards for us to ensure that our clients receive high quality representation. If you have too many cases, you can't do a good job on them. So there are standards. There are also standards that create ratios for every attorney. You have to have point to five support staff for every attorney up to a point to five investigators. There are ratios for for all the work that we do. I can't I don't know the prosecutor's staffing and I can't speak to to their model. But what I do know is that we are driven by standards adopted by the Supreme Court and by our union contracts. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Caldwell's Councilmember Gossett. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I wanted to first comment on the issues raised about 40% of of those who. All right. I fear public defenders end up committing a crime before they do any time in jail again. I think they were. I think that Mark or Judge O'Donnell was talking about. Seek out programs like that where several people have not come out to come in a couple of weeks. And we also had just come down from the Regional Justice Center, and it had been out 38% of everybody antsy got it sent by judges way out at the Regional Information and Regional Justice Center. And it's easy to see how they would discontinue trying to make it. I having to write about an hour a day. But most importantly in regard to this statistical point is that since 1985 and I think, you know this, Anita, there's been a tremendous increase in mass incarceration of low income Americans, particularly African-Americans, Latinos, native and very poor white people in our criminal justice center. And the corresponding recidivism rate, the number of times those folks have gone back into jail after getting out of jail, have been, up until recent years, 67%. A little over two thirds of them go back. So a lot of people are making the case that it's the mass incarceration of so many people and then the imposition of legal financial obligations that they have to it accrues in market state at 12% interest a year, the amount of money they owe us. And then when they get out, they start getting hassled by agencies that make it their business to go after folks who have outstanding debt. And those are very critical problems. I just think that the 40% is way lower than the 67% recidivism. So that doesn't concern me that much. Plus, it is judges that allow people into alternative to incarceration programs and the public defender's job just try to represent them the best way that you can. So that's something that we should keep in mind also. You have been the director. How long were you deputy director of public affairs? Two years. The year and a half. I think. I think I was August of last year, maybe. August of last year. I don't see how I love a public official in a department. They got an audit based on the last two, three or four years could be held primarily responsible for the 11 to 13 findings. Of course, you have some responsibilities that you're in, but the example I like to use is my office. Each council member has four staff. I have two staff that consistently tell me and you go to the King County Jail too much to see individual clients. You're supposed to be dealing with policy that help us to keep these cats out of jail. You don't have time to be going over to the jail to see individuals. But when a mother or relative calls me personally and said, Junebug is in jail, I know the outcome for asking somebody else to go see them. So I go always are leaders have them make have to do a balancing act between advocacy management and being out there with the people. I'd like to conclude by just sharing with my members two examples that I have had with you in recent weeks that I think will show that why I believe you be an outstanding public defender when we confirm you. One, you had a training about three weeks ago and you made it non-mandatory. Okay. Usually the public defenders say, I've got to be at this training. You're part of your public event. But you said these intelligent people, I want to make it non-mandatory. You asked me to come and speak to. I was impressed that on and 82 out of the 220 lawyers that you have in public defense on their own decided to be at this. And the rest of the staff that were there were, I guess, researchers and secretaries or whatever, but to me and me talking and so on , that was the respect that they had gone out for you during the couple of months you've been their leader and a couple of years they've been working with you. So that says volumes about how responsive your staff will be as you continue to improve the operations of a public defender. And lastly, I called you a couple of times about individual clients, and you've gotten back to me either the same day or the next day, letting me know specifically what the problem. And the last time you said, well, this guy's mistaken because he did have a ball during court, and I kind of raised my voice to you about a lawyer. And I've been there and you gave me the lawyer's name. He said you already had a lawyer go visit this guy while he's still in jail. To me are superb examples of very good leadership, and I hope that we respond. Yes, I guess, Mr. Chair, my state my comments have been more statements than questions, but thank you for giving me an opportunity to do that. Can I just respond very briefly, Councilmember Garcia? I just wanted to be clear that the people who were at our conference were not just attorneys, but our investigators, our mitigation specialist, our paralegals, our legal assistance, all of whom are really integral parts of the representation of each client. And I want to make sure that they know that they are valued as much as any of the lawyers. But I think Councilmember Garcia Arlington, a motion from you at this time. Oh. At this time. And I'm hopeful that we are, at least at the committee level, a vote on this motion today. I would like to move that. We had our proposed ordinance 2018 zero 5 to 7 staff. Is that the correct number? That that is correct. Mr. GARCIA. And this is this would be a recommendation on our motion that we forward to the full council, the full representation of King County Council members, nine of us, but at a final meeting where we consider and finally confirm her recommendation. So I want to move it out with this recommendation that should be concerned. Up for confirmed. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember Gossett. That motion is before us. I haven't spoken yet, but I want to just take a moment to say a few words. First, I want to thank the Public Defense Advisory Board. You know, you are more than just one of our typical advisory boards, and we have a lot of them here at the county. You take a regular active oversight and consulting role with the Department of Public Defense and report out to the community, the executive and the council about what's going on there. And there is no doubt that following the litigation over retirement benefits, that there's been tremendous turmoil as this function, this vital, constitutionally mandated function, has undergone tremendous change in the last few years. It was one of the first issues that I had the privilege to engage on as a new council member here at the council. In terms of what would the future of public defense look like in King County? Would we continue to honor the traditions of advocacy for policy reform, or would we revert to what most jurisdictions around the country have a bare minimum constitutionally mandated in the courtroom public defense system, and we chose the prior we chose to protect and preserve and enshrine in the charter of the county the obligation, not just the opportunity , but the obligation of the department and its leader. If you look at the ordinance, it's in two places with the department and everyone that works for it, and it's leader to advocate for equity and reform in the criminal justice system and access to justice. In fact, it was Councilmember Dunn who suggested the language in that charter amendment access to justice. To his credit, he has a strong view, being a former prosecutor, about the importance of a public defense, being in that adversary and active position. That mandate when brought to life can be uncomfortable. It can be uncomfortable for those in power, whether they sit on it in a courtroom, under a black robe, whether they are prosecuting from one side of the courtroom, whether they're policymakers who write budgets and fund programs and want to do the right thing. But I think that as the case that an interim director can do outside, that sometimes that discomfort and that cacophony of ideas brought into the public sphere, even ones that may at times be unpopular or the vast or sharp minority, help us get to a. Our result, and that's what we're all trying to do, I think here with our justice system in this in this community. And that is get to a better result. And I think we have to be confident and comfortable enough in our views and positions to hear dissent and to have those dialogs with folks of differing views and to a to account for why that Councilmember Baldacci made a very good point. Sometimes you start off, you think you're diametrically opposed, but you're talking, well, you think maybe we got more in common and we can get there. Councilmember Dunn mentioned about positions that may be opposed, for example, the CFTC, by the will of the voters. And there's no doubt that they voted to approve that. But, you know, as Councilman McDermott is fond of pointing out, sometimes voters don't necessarily comport with their views with the Constitution. They would have had him not be able to marry the person he loves. The Constitution of United States Supreme Court says that you can. And what I think in this function guides Ms.. Cantwell in my discussions with her is an unrelenting and uncompromising devotion and dedication to the United States and Washington state Constitution on behalf of those who need it most. And sometimes we hear things that, you know, are uncomfortable for those of us in the establishment personally. Your story is incredibly compelling to me. The daughter of immigrants, a dad who started off parking cars in this country, there was no inside recommendation to get you into Yale. None. You earned it. And I just and there was no no inside family member to go to that district court clerkship or that court of appeals clerkship. And those of us on or lawyers here know that those are tough to get and they only go to the best and the brightest. And so, frankly, I think we're lucky that you're willing to even consider doing this job. We're fortunate to have you here, and I know that there's differing views about that. And finally, me say this we all can do better at this, myself included. But I've heard a willingness and a commitment in personal dialog and here today to continuous improvement and to being a better leader. This is the new job. And you said, Hey, I've stumbled on occasion in the early start, but I'm committed to learning from those mistakes, like the best of us and being a better leader. The way I know that you're serious about that and are committed to that is the support of your employees, SEIU, the Teamsters, the folks here today. I've heard from them. This department needs needs you to lead it at this time. We cannot we cannot let persist the low morale. And we saw those employee surveys that has gone on and festered there. And I am confident that because of the support you've got with your team and your commitment to the individuals in your organization, that you're the right person at the right time for this job and that you'll continue to grow and develop and work with the rest of your peers in the legal community and the policymaking community to be an even better leader. So I'm looking forward to voting for you and I hope we get to do that. Thank you very much for your willingness to serve. Customer. We're done. Thanks, Mr. Chair. Appreciate that. And in the tenor and tone of the questions up here, I think we drill down and learn a lot about you as an appointee today. As I mentioned in my dialog with you earlier, I, I still need to get some answers to some questions relating to a report that just came out now . And that report come out a few months ago. I'd be derelict in my duties and not having those questions for you up here, but because it's just happened, I've got to get the answers to those questions. CHAIR And I've had a brief conversation up here in his it is his direction that we move forward with a vote today, which I certainly respect. That is his prerogative as chair because I don't have the answers to those questions. I can't vote yes today, but I'm I think I can get to a place where I can vote yes if I get the responses to those questions. And so and I'm not saying that halfheartedly or in jest that serious. So I'm going to just because we're going to force a vote today, I'm going to vote no for the moment and look forward to the chance to go ahead and get some answers, some questions related to that audit report that just came out, because I think, honestly, down the road, I think having fleshed out the vision for responding to that and making the department not only comply but exceed in terms of what you're doing will help everybody in your department and then the constituency and clients that you represent. So I just wanted to be real clear about where I was coming down. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you very much, Councilmember Dunn. Other questions? Council comments on final passage. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. You're obviously going to be appointed today. And so four years from now, you'll be back again for reappointment should your hearing not be on fire. So anyway, I just wanted to say that I will be looking forward to working with you on systemic things and how we can make this county work Tibet together better and making sure that the outcomes from each of the four units are fair to the citizens that you are protecting. And so they all have equal justice. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Other questions or comments? Okay. The clerk on call the roll on proposed motion 2018 052 set of seven I made. The motion was made with recommendation in the ordinary course. I just to be candid, I had hoped that we could move it forward today. But Councilmember Dunn, I think, has once an opportunity to have some questions answered. So it would not be on this afternoon's agenda, but would be, I think, on next Monday's agenda. If it were on this Monday or if it were today, a councilmember with our condition can always ask for a courtesy delay anyway. So that would be the schedule if I got that right that I'm seeing some nods know help us out here. Mr. Chair, typically an expedited agenda means the following week. In this case, I think you should just clarify whether you mean a week from today or two weeks from today. On the right now. One always rules. One way or. The other can be a week from today I'm standing. All right. Okay. It seem not. All right. Help us out here with the roll call. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bellucci? Councilmember Dunn? No. Councilmember Garcia. Hi. Councilmember Caldwell. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember up the Grove. Councilmember von Richter. No. Mr. Chair. All right. Mr. Chair, the vote is 6 hours, three nos. Okay. We've given a do pass recommendation to the motion. It will be on the full council's agenda a week from Monday. That's in the ordinary course. And I just for folks awareness, it is the tradition of the council that a member can ask for a one week courtesy delay beyond beyond that. So that could happen. But members can also ask for a vote on that. So we would expect to take it up a week from this afternoon at 130. And there is an opportunity for public comment. Thank you all for being here. And Anita, thank you for being here and thank you very much for your help. Okay. We are given the nature of this item have taken and the public testimony more time than anticipated. Our pasta briefing item 12 really warrants more attention, I think, and time than what we've got here before. We should be adjourning. And we have had some dialog with the consultants that says they would prefer to have more time to spell it out. And Councilman Baldacci has kind of been the nut kind of has been the leader on this from the from the beginning when she chaired the committee. The whole. Does that work with you? If we were to bring this for a more fulsome briefing next time. I think that we should give it enough time. The question is whether we do a little bit here and a little bit then, or if that's too choppy. I would leave that up to the folks who are going to have to come back to do the presentation either way. Would it work better to do it all at once? It seems like it would. They're nodding after that. That being the case. We could move, I think our perhaps our other items on the agenda. We will we will work with you to get that scheduled this year. Thank you for your patience and we appreciate your patience. As you can see, we've been working on a hot, hot issue here with some time sensitive because of an expiring interim appointment. And it will also give members a little more time since we just got the report to read it in depth, which I think is going to be helpful to have a good dialog on that. Let's see, are we staff ready to take up proposed ordinance 2018 zero four or five six, which would authorize the executive to enter into an interagency agreement with the City of Renton regarding the Lake to Sound Trail, Councilmember Dunn and I are co-sponsors of this. I think it's fairly perfunctory and I don't even know that we need a detailed staff report. Because of the late hour. The staff for that item is not actually here. I'll give you. The very brief highlights. But as you said, you can. Kind of give us some briefing. Councilmember Dunn's ready to move it this important project and you're and great. Right? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah. I don't need a whole lot of explanation, but I would propose order is 2018 0456. All right, that's before us. And a brief overview just quickly, what it does. I think there are two correct. There are. You want to get to them together because the item is for the same reasons I would move ordinance 2018 0456 and also Ordinance 2018 0457 together. Great. And just by way of a high level overview, both these ordinances would give the executive authority to enter into local agreements for construction of and maintenance of trail segments with our partner jurisdictions. Very good port and project. How's it going to end up as it is it happening? It's progressing. Okay. Councilmember Patterson was big on this, I think to make this trail happen. I'm saying not everybody's happy with this legislation. All right. Let's call the roll on those two items, 13 and 14 proposed ordinances, 2018 04560457. Excuse me, the two chair. I believe there may be amendments. Oh, would you move the amendments, Councilmember Dunn These are perfecting technical amendments. That were the direction they are in your packet. Mr. 573 What's the. Safety analysis and do? There they are. These are very long agreements and. What they are for each one of these markets. Sorry, would you say for anyone. Or any one in for 99? For anyone is Amendment One, which replaces attachments. Councilmember Doug. So. 84. I'm Sage page for you on just a memo. And thank you to the first one. And because there are another one. Which I think is that. For 99. And both amendments are technical changes recommended by the council's legal counsel. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Now we sorted through the packet just reviewing changes of over 500 page packet here. We're trying to get through like kind of like your phone but anyway, open book. Yeah, that's right. That's obsolete. So should these packets be by the way? But anyway, so to ordinance 2018 0456, which I previously moved, I would move Amendment one and can I move them together now? We'll do it separately in. Favor of Amendment one. Say I, I any opposed? Number one hangs. Yeah. With respect to Ordinance 2018 0457, which I previously moved, I would also move Amendment one on favor. Amendment one, say i, i any opposed Amendment one to the second, ordinance four as hangs now to the underlying ordinances as amended, the clerk will call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell Duty Councilmember Dunn. All right. Councilmember Garcia. Councilmember Caldwell So Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott, Councilmember of the Grove. Councilmember von Richter. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is eight is one excuse. All right. To pass recommendation has been given to those two items all here. Is there any need to expedite that? No. Yes, I think we're ordinary course. So week from today, we'll call that. Yes, if that's ordinary course. All right. We're going to work it out with. All right. There's one more. Item content, Mr. Chair. Yes, I think they can we can say there's one more item related to review warrants, which we're not going to get to today. And I encourage members just to take a look at that. It involves a code change regarding authority to issue the warrants. If there's nothing further to come before us, we're adjourned and we'll see you for those caucusing with the larger caucus at 1215. So we have time for lunch. Get a lunch. Is that work? Yeah. I canceled it. Oh, we're not caucusing. It's canceled for the smaller caucus. And is anyone welcome or adjourned? ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE authorizing the King County executive to enter into an interagency agreement between King County, a political subdivision of the state of Washington, and the city of Tukwila, a municipal corporation in the state of Washington, regarding design, construction, ownership, operation, and maintenance of the portion of Segment A of the Lake to Sound trail that is within the city."}
{"id": "king_380404bc-8e1a-4746-857e-82ab037bff04", "input": "You the committee of the Home to order. As a student of Irish history, if not literature, I want to wish everyone a good Bloomsday. In light of the public health emergency, the governor has issued an emergency order suspending the session of the Open Public Meetings Act. That requires we have a physical space for the public to watch our meetings. This order has been extended by leadership of the Senate and the State Senate and the state House of Representatives. As we start today, I would like to acknowledge that we are on the traditional lands of the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We thank these caretakers of the land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial. We'd also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians who live in King County and have brought their cultural ways of life here greatly enriching the community. Madam Clerk, we please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Belcher. You. Councilmember Dombrowski. Here. Councilmember Dunn. Here. Council Member Commonwealth You're a member member council member of the ground here. Councilmember member right there. Councilmember Vaughn. Right there. Here. Council members are high here. Mr. Chair. Here, Mr. Chair on rhetoric and see the concern in your eye. We have you as president. Today we have a briefing from council staff on the COVID 19 supplemental appropriation request that was transmitted to the IG to the Council last week. We'll also take up the Harborview Bond proposal and after we hear from council staff, I anticipate going into executive session prior to taking action on the Harborview Bond proposal. We also have on the agenda a briefing from members of the Charter Review Commission, the first related to subpoena power of the Office of Law Enforcement, Law Enforcement Oversight . The second charter amendment related to the process for inquests. Depending on the conversation today, it is possible we would take action on each of those proposals today. Following the charter amendments, we'll take up a motion that asks the executive to provide flexibility to an end to unincorporated area restaurants and retail businesses to operate outdoors. The last item on the agenda is a motion that asks the executive to provide for property tax payment plans or 2020 property tax payers. A housekeeping note as we get rolling. To help us manage the meeting and ask the public as well as executive and council staff to please keep the video off until just before you plan to speak. With that, I'd entertain a motion to approve the merits of our June 2nd council meeting. Soma Councilmember Yvonne Roper has moved adoption approval of the minutes. See? No discussion. All those in favor, please say I, i, i opposed. No, the ayes have it. The minutes were approved. Will now turn to public comment, though we are getting used to it having an entirely remote meeting of the committee. The whole is somewhat unusual for the council. They want to be sure that everyone who calls in understands the rules for public comment and how the process will be managed. First, our standard ground rules of the comment must be related to items on today's meeting agenda. Must not be used for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election of any person to any office, or for the promotion or opposition of any ballot proposition. It also should not include obscene speech. If the speaker fails to abide by these restrictions. I will rule them out of order, require them to conclude their testimony. Now I'll describe the process as members of the public joined the Zoom call. You are automatically muted. We can see your name or the last three digits of your telephone number or our committee clerk will call the names or numbers when your name or last three digits of your phone number is called. Staff will unmute your line. Please be sure to also on your phone if you have muted yourself as a courtesy before before you begin your testimony. If you might just state your name and then pause, we will acknowledge we can hear you. And then if you begin by saying and spelling your name. So we have it accurate for the record. And if you wish your video to be turned on for your public comment, please request that at the beginning. As you are recognized, you have 2 minutes to speak. And you'll hear a timer to go. Go off when you've reached 2 minutes. You can certainly finish your thoughts, but please wrap up your comments to allow the next person to speak. If you go much past your 2 minutes, I may interrupt and ultimately ask you to conclude or be muted. And if you are listening on TV or streaming the meeting or audio before your testimony, we ask that you please mute those features so that we don't have feedback on the lie. Please hang up after you provided your public comment to make it easier to manage the call and you can follow the remainder of the meeting on King County Television Channel 22 or stream online. The link to stream online is on the Council's website, which is at WW W dot King County back site I'm sorry WW dot King County dot gov backslash counsel. And then click on the watch us live button. Well, now go to go to public comment reminder when your name or number is called to state your name so we can confirm that we can hear you, madam. Please go ahead with public comment. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first caller on the line is Bernadine. No, go ahead. You're unmuted. Great. Thank you. I am Bernadine Dark? No. Or Bernie Dark? No. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Great. Thanks. Last name is spelled Dios C H NHL. I live at one three 208 Kathleen Road in Renton, Washington. I'm currently the chair of the Harborview Board of Trustees. Thank you for considering the Harborview facilities improvement issue. Harborview is a critical asset for our mission population. King County, Washington State and the region. I support the Harborview proposal before you. It has received unanimous support from the Harborview Board, the Harborview Leadership Group and the Capital Projects Oversight Committee. The proposal addresses critical medical center needs. A majority of the medical center's facilities are aging and out of date in terms of modern best practice standards for infection control and privacy. Certainly, it's being tested now in the course of a pandemic. Harborview often operates at 100% capacity. On average, 50 patient beds per day cannot be used due to infection control. Harborview provides world class, quality leadership and patient care. We can be proud of all of our providers and staff at Harborview. It's outstanding organization. Help us keep our promises to all the populations that depend upon us. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Kansas. Please go ahead. You're unmuted. Hello. This is Candice. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Okay. My name is Candace Tkachuk, and I'm a concerned citizen of King County. Last Friday observed the Lord Justice meeting that you convened and was glad to see council members who are white, like myself, aligning themselves with the transform transformative calls for justice that are happening across the country right now. I could sense that many of you believed, as I do, that we white people are endlessly accountable for the way that white supremacy has made a mockery of justice in this country. Today, you have the opportunity to address this mockery by supporting subpoena powers for the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight. Although your support of this provision will assist all its critically important work in doing so, you can strike against the white pattern in which the appearance of reform is allowed to cloak the true absence of it. And let me be clear, my urging here is not a criticism of Oleo, I think, very highly of its staff, but rather I am hoping that we can arrive at a place where those who have sought to contain only those authority will have no power to do so . Diminished another provision. I urge you to move on as one that would make the inquest process for those who are killed by police a truth finding an experience rather than a process that exists to protect police officers. I believe that we can all understand the message from the streets these days. The era of covering up the terrorizing disproportionate and racially biased actions of police through formal processes is over. It is now time to refashion our system so that it truly serves those who are forever changed by police brutality rather than those who are the source of it. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Amy. Darlene. Go ahead, please. You are a muted. I did not. I did not intend to sign up. I have nothing to offer other than reiterating Candice's articulate words. Thank you very much. The next caller on the line is Ernest Do. I'm trying to unmute you. Can you mute yourself? There you go. Go ahead, please. I'm not calling in for public comment. I'm sorry about that. Thank you for letting me know. The next caller on the line is Carla. I'm trying to mute Carla in. Carla Boyer, C.A.R. MLA. BAIER Thank you. Go ahead, please. I'm speaking in support of Olio and in support of the more authentic oversight of the actions of the Sheriff's Department. The more power a public agency has, the more essential it is both for the welfare of that agency and for the public that it has meaningful oversight. Now, in the case of the police. They they have power to. Take away freedom and they have power to extinguish life. And so it's essential that we have meaningful oversight. Now, I agree with one of the council persons comments that a decade of oxygenation against meaningful oversight by oleo is far too long. And so I'm speaking in support of subpoena power, which is understood by people at right minded people who want meaningful support as an essential tool for meaningful oversight. And I'm also speaking in support of having the sheriff be an appointed office. And finally. There was a there was a a just and necessary movement. I think it's almost been a year ago now to reform the inquest process in Seattle and so that it so that the inquest process would be a search for truth rather than a continuation of trauma to the families impact. And I wish to see them forward. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is named Carol. I'm trying to meet you. If you'd like to speak. Please meet yourself. There it is. Hi. I'm a staff member. I'm not here for public comment. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. The next speaker is listed as Equity and Education Coalition. I'm trying to a mute you if you'd like to speak. Go ahead. You might have to just tell. The name I have is Equity in Education Coalition. If you'd like to speak, please unmute yourself and go ahead. So I'll move on to the next one. Who the next person is? Fernando Luna. I'm trying to meet you. You'll have to. There you go. Would you like to speak? Hello. My name is Fernando Luna. I'm a civic engagement coordinator for Inter Menos, a Latino LGBTQ organization based in Seattle. Race, ethnicity and sexual orientation are a powerful set of were hers and get our community persistently under invested in. When Buster files were passed, our communities received only 10%. That teeny destination live. Community based organizations aren't capable to lead or. I'll be staffed by immigrants, refugees, indigenous people and other people of color. This is unfortunately happening again. In this current public health crisis. Latinos account for 41% of the COVID 19 cases in the state of Washington. Despite that, we are only 13% of the whole state population. This is the equivalent of genocide to our communities. I know there is a lot of talk of equity and other stuff, but I'm asking you, council members will do allow for the CARES budget to shed more crumbs while our community die. And. Is, in fact, in all of their. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Helen Shaw warm? Please unmute yourself and go ahead. Thank you. My name is. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. My name is Helen Shaw. Wang and I work with the White Center Community Development Association on economic strategies that prevent displacement, especially within our first and second generation immigrant, refugee and black owned business community. Given current COVID 19 funds, council members, please think about what it means to co-create with the community right now. Council Please think about the words racial justice and how those words can be realized. Given the COVID 19 funds, how can council allocate those funds to co-create a true picture of racial justice? We ask that you consider the historical disinvestment in our communities. The crimes that we continue to receive. The harm and brokenness caused by past decisions. Like the one of recent regarding the building of the White Center quarantine site. Displacement within our community has already occurred prior to COVID 19, and it continues to occur. With COVID 19 now. We are and will experience unprecedented displacement. Residents are asking How will we pay rent next month? How will I feed my family this month? Leaders are asking, How can we innovate? Council members. The COVID 19 funds are really already allocated are really not enough. Show us an allocation of COVID 19 funds that truly co-create racial justice now. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Andre Helman. Go ahead, please. You are muted. Hello. This is Anya Hellman. I'm the pastor at Northlake Lutheran Church in Kenmore, Washington. And I just wanted to call to to state my support for allowing subpoena powers to oleo, as well as my support for the sheriff to become an appointed office, like many others who have called in and already spoken. I would like to see more accountability with the King County Sheriff's Office. And these seem to be good proposal, good, good ways to try and make that occur. I'm also not aware I was just looking on the site to see if I could figure out whether the term limits for the King County Sheriff's Office right now are for the sheriff. But if if there are not, I hope that there would be. And if there are, I hope that those would continue even with we have this position be appointed. Thank you. Thank you. The next on the line is James Johnston. Go ahead, please. You are muted. For a fellow James Johnson. Common spelling. I'm the I'm the current president of the Lawn Mower Bar Association on behalf of the LMB, and we support the Charter Amendment which concern granting me all the subpoena powers and clarification inquests can be held. Simply put, in times where police accountability is at the forefront of our minds, the necessity for a complete and transparent investigation process is underscored without a thorough investigation and transparency to the process. I fear that the same injustice as we've seen in minority communities time and time again will continue to happen, which simply cannot occur. I think the message of minority communities to police is clear and that is stop taking the lives of our black and brown people. Furthermore, if someone's life is taken by law enforcement or as the result of law enforcement action, the investigation should be permitted for that person. Furthermore, the family of the deceased, they deserve some representation in the inquest process. They know more than ever. It's essential that we have a strong inquest process and the current charter language is vague, since it's not always clear when a death involves by law enforcement. So again, the NBA supports the charter amendment. Thank you. The next caller on the line is James. When? I'm trying to unmute you. Please unmute yourself by sharing. Thank you. Mr. James, when can you hear me? Yes, please go ahead. And I'm speaking as a concerned Kent resident, but also would like to supplement and reaffirm all the prior comments have been made. And I definitely believe that there is ample opportunity for the King County Council to not only take a local and sort of city oriented stand of a national and global stand to hear approaches to accountability enforcement, as well as inclusive equity in the way that they not only allocate resources, but also. Continue to engage in the conversations with the community members that continually reach out to them. In particular, I am speaking to I believe it is your briefing number 2020 b0051 end of today. I apologize if that's the incorrect one. I'm a little anxious and this is unfamiliar space for me. However, I'd like to still speak about my summary and the board. I believe it's called the the budget crosswalk that the King County Council has shared to the public not too long ago. I've noticed that there seems to be a growing divide in terms of a divide wouldn't be the word that preferred they would like to use. But in terms of the budget allocations that are being given and then used to support communities of color as minorities and those that are mostly marginalized and underrepresented, not only in this conversation , in this space, but in our own local communities, in the schools and in the public spaces that are currently shrinking and global pandemics, climate change, technological revolutions, and the growing elderly populations and those that are more vulnerable and more susceptible to and not only systemic and institutionalized oppressions and forms of trauma are not only being exasperated, exasperated and unhelpful in these times as a whole. On a personal level, I know that there are a lot of people we're doing the work out there right now, and all of this is to say that I would strongly advocate for King County Council to take a stand and to be able to use and clarify every avenue that they have to be able to support this collective movement, as well as transformative, trauma relieving change that our society needs today. And thank you so much for your time and attention. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Jenna Franklin. Go ahead. You are muted. Oh, shoot. Now. I don't know how I am. We can hear you. Go ahead. Oh, you can. Sorry. No, I didn't want to provide any comment. I apologize. That's okay. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Joseph Shoji Lockman. Please mute yourself and go ahead. Hello, council members. My name is Joseph Challenging Lockman. I'm the policy analyst for Asian Counseling Referral Service. And thank you for the opportunities today. And I'd like to speak in support of the on the county's inquest process and the charter amendment as well as Olio. And first of all, I want to say that we absolutely support the the Oleo having subpoena power to make sure that they're able to perform a thorough investigation. And to build on this, we are part of, along with others, including on the Lawn Milk Bar Association and others who are on this call. We are part of the group that works with both the county executive's office to strengthen the inquest process. And on top of that, we also worked with Nikita Oliver and others, Alejandro Torres and others to to make sure that there was a community in the community color lens in terms of crafting the charter amendments, which we fully support. We absolutely need to guarantee that there's inquest representation. I think there's a strong understanding that families need to have that legal representation to ensure that they have equal opportunity for seeking justice, especially when they've lost a loved one to lethal force by law enforcement. And then there's the need to clarify when a death involves law enforcement, the current language, as James mentioned, is vague. And in terms of situations, for example, where a person who was transported to hospital after an encounter with lots more shooting died later and needing to clarify that that is a death involving law enforcement and requires investigation and through the inquest process. And I think this also just needs to be said that there's a broader attack going on, on the current inquest process. And this is a time for the county to set up and strengthen the inquest process and stand up for black communities and show a commitment to racial justice. Considering that the sheriff's office, King County Sheriff's Office, cities of rent rents in Kent and are often federal way so not backed off of this law. This lawsuit although the city of Seattle did back off the letter that we passed around as a community sign on at this point has received about 4500 signs, including close to 70 organizations in the King County area as well. As you know, as I stated, over 4000 individuals have signed on in just a short period of time. And I hope that the council will see that this is really something that needs to be fixed now and something that can be done in these times to show support for black communities and other communities that are affected disproportionately by police violence. Thank you. Thank you. The next person on the line is listed as legal team Zoom. If you'd like to speak, can you please provide your name? Yes. This is Corey Gill. Matt. C. 0rey. Go, Matt. Ju i l m e t t. And I'm an attorney representing a family of those killed by law enforcement. I'm testifying here today on behalf of the Public Defender Association. I'd like to first start by thanking Council Members Angela Cornwell's Dombrowski and McDermott for sponsoring the Charter Reform Amendment before the Council today. First, like to support all your subpoena authority for the reasons others have shared. I would like to spend bulk of my time expressing my support for the proposed improvement to King County's charter language related to inquests. The proposed change to King County's charter enshrines the right to representation for families within the charter itself. When families lose loved ones to actions involving law enforcement, they shouldn't have to foot the bill to be able to participate in the inquest process. The proposed inquest charter change also ensures that any death where law enforcement contributed to the death receives an inquest. Current charter language, which requires inquests and deaths involving law enforcement, is vague. For example, a similar death to Emmanuel Ellis's that we saw recently in Tacoma. Someone dies several hours after being placed in a chokehold. The autopsy was the cause of death as acute methamphetamine intoxication. However, it appears the chokehold may have also contributed to the death by depriving the individual of oxygen. Under current rules, it's not clear whether an inquest would be called in this situation. The proposed language, drafted and passed unanimously by the Charter Review Commission, calls for an inquest where any member of a law enforcement agencies action decision or possible failure to offer the appropriate care may have contributed to an individual's death. This language provides the much needed clarity and will ensure that all deaths that the community expects to receive an inquest will receive an inquest. This is improvement. To strengthen Kincaid's inquest process is important more than now, more than ever. I urge the Council to pass this Charter amendment with all due speed. Thank you. Thank you. The next person on the line is Liliana Ballesteros. Go ahead. You are a mute. This is Lillian. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Hi. My name is Lillian by yourself, and I'm the executive director with the Latino Community Fund, as well as programs for Latino. I'm here to address the CARES budget, which right now is not looking to reach our community. We every year get to work with tens of thousands of voters in our county across the state. And we co-create we work with communities to create innovative programs in health and around economic development. And we see time and again our smaller Latino groups are community led groups with the proper resources are receiving the funds. They actually get to the heart of what community needs and the ideas that community is creating. And it's miraculous. But we don't need miracles right now. We need action. We see that time and time again, even in the midst of this public health crisis that is based in racial injustice. The county has said how they are racially, just a racially just county and how you want to co-create policy solutions that we need. And yet the investment is not in line with that. Conversation it. We do not see that that investment is there. And for true authentic equity authentic with more than words it's actions. And this is a time for action. We in order to walk the talk, you need to invest significant significantly more than the pitiful amount outlined right now in the executive cares budget. Right now, our communities are going to work every day. They are investing in our community with their bodies, with their lives, with their health. The county needs to invest in us and our communities. These funds need to rescue the disasters that hit our black and brown communities who are hit first or hit hardest or hit longest. When we see something like COVID 19 come through and the executive's cares budget needs to address that, the intersections of police brutality and equity. These are all rusted and root causes. And root causes are not going to be they haven't been they are not going to be cured by words. We need action. It's time that the county, especially in this health crisis and the economic crisis and the community crisis, step up and invest more than words. Your words alone are killing us. We need more of an investment through the executive care budget into communities that are hit by this COVID crisis. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Sam. Now, go ahead. You are muted. I thank you. Thank you. My name is Mel and I work with Equity and Education Coalition, other Partners in Change program. Thank you again Council Chair and council members for allowing me to speak in support of the Equity in Education Coalition's Partners and Change program. We definitely want our communities to be invested through the CARES Budget Part budget. So Partners and Change has been bringing together more than four dozen organizations in the past month to coalesce and respond to the COVID 19 implications on our health, safety and communities of color, specifically working to support our vulnerable communities at the frontlines. So Partners and Change is strongly positioned as a connected source of trusted advocates to do systems work and in connecting our communities to policymakers and government departments. Our work involves securing resources to provide to those in need, working to change systems by infusing our racial and social equity and justice principles to transform the way that we work together and also change systems to benefit the most impacted peoples. And I would like to ask the Council to have Partners in Change be funded at the request that has been submitted to the Executive and the County Council, because these monies will directly support rental and food resources and needs towards grassroots organizations and our communities that we work directly with. Also offer the right tools and capacity to strengthen and expand our COVID 19 response and prepare our communities to face the recovery and the possible second wave of COVID 19 that's going to impact our region. So King County stands to benefit immensely from this investment to the project and to the communities that are impacted and from the engagement that it provides the necessary resources to our communities. As we know, strong regions require strong communities, and strong communities needs strong investments and long term relationship building. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line is Sarang LAMB. I've unmuted you. Please go ahead. I. Good afternoon. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you and good afternoon. My name is Seven LAMB and I am with the Cambodian American Community Council of Washington. We have over 14 Cambodian American organizations throughout the state of Washington that is currently part of our council. And today we wanted to show support and request that you support the Partners in Change program. For the past month that we've been involved, our Cambodian community have been directly and indirectly impacted by COVID 19. And we definitely would appreciate your support and so that you can then support our community as well. Thank you so much. Thank you. And next caller on the line is listed as Tenant's Union of Washington. If you could give us your name, you can go ahead. Your immunity. Thank you. My name is Violet Laverty and the director of the Tenant Union of Washington. And I'm actually here to speak about the executive care budget. And right now, we operated a hut. They were tended to call in. There are a lot of tenants right now who are experiencing not receiving their unemployment checks. And what I'm calling the ball is where I'm coming to testify about is getting funding to organizations who are really on the front line, like United Way, extending some of the programs that exist right now in King County to further out the help to the community. We get calls daily are are hotlines right now is overwhelmed with calls coming in and we're trying to get as many resources connection to them. A lot of tenants right now can't. Pay. Their rent. And so the fear is not receiving the funding that they're supposed to get right now. And we're asking King County to fund the programs to get more money in communities, vulnerable, marginalized communities right now who need the help so much. And so we're taking and building calls, getting them connected to resources. And United Way is helping them rental assistance, expanding and investing in food programs that are that will help communities all over King County. And so that is my ask today. I just received three more calls this morning that are in fear of losing their their their homes and of not being able to pay their rent or even get food. And so what we're trying to do is get as many resources together to send it to them, and hopefully that you will invest in programs that are already existing right now to give them more funding to help more people. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Velma Valeria. You. I'm trying to unmute you. Please unmute yourself. And there you go. Yes. Thank you. Good afternoon, Sharon McDermott and members of the council. Thank you for having us for taking us to testify this afternoon. My name is Velma Valeria Vitiello, RIAA. I'm a former Washington state representative and I work with the Equity in Education Coalition Nursing Change Program. We appreciate the funding for community services, but really there's something big missing, and that is funding for community based organizations led by people of color to deal with the disproportionate impact of COVID 19 on our communities. The EEOC Partnership and Change Program has asked for $2.5 million to provide. Food and rental assistance masks, gloves and hand sanitizers. We also providing translation or public health information in six different languages. We ask that all financial support for small and micro nonprofit community organizations to have their resources and infrastructure to respond to their needs. We're also doing something that's really the first of the kind. We're mapping out technology, hardware and Internet deserts throughout King County. We are mapping out cultural, ethnic and linguistic assets of the CBO to facilitate engagement with government agencies. We are ensuring kids have the necessary technology and Internet connection needed to continue their virtual education. We truly, truly want to be a partner with King County Council and King County Government to increase our own advocacy presence and oppose and guide ongoing and future response to current and future emergencies. So we ask you to take us as a partner and work with us to continue our work in the communities. Thank you. Thank you. The next caller on the line has last week digits of their phone number as 084. Go ahead, please. You are a muted. Hello. My name is Estella Evans. A s e l e s e c h larson. Evans. I work with the Housing Development Consortium. I've been involved with Partners and Change for the past month and have seen the Direct Impact Partners and Change is providing to communities during this time during the pandemic, partners and change, unlike a lot of organized organizations, has been able to effectively bring together policymakers, decision makers and stakeholders to meet the immediate needs of communities of color who are mostly impacted by the pandemic. Right now, Partners in Change is also reflective of the communities that are being hit hardest with this pandemic, and I believe they would be able to meet their needs given that they reflect that population. I highly urge the County Council and county executive Dow Constantine to fully fund partners and change ask of 2.5 million so that we can directly support and continue this important work of our racial justice in serving the communities that are disproportionately impacted by the pandemic. Thank you. Thank you. The next has the last three decades of the phone number as 951. Go ahead, please. The last three digits of your phone number 951. And you are a muted. Please go ahead. If you don't wish to speak with you, just let us know. 951206951. I'm not sure they're still on the call. Okay. I learned when you started a951 still here, but not speaking. Right. I'll just move on. The next person on the line has last three digits of 139. Go ahead. You are muted. Yes. My name is Marilyn of. Can you or me, please? Hello? Yes. Can you spell your name for me, please? It's the obvious in Victor a are you piers and boy, i f. Thank you very much. Go ahead. Okay. I'm just. I'm just calling to to see just a few things. I have a statement. All people are impacted, but especially people of color by the police department. Department. My name is Marilyn Covarrubias. I am the mother of Daniel Carol Beals, who was killed in Lakewood, Washington, on board 21, 2015. Essential oversight. Subpoena power is crucial. As we can see, we've seen in the Emanuel or Emanuel Ellis situation around Ramsdale, the chief of police, he said that he didn't know about the autopsy, finding that it was ruled a homicide. But he was killed by oxygen deprivation. I feel that this is. This is incompetence on his part. Or he just doesn't care. Traffic stop that end to end. That should have ended in a ticket and in death. Walking home from the hospital ended in death for my son. Incidents where people call in and ask for help for their or their family member because they're attempting suicide and in death because the police come and kill them. Qualified immunity and the unions that protect police officers from accountability and prosecution are wrong. And that's all I have to say. Thank you for your comments, Mr. Chair. I believe I've called everyone on the line. Any time. You myself. Equity in education. Is that Sharon? Are you still on the line? Did you wish to offer testimony? I'm looking to see if I can unmute equity in education. Unmute. I can't unmute. And you miss dealing? No, I wasn't able to ask. I think that person needs to unmute themselves. If that is Sharon and you wish to testify. If you please, try to meet yourself. Not seeing that happening. Madam Clerk, I would ask you to unmute all of the attendees for a moment. It may be chaotic if there is background noise, but I want to ask if everyone has had a chance to testify. Well, I have a muted everybody. Mr. Chair. Thank you. Is there anyone who can speak up now who has not had to suffer public testimony and would like to. Anyone hearing no one and no one to close public testimony. Want to thank everybody. Mr. Chair, I'm going to a mute I'm going to mute everyone now. And I'm not sure if that's going to mute use. So please, I'll be prepared. Here we go. I am muted everybody. And I'm muted myself. Thank you very much, madam. Thank you. Well, close the public hearing. And that takes us to item five on today's agenda. For the first discussion item, we have Tillery Williams and Andrew Tan from Council Central Staff here to provide a briefing on the COVID 19 supplemental budget that was transmitted last week. This is the third COVID supplemental budget transmitted since we've been addressing the pandemic here in King County and White Dave Lee and Aaron Robert from the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget are here answering questions as well. Mr. WILLIAMS. Mr. Kim, the line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Tillery Williams, Capital Central Staff. I will begin with the staff report, which begins on page nine of your agenda packet. Proposed Ordinance 2022 11 would make a total supplemental appropriation of approximately $70.4 million, of which 19.4 million would be made to general fund agencies 36.5 million to 9 general fund agencies and 4.5 million to capital improvement program. The June COVID 19 emergency omnibus would be the third emergency supplemental appropriation ordinance to date. Moving along to page ten, Table one provides a summary of all of the emergency omnibus legislations that have been adopted thus far by this Council. In March, Council appropriated a total of $27.4 million, and with the April Omnibus Council appropriated a total of 62.9 million. Again, for this particular omnibus, the executive is proposing a total of $70.4 million. The Executive expects to transmit two more COVID 19 emergency omnibus legislations later in the year. The Office of Performance Strategy and Budget anticipates transmitting the fourth omnibus on August 13th and the fifth omnibus on October 15. Also beginning on page ten is table two, which provides a summary of each of the appropriations included in the proposed ordinance. I will briefly go through these and try to get through them as quickly as possible. The first request of $1.5 million to the Office of Emergency Management would fund upgrades and replacement of mission critical audiovisual components to support continued COVID 19 response operations according to the fiscal. Not replacing the equipment jeopardizes continuity of the response and the health and well-being of Kane County first responders. There is also a request of roughly $12.3 million from the Office of Emergency Management to purchase non-medical personal protective equipment to provide across county government, as well as to businesses and organizations and faith based organizations. Security Corps is requesting $4.3 million in temporary support for remote video conferencing and evidence sharing and superior court courtrooms. This appropriation would enable the courts to start working through its lengthy case backlogs due to the required COVID 19 related closure. Moving on to page 11, the next couple of items in the summary for Superior Court includes a request of $67,000 for the purchase of sanitation supplies, including masks, gloves, surface wipes and sanitizer to be used by staff, jurors and the public, and a request of $12,000 for the purchase of COVID 19 related workplace accommodation, supplies and equipment , including plexiglass screens for high volume courtrooms, accessory equipment for working at home, and portable video cards to provide immediate accommodations for courtroom hearings that need to be done by video. The Department of Judicial Administration is requesting $256,000 for the purchase of sanitation supplies and two temporary reconfiguration facility costs to continue operations during the COVID 19 emergency. Next, there is a general fund transfer request of $1 million to the Department of Local Services Permitting Division. This would support the continuity of government operations for the permitting staff. The moneys would be transferred to local services to fund the retention of permanent staff in March and April. As a result as a result of a 50% decrease of fee revenue due to the public health emergency orders. The next item on the list is a request of roughly $1.4 million for the Water and Land Resources Division to implement a grant program to provide economic support specifically to King County farmers and farm businesses, according to the executive. This program would include grants to farmers markets for business interruption. Grants to farmers for protests, personal protective equipment, grants to farms for technology upgrades to facilitate compliance with social distancing measures. Food Bank and food pantry support and facilitation of senior center partnerships. Moving on. The next two items were appropriate. $3 million to DC H. S to contract with United Way to support a food and shelter program, to provide food security and to provide rental assistance and eviction prevention. There was also a request of $1 million for DHS to increase contracts for legal services that focus on COVID 19 related eviction prevention and foreclosure defense. Moving to Page 12, the next three items on the list include a request of $1 million for DHS to increase contracts for domestic and sexual violence victims services and support $3 million for DHS to implement a grant program for shelter and housing providers to support current higher cost operations. And lastly, a request of $900,000 to provide support to the law enforcement assisted diversion programs. COVID 19 response and during. Moving on to public health. First, there is a request, a $4.8 million to provide food security assistance for eligible individuals to purchase food and to strengthen and expand infrastructure for food banks and providers. The proposed ordinance would also appropriate $297,000 to support hazard pay for protect 17 represented staff working at care sites similar to the hazard pay for Western State Nurses Association members as approved in the last COVID 19 omnibus. There's also a $900,000 request to provide funding to community based organizations to curb the increased violence associated with the COVID 19 crisis as part of the Zero Youth Detention Initiative. Next is an appropriation request of approximately 4.1. $4 million, an expenditure authority for a Health Resources and Services Administration grant to expand COVID 19 testing and medical services for persons experiencing homelessness and to purchase medical supplies and personal protective equipment. Following that is a request for $467,000 in expenditure authority for Y and for Ryan. Y Herzl passed on funding for building, preparing for and responding to COVID 19. The Ryan White Act is a federal program that addresses unmet health and social service needs of persons living with HIV across the United States. There are two more requests for expenditure authority for grants under public health. This includes $108,000 for a CDC foundation grant, which would provide support for contract COVID incident management teams in March and April. And $1 million for the Gates Foundation grant that would create a Bec communications campaign and address community needs that cannot be covered by other funding sources. The next item is the largest proposed appropriation in the ordinance. The executive is requesting $17.8 million to support public health, health and medical area command operations and COVID 19 response, which would expand staffing, contract labor and supplies, including testing, surveillance, isolation, quarantine support services, data analytics and informatics. Logistics Planning. Emergency Operations and contact tracing. Following that is a proposed increase of $415,000 and budget authority for the airport to support labor supplies, equipment and temporary retrofit costs associated with the ongoing COVID 19 response. FMD Internet Service is requesting $2.9 million for operating costs and security and food service costs to COVID 19 related leased sites to $900,000 for touchless plumbing fixtures in county on buildings. There are four items on the list for the item. The first item would appropriate roughly $1.1 million to build new network sites in support of the county's response to COVID 19. I'd like to add that six have already been built and three are in the process of getting built. This amount also includes temporary term, limited labor resources, staff, overtime and equipment needed to build sites. The second item would appropriate $2.4 million to enhance King County's Internet connectivity, to support increased demand for high speed and large volume data during COVID 19. The third item would appropriate $1.1 million to facility to acquire new tools and subscribe for technologies that enhance public outreach and engagement in support of counties in response to COVID 19. And this would be things such as Zoom, video conferences, licensing and support. Moving on to page 14, which covers the last three appropriation items. Lastly, TCI is requesting roughly $1.4 million to purchase 875 laptops. This includes costs, a full four year cycle laptop leases from Dell and other peripheral equipment. The last two items make up the capital portion of the proposed ordinance, as proposed ordinance would appropriate $2.5 million for leasing costs for two new COVID related quarantine sites, as well as lease extensions and three at three existing sites. It would also appropriate $200,000 of additional funding to the existing COVID 19 related modular sites across the county, and one point my $1.9 million to fund temporary reconfiguration to floors two and three of the Kane County Correctional Facility West Wing. This would be for social distancing purposes related to COVID 19. Additional details for each of these items presented in summary are provided beginning on page 14 of your staff reports and ending at the top of page 25. Executive staff indicate that most of the appropriations included in the proposed ordinance would be funded would be funded by state monies and federal monies that are currently or will be available to the county from the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security or Cares Act, including Federal Emergency Management Agency, disaster relief funding and the Treasury Department's coronavirus relief . I'd like to note that during the week of April 20 of 2020, the county received $262 million from the Treasury Department's Coronavirus Relief Fund. Executive staff indicate they are making an effort to ensure that the county exhausts all other available state and federal funding before utilizing the $262 million. Executive staff also indicate that most of the expenditures related to the ice belong to the isolation, and quarantine sites may be reimbursed through payment. Executive staff did provide an estimate of how the $262 million relief fund would be used. So far, the executive has designated 70% of the proceeds to support county government expenditures and the remaining 30% to Non-Covid County government expenditures such as community and economic support and recovery and support for cities and fire districts. Table four on page 26 provides a summary of the estimate and the funds that would remain should the proposed ordinance be adopted. As shown in the table, 125 million would be reserved in anticipation of a second wave of coronavirus cases later this calendar year and $50.6 million remains on designated. One thing to note, though, is any new allocations should be consistent with the coronavirus relief fund guidance. Any expenditures that are incurred, audited and ultimately deemed unaligned on allowable will likely have to be covered by the general fund or another appropriate revenue source. A key limitation is the prohibition on revenue replacement, meaning the coronavirus relief fund cannot be used to pay any taxes, permits or fees paid to the county. Beginning at the bottom of the PS 26 of the Stack Report is a selection that summarizes the June 2020 Office of Economic and Financial Analysis Revenue Forecast for the county. And lastly, on page 28 is Table five, which provides a timeline of the activities that would need to be conducted, anticipation and in anticipation of possible action on this proposed ordinance. And that would take place at the June 2030 Council meeting. Mr. Chair, that concludes my remarks, and I will be happy to answer any questions you may have at this time. Thank you, Mr. Williams. Mr. WILLIAMS. Since I wasn't keeping tally of the numbers, but a substantial amount of the expenditures, at least in the first half the table as you went down was for actual protective equipment, PPE, sanitary wipes, other such materials, but at least earlier in the pandemic were in short supply. Do we have an indication about our ability to secure the quantities that we'd be budgeting at this time? Yes. In the staff report. Let me find it here on page four. I'll just go ahead and say that our PSB has stated that they are working. They have identified some vendors that could provide large quantities of this of these equipment and little to no cost. And they are expecting shipments of this equipment within the coming weeks. Okay. Thank you, Councilmember Dombrowski, and then others who have questions. But I know Councilmember Dombrowski has a question, Councilmember. Oh, thank you, Mr. Chair. And sorry, I'm receiving a delivery of about 25,000 county masks right now. Believe it or not, I'll show you the truck. Got our county employees on the job for distribution into the community. Hey, I had a question. Tillery, I really appreciate your comprehensive staff report. Really excellent and understandable, but I had a question just drilling down a little bit on the Surface Water Management Fund and the transfer. What is it, 1.2 or $3 million to support look like ag related in farmers market programs. You know, we in the Budget Committee have really worked hard to try and build that fund up to meet critical water quality management needs. And it is a charge in the unincorporated areas on property taxes. And it can it's a significant amount of money. But I was just surprised to see the proposed use of those funds, which is my understanding as a utility. And I, I one, I wonder what the nexus is to to water quality. It looked like I saw in the footnote it was tied to maybe supporting ag lands. But I'm just wondering if. If there's a what the nexus is there, if those truly are swim water dollars that are proposed. Councilmember Dombrowski I don't have the answer to that, but we do have Director Di Billy on the line. If he would like to step in. Yes. Can you hear me? Okay. Thank you. Great. So, Councilmember de Baffsky, that proposal is to use some of the federal funds for this purpose. It goes through that particular fund just because that's where the agriculture programs are. But we are not proposing to use utility revenue for this pork. Okay. That that makes more sense. And just. Well, I've got the opportunity here. But with respect to the lead dollars, $900,000 for the brewery and work. Is that so? Call me. Understand that a little bit. Is that to help mitigate with some of the a loss of mid mid dollars. But but trying to shift it to new programing so it's not revenue replacement. How's that how's that working? And then myself. So this is because Reid is doing things that were not originally budgeted in response to COVID. And the staff report actually has some detail about that, like hotel rooms and things like that. So this is in no way replacing mid funding. It is incremental costs associated with COVID that would be supported with federal funds. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you, Tillery, for that great report. Colleagues. Member. Councilmember Lambert. You, sir. So two questions. Number one, I'm glad that way. This here on the line and Hillary and others. I just got a very interesting phone call with a state auditor and a crew and there was some interesting pieces of information that I will type up and said to you later today about documentation of these expenditures that I had not heard before. So I will let you know what I learned a few hours ago. On the masks, I see that we will give two masks to every person in the county. I know in my house I bought four for me and two for my husband. So not everybody is going to need two masks. So how did we. I see that we're going to get new shipments every three days. Is there a possibility maybe the 25,000 at Rod's house may go pretty fast, but if we don't end up needing as many, because that is an $11 million expenditures to expenditure. Is there any way of scaling back? I realize that these are reimbursable from the federal government, but the federal government is also our money indirectly. So I would like to know that. And the second thing is that as we go forward, I understand. So I'd like to know and verify this, that for the people who are in our hotels right now, in our centers is $155 a day for each person in there. And I'd like to look at how over time, we can begin to see how to reduce that cost. It's pretty high cost. And I'd like to know those two things. Thank you. Thank you. Council member member staff can definitely follow up on those things and get back to. For questions, colleagues. Was close. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple of questions. Probably, Dwight, but perhaps of artillery. First of all, with regard to the United Way appropriations for assistance and food security and rental assistance, I have all the respect in the world for United Way. I'm just wondering why those that organization was selected, how much would go into overhead, if anything? And is this decision, this determination based on inadequate capacity at the county to be able to handle a distribution of the funds. To Tillery here. I did speak with PSB and it is a capacity issue. The thinking behind that was that United Way had the capacity to hit the ground running right away. Now, with the overhead cost, I would have to defer to Director Guiseley to answer that question. Oh, Councilmember, I don't know the answer to that question, but it's an easy one to find out. I know they're doing things with basically their existing staff, so whatever overhead cost there is should be quite modest. But we'll get you an answer to that question. Okay. Thank you. And to follow up on that, I know quite a lot of compelling testimony from individuals who are involved with partnership and change. And I've been very impressed with the work that they've done and the proposal that they made, which I did see several weeks ago. And it's a coalition of, I think they said, over four dozen community based organizations. Would that be some type of organization that would be in your mind, would be able to distribute some of the funds, especially in those community communities that have had difficulties in accessing racial justice, but also really have a need for the resources. Yeah. So they are eligible to apply for the funding through the RFP processes that we're running. So usually the practice we have is to not just designate one in advance, as there are some particular reason that you need to do that and there's some special advantage. So they would we would expect that they would be applying for a share of the funds. We can give you more information about that if you're interested. I appreciate that. And are you talking about applying for funds from United Way or for other parts of this funding. Or other parts that are relevant? You will recall that the Council has already appropriated $2 million for working with these kinds of organizations. So there's a variety of different sets of money that are available to support these kind of groups that are working in our communities. Great. And just to let everybody know, I am intending to increase to add in additional funds for that eastern part of the funding that we've provided in the previous two covered budgets. Another question has to do with Gates Foundation Grant, since this has not passed through. When do we get federal funds? Or could you let us know more about that? Council member. I believe that the Gates Foundation money is there money they are granting to public health. It would not involve federal money in any way, any advantage of it. It provides some communication support that we don't believe we have other funding sources to support. Thank you. And lastly, with regard to Casey Anthony, I see $2.4 million for Internet connectivity to support increased demand for high speed and large volume data during COVID 19. You know where that money is intended to be spent. I know some of that would go internally for county departments and perhaps for the libraries for the parents. But what about really getting funding out for this was brought up by a couple of our people testifying for individuals, families for students who are not able to connect to their schools for remote learning. We checked, but I don't. Believe. That individuals of that description you're providing are connected to our network or iiNet or our internal network and therefore probably in effect from this investment. As we discussed previously, Councilor, I think you have a somewhat different idea that would be more appropriate to reach individuals. We're working on that. Yeah, I. There are some members. Hello. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Sorry. Do I just want to follow up on Councilmember Caldwell's questions? I'm not sure if I. Maybe I just missed that. Do we have has the executive tried partnering with smaller community based organizations that do food assistance and rental assistance programing? You know, we heard from the Partners for Change Coalition during public comment, for example. I think we often hear a justified frustration from smaller CBOs that have better relationships with community, how they're not getting supported by bigger, bigger, bigger nonprofits are. So it are just thinking through wondering why united way for these $3 million rather than smaller CBOs that have closer connections to community. So let me give you a partial answer to that question, COUNCILMEMBER. And I think we need to have this DHS follow up with you and with the council generally. So one of the things we are trying to do is get money out as quickly as we can once you appropriate it. And organizations like the United Way who already are set up to do that, can do it very quickly. And so that's kind of the rationale for doing it. As I mentioned earlier, DHS would also be working with potentially with our processes to involve other groups in doing that as well. But I want to I don't know the details of whether some of the groups who testified today already have relationships with DHS. And so let me get back to them and find out what exists already today, that, you know, if the council were to direct it, that we could easily get resources out through those other networks. I think you're right that that would be great. I know for a fact there are several smaller CBOs that already have the capacity to do rental assistance and food banks that serve particular neighborhoods in all of our district that would love this kind of support. So I would appreciate if we directed our energy toward that alternative moving forward. Further questions. Council Member Caldwell's. Yes, thank you, Mr. Chair. I just would like to again thank the staff. Tillery And Andrew, that's phenomenal and really did great work on this staff report. But I'd also like to remind my colleagues that we will be welcoming your suggestions for what we will include in a striking amendment. Are those suggestions in the way of either actual language or concepts should get to Tillery and the Andrew by this Thursday at noon, we will then come out with a striking amendment, hopefully by Friday afternoon, maybe over the weekend. But I. Think. We can likely at least provide a memo with concepts of what are what will be included in the striking amendment by Friday, and then following up with that language as soon as possible on Saturday or Sunday. And then we'll be welcoming your on line items, write amendments on by Monday at noon. And the plan is that we will vote on the striking amendment at the council meeting next Tuesday, the 23rd. Tony, do you want to add anything more to that? I think that sums up everything. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. And I think Councilmember Bell did she has a question. I see. Councilmember up the goal of raising his hand as well. But I do want to let my colleagues know that I need to step away for a minute. So I'm going to hand the gavel to Councilmember Bell Dutchie. And with that, Councilmember Balducci. There you go. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. And I'll so I'll call on Councilmember Up the Grove next, and I'll hold on to give my comments in a moment. Councilmember Grove, go ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. TILLERY For the the largest appropriation, the 17 million for public health. What does the budget bill say about how that money has to be spent? I know you in your staff report, you gave a narrative of the kinds of things they were interested in spending on it, but do we put any constraints on it or is that just funding? Do we just give kind of a blank check? I don't mean that in the pejorative sense, but do we give a. We're just going to give 17 million to public health or are there constraints in the budget bill that limit or specify how it can be spent? So usually what the executive shares with us, any proposals? The council does have the ability to go in and restrict some of those funds, but I would have to defer to Director David Lee. The only information that we will provide it was what was in the fiscal no. But other than that, I'd have to defer. So councilmember up the grove. The way the legislation is written, there is no detailed restriction on the money that we are requesting for public health. Clearly it will have to comply. Since we're intending to use federal money, it will have to comply with the federal restrictions. So it will have to be incremental. COVID related costs can't be revenue replacement. It has to be spent before the end of the year. All of those kind of things. But otherwise, we are providing a general list of the kind of things public health is doing, mostly expanding testing and expanding contact tracing. We did not have a level of detail that's a whole lot more specific than that. If there is interest in the council in writing some language that either prevents it from being used for a particular thing or ensures that some of it is used for particular thing. We're happy to work with you on that. I was, if I may follow up, Madam Chair. I was more through sort of where the number comes from. If we don't have that level of detail, why is it 17.4 instead of 16.5 or, you know, where? Yes. So it is. And obviously, this is now about ten days old from the executive side. It was the estimate that public health had at the time that body of work, you know, counting short term temporary employees, estimating how much they would be paid, how much test kits would be. I guarantee you that if we asked them today to recalculate the number from scratch, it would turn out slightly differently because we'd have different assumptions about things. And so it is frankly just an estimate and it probably has some false precision to the detail of the number of do we allow does do our budget systems allow for sort of real time tracking? For example, we get our next COVID. Omnibus. Is it sort of reconciled if they ended up spending less or more than that that we had just the. I assume this is for a. A time duration. That estimate is to get us through to the. Yeah. So that estimate was for from basically now to the end of the year for this set of activities. Okay. So if I'm just completely making this up, if a month from now we get new guidance from the federal government about public health should be doing this other thing we have not been doing. Then they'll come back and say, okay, then we need $2.63 million from August the end of the year to do this new thing. And yes, we do. Obviously, at the end of every month, we figure out what we spend and in some cases, we'll be back to you asking for more money. In other cases, we'll probably be able to say, hey, that didn't cost as much as we thought. So we're going to add, in essence, turn back $2 million back into the pool and we'll ask for a different use of it. And finally, I'll be super quick, Madam Chair. I don't even need an answer. But would you at any time, do you see us venturing on an expenditure that has some risk or uncertainty that could end up in us having to use general fund? Will you let us know? Yes. And we work very closely with your staff about things like that. So they'll ask, hey, we have this idea that's coming from a council member or does it fit? We're happy to give that feedback. We also have outside legal counsel we can consult with and we've done that several times and they've told us, Yeah, that's okay or probably shouldn't do that. Okay, thanks. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Any other questions from other members before I mention Councilmember Lambert backing out what the previous speaker said? I, too, am concerned at some of the reasonableness of the past when we were putting a speeding up within $2 million for outreach to inform about COVID. At this point, I think everybody knows COVID exists. So those expenditures may be difficult, ongoing to to rationalize. So I am concerned that we look at some of the expenditures at this point and say, is that still necessary? That range is I think it's going to be difficult to verify some of this if it doesn't pay them out. Thank you. Thank you. Any other members? Okay. My comments. I want to underscore something that our budget chair, Councilmember Coldwell, said this. This proposal is going to be moving through council at a speed that I don't believe I've ever seen before. We're having this briefing today and then next Tuesday in full council, we're expected to take up any amendments and vote. So it's going to go very, very fast. And I want to say a couple of things. First of all, I want to suggest that since we're having a series of COVID budgets and NON-COVID budgets that will be coming through over the next several months. If you see something in here or you don't, rather, if you don't see something in here that you feel is missing, that can be added. We will have future opportunities to do that, and I just think we should all keep that in mind rather than trying to come up with programing like in five business days. Right. And secondly, Councilmember Coles, I want to just thank you and remind everyone that she's been leading us through a process where we went through a serving of the membership, put down our top priorities, found a lot of coalescing around principles. We adopted a principles document and in my opinion, this proposed budget. When you look at the community based support areas that are being proposed, really responds to that. So we've found, I think, a place of some coordination or coalescing between the branches and among the officers in the council. I'm pleased to see the focus on survival types supports like rental assistance, keeping a roof overhead, food assistance, keeping food on the table. And I think what we heard from the community members who testified today was not don't do that, but rather there are specific areas in the specific communities that are that are suffering intensely and acutely . And we should make sure that the money gets to the people who are suffering intensely and acutely. I'm going to be asking my colleagues and I'm going to work with the budget chair to see if we can't do more. Now we've had a number of reports about how much COVID Cares Act funding is coming to the county. We need to be cautious. I agree. And you know, per our adopted statement, make sure that we are preserving enough of that money to support the very expensive public health work we still have to do. The contact tracing is going to be critical and it's going to have to go on for a long time. So we want to make sure that we don't overspend and not have money to do those kinds of activities. However, it does seem to me that somewhere within the 260 million that we received from CARES Act funding, that we could do more than what we're talking about here to support the community now when the need is the most acute and the most challenging. So I'm going to be asking that we look at that between now and next Tuesday and hopefully support a striking amendment that will will address that. That said, I just really wanted to give a comment not not not ask a question, but if anybody, the staff or Mr. Daley wanted to respond to that, please feel free to do so. Okay. Not seeing anybody, Councilmember. Oh, yeah. Councilmember calls. Please. Go ahead. I mentioned your time. Thank you. This, this. And I appreciate your bringing up that. We do have a couple of more covered budgets. I just want to remind my colleagues on the council that this could be information that can be helpful to the public besides this covered budget 24 hours now, which we hope to take action on next Tuesday at our council meeting. We also will have transmitted likely this week the third omnibus from the current biennium, and that will be taken up in July. So we don't have to deal with that at the same time as this COVID budget. The fourth COVID budget is likely to be transmitted mid August and we were we are projecting council action on that on September 1st or thereabouts. We also have the biennial budget for 2021 to 2022 coming up. And it will be transmitted on or about September 22nd. And the projected council passage for that is November 17. But we as well will have likely have a fifth council, a covered budget to be transmitted on or about October 15th and to a fourth omnibus supplemental budget for this current biennium, also projected to be transmitted on October 5th 10th. And both of those would likely be taken up for action by the Council on December eight. I also will be getting the format to all of you within the next week to get your recommendations for what will go into. The. The biennial budget so that the executive can plan for trying to accommodate our policy and funding priorities. So watch for that in the next few days. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. Councilmember Wells. I think that's a probably a good point to wrap up this item, unless there's any final words from anyone on the panel or any members. Okay. So we will move on. This was not for action today. This is going to be on the council agenda next week. This brings us to item number six, which is a proposed ordinance number 2020 20176, which would place on the November ballot a bond proposal for public health, safety and seismic improvements at Harborview Medical Center. We're going to have a briefing on this in a moment. But I just want to alert folks that when the briefing is done, we will be going into executive session, which means that the council members will leave this Zoom meeting. The Zoom meeting will continue without us in it. We are going to another meeting to have our executive session to discuss an item that I will describe if the chair isn't back. And and then we will come back into this Zoom meeting to take final action on the Harborview Bond and move on in our agenda. So that will all be announced and flagged as we go ahead. But I wanted to make sure people knew that was coming. And before that, we have a briefing from our council central staff, Sam Porter and Nick Bowman. Why don't you are you are you on the line, Sam or Nick? Yes. I don't think. You don't have. To. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Materials for this item begin on page 67 of your packet. As the committee was previously briefed on this item at the May 19th meeting, I will just provide a very quick, high level overview today and lead with the only notable change since May 19th being the Revised Office of Economic and Financial Analysis on the weather forecast that was released earlier this month. This forecast anticipates significantly lower assessed values than previous forecasts, the result of which being that while the average rate of approximately $0.08 per thousand dollars of assessed value has not changed for the proposed harbor view bond, the average increase in property taxes is now estimated to be approximately $75 annually for homeowner over the life. Of the. Proposed bond. This is $7 more than estimates previously provided based on the August 2019 forecast, and that was included in the previous staff report for this item. The staff report in your packet has been revised to reflect this change. The proposed ordinance 2020 0176 would place a 20 year $1.74 billion capital improvement bond on the November 2020 general election ballot, the proceeds of which would go towards new construction, renovation, seismic retrofitting and other health and safety improvements of Harborview Medical Center facilities. Attachment of the proposed ordinance provides a high level overview of the improvements which may be funded with levy proceeds. These improvements are based on the Harborview Leadership Group recommendation report that was transmitted to council on April 8th of this year. This report, requested through Motion 15183, provides background and detail on the Harborview Leadership Group efforts and summarizes the size and scope of their bond recommendation in order to meet the elections deadline to include the proposed bond on the November ballot. The last regular council meeting to adopt with maximum processing time is July seven. The deadline for elections to receive the effective ordinance is August 4th. And that concludes my remarks. I'm happy to answer any questions. And we have Nick Bowman available as well. Thank you. Councilmember Bell, did you are there Councilmember, other council members, other questions? This is our second briefing on the item. C-note Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. And thanks for having this second briefing on this important legislation. Sam, thanks for the report and the updated information with respect to the property taxes. My recollection from reading the materials in the first briefing was that in the first, certainly first year, but maybe then the second and third that the actual amounts collected are quite small. And then it goes. Then it begins to peak and then tapers off. Can you confirm that? And I'm just and then I'm wondering, is there any ability I don't know that we'd want to do this, but is there an ability to seek approval this November? But because the amounts are so small in the first year, or to actually delay collection or commence collection some time, say, in 2022 or 23 without materially impacting the time or or length of the of the period of taxes imposed. Yes. Council Member, I will direct you to pages 72 and 73 of your packet. This is a revised debt issuance schedule with the estimated annual levy rate based on the June 29th 2020 or even forecast the first few years. And the estimated levy rate for 2021 is about $0.12 per thousand dollars and then goes up from there. Does that kind of get to the answer of your question? Yeah, I thought the numbers were quite works worse, much smaller in the first year or so. I just missed the mystery of calling. I believe Patrick Hamacher is available to answer this. I think I think I think so. Very briefly in this book, that's not $0.12. That's quite $0.22 in the first couple of years. And Sam said $0.12. It was just an honest mistake. So it doesn't even get to a full penny until the third year. It's 2.8 $0.08. But I was I was coming on the line to get to the second part of your question, Councilmember, because it's a little different than what we normally have about can we not? Levy Initially, and I think we would ultimately want to ask legal counsel about that. But in general, I believe the answer is yes, because in as opposed to your normal little lift levies where you say we're going to collect a certain rate per year or up to a certain rate per year, what you approve in bond ordinances is a principal amount up to a certain amount. So what you would probably need to find out in the first couple of years if you didn't want to levy it initially, is how you were going to raise the cash to do the planning and design work in the first couple of years, which is why that rate is so low. It's a small expenditure if you're on the way to do that. I do believe you could wait a year or two before you started levying it, but it's such a small rate too. That would kind of be a policy option. Yeah, it's a it's such a small rate for a small amount of money. You could maybe look at an inner fund loan. And I even wonder if the administration of collecting that small amount is is very efficient. So I don't know, we probably lost weight deeply and I don't want to do anything that would take this off of that the track toward a strong launch. But given the economic times it and the very small sums collected, I know that sounds somewhat inconsistent, but I just wonder if we might take a look at that between now and final adoption as to when the collections would start. So. Councilmember, I'm still here. Oh, Dwight. And I think Mr. Henniker had the right idea. You should ask legal counsel, but my recollection when we did something similar many years ago, when I was at the city of Seattle with the Libraries for all bond issue, if you put a measure on the ballot in a year, I believe the legal advice we received at that time is you have to levy the tax the next year, even a very small amount. Otherwise, you're basically asking voters for something that's speculative that way in advance. And the law, as I remember, does not allow you to do that. Thank you. Appreciate it. Right. Mr. Chair, are you looking to advance this to a full council today? Not at this moment I am, but not at this moment. Okay. Are there any other questions? Colleagues. Colleagues, for your information, this is one I would anticipate questions, certainly, which is why I'm asking for questions. And then we do have a unrelated matter regarding Harborview. They will introduce as an executive session and we'll go into executive session before I would be seeking a motion on the bond measure. And just so you know what course we're charting here. So questions on the policy of the bond measure. Okay. Thank you. Just wanted to know in the chart when he heard that estimated rate is three and a quarter. With what's happening right now, is it a possibility? The best estimate actually could be lower. Mr. Hamacher. Yes. Like that king sized insect. What might it be at this point? But remember that because of this, we might issue some debt in the first year. Back to the customary Damascus question, but it'd be for very small amounts to do planning and design. So when we start to issue the construction debt in maybe three years, the market could be completely different. If we were selling 20 year bonds today, I think the rate would be closer to 2% than it was to 3%. But because of that, the executive, I think they did they have brought the estimate for the interest rates down during the time the council's been considering it. But I think they do want to plan to be more conservative than less conservative when they're trying to guess the interest rates for a couple of years down the road. I think if. Hey, no further questions. While not related to the bond proposal, the Harborview Medical Center Board of Trustees has been directly and indirectly authorized as directly and indirectly off until agreements for four properties that are being operated under Harborview is a hospital license and the rents paid out of Harborview Medical Center revenues. However, both the county code and the Hospital Services Agreement specifically define what properties are considered to be part of the medical center. These additional properties are not included in those definitions. The Council needs to go into executive session to confer with the county's attorneys to obtain legal advice of potential actions the county may take related to this matter. Therefore, the grounds for executive session under RTW 4231 ten are to discuss with legal counsel legal risks of a proposed action when public knowledge regarding the action is likely to result in an adverse legal or financial consequence to the county. The committee will be the executive session for approximately 15 minutes until about 3:02 a.m., asking QC KPTV to please post the virtual meeting to that effect. And I'm asking only council members and any county employees directly necessary for the discussion to join the executive session by state at this time and council members, you may still stay logged in to zoom and leave yourself muted and step and committee assistance will make sure that you're muted when you leave Zoom as well so you can leave zoom open and I will see you in the executive session scope momentarily. Thank you. All right, then we're coming out of executive session and as we've ascertained that all members are accounted for. Councilmember Dombrowski, I would entertain a motion if you were so inclined. Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I move adoption of the Harborview Bond ordinance, and as the prime sponsor, I defer to you for opening remarks. Thank you, Councilmember Dombrowski, for moving. We give a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 176, and it was my pleasure to serve with you, Councilmember Dombrowski, people from Harborview, people from UTEP Medicine, our labor partners at the hospital and neighbors around Harborview on first tail, and perhaps most importantly, the mission population. The hospital's duty is to serve. And as you already heard, when the board chair for Harborview Board of Trustees testified during public comment, the recommendation from that working group was unanimous for the package that has continued from the working group that Councilmember Nebraskan I served on through the Harborview Board, the Facilities Committee and the executive to arrive to us in the same form. We see now in the middle of a pandemic the work that Harborview and its partner that we contract with operate medicine do so well. But to single out and be particular the work that Harborview does as the county hospital and in fact serving our mission population, recognizing that they have a mission to serve non-English speaking poor persons, the uninsured and underinsured victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, people incarcerated in our jails, people with mental illness or substance abuse issues there has been treated and voluntarily. People with sexually transmitted diseases and those who require emergency trauma or burn care. That's truly the mission population of the hospital and who they serve every day. The bond measure itself does some critical work that Bernie spoke to in her testimony, particularly making the the hospital rooms single patient because of the number of beds that end up unusable on any given night due to infection control, something that I think the layperson is probably more aware of today in this pandemic than we might have been before. As we come to understand the transmission of COVID 19, and this is a as the current by measure is expiring, this is our chance to make substantial investments in the Harbor Harborview campus and truly its mission, including up to 150 respite beds in Harborview Hall while maintaining the shelter capacity at the most appropriate place within the campus, redesigning the arrival of the medical helicopter. Because currently, if you arrived at Harborview by helicopter, you're under being transported from that building to another by ambulance rather than simply an elevator ride down into an emergency room. That that will be addressed within the bond measure and enhancing the greatly enhancing and in investing in behavioral health, in the investments that are so needed in behavioral health and our ability to provide support and treatment to people. So I will ask my colleagues to join in this sustained investment not only in our county hospital, but truly in our community and our own well-being. Further remarks. Saying None. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member belt reaching. I council member Baluchi votes. I Council Member Dombrowski. I Council member Belsky. Both I Council member. Done. High Council member downvotes i council member calls I Council Member Commonwealth Votes Council Member Lambert i. Member Lambert I council member us across. Council member of After Grow. Councilmember Vaughn right there I. Councilmember Vaughn right there are both I council members online. Council members on lifeboats. I. Mr. Chair. I. Mr. Chairman. Mr.. Full time. Mr. Chair, the vote is nine zero on us. By your vote, we have given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 176, and we will send that to full council without it. Without objection, we will expedite. So it appears that the account on the council agenda one week from today. See? See? No objection. So order. Thank you, colleagues. This takes us to briefing 2020 B 51. It's a briefing from the Charter Review Commission. You remember that last year the co-chairs of the Charter Review Commission, Louise Miller and Ryan Simms, presented their early reports. Today, co-chair Louise Miller is going to provide an overview of the commission process and final recommendations. Then we'll hear from commission members Alejandro Torres, Rob Saca and on the two Charter amendment proposals we are discussing today related to all the subpoena powers and the counties inquests process. From my colleague's reference, the slides for the presentation are included in the CAO package beginning on page 373 of your packet. With that. Former Councilmember Miller. The floor is yours. Really? Let me and you. There you go. Thank you. My welcome to the council. I can see you've had a lot of really important things that you've been doing this a bit. It sounds like it's been a big day, so we'll try to move through this as smoothly as possible. The overview of the process. 23 commissioners were appointed by the executive and confirmed by the council, and we held town hall style public meetings at the beginning of our work. And also we did the same when we were working on our final recommendations. The Commission operated on a consensus model and recommended 11 amendments be placed on the ballot. The recommended amendments in the order that they appear in the charter are some changes to the preamble, which I won't go over. You can go over it in your own report, but updates and clarifications to the initiative and referendum process. Much has changed over the last several decades in election law, and the charter has fallen behind on being current with state law. And there are also some sections that would benefit from clarification. So this amendment addresses those issues. Subpoena Power for law enforcement oversight. I will briefly read it, but we have, I believe, a commissioner who will cover this issue, because I think this is one that you're scheduling to move forward with. The amendment would add subpoena powers to those listed under the Office of the Law Enforcement Oversight. He recommended amendments in the order again as they appear in the charter. The next would be the additional exempt positions. This request from the the County Council and the Executive. I think the Charter includes specific language around which county positions are exempt from a career service system. This amendment would allow the Council to adopt an ordinance changing the exempt positions. Something that surprised me. You did not have any language in the charter that allowed a removal process for elected officials. So we had really top staff work on this and they really researched a lot of this throughout the country. And we found out that, you know, the very city we're in, Seattle has this kind of language. So this is what we're proposing to go into the charter. The amendment would allow elected officials to be removed from office by a supermajority of the County Council for misfeasance, malfeasance or violations of their oath of office. Currently, the only option for removal is a recall election. Here's one that won't be controversial, I'm sure. This is the county sheriff's suggestion to revert it to an appointed position. This amendment would revert the office of county sheriff to that of an appointed official, whereby the executive would appoint and the county council would confirm the county sheriff . Next comes the increased antidiscrimination protections. This amendment would add protections against discrimination for family caregivers, honorably discharged members of the military, and add protections to those discharged solely because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. We also have additional requirements for inquests. This is one that you will get more information on. I feel this amendment will require that an attorney be appointed for family matters involved in inquests, and require an inquest to be conducted when a member of law enforcement may have contributed to the death of a person in custody. Another one that's in relationship to something the state is changing is affordable housing. The property sales career properties owned by agencies that used to be part of the Metropolitan Municipality of Seattle are required to be sold for full value at a recent change in state law allows the property to be sold for less than full value if it's going to be used for affordable housing. This would correct this conflict and allow for these types of transactions. And I know there's been discussion about this because we know that we just don't have all of the housing that we need for our workforce and for our low income friends. Then there are some omnibus changes. There are two amendments to make a series of changes throughout the document. These include typographical and radical, an amendment containing a series of typographical and technical changes throughout the charter. And also we decided to revise the concept of citizenship throughout the document. This amendment revises all references to citizenship except one. The amendment changes the term of citizen to either resident when describing a person or public when describing things like public participation. There is one reference to the citizenship left and regarding the need to be a citizen to hold elective office, which is a requirement of state law. The Charter Review Commission believes very strongly that the County Council should place all 11 of these amendments. However, we realize that that might be too much to go on one ballot. So we are saying that we think you might need to decide which would be the first batch and which would be the second batch. And that depends on your discussions and debate, whether you think you could present. All of them. I want to just make a couple of comments that came up in our report to you earlier on suggestions to the next commission. One of the things we discovered was that we really needed to have a facilitator from the beginning once we got the facilitator to work with this. We really it really moved along better and we really started to focus in. We also created subcommittees for some of the topics and split some of the work and then asked those commissioners, come back to us. We think that's a good thing to continue to. And the one thing that we didn't do, but that we think probably should be done is set sort of a length of time we want to spend on this. How long do you want to deliberate over these changes? And our suggestion would be it would be best to be able to report back to the council between nine and maybe 12 months, not a year and a half later, which is what it was for us. Now, one other thing I'd like to say is that we were served by excellent county employees. They did a fabulous job and they did enormous amounts of research, but they were always ready to go. They always got us started on time. We tried to finish on time and considering we had many, many, two and three hour meetings and had to have set up for all the electronic things that we needed and the research papers. I really compliment the staff that you loaned to the commission for this process. Thank you. Oh, sure. Miller You're very welcome. And Councilmember Dombroski and I can personally vouch for the time you and all the other people on the commission invested, because our Harborview Leadership Group was meeting on the same floor on the same night pretty regularly through that entire year. So we were coming and going from the building at the same time you were coming and going and know the work you were investing at me by way of further introduction, point out that co-chair Miller has spoken of 11 amendments. At this point in time. There are five introduced and two on today's call agenda. No, the other three will be scheduled and we'll continue our work from there. But just in time management, you're already aware that this meeting, it's now 328. I mean, we have the two ahead of us and two motions, but no, the others will be scheduled. It was a matter of time management that set that up. And I have a question for co-chair Miller Councilmember Von Right. Our. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Louise, thank you very much for your service and thanks, Ron, as well. I have a question relative to the sheriff's position. Can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. You mentioned that the under the proposal that the county executive would nominate and the county council would confirm, when I was in the state Senate, I chaired the confirmation process. And it was a very interesting process because. One of the misjudgments by members of the Senate was a person could serve well regardless of whether or not they're confirmed by the state Senate. Does this allow an appointee to serve? Prior to or has to wait for confirmation by the county council. Boy, I wish I could tell you that perhaps one of the staff members there has this in their mind. I don't. I think that the council has to confirm before they can serve. But that's maybe. So if I can jump in. Council member that appointed process, the amendment that it was brought forward by the Charter Review Commission would effectively review forever the appointment of the sheriff to the same process, followed by all of the other department heads. And there are allowances for short durations of time. And I just don't know that my head of it's 60 or 90 days and there can be continuances of those interim appointments until that confirmation occurs. We can check with the legal counsel and advise the Charter Review Commission and get back to you on that. But I do believe that it would just be the same process followed for appointment of all of the other department heads. And so there is a period of time where they can serve before having been confirmed legitimate by me. Continue. I would like to see a definitive answer. I appreciate Patrick's comment, but I'd like to have a definitive answer. Louise, thank you again. You and I were part of a process by which we did put the. Process of election of the sheriff out to the public. I thought then it was it increased accountability. I believe that we've had a number of very good sheriffs in the process. And I continue to believe that accountability starts with the public, not with politicians. Thank you. I concur. Further questions, Coach Miller And let me interject and ask this. Is it Saca and Mistress, are you presenting on the overall recommendations or on the first charter amendment itself? I'll be presenting on Olio and Raab will be presenting on inquests. Okay. Then I will continue taking questions for co-chair Miller, if there are any on the overall presentation before we get to the individual amendments. Councilmember Bell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm not sure who this question is for, and it's partially historical, partially a judgment question. These charter amendments can only be on a November ballot. November ballots, especially in a presidential year like this year, are extremely long. And and I think that we had all more or less confusion coalesced around the idea that we wouldn't try to put all of the 11 on one ballot, even if even if everybody agreed to all of them. And so my question is, is, does anybody, staff or chair Miller, recall past versions of updates to the charter? I recall voting on them and sometimes there were quite a few. I'm just trying to wrap my brain around what's the right number or what's too many, I think is probably the more important thing because and let me just say, we proposed out of my office the one about the about the gosh, you know, the initiatives to to the to the council and to the and to the public, because we had a group of people trying to run an initiative. And regardless of what you thought about the substance of it, the process was not good. And it really created a lot of concern and disillusionment in the public because they did what they thought they needed to do on the timelines. They thought they needed to do it only to find they were too late. And so we've updated our ordinances and other procedures internal to King County, and now we need this charter change to fix it. But if it was if you were to ask me, is it the most important thing, the most time sensitive thing, it probably isn't. So I'm just trying to wrap my brain around the question of how many makes sense at a time. Yeah, and I know and I believe we felt the same way, which is why our report said, you know, we know you might not be able to put them all on the same ballot, but that was one of the reasons that we took some of the early. If you remember, we had an early report that I did that had some of the things that we thought were less controversial and maybe could be put on the ballot in 2019. And it didn't happen. So that's and, you know, that's up to the council, lots of things going on. But that's why we're now faced with, oh, we either have to do them all here in a really busy year. That's very true. Or we'll have to pick and choose what we think. We really need to get changed now. And you've raised one issue where it was complicated to look at the length of time people had to get signatures and what they had to write and what kind of paper it had to be on and and on and on and on. There were a lot of things that seemed like they weren't necessary, but that you still have to work with your election departments and they still have to have the time to be able to actually get things out in the voters pamphlet, etc.. So yep. Anyway, that was one of the reasons that we gave you sort of our early report with the, a gentle suggestion that you might want to put it on the 19, 2019. Are you suggesting, though, that the committee thought that 11 would be a number that you could do on one ballot? I don't know that we've had that direct conversation. I think some people thought, well, maybe, but we didn't for a while. There were a couple that we didn't think we're going to be considered. But after we had worked through language and then had public hearings and heard from people, we thought, well, you know, maybe we need to sit back and say, do we go ahead with this or not? And so we realized that Eleven's quite a bit. And some of them are easier for people to understand than others. Well, thank you and thank you for the your being a go to person. Councilmember Miller, we always appreciate your advice and considered work on so many big issues at King County. Thank you. Thank you. Any other questions for Coach Miller? Being none. We thank you very much. And we will take up the first of the two charter amendments that are on our agenda today. This is proposed ordinance 2020 206, which would amend the county charter to grant the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight subpoena powers. Nick Bowman will give a staff report on the proposal. Mr. Bowman, the one is yours. Good afternoon, council members. For the record, Nic Bowman, council central staff. The materials for this item begin on page 389 of your packet. Proposed Ordinance 2020 0206 would submit to the voters of Clayton County an amendment to the county charter to be placed on the next general election, which would add the authority to subpoena documents, witnesses and other relevant evidence. The list of charter powers granted to the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight. As the council is well aware, King County has worked for many years to improve oversight of the King County Sheriff's Office. In the interest of time, I won't go into the full background of those efforts, but I will say that they began in 2006 with the establishment of a blue ribbon panel on police oversight and the adoption of Ordinance 15 611 Creating Aliyah. In November 2015, the voters of King County approved an amendment to the county charter that established OLEO as a charter mandated county office within the legislative branch. This amendment, now Section 265 of the King County Charter, increased oversight responsibilities for Oleo and requiring that those authorities be established by ordinance. And in April 2017, the Council adopted Ordinance 818 500, expanding all those authorities to include investigative authority with subpoena powers for the office, complaint and concern intake responsibilities, including the authority to review Ccso complaint intake classifications, authorization to review policies, procedures, training and operations and to make recommendations. Access to relevant information and crime scene authorities. Notification requirements regarding cases of Complaint Handling Processes and review of inquest findings. Proposed Ordinance 2020 0206, as I said, would submit to the voters an amendment of the King County Amendment to the King County Charter, which would add the authority to subpoena witnesses, documents and other evidence relating to its investigations or review to the list of all your powers described in Section 265 of the County Charter. As stated earlier, Oleo has subpoena powers under King County Code 2.75.055. However, unlike its charter provision that can only be added or removed by a vote of the people lost, ravished by ordinance is transitory and can be changed by the council adopting a new ordinance. If the subpoena power were added to the charter, it can only be removed by a vote of the people. According to Olio director Deborah Jacobs, without the ability to compel the sheriff's office personnel to be interviewed and to produce relevant records. OLEO has limited ability to complete, thorough and objective investigations. Now the authority to issue subpoenas is an established power within oversight agencies around the country and one granted to numerous county entities. A non-exhaustive list of oversight offices in other jurisdictions across the country where some form of subpoena powers can be found on page 391 of your packet and includes. Oakland, California. Washington, D.C.. Chicago, Illinois. Denver, Colorado. Indianapolis, Indiana. Detroit, Michigan. Los Angeles, California. New York City. Cambridge, Massachusetts and Rochester, New York. The table on page 392, your packet lists the county entities with the authority to issue subpoenas as well as any limitations to that authority. And some of these entities include the County Council, the Ombud office, the Office of Civil Rights, the auditor, the chief medical examiner. The Personnel Board and the hearing examiner. It should be noted that should the proposed ordinance be adopted and subsequently approved by the voters, the amendment passage alone may not be enough to effectuate the desired change , as the proposed amendment may affect the working conditions of cso's unionized workforce. The county would most likely need to engage in bargaining with the affected unions before Oleo could exercise the powers granted by that amendment. I also just want to touch briefly on some election timing requirements in order to place on the November three, 2020 ballot and effective ordinance must be transmitted to Elections Department by August 4th, 2020. Therefore, the last regular council meeting date for adoption is July 21st and August 4th. 2020 is the last special council meeting date to adopt the ordinance as an emergency. Finally, there are two amendments. Amendment one would make changes to the language and substance of the proposed charter amendment, including changing the general election date in which the proposed charter minute would appear on the ballot from November 2019 to November 2020. Granting Oleo the authority to administer oaths to witnesses subpoenaed by Oleo and clarifying that any witness subpoenaed by Oleo shall have the right to be represented by legal counsel. Amendment One confirms the title of the proposed ordinance to the changes made by Amendment One. With regards to changing the general election date in which the proposed charter amendment would appear on the ballot from 2019 to 20 2nd November 2020. That concludes my staff report. We have also director for Jacobs and she's Patrick Singleton, CSO Online to help answer any questions the committee may have. Mr. Bowman For my clarity. Clarity? The two amendments are the one substantive amendment and the title amendment. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. And next, I'd like to call on our commissioner from the Charter Review Commission. I believe, as I'm prepared to present on this amendment. Alejandro. Pausing at 100 trees. There we go. Hi, everyone. One thing, Councilor McDermott, first of all, is that it says that my Internet is a bit unstable here in rural unincorporated, which I think all of us feel a little unstable during COVID. So let me know if I'm lagging. And I can try to adjust or shut off my video. I wanted to thank you, Councilmember German pair and all the council members for this discussion. I also want to express my gratefulness to the charter commission, some of whom are watching especially. At 100, you just walk up. Of 100 drives. I suggest you turn your video off. Okay. Will do. Is this any better? Yes. Okay. Excellent. So just wanted to say thanks again to the charter commission, especially the equity committee, especially my co-chair, Liz Ford, who was a main driver. I think Nick actually mentioned quite a number of things, so I don't know that I'm going to be doing a lot more of fleshing that out. But I just want to say a little bit from the charter conditions perspective as to what we felt that this amendment would do and also why we felt it was necessary. As Nick mentioned, this also needs to have the authority to subpoena records and provide effective civilian oversight for law enforcement. And, of course, the amendment for subpoena power would add to that list of oleo of authority charters granted to oleo in the charter, and the county code already has a reflection and contemplates granting this authority to oleo. But it is not listed as in the charter as it is with other agencies. Now the CRC believes this amendment, if this amendment passes and ultimately can be bargained, that subpoenas rarely be used as parties will share information and not want to have to use the subpoena process. Well, with that in mind, why do we feel this is necessary? The Charter Commission believes that the residents can county have expected civilian oversight of the King County Sheriff's Office since 2006 and before, but at least 2006 when the council created the office, and certainly since 2015, when the voters added oleo to the county charter. However, efforts for effective civilian oversight, including subpoena power, have consistently been thwarted by the collective bargaining process. The issues to this day, the charter commission believes, continues to this day and we feel is a powerful statement to add the subpoena power to the charter and make it consistent with other agencies. It's been almost 14 years since the council first created Oleo, and that way it is long enough for effective civilian oversight. We feel by you moving this forward to the ballot, voter approval will help clarify the public's desire for more empowered oversight of our sheriff's office. Thank you. Thank you. Council members questions of Mr. Goldman Miss Trace and I'm Patty content. I'm sorry, Miss Court. And I don't know your current title, Undersheriff. In another week, I'll be the undersheriff. And currently you don't, chief, but okay. And also Director Jacobs are all available for questions as well. Colleagues. Ashton Lambert Councilmember, remember? LAMBERT Thank you. So I have two questions. One is, will this change the requirement for it to be parliament? And secondly, if you look at the chart, there are many departments that have the subpoena, including us. And to my knowledge, we have never used it. So how often in all of this has it ever been used? To my knowledge, it hasn't been. So I would like to be updated on that. I can speak generally to the first question, which is that it may require bargaining. It is our understanding that, yes, bargaining would need to take place before the olio to actually be able to subpoena you. So personnel that but that of course we would have to actually have the men would have to be adopted by the voters . So I don't want to put the cart before the horse too much. Right. And in addition, I do not have on hand a record of how many Times County entities have issued subpoenas. I would have to query all of those offices to determine that. It should be pretty easy because I think the answer is probably zero. I don't understand what is different. We already have the ability for them to subpoena. And as she said, it's been years that it hasn't been fired and for a variety of reasons that we probably should get to the bottom of. But this this doesn't change it. We'll be back exactly where we are right now in my mind. So that's a concern. We're making a pretty much false assumptions public that this will change the underlying. Richard Jacobs, did you have a response either to the previous question or the current one? Yes. Thank you. I appreciate you hearing from me a couple contextual comments. So the officers in the county that have subpoena power are counsel of Ombud, Office of Civil Rights Auditor, Chief Medical Examiner, Personnel Board and hearing examiner. And I also want to let folks know that it's a pretty much a norm for investigatory oversight agencies to have subpoena power. And I have a list of about 15 or 20 that I'm aware of that have it. In fact, almost none of them use it. And there's a good reason why. The reason is, is that once they have it, the threat of using it suffices to get the access to information that they need. That's been the lesson I have learned from hearing from my nationwide colleagues, is that once you have it, it sort of works without having to assert it. But Councilmember Lambert's comments are so well taken. The other thing I did want to mention is that there's specifically a real concern, the current collective bargaining agreement. It says that. That if the charter is amended, then it's a reopen after bargaining subpoena power as required by law. So that's one reason to do it now, because I know we have a lot of ambitions for the next round of bargaining. I also feel like having the voters affirm that this is their desire and make it consistent with the council's understanding of the role and the investigation role will be very important. And I think that affirmation would be meaningful and even potentially meaningful if there are challenges in the context of bargaining. So no, it's definitely does not overcome the state law challenges presented by collective bargaining for or oversight. But I still think it's important and worthy thing to be in the charter, to speak the will of the county . Thank you. Thank you. Further questions, colleagues. John. Councilmember Dunn. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Appreciate. And this is a question for our two questions. One is, does the sheriff's office have a position on this particular the charter amendment aside, appreciate your articulating it. And then the other question I have is, and maybe Debra countered, there are different kinds of subpoenas in the world. There are civil or criminal. There are legislative subpoenas. What is the what is the type of subpoena we are talking about here? And is there any standard that has to be met in order to request the subpoena? In other words, does it have to be within the scope of an active investigation, or can it be very broadly used in terms of various policy? What is what is the charter amendment speak to with specificity? Thank you. So I can keep cold Tindal sheriff's office, so I can answer Councilmember Dunn's question. So the position of the sheriff and our office is that we really are not taking a position on this. Obviously, this is something that has been an issue, if it goes to the voters, becomes part of the charter. It does have to be bargained. At least that's my perspective as your previous director of labor relations responsible for collective bargaining in the county, and that currently it is the executive who has that responsibility to negotiate this, which is really a working condition but because the voters previously. Basically approved that, you know, we would not bargain our own working conditions, which makes sense. Thank you. You're welcome. And on the second. So I don't have a full answer to your question. What I can tell you is the intent is that it would be able to have compel people, personnel to be interviewed about incidents and also to compel to get banking or phone records as far as the legal complexities of sort of how it would be administered. I don't have the familiarity and we'd have to have some research done on that. Can I just make one state? I'm sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Go ahead. I want to ask I think that like some other issues, I need some legal clarity on it. It may be just that it's substantially similar, as you said, are other independent counsel appointed positions. But I'd like to know and in particular, I'm interested in the in the contours or in other words, the limitations and what the subpoena power provide for my own information at some point. I mean, we're going to take action to travel with your passport. Helpful. So appreciate that. And go ahead. I just want to clarify one other thing about a reopen or that Deborah mentioned. That still has to be something that the guild would be interested in doing while it's in the contract. It still requires that there is the willingness to reopen. So I just wanted to point that out. Thank you. I mention one other thing, Councilmember. Councilmember Dunn, you know, the questions you're asking also would relate to what kind of independent investigations are being conducted. And this is something I'm really eager for a council to give some thought to and hopefully have a stakeholders conversation that includes guild members and KSO and the public. There are different ways it could be approached and I won't go into details now because I know we're short on time, but I think that there's a lot into sort of what this might look like. Yeah. And I appreciate that and I'll just finish with this. And so I'm not like, you guys aren't like searching in the dark. What I'm looking for is that the subpoena power is rationally related to the charter, the mission of Oleo in the charter, and other subsequent motions and legislation we put forward as well as staffing that is that it if it goes forward, that it move in a way that is directly related to that mission as opposed to some, you know, blanket authority to subpoena whatever it is that is desire for the purpose of driving some policies or set of policies forward. That's a little bit different and it just needs to be discussed so we don't work or buy in here, so to speak. Up the road. Can about the growth. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I think I know the answer to this, but I want to make sure is the Sheriffs Guild contract next up for renewal at the end of next year. The crisis heads nodding. This charter amendment wouldn't take effect. The November ballot take effect, I assume, January one. And imagine that timing would be just about right to begin going into negotiations and. Right. So perfect timing. So that speaks to me as one reason to act. And I'd just one comment, if I may, if that's appropriate, Mr. Chair, then I. My constituents or people I hear from are often very confused about this process. And it's frustrating as an elected official because the heat is on us. I don't think most people realize that the only tools of civilian oversight that we're able to conduct over our sheriff's department or those in which the police agreed to. Because of this provision in state law that allows not only for the police guild to negotiate, but if we don't reach agreement, it goes to a third party and that decision is final. And when that third party often looks at comparables, it means it's a barrier to change. And so this. Just to be clear about communicating what we're doing, we're. You know, this is being proposed to go in front of the voters, be put into our county constitution or county charter to strengthen our position there . Whether legally, politically, structurally. But at the end of the day, the only oversight we're allowed to provide is that in which the police agree to let us provide intel if and when state law were to change, and so not to get people's hopes up too much who are advocating for this? Because unless again, unless that state law changes, this is going to be. Only if the police want us to, basically. So that's my my comment on it. But I'm very supportive moving forward. Colleagues. Edification. Was my remember. So could you clarify? I think all of us had the right to do independent investigations. And I thought that there was a grievance at some point about that. Can you tell me where the grievance landed in and is there the right to do independent investigations? So I can say on the history that there was a grievance filed after the audience was initially passed in 2006. Most of that ordinance was repealed and then the grievance was dropped and the ordinance was passed in 2008 that aligned with the contract with guilds at the time, and then the powers were later established. I'll let Deborah speak it to the individual or the independent investigations, but that the initial grievance was for the initial ordinance, and then another ordinance was put in place. So I you're talking about the more current grievance. The grievance was over a systemic review of the shooting of my chance to get involved. And the guild has been on hold with its grievance because it wants to present it to Oehler in person and because of the virus that has not happened. 310. I do not believe that report is an investigation is because no investigation was done, meaning no one was called. It was just the review of the file, much like, you know, of adding and then adding expertize. So if they don't like that, they're really not going to like what an investigation is. And that's something that, as I mentioned earlier, we really need to discuss, but that's a status after it's presented to all our rules. And then it's possible it could be appealed to arbitration. That would be the next step. I would love for us to be able to resolve it peacefully before that myself, and I've expressed that to Olara. So at this very moment, you have the right to do. Whatever. I'm sorry. The right to what? You independent investigations. So on a very limited scope, for example, it would be possible under limited circumstances to investigate someone who is not represented by the Guild. Yes. So basically, Deborah is correct. That would mean the chiefs, the undersheriff. Perhaps our legal advisers, those that are know, I think there's seven or eight of us that are not represented. A very limited. And beyond that, Patty, I believe the scope is also limited, meaning it might have to be a use of force or something like that as well. I'd have to look at the language, but I think it's along those lines. Thank you. Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We've had some discussion about this. And I want to remind folks and please Deborah or Nick or legal counsel, correct me if I'm wrong, but Nick mentioned the 2017 implementing ordinance that I had worked on with councilmen, Councilmember Gossett, which carried that brought to life the the charter amendments passed by the voters. And we, I believe, already adopted in that ordinance the authority for the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight to issue subpoenas so that the the it's in their charge today. And I know that hasn't really been mentioned or has it's maybe got lost a little bit that this charter amendment would basically the thinking behind putting in the charter is that it elevates the importance and to the extent we don't get agreement from the guild at the bargaining table coming up, the grove is 100% right. And I like the way you phrased it, that we can only do the oversight that the guild lets us do. But the thinking is that perhaps what the voters speaking on this particular topic, that it might, if necessary, to go to an arbitrator, have some extra strength in terms of the the people speaking so that the power is there by ordinance. This just puts it in the charter. We're not changing the contours of it at all in terms of the kind of subpoena power. And I think with respect to the individual investigations, the investigations of individuals, their use of force versus other investigations by the office, the subpoena power could be helpful in their systemic review as well to the extent they need documents to complete that. And maybe that's my question to Director Jacobs. Would you agree with that? I would say at this point we are fairly successful in getting the documents we need from the sheriff's office. They have capacity problems, so there's a timeliness issue. But besides that, we have that kind of access. So it would be hard for me to envision that systemic review. I guess we would have to be trying to get data from like outside sources. It's possible, but I'll have to think a little bit more on that and I'll let you know. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome. Colleagues, anything else? Would you like a motion? I would welcome a motion. They, Mr. Chair, I'd be happy to move. Adoption of proposed ordinance number 2020 0206, which would with a do pass recommendation of the full council. The ordinance would put before the voters in the November 2020 election the question of whether they would like to amend King County Charter to specifically grant the Office of Law Enforcement Oversight, which was created by Charter. The power to issue subpoenas. And if amended here by Amendment one, to compel witnesses to testify with the assistance if they wish to counsel. Councilmember Dombrowski is moved to give a to pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 206. Councilmember Dombrowski if you want to move adoption of the amendment so moved to amendment one is before us. Staff addressed the amendment as the discussion on the amendment. All those in favor. Please say I i i opposed nay. A. The ayes have it. The amendment is adopted. Move t one and two. Two. One is before us discussion. All those in favor of Taiwan. Please signify by saying I oppose. Nay, the ayes have it. Total amendment is adopted. We have ordinance 2020 206 as amended before us discussion. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to speak. As a member of No Duty. Thank you. Thank you. It's been a while since somebody did that. I didn't speak up during the question and answer, but I wanted to just make my feelings on this clear is I have always believed as somebody who spent a lot of time working with internal investigations, people as labor advisers, legal adviser, as a director, I have always believed that a good oversight, oversight that is accepted by all sides, by the public, by the people who have been harmed in most situations where we're doing an investigation and somebody has been harmed somehow and by the people who are providing critical services like law enforcement, feeling that they get a fair shake, I think that public oversight provides that kind of assurance to everyone when it's done right. But in order for it to be done right, the investigators need access to the information they need to to do their job without full information. They cannot provide the transparency. That's what we seek with oversight. And so I think this is almost almost a no brainer. I don't have any concerns with this level of of of authority at all. I hope that we can implement it. I personally also believe that oversight should not be subject to bargaining. I should not be able to say whether somebody what somebody how somebody judges me. I should not control that process for myself. That's just that's almost unethical. And so I think it's really important that we move in this direction for everybody. By the way, I'm very much in favor of having a process that was briefed to us in that earlier briefing about how elected officials can be held accountable, not holding in on myself or my colleagues separate from this. So I just feel very strongly this is a good step. I will vote for it. I hope that it passes in November and that we can find a way to implement it. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Other colleagues. Councilmember Dombrowski. I think it was I know the meeting's running long and I'll try to be very brief here, but I echo the comments, of course, from about 80. And I've been thinking a lot lately about the phrase law enforcement. And there's two pieces to that, the laws and the enforcement. And I think in the debate we're having here in our country right now, we should look at what laws we are passing and have passed and determine whether they are laws that have just put impacts in the way they come down on folks and make changes. We also need to look at our enforcement side and make sure that it's just and fair and effective and that people have confidence in it. This is one small piece of building confidence in the enforcement side of the laws that we as politicians and others have adopted. And like any profession, I just think that independent oversight, checks and balances, if you will, on that is par for the course. And it not only builds confidence by it in the system, by the public, or at least it can if it's done well, but it can also improve the organization. This is not about getting somebody or going after somebody. This is about ensuring that there is transparency when something goes wrong and that there is accountability and that there can also be vindication and clearance. Right. Let's let's keep in mind that these outcomes are not predetermined. We have independence in the structure to take a look at things when there's been a complaint made and make sure that when the decision is rendered that it comes from not an internal investigation unit or somebody part of the organization, but rather somebody outside. It's why our courts are independent. It's why the judge wears a black robe to signify neutrality. This is these are values enshrined in our in our in our country. And this today is just a tool for our independent oversight office to be able to hopefully carry out that mission. I want to just signal to colleagues, we've had a good discussion today about the role that the labor negotiations plays in this. And I've heard some new statements, including one echoing our county executives leadership saying, hey, you know, buffer state law, we wouldn't and maybe shouldn't have to negotiate this. We set the labor policy today for the county as the county council. And I think that we shouldn't wait on this issue and also on the ability of Oleo to conduct independent investigations until the next bargaining cycle. I know a lot has happened since we adopted that contract a couple of months ago. And I, I want to just let you all know that we're working on a draft labor policy that would ask the executive to go back to the bargaining table and see if the guild is willing to reopen the contract on those two items and get it done. Because I just don't think you can watch what's occurred here in America and have the same answer that we've had for a decade, which is no. And if it is no, I think that tells us some valuable information about what policy responses and what budget steps we might need to take. Because as I said at the last meeting, we talked about this on Friday. I think our public wants us to fund a law enforcement system that protects and serves in a fair and just way. And effective oversight and transparency is a part of us, a critical part of that and is necessary, in my view, before significant funds are put in. So I think the governor about it, she got it right. This is like almost a no brainer. We've already done it. The ordinance, this enshrines it if the voters approve it in our county constitution and courage colleagues support. Appreciate the co-sponsors that have come on councilmembers alkali co wells and McDermott. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The discussion. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member, Belgium. I Councilmember Carducci, but I also remember asking. I. Councilmember Demovsky both to council member. II. Council member done both I Council member calls I Council Member Caldwell's full time Council Member Lambert No. Council member Lambert Voltz, now council member of the drop. By. Council member of the Girl Scouts, council member Conroy Fowler. I council member by night thereabouts. I council members are high. I council members on halibut i. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is eight ice. Councilmember Lambert. No. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2020 206 and. We will. Staff. Is this the one that time to engross might be needed? Yes, I think it's possible. But it's it's also if if there's a desire to expedite, that would be fine as well. Is there a desire to expedite? Mira. Then I will. We will not expedite. It will be a regular course of action to full council and not on consent. That takes us to item nine. Proposed Ordinance 2019 to 36, which would amend the County Charter to clarify when an inquest was being held and to provide for legal representation for the family of the decedent. I know my colleagues are aware of litigation surrounding the inquest process. I want to point out that the litigation is separate from the charter amendment we'll be discussing. And it's my hope that we'll be able we will focus on the charter amendment and not discuss the litigation issues which would it would necessitate in executive session. Jennie Jim, John Batiste will give a staff report on the proposed charter amendment. And Ms.. Jon Batiste, the line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jenny. Jon Batiste, Counsel. Staff. Agenda item nine begins on page 43 of your packet. As you noted, Mr. Chair, this is a charter amendment related inquests, and it would add language to the charter about when an inquest is to occur, and it requires the county to assign an attorney to represent the family of the decedent in the inquest proceeding. In the interest of time. I will be covering highlights in each section of my staff report. I'd like to start with a few background facts on inquests on page 404 of the packet. An inquest is an administrative fact finding inquiry into in the review of the manner, facts and circumstances of the death of an individual in King County. Inquests are held when a death involves a member of any law enforcement agency within King County, while in the performance of his or her duties. The scope of the inquest is limited to the cause and circumstances of the death, including whether the law enforcement member acted pursuant to policy and training. The purpose of the inquest is not to find fault or determine whether the use of force was justified. An inquest is not a trial in the sense that there is no judgment on liability or found fault is produced. However, an inquest has some of the attributes of a trial, including hearing, sworn testimony of witnesses and a selection of a jury in the case of an inquest known as a panel is the finders of fact. As you are well aware, there have been recent changes to the inquest process in recent years. I wanted to highlight a few of those changes on page four, oh five and four and six of the packet. In December of 2017, the executive convened a six member King County Inquest Process Review Committee. Then in January of 2018, the executive temporarily halted all King County inquests in order to allow more time to review the existing inquest policies and procedures. In October of 2018, based on some of the review panel recommendations, the executive signed a revised executive order for the policies and procedures for the inquests. Then, in May 2019, under the new inquest process, Judge Michael Spearman was appointed as an inquest administrator. There was a pause again in the inquest process in December 2020 as the parties indicated that they intended to seek review of the inquest procedures in King County Superior Court. Petitions were filed with the King County Superior Court subsequent to that, and most recently on Friday, June 11th, the Executive signed a revised executive order which includes revised policies and procedures. However, of note, there were really two things that were revised. Substantive changes to now allow for subpoenas to be issued to involved officers and to allow counsel for the involved officers to participate in the inquest hearings regardless of whether they offer testimony. The next date. That's coming up is July 17th of 2020. That is when you hear your court is scheduled to address all of the pending petitions related to the inquest process. I want to note that it's my understanding that the outcome of the litigation won't affect implementation of the charter amendment if it's approved by the voters. Page 5405 of the packet provides a very high level summary of the current inquest process that is outlined in the executive order. The process starts with the prosecuting attorney's office receiving information from a law enforcement agency within King County of a death of an individual involving more law enforcement. The PAO then reviews that information and advises the executive as to whether there should be an inquest. Upon receiving the advisory opinion, the executive determines whether to hold an inquest. If the inquest is to be held, the executive then directs the manager to proceed with the inquest and the manager then assigns one of the inquest administrators to preside over the inquest and the Superior Court provides the facilities, the jurors and the courtroom staff. Specifically now looking at the language in the charter amendment. Please turn to page four of six and four seven of the packet. The proposed changes to the Charter, if adopted by voters, include several substantive changes to Section 895 of the Charter. Specifically, it adds additional language regarding when an inquest is to be conducted. This additional language specifies that an inquest shall be held where a member of any law enforcement agencies actions, decision or possible failure to offer the appropriate care may have contributed to an individual's death. Was this language the intent of the Charter Review Commission was to expand and broaden the number and circumstances under which the inquests are to occur. The next substantive change in the charter amendment is that it defines what a member of any law enforcement agency is for purposes of this section of the charter. And that is the second substantive change. The third one is that it requires the county to assign an attorney to represent the family of the deceased decedent in the inquest proceeding. But the family has the option of accepting the attorney or not. As Council members are aware, in January of 2018, the Council did adopt Ordinance 18652, which requires the Department of Public Defense to provide legal representation to the family participating in inquests regardless of the income level of the family. The proposed charter amendment is very similar to this language. Mr. Chair, I would note that there are two amendments in your separate amendment packet starting on page seven. These amendments are not substantive to the First Amendment, which is on page seven, and it also has a corresponding title amendment reflects suggestions by legal counsel so that all the charter amendments use the same language when referring to the election dates. The Second Amendment on page nine is really a style and readability change so that the sentence reads a little bit better. Well, Mr. Chair, that concludes my comments. I'm happy to answer any questions for you. Thank you. Mr. Jon Batiste, before we go to questions, I would call on Mr. Surkov to take to present. Minister from the Review Commission. Good afternoon. Good afternoon, Mr. Chair. Good afternoon, Council members. My name is Rob Soca and I'm a commissioner. Can you hear me? Yes. I'm sorry. Right. And I'm a commissioner on the Charter Review Commission. It is my honor to appear before you all today, and especially Council Member Sala. Tommy Lee. Hey, Suz Fernandez Marial. Joseph Pepin. My chance. Dunlap. Giddens. Malina Lyles. These are just a few of the people. That when we talk about inquests, irrespective of whether the death is is deemed to be justified or not, we must never forget to acknowledge the humanity in the names of those killed in encounters with police. Sadly, the lives of families and communities are forever changed when someone is killed by police. Nationally. We're also mindful of the recent brutal killings by law enforcement of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others across the country. And I'll tell you that in my personal capacity over the last few weeks, I've been absolutely honored to march alongside my my dear friend and old colleague council members Natalie. As well as thousands of others in the movement for Black Lives across our region and our nation. Personally, I've also been moved by Dormice devotion to serving others and humbled by his presence and inspired by his bold leadership. And I thank him. And I think every one of the council members who have supported this particular proposal today. I'm also hopeful that our region. Our region's unified voice will bring meaningful, lasting policy change to address issues of police accountability and transparency. But in this forum, in this legislative body in which I virtually stand before you today, you must move from protest the policy. And here is the opportunity at hand. And when we're talking about the proposed charter amendment, what will it specifically accomplish? Well, on the commission, we believe that this common sense charter amendment recommendation before this committee would directly advance three basic ideals and law enforcement accountability, truth and transparency. Therefore, the Commission recommends making two substantive changes, which Jenny already highlighted. As it pertains to inquests. To recap. We want to do. We want to elevate to the charter the relevant county code provision for writing a county funded attorney, the families of the deceased during the inquest process. Again, this particular proposal, with respect to this particular proposal, it's 100% consistent with existing law and interpretation. The second thing that we want to do, as Danny alluded to, is we want to ensure that the inquests process occurs in the event of an in-custody death. She talked about some of the the textual underpinnings and some of the specifics as it relates to the exact language. But broadly, what we want to do is make sure it applies to law enforcement agencies and corrections agencies and require an inquest at any time that any action or decision or failure to act may have contributed to a death. We talked about what an inquest is. There's some egregious myths out there. We've heard from the community during this process, but the overwhelming majority of community input that we've heard and gathered during this process was was strongly in favor of having the inquest, as we we've proposed today. It's just the Administrative Fact-Finding Inquiry. The purpose is not to determine liability or fault. It doesn't address wrongdoing or whether the death could have been avoided or whether it was justified. So why do we why do why are we moving this specific proposed charge, a charter amendment before you today? Well, broadly when we began our work on the commission to help enhance the inquest process potentially at the charter level, we started with the premise that agree families deserve answers, they deserve truth as well. Again, inquests are not a finger pointing exercise to assign blame. One way or the other, the findings of an inquest help all stakeholders, including policy makers, including you all help you understand the causes and circumstances of the death to enable people to learn and grow from these experiences. We we found that inquest reform at the charter level helps maintain and improve public confidence and trust in the integrity and professionalism of the community's various law enforcement agencies across King County. During officer involved killings. Again, the goal is to enable departments to be held accountable for creating better safer. And more equitable ways of protecting and policing. So we know that it adds legal representation and affirmative right to legal representation for family members of the deceased. We think that this will fully and more equitably allow participation in the in the inquest process, regardless of a family's financial means. And we also learned that providing legal counsel for all families of the deceased will better ensure each party to an inquest will have equal opportunity to participate. Again, that one is 100% consistent with the existing law, but we felt strongly that as a matter of policy and priority. Before the current crisis that we're seeing. And I'm not talking about the COVID crisis. That it was important to up level that particular provision to the charter. And then with respect to the in-custody death clarification. The Commission wanted to shine a light. The light of transparency that's inherent with a more robust inquest by expanding the requirement to all in-custody death situations. And we felt that understanding in-custody deaths, learning from each other's deaths, and using that information to make positive, positive changes to the system outweighed any potential concern or cost of having too many inquests. Again, we felt that aggrieved families deserve answers. So does the public and members in the law enforcement community. They all deserve a full and complete investigation of the facts that led to any tragic death. Which of course, is tragic. So, Mr. Chair. And Council. In sum, we believe that these common sense reforms to the Charter to create additional transparency and accountability and trust in law enforcement are necessary. And now the time for action and accountability is more. Is more clear than ever, in my view, and we must move forward together to get to the truth. And I'd finally like to make it clear that this was one of the early action items that Chair Miller identified earlier, that we moved forward last summer because it was adopted unanimously. We thought it was less controversial, and so we felt strongly about it then. And given current events, we feel well. I personally feel even even more strongly about it. So, Mr. Chair, that concludes my overview of the inquest proposals. At this time, I welcome any questions or comments that you all may have. Thank you very much. Colleagues questions. Seeing no questions. Council members all i. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just want to first thank Rob soccer. Thank you for first of all, for making me blush. I appreciate you. I got to know Rob when I was an associate at Perkins Curry, and he's always been an exceptional attorney and tireless champion for justice. I want to thank him all and trace Mikita, Oliver, Chair Miller and everybody on the Charter Commission, Charter Review Commission for all the hard work that you all have done. I'm very supportive of this amendment. You know, families that have gone through the inquest process, our families who we owe the most to these are families who lost loved ones at the hands of the government. And this charter amendment would make sure that if one of our constituents has had to suffer the death of a loved one , that they would be provided an attorney to go through the inquest or investigation process. So it's the absolute minimum that can be done, in my opinion, to provide the fundamental right to representation during what is the most unimaginable situation that a family could go through. So I ask for everyone's support on this, and thank you also to the co-sponsors on this legislation. Some of those. Councilmember Dunn. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm a little unclear. I got all the good arguments and the good arguments in favor of the legislation. I didn't get sort of a real breakdown with specificity of the of the language. Is this are passing an ordinance is charter amendment. I guess I'm missing exactly what the details in terms of the inquest language. This is a charter amendment as recommended by the charter commission. Okay. So let me ask this question. What I heard was was a very good explanation of the arguments in favor of the charter amendment. I didn't hear a central staff breakdown, and we're not going to do that. We're just going to rely on the charter review commissioners to provide the briefing. And that's fine. But I think there needs to be. A little more analysis in terms of what it does with the language does. And in terms of pro and con, there's a mr. Sanchez presentation is the commissioner was preceded by a staff report by Getty Jon Batiste. And if you have questions of Mr. Batiste or or want further information, we can certainly facilitate that. Yeah. I mean, Jenny, can you just break this down to quick parameters? I might have missed that. I was out of service for just a little bit longer. Can you break down the parameters of what the language changes? Yes. So on page 4:06 a.m. 407 of the packet, it's just a sentence that we're talking two sentences. The existing language is is very short and the changes are also very short, but they are substantive. So I'll go over it again. If adopted by voters, these changes to Section 895 of the charter would add the additional language regarding when an inquest is to be conducted. This additional language specifies and so this is the following is new language. An inquest shall be held where a member of any law enforcement agencies actions, decision or possible failure to offer the appropriate care may have contributed to an individual's death. Additionally, there is another sentence added for the purposes of this section. Members of any law enforcement agency includes a commissioned officer, noncommissioned staff and agent of any local or state police force, jail, detention facility or corrections agency. The next substantive and it's an is again, a one sentence but very substantive. The county shall assign an attorney to represent the family of the decedent in the inquest proceeding, but the family has the option of accepting the attorney or not. As Mr. Sokka indicated. Currently, the current code provides that the Department of Public Defense shall provide an attorney to represent the family. So this would not change. The county's the current practice now, but it would elevate that to the charter. Additionally, as I noted earlier, the added language is intended to expand and broaden the number of inquests that occur with that additional language. Got it. Very good. That's okay. That that that helps me. I try and thank you for that. And I missed part of that. Is there a beneficial note or anything in terms of the cost associated with it, with that those additional changes. There has not been a fiscal note currently the. County does fund the administration of the inquest process. But there has not been a fiscal note to specify how many what the additional costs, if any, would be. And Mr. Chair, real quick on this, we got 11 charter amendments to the plan will be a central staffer will introduce the issue, then we'll have a charter review. Commissioner, make the pitch essentially. That's the point. Just so I understand. That's how we've done it today. If there are additions, if when we take up additional charter amendments. And to date, only five of the 11 have been introduced. There are commissioners who wish to make presentations. The commission supplies somebody. Then, yes, we would follow a very similar format. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Yvonne, regular. True. That was the question. Council member Dunn's question was the one I was curious about. If there is a fiscal note, if there is a limit on how much we pay and I want that, we'd have an opportunity to evaluate that and the forecast. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. You can understand it. Agree with Councilmember Graham there couldn't be a more horrendous experience than life for anybody but to lose a loved one's. I did support the inquest process and paying for the attorneys. But the reason for a charger for me is how the government works not to pick special laws. We like the Mexican charter so can't be changed for ten years. So the things that are important here are writing in law or providing the attorneys and we have inquests. And so I think that as a policy, taking our favorite pieces of legislation and sticking it in the charter, that's not what the charters for. And I have some concerns about some of the language, like possible failure, appropriate care, who who decides what was appropriate care. And that's the reason we have laws so that we can define what is possible failure, what is appropriate care. So we have a definition, we put it in the charter. We don't have that. These are already existing in the existing law. And I think that they are important. I can't imagine them being changed. So having them clearly defined in law is in my mind where these things should be, not in charter. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Further discussing colleagues. Councilmember Bell DC. Mr. Chair, just a brief comment. I really appreciate the what appears to be some serious care that went into drafting the language around when an inquest will be required. I'm glad to see that this came out of the executives process because I think, as we all know, currently, the executive or prior to his executive orders of recent times would have a decision. Yes, this one gets an inquest. No, that one doesn't get an inquest and that can. And that in and of itself can be, I imagine, a very difficult decision to make, but also seems very odd and unfair to the people who have been infected by the person who's been, you know, their family member's death. Like, why is one one death worthy of this kind of deep public inquiry? And another one isn't? So I think the standardization of it is really good. But also, the the Department of Justice has standards for when we report what what in custody death is. That counts for purposes of data collection. And it sometimes doesn't make a whole lot of sense, I'll tell you. Like so we have had people who have never, ever set foot in our jail, who died in custody and were counted as a death inside the King County jails. We have likewise had people who have come into jail, had bad things happen to them in jail, got sent to the hospital because of the injuries they incurred, died at the hospital from their injuries and don't count as an end to custody death, which is just crazy, right. So I like when I read this, it to me it makes a lot of sense that the way it's been stated and I appreciate the work that apparently went into that and I'm happy to support both the standard that's being set here for a routine inquest be happening whenever there is a death in our custody, whether that be in police custody or in or in like sheriff's custody or in our jails. And I really I mean, I don't I'm very happy to support the proposal that the family gets a support person who understands this difficult process, which I think would be hard for a layperson to navigate at the best of times. It all makes good sense to me and I support it. Thank you. Further questions. Councilmember Carlos. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just to chime in, I also support, since I was pleased to work on this issue in one justice committee when it came through earlier. And I think it's an important step forward thinking. Council members are prime sponsor. I'd like to move the amendment. Mr. Chair. Councilmember Sala has moved adoption of Ordinance 119 to 36 and moved adoption of Amendment one. There are two amendments, correct? That's correct. There are two amendments in a title amendment to conform with the First Amendment. Can you remind us the contents of Amendment one in Amendment two? Yes, they are both non substantive amendments and Amendment One is simply to make the same changes to the election date language. And then Amendment two is intended for style and readability changes that. The sentence reads a little bit better. Councilmember Zala has moved to adoption, a move that would give a two passed recommendation to Ordinance 2019 to 36 and adoption of Amendment one. The date change discussion on Amendment One seen none of those in favor of Amendment One. Please signify by saying i. I. I opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. Amendment one is adopted. Council members all by Amendment two. So move. Mr. Chair and some of his allies moved the adoption of amendment to see no discussion. All those in favor of amendment to please signify by saying i. I opposed nay. The ayes have it. Amendment two is adopted. Council members on how they would you move it? Adoption of Title Amendment one, please. So move, Mr. Chair. Adult Amendment Tier one as before. See no discussion. All those in favor of title amendment to one please signify by saying I, i all those opposed. No, the ayes have it. Total Amendment one is adopted. We have Ordinance 2019 to 36 as amended before us. Discussion Council members. Hello. Would you like to open? Sorry, but I think we have said everything that needs to be said at this point. I hope everybody supports this amendment and I'm very thankful for all those who worked on it and co-sponsored it. Thank you. Thank you for the discussion, Councilmember Caldwell's. Sorry, Mr. Chair. I just left the unmute. None. It's my little trick to see. Oh, I think it's my advance warning if I realize some of these mute is off. I see people meeting all over the place right now. See no further. No one further to speak. I'd ask the clerk to please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Belushi. Hi, Councilman. Douchey Council member Dombrowski. I. Council member Dombrowski. Both I Council member. Done. No. Council member done votes now. Council member Cole wells. I. Councilmember Caldwell's votes I. Councilmember Lambert. No. Councilmember Lambert. Votes. No. Councilmember. Autograph. I. Councilmember after grove votes. I. Councilmember Yvonne Wraith. Our. No. Councilmember von Right. Thereabouts, no. Council members only. By. Council members on high votes? Yes. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is six I's Council Councilmembers Lambert on rank power and one vote no. By your vote, we've given a do pass recommendation to ordinance 2019 to 36, and we will advance that to full council. We will expedite it. So it would appear on next Tuesday's council agenda. That takes us to the next to them on our agenda. Proposed Motion 2020 208 calling for the executive to allow restaurants and retail businesses in unincorporated King County to have flexibility to provide more outdoor service. Mary Annan will give the Senate report has begun. The line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Mary Bergeron from the council staff and the materials for this item began on page 433 of your packet. As you noted, proposed motion 2020 0208 would ask the executive to allow restaurants and retail services in unincorporated King County flexibility to provide outdoor dining or retail services in addition to what is allowed indoors during the phased reopening plan. As you all know, King County is right now in modified phase one of the Safe Start reopening plan and has applied to move into phase two, which could be permitted as early as the end of this week. Both of those phases impose fairly significant limitations on the kinds of activities that can happen indoors. And you'll see on page 435 of the packet, there is a chart that lists the types of activities that are allowed in modified phase one. And I'll call out in particular that for restaurants. Indoor seating is allowed at 25% capacity in modified phase one, 50% in phase two for retail operations, 15% indoor capacity in modified phase one, 30% in phase two for both of those types of services. Outdoor activities are more expansive, basically because the risk of transmission is lower outdoors. And so for restaurants in both phases, outdoor seating is allowed at 50% of existing capacity, with new or additional seating allowed if it can be spaced so that there's six feet of distance between tables. And then for retail activities again, there would be additional activities allowed outdoors as long as there is appropriate distancing. So what this motion would do is ask the executive that for restaurants and retail services in unincorporated King County, that they be given flexibility to expand outdoor activities in privately owned areas such as parking areas or other private property, as well as adjacent sidewalks, alleys or other right of way ensuring that steps are taken to ensure adequate pedestrian pathways and that there be no additional permits or fees required. So the proposed motion would ask the executive to look into this to prepare any legislation needed and to implement this request with the provision that at the time that the county enters phase four of the Safe Start plan, which would essentially be the back to normal activity that these provisions would sunset. That concludes my report. At this point, I know that we've got executive staff here, if there are any questions, and I'm happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you. Astronauts. Up the Grove. Member of the Grove. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I assume, Mary, that this has flexibility, given that it's a motion to the executive to somehow account for any potential conflicts. Should. One person's right, you know, new ability to set up tables. Impact. Other peoples, something other than a traffic flow was the only thing. But I'm if it reduces the number of parking spaces or creates noise for a business next door. I mean, is there I don't think it'll be a problem, but I assume we don't get in that level of detail here, that we just ask the executive to come up with a way to do this? Yes, that's correct. Councilmember, this motion would just ask the executive to implement the appropriate regulations and again, to do them in a way that doesn't require additional permits or fees during the Safe Start reopening period. Executive staff have noted that there would be essentially additional complications for businesses expanding into the right of way that would have to do with access and, you know, to maintain appropriate ADA access, for instance. And so all of those would, of course, have to be looked into as part of the permitting process. And this motion would ask the executive to take those steps. Okay, thanks. Further questions. Obuchi. Councilmember Vale Dewji. I think this is. A great idea. Thank you to the sponsor and the co-sponsor. And I just want to ask, is it something that's written in a way that we could update the code so that there are opportunities to allow this sort of activity even when we are beyond like COVID one, just just because it's a good thing to do. I would love to see that as well. I wouldn't say no because it wasn't in there. But it would be great if it was something that was permissive where you could see more outdoor eating and encourage more outdoor activity this way into the future. Thank you. Council Member The motion as written would sunset these temporary and more expansive opportunities. At the time that the county enters phase four, however, it does ask the executive to prepare any needed legislation to implement them. And so it would certainly be something that were there to be additional legislation. The Council could choose to keep it in force or to evaluate it at such time as we get back to normal life. Thank you. Thank you for that question. Councilmember Bell duty for further questions to preference to those who often complimented the sponsors of the motion. Councilmember Dombrowski I do want to compliment the sponsors and let it be known that I will accept any invitation for al fresco dining for many of my colleagues in their districts pursuant to this legislation. And I'll buy the first round. Very good. With that, I see no more questions. This was an idea that I started to work on, and I was obviously not thinking as big as Councilmember Lambert, who always things very big because I was only thinking restaurants. It was her idea to make sure we were including retail as well. Councilmember Lambert Promotion. Mr. Jack, pleasure working with you. I'd like to make a motion that we that we pass ordinance 2020 0208 with a DE Pass recommendation. Councilmember Lambert has moved to the we get a do pass recommendation the motion 2020 208. Discussion Council member Lambert. Thank you well and to the just ears back council member. I'm a beauty. I will enjoy eating with you afterwards and the speaker and speaker after that. And we will look for how many rounds. But this is important. I would like to thank the city of Spokane. They had the legislation and had put together quite a extensive book on what their thinking process were. And so we were able to get a lot of information that might be helpful in going forward if you choose to do this. After we get the phase four and this will help our businesses that are having a huge struggle being sustainable to have more options of being able to keep their businesses. So I look forward to more evenings out and having a nice dinner or something. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Further discussion. Say, No, no, that's the court to please call the roll. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Council member. Founder. It's a great idea. Hi. Council Member. Calgary Chief Outside Council Member. Dombrowski. It's a fabulous idea. I Council Member Dombrowski Both I Council member one. We. The council member done both. So I council member calls it a high. Council member wells full time. Council member. Member. Council member Lambert I Council member Lambert Oh, it's like. I guess I. Kill council member of the group outside council member gun our. Fears I. Council member go and make report council members online. By. Members. ALL Hello, Bullseye. Mr. Chair. Fantastic sponsors. I vote. I know the vote is 980 now. Thank you. By your vote, we have given a unanimous do past recommendation to motion 2022 await and we will expedite that posthaste. And Council Madam Council Chair, I urge you to have a meeting next Tuesday so we might take this legislation up and with that we move to item 11 on today's agenda. Motion 2020 192. This calls for the County Treasurer to provide for payment agreements for 2020 property tax payers. Wendy Sue who will give our staff reports. Ms. who the line is yours. Thank you. Wendy Sidhu Council staff. I'm really hoping the sponsor of this legislation can actually see my video because I feel like he would appreciate it. So the materials for this item begin on page 453, but I'm going to actually move you to the analysis section that starts on page 424. Of your packet. Proposed motion 2020 0192 would request the County Treasurer to provide four monthly payment agreements for 2020 and 2021 for tax payers affected by the COVID 19 pandemic. Under state law, however, the Treasurer can only provide for payment agreements once a count because what's once a tax account becomes delinquent and so payment agreements can't actually be offered prospectively . The Treasury section does have a property tax payment agreement program in place for taxpayers who are delinquent on prior year taxes. There was a change in state law earlier this year that would allow the Treasury to expand the program to taxpayers who are delinquent on current year taxes. So that means that as of this change in state law this year, people who did not make their payment as of June 2nd, they would now be eligible to enter into payment limits are turning to page 455. The amendment section at the direction of the sponsor council staff has drafted a striking amendment as one that would request the Treasurer to identify those accounts delinquent on 2020 taxes as of June 2nd, 2020. The executive would also be asked to perform outreach to promote the delinquent tax payment program and also to look at considering waiving or subsidizing fees charged by the third party vendor that Treasury uses to administer the payment agreement program. Then finally, the motion also requests the Treasurer to report on utilization of the program by April 1st, 2021. The striking amendment is on page 13 of the amendment packet and I'd be happy to answer any questions. And Ken Guy and Carol Basler are here as well. So who does the legislation? Is the county able to do this without legislative action from the state legislature? Yes. We have. We have the authority. We need to do this now. Yes, there was a state law change that allows for counties to offer payment programs for current year delinquent taxes. Further questions? Council member done, Mr. Chair move proposed the motion 2020 0192 to speak to it. Council member Dennis moved to give a dubious recommendation to motion 2020 192. Council Member Dunn Thank you. And Wendy, I wish I could see you. I tried like crazy to do that, but I'm I'm a I'm a low tech man in a high tech world. So just barely able to hang on to the speaker phone. But I appreciate your patience. Um, I want to thank my colleague to work with me on this plan to provide property tax assistance to King County residents who, in a number of cases, many cases desperately need it. Over the past few weeks, we've worked really hard with the executive offices and the Treasurer to integrate a lot of their valuable input into the strike or that is before you. Today we are painfully aware of the financial strains caused by the COVID 19 pandemic, and we share the common goals of getting help to those who are most affected by our present crisis this year. And this is important to note this year, 28% more King County residents are delinquent on their property taxes compared to 2019. That's an additional 10,000 people who are not able to pay their property tax bill. And what today's striker does is focus on those taxpayers who are currently delinquent June one being the deadline, and offers more flexibility to the county treasurer in implementing a proposed payment program while maintaining the intent of the original motion. The amendment asked the county treasurer take steps, affirmative steps to engage those who are delinquent in the first half property tax payments for the June 2nd and offer them a payment plan for their 2020 property taxes. However, it leaves up to the Treasurer to determine the details of designing and implementing the payment plan. The amendment maintains the request that County Treasurer consider the feasibility of either waiving or possible subsidizing third party vendor fees that accrue during that are accrued due to that payment plan. So basically payment plans are already authorized under state law. They're are also something we already do. The county does not promote them or reach out in an effective way. And Ken may want to speak to the details of that, but there are vendor fees and other things that are involved. So I appreciate, again, my colleagues willingness to work with me on these, providing some flexibility for tax payers during these challenging times. And I also think that putting a payment plan together actually will end up generating the county more revenue because instead of people just abandoning their taxes for six months or a year until there's a leave , it gives them a decent payment plan option that they might be able to pay to amortize this debt. And I thank you for your consideration. Thank you for the further discussion. McCormick, would you please call the roll? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Councilmember Dunn, will you remove adoption address one? I move as one? Strike Amendment. S-1 is before us saying no discussion and all those in favor of S1 please signify by saying hi are opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. S1 is adopted. Then see no further discussion. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll? And Mr. Chair. Council Member Bellucci I Council Member about due to votes I Council Member Dombrowski I Council Member Dombroski votes i council member done. Hi. Council member downvotes i council member. Commonwealth High. School Member. Cornwall School Science Council Member Lambert I. Council Member Lambert Outside Sponsor Member of the Grass. Fire. Council member of the crowd outside council member Yvonne right. Are I council member or outside council member? While I. Remember I saw the light bulbs, I missed your chair. By your. Chair. The vote is nine zero now. Thank you. By your vote, we have given a do pass recommendation to motion 2020 192, and we will expedite that to full council a week from today. Madam Clerk, I believe we have no council members who missed any votes, so no need for reconsideration. Is that correct? Mr. Chair. All right. And Members, I will remind you before we adjourn, I will remind you, we have an Employment and Administration committee meeting that will immediately follow this. So the fun is not over. Do not hang up. Do not depart with that. The council meeting is adjourned and you may not hang up despite what my script says. ", "output": "AN ORDINANCE providing for the submission to the qualified electors of King County, at a general election to be held on November 3, 2020, of a proposition authorizing the county to issue its general obligation bonds in the aggregate principal amount of not to exceed $1,740,000,000 or so much thereof as may be issued under the laws governing the indebtedness of counties, for the purpose of providing funds to pay for public health, safety and seismic improvements for Harborview Medical Center."}
{"id": "king_5bf134e2-5196-4afd-92fb-03e6256a9bbe", "input": "Good morning. I'm going to call to order the meeting of the King County Council Committee of the whole for April 5th, 2017. And Mark, I want you go ahead and please call the roll. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. Councilmember Garza. Councilmember Kowalski. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember up the Grove. Councilmember Von right there. Madam Chair. Here. Okay. So just for those who are following along, we do expect eight of the nine members to be here and they will be here shortly. But we have a very packed agenda today. So I want to start with the preliminaries so that we don't go too long over our agenda allotted time. I know that Councilmember Up the Grove is unable to attend, but everyone else should be here. So our agenda today includes two motions. I want to, by the way, also skip the approval of the minutes for now, since we don't have a quorum. Our agenda includes two motions to fill judicial vacancies in the King County District Court. At our special meeting on March 29th, the committee selected five final candidates for two vacancies in the Southeast Division. We will be interviewing those candidates this morning. Welcome to you all. Thank you for being here today. And I thank you all for participating in this process. It's been it's taken a while. And we appreciate your patience. But we want it's a very important decision. We will make sure we get it right after the interviews. I expect that we will go into executive session to discuss the candidates qualifications and then after that, we will come back into open session. And if we are ready, then we will take action on the motions. So we'll begin with a brief staff report and then go right into the interviews and I will turn to our committee staff. Leah Zoghbi for the staff report. Welcome. Laughs Good morning, council members I'm Leah Crackles I'll be counsel staff and the materials for this item begin on page nine of your packet. There are currently two vacant judicial vacancies in the Southeast Division of the King County District Court. Under state law, the King County Council is directed to fill district court vacancies by appointment. The King County Code provides. A merit selection process for filling such vacancies, which includes advertising existing or anticipated vacancies rating interested applicants by the King County Bar Association and any other bar association with an established Judicial Candidate. Evaluation Procedure Review of all the candidates and interviews of the final candidates by the Council's Committee of the whole and then final appointment by the King County Council. The nominees are the appointees. Will serve until a successor is elected this November, and they will be eligible for to run for election. On page 23 of your packet, you will find a table that summarizes the candidates bar association ratings. And at the beginning. Of or beginning on page 29. Of your packet, there's a table prepared by council staff that compares the candidates, according to some of the criteria found within the judicial questionnaires that. They've each filled out for the Bar. Association process. In addition, you've each received a binder with a more comprehensive information about the qualifications of each candidate. And that concludes my staff report. All right, thank you. So the process we're going to follow today is we're going to interview one candidate at a time to maintain fairness. I'll ask the candidates who are not yet have not yet been interviewed to wait in the council conference room outside the dais here with the audio off until it's their turn to be interviewed during each interview, we're going to give each candidate an opportunity to make an opening statement of up to 2 minutes. Then we're going to ask a series of questions with up to 3 minutes. To answer each question, we've allotted approximately 20 minutes for each candidate, and I'm going to try to give everyone a closing statement of up to 2 minutes. But we're going to have to watch the clock and see how much time we really have for closing statements. I'm going to ask you to be a little flexible, if you would. If you have anything to say, my suggestion would be get it out before the closing statement in case we run long. Thank you for that. Questions will be the same for all candidates, though we will. There may be a limited number of follow up questions from members on the committee. So there's a set of warning lights here to help people keep within limits. The countdown timer will show the time remaining. When 30 seconds are left, the yellow light will go on, and when the time is up, the red light will go on. So candidates should not feel obligated to use the full time that is allowed, but of course that is the amount of time you have. So you may use it if you choose. When a candidate's interview is over, you're welcome to remain in the council. Will Chambers at that point and we'll carry on and have staff bring in the next candidate until we're done. So we're going to do this in alphabetical order. I would like to ask if you would escort all of the candidates to the conference room now live, and we're going to see if we can't get a few more members down here before we start with the first candidate so that everybody has a chance to be heard by as many people as possible. Thank you. We're going to be at recess for just a few minutes. We are prepared to get started with our interview of candidates for District Court in the Southeast District. Our staff is now going to bring in Ms.. Edmiston, our first candidate. And again, just for those who are joining, we are going we have five candidates. We are going in alphabetical order. There will be an opening statement of up to 2 minutes. We have a series of five questions which we have assigned to councilmembers who graciously volunteered to ask questions. And we are all those folks are here. Welcome, Ms.. Edmiston. And then just continuing on each candidate, council members will have up to 3 minutes to answer. Each of the questions will be using the time are here in front of me and then they will be offered an opportunity to give up to a two minute closing statement , although I have asked them to be flexible with that because we are starting a little late and we want to get through everybody and have time to deliberate today as well. All right, Miss Edmiston, welcome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Would you please go ahead and make your opening statement of up to 2 minutes? I will. Thank you all for taking the time to interview me this morning. I'm very grateful for the opportunity. As you know, from my materials. I'm Bobby Edmiston. I'm here today seeking appointment to the Southeast Division of the King County District Court. My diversity of experience has given me the knowledge and perspective to be a good judge in the district court. I have a wealth of criminal practice experience, having represented clients in both felony and misdemeanor cases. I also have a wide variety of civil practice experience, including my current practice area representing parents and children, independency matters, representing parents accused of being in contempt of court related to child support, and representing refugee and immigrant clients in public benefits cases, as well as victims of domestic violence in the family, law and protection order contexts. But what I want to emphasize for you all about that experience is that I know the King County District Court and specifically the South Division. I've spent approximately 70% of my career working in the King County District Court in the Southwest and South divisions. In addition to the diversity of experience I already shared, I also have the appropriate temperament to be a good judge and a fundamental belief in the respect and the dignity of all who come before me. Attributes that come with me daily in my practice, representing my clients and working with my professional colleagues. And that will transition with me to the bench where I will ensure that all who appear before me, whether the accused, law enforcement, victims, witnesses or aggrieved parties, will be treated with respect and have their dignity maintained. Thank you. Thank you very much. The first question will be asked by Council member Cole Wells. Thank you about chair and I miss anything other than what you've already told us. What do you believe is most important about your background for this position? And, and why do you really want to be a district court judge? I read something interesting this morning that I'd like to share with you all as as a start to answering this question. I was reading an article about racial disparity within the court system. And it starts off with a quote that I will paraphrase where they indicate that our laws are the promise to our citizens and others before us. Our justice system is how we keep that promise. And that that quote really spoke to me in my current role as a public defender. And it speaks to why I want to sit behind the bench as a judge in district court. I think that it is very. Important for a judge to recognize not only the legal issues that face the court, but also the social issues, the issues of and access to justice that we see, the issues of racial disparity within those who are charged, those who populate our jails as well, those who are released pretrial and who are not. I think that that recognition and a commitment my personal commitment to. Being introspective and very honest with myself in terms of what I bring, what I bring with me, what baggage, for lack of a better term or what. What cultural issues? Come with me. Is something that's important. And I. I get concerned that that can be overlooked by judges. And looking at that. Speaking to the issues of, for example, pretrial release, which is one of the issues that I noted, where I'm concerned about disparities. We have a wonderful court rule. And I think that I as a judge will be a person who can. Act upon the mandate of that court rule. Maintaining that promise, tying back to the quote that I paraphrase of a quote that I shared with you all at the beginning. Maintain that promise to our citizens to uphold that court rule that presumes release. Absent risk of violence is within the community or absent. Risk of substantial risk of failure to appear. And I think that that requires a level of courage to maintain. A fidelity to the text of that rule. That is something that I have developed over the course of my career as a public defender, being courageous enough to argue new and novel legal issues even when they're unpopular. Recently sinking an emergency contempt finding against the Department of Social and Health Services when the question of whether emergency contempt actually exists is a legitimate question. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember McDermott. Would you like to ask the next question, please? Thank you, Madam Chair. I'm one oppose a hypothetical situation and ask how you would respond to it. A defendant in your courtroom is displaying mental health or behavioral issues in being disruptive. How would you maintain control of your courtroom while also respecting the rights of the defendant? So this is a scenario that I've seen in my practice and I've seen it handled well, and I've seen it handled in a way that escalated the situation. As I indicated in my opening statement, something that's very important to me is maintaining the dignity and demonstrating a respect for all who appear in my courtroom. In that situation, I think that to a certain level, if the court proceedings can be maintained in an orderly fashion, despite the individual's behaviors, that we simply proceed forward and not necessarily potentially embarrass that individual. But if we reach a point where the court proceedings cannot be maintained, I feel quite strongly that the best thing that a judge can do is speak directly and frankly to that individual about what the expectations are in the courtroom about that they will have the have an opportunity to speak directly to the court, whether through counsel or directly, and that the expectation is that they have an absolute right to remain in the courtroom. But if they cannot, they're also welcome to wait outside in the hallway, and that court staff would be happy to go, let them know when their hearing has been called. I think that that also, however, brings up issues related to therapeutic courts as well. And it would be my responsibility as the judge to make sure that if there are symptoms that appear to be relatively obvious mental health symptoms that I share with that individual, that there are options other than. The conventional court, for that matter, is in King County district, for example, a mental health court. And I would like to advise or ask defense counsel to please advise this individual about that court, about that therapeutic court, as well as making sure that I advise in clear, plain language from the bench as well, so that they're familiar with all options that might best serve that particular individual. Thank you. Okay. Councilmember Lambert, we get we finished quickly. Councilman Lambert's up next. Thank you. Thank you. So much. Okay. Good to see you again. My question is, in. Your role as this decision maker. Describe a time when. You knew you were wrong or figured. Out you're wrong. How did you realize that you made the mistake? How did you what made you change. Your mind and how did you correct yourself or. Reverse that mistake? I'm just going to go with the first example that jumps out. Early on in my felony practice, which was early in my career, it was about 18 months after I started my criminal defense practice that I transitioned into felony practice. I had a client that was particularly challenging in terms of communication, didn't have a cell phone, didn't have email, and we really did struggle between hearings to communicate oftentimes in court was our best opportunity. And so thinking that I was being self-motivated and prepared for an upcoming case setting hearing, I walked right on over to the prosecutor's office and and I asked them to make an offer. And I prioritized what I thought should be the priority or would be my client's priority, which was no jail time. Thank you. And quite proudly and quite naively, that afternoon at the case setting hearing, I announced to my client, Guess what? I got you a great offer to reduction to a misdemeanor and no jail. So proud. And my client said, Oh, that sounds good. There's no probation, right? I said, Oh, no, it comes with two years of probation. And my client was very upset and said I'd do a year in jail before I do a day of probation voluntarily. And at that point, I realized, oops, this is very much the wrong decision. And as the decision maker, it had been mine and my fault. And we ended up continuing the hearing over our prosecutors. Objection. Who had said, no, no. Ms.. And Mr. was in my office this morning and negotiated. They have an offer, they should be ready. And I had to accept the responsibility for my mistake because it was not anybody else's issue but mine. And so I stood before the court and explained that I had made the mistake and I was appropriately going to advise my client what his options were in terms of even the choice to retain me or continue to have me as counsel or seek a new attorney. And then I got also the distinct pleasure of going back to the prosecutor's office and and renegotiating, which was not personally enjoyable but needed to be done for my client. That informed me that experience, informed my practice for the seven and a half, eight years that have come after in terms of a client centered approach to the work that I do, in terms of acknowledging that every individual that I work with is an individual who has different needs, who has different interests, and who has different priorities from one another and from what I might anticipate, and that I need to meet them where they are and advocate for them there. I will bring that lesson with me to the bench in District Court acknowledging that what might be a positive proceeding for somebody where they feel that they have achieved justice or achieved a resolution is is good for them, might be different for the next person. Thank you. Thank you. Fourth question will be asked by Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. I was listening with interest to your response to the first question that we presented to you, and you started off by talking about the issue of racial disproportionality in our criminal justice system and how you would deal with it. This is kind of an enhancement to that. That's not a specific question that we'd like for you to describe what you have done in your present, personal and professional life to address racial disproportional racial disproportionality. Particularly in our court system where it's been very controversial. Thank you for that question. In terms of addressing racial disproportionality, both on a personal and professional level, the fundamental one. One of the fundamental things that I have done is I have refused to believe that I fully understand the issue or that I know everything about the issue. I don't. What I have embraced is a continued desire to learn, to learn about the intersection of racial disproportionality and our court system, and about communities different from my own as well, both in terms of the richness of those communities and the obstacles that those communities and challenges that they face community wide and as individuals within that community. And so within my personal life, I have put myself in a position to have those conversations that can sometimes be very difficult or awkward about issues such as has privilege about overt aggressions, but also microaggressions. I've put myself in a pause and the categories micro assault and so on. I've made sure that I am not a silent observer when I see these issues before me, that when I see somebody's behavior behaving in a way that I think displays a bias or a micro-aggression of some sort, that I speak up and call them out on that not in an attacking manner, but I try to address the issue in a way that invites a conversation not only for the other, but so that I may learn and grow as well in a professional context. I have also addressed this issue by calling it out and putting a name on it. I think that a fallacy over the course of certainly my upbringing in my career that I've seen repeatedly is individuals believing that we are somehow in a post racism society, which is obviously not true, or that just because I don't believe that I am a racist, that everything is okay and that I am not behaving in a in a racist manner. And so we end up stifling or silencing ourselves and the discussion about the effect of race, class, cultural issues in our professional discourse. I have just recently stood before a court and shared the experience of my client, who is a young African-American man who was raised in the foster care system, who had his children at a very young age and has had and his life experience has been very different than that of the attorney general, the social worker from the department on the case and the judge that I am presenting to. And I believe that his experience and his background has borne on his behaviors that are now being questioned in the court by the Department of Social and Health Services. I'm in a dependency practice right now and really use the opportunity to say to the court, just because it is not similar to our experience, to the Department's experience , to the attorney general's experience, does not mean that my client's behavior was was wrong or should be judged and tried to use that as an opportunity to educate. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Fifth and final question will be asked by Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you, Bobby, for being here again. We some of us are there to interview you before, so your answers today are helpful beyond those. I have the fifth general question, and that is related to kind of court operations and budget issues. And it is this the county's general fund, which supports district court, has an ongoing structural crisis, that the court is regularly having to find ways to do more with less. What ideas do you have for how the court might operate more efficiently? I love that question. Thank you, because I have a very specific thought on the topic. Obviously, there are financial constraints in every area and certainly the court struggles with that issue. I think that one very concrete challenge that the court has has to do with appearance of specifically criminal defendants for hearings that we operate in a very , in my mind, outdated system where individuals come to court, for example, for an arraignment, a pretrial hearing or whatever type of hearing or readiness. And when their next hearing is scheduled, they're given a small, usually pink, sometimes white sheet of carbon paper that has their next hearing date on it. It's been my experience that my clients, my hundreds of clients over the course of my career in district court have so many obstacles that they face, whether it's homelessness, other poverty related issues. Housing instability. And. So many possible obstacles that keeping track of that little tiny piece of paper or transferring that date to their phone to their calendar is just not necessarily a reasonable expectation. And they miss hearings. And then we have the inefficiency and additional costs related to that inefficiency of issuing warrants, of booking on warrants, of return, on warrant hearings , on incarceration costs related to needlessly missed hearings, whereas. A modest capital investment in an automated system or utilization of court staff. If we didn't have an automated system to provide a courtesy call or a courtesy text message for folks, Hey, you have a hearing in 48 hours. The same thing that, for example, my doctor's office is able to do when I have an appointment. I think would dramatically increase the appearances of of litigants in specifically criminal but other proceedings as well if we utilize such a lesser system. And although it would be a modest cost up front would pay off, I would expect in dividends for the system as it was imposed because we would have more people appearing, fewer warrants, fewer return on warrant hearings with less need for public defenders, prosecutors, judges, jail guards, all of the staff and cost that comes with those hearings going in. I've seen in other jurisdictions where such a system has been used and that there has long term been a cost savings as well as a human savings in terms of people staying employed, maintaining their housing because they're not needlessly incarcerated. Thank you. Are there any follow up questions, councilmembers, before we move into the closing statement? All right. If you would, Ms.. Edmonson, please give us your closing statement. As I said, up to 2 minutes. But since we've gone a little long, maybe you could make it brief. I will do my best. Thank you. So much. Thank you all so much for the opportunity to speak and meet with you today. I believe that I am the right candidate for appointment to the King County District Court Southeast Division. My diversity of experience has given me both the perspective. And the experiential understanding to assess the complex, both social and legal issues that confront our district court on a day to day basis. My ten years experience as a public defender has given me the experience and skills to manage a high volume calendar. Having managed a high volume caseload, being familiar with how to read a docket quickly to identify legal issues, having experience clearly, quickly, concisely, in plain English, articulating those issues to the folks who are about to go before the court so that they may know what to expect. And being familiar with the electronic record systems that are used in the court, whether E, C, SDR, Jabs or J, I switch it on it to my out. I possess the courage, the intellectual integrity and fortitude and commitment to justice that is necessary and has prepared me to continue to confront the complex issues of racial disproportionality that are facing the Court today. Given all of this experience and these attributes, again, I believe that I am the right candidate for appointment to the King County District Court. And I thank you very much for your time today. Thank you so much. Really appreciate your time, your diligence. This is a very detailed process and you've provided us a lot to think about and we're ready for the next candidate at this point. Please. That will be Jason Petrus. Generally. Yes. While we have a moment, perhaps we can now take up the approval of the minutes. Thank you, Madam Chair. I'd like to move the minutes of our last meeting and as the thread. Okay. I'm sorry. I'm just looking for. Yeah. Just looking for the regular agenda. Here it is. We are approving the minutes of the March 29th, 2017 Special Council meeting and may have been moved. Any comments? Questions, changes? Seeing none. All those in favor. I can just do this by voice. Vote. Right, Margaret? All those in favor. Please signify by saying I any post. All right. The minutes are approved unanimously. All right. Welcome, Mr. Porges. Please help yourself. This, as I should have noted before, there's water here in case you brought your own. I say, good, because I'm going to ask you to talk for a while. So as I said earlier, we're going to ask you to make an opening statement of up to 2 minutes. There will be a series of five pre-prepared questions. You'll have up to 3 minutes to answer those. And then time for a brief closing statement, if you would, please begin with your opening statement now. Okay. Well, it is an honor and a privilege to be here today. And I want to thank you for this opportunity. Throughout my journey in this appointment process, I've had the opportunity to meet with many individuals, and I've been primarily asked two questions Why do you want to become a judge and why district court? And my answer to both boils down to my desire to serve the community. However, for some, when I've been asked that, when I've given that answer, they weren't impressed by it and I wondered why. And I begin to look deeper at my motivation. And I recalled one of my earliest memories of serving the community. I was 11 years old and my school was temporarily closed, and I watched on the news for approximately five days as my neighborhood, South Central Los Angeles, was looted and burned during the L.A. riots. After the fire stopped and the looting subsided, I remember my single mother waking me up early on a Saturday morning and telling me we were going to go clean up in the neighborhood at a local shopping center. She and I went and cleaned debris that day and I felt good about that. It sparked a fire inside of me to serve others and to assist in my community. And like all of you, my desire to have dedicated my life to be a public servant, and so my desire to serve as a King County district court judge stems from that. It's not flashy, it's not attention seeking, but it's been the basis of every decision I've made in my life. And I desire to become a King County District Court judge, to serve the community and the district court, the People's Court, where people often have their first and only experience with our justice system. And I desire to reach the people and the legal setting where they need it most. King County District Court. Thank you. Thank you. And the first question will be asked by Councilmember Cole. WELLS Thank you, Madam Chair. And Mr. Boyd, this other than what you've already stated, what do you think is the single most important part of your background in terms of being able to assume this position? It's my experience. Some might say that I'm I'm young. However, as a district court judge, my duty would be to interpret and apply the law. And the law is blind to my age in that role. And so I have over nine years of experience as an adjudicator in my time as a hearing examiner, as a administrative law judge, and then subsequently as a senior administrative law judge and as a pro tem judge, I've adjudicated over a thousand cases. I've also been a C excuse me. I've also been promoted twice at the Office of Administrative Hearings, first as a lead administrative law judge and then as a senior administrative law judge. And in those opportunities, I've had the opportunity to to train and mentor judges, some more experienced than myself and bring on new judges as well. And so I have a unique skill set in terms of a expansive resume of judicial experience that I will be able to bring to the bench. Additionally, unfamiliar with District Court in that I practiced as a public defender in district court and as a as a deputy prosecutor as well. And so I have experience on both sides, and that will help me in terms of bringing a balanced approach to the court. Thank you. Second question will be asked by Councilmember McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, Mr. Peters. What would you do in the following hypothetical situation? Defendant in new courtroom is displaying mental health or behavioral issues and being disruptive. How would you maintain control of your courtroom while also respecting the rights of the defendant? Well, first, I want to make sure that the person is okay. And so I need to make sure that they don't need any type of medical attention or anything like that. Assuming that that's taken care of and there's not an acute medical issue that would require contacting the authorities, then I would begin to speak with the person and do my best to try to understand what that person is experiencing at that time. I would see if that person has questions about the proceeding and whether or not they're fully understanding. I also would offer that person a recess. Sometimes it may. They may need to take a moment to think about and take in the court proceedings going going really quickly. I mean, these proceedings are very stressful for the people that are here in court. And and so this could have a huge impact on their life. And so they may need a moment to gather themselves. And so I'll give them that opportunity. If they continue to be disruptive, then I'll have to look at other alternatives. Maybe it might be appropriate to take their case later on in the calendar and to come back to their case after they've had some more time to gather themselves and maybe to cool down. But more than anything, I want to give them every opportunity to to be heard and to be able to meaningfully participate in their proceeding. However, that needs to be balanced with the need to make sure that the courtroom is running appropriately and that they're being given that everyone in the courtroom is being given the opportunity to participate and that the court proceedings aren't being significantly delayed to the prejudice of others. Yep. Okay. And the next question is from council member Lambert. Thank you. I'm Renee. Morning. So in your role as a decision maker, describe a time when. You were wrong. How did you realize that you had made a mistake? What made you change your mind? And how did you correct yourself when you realized you'd made the mistake? Well, as a administrative law judge, I am required to issue written decisions after each administrative hearing that I hold. And so we have administrative hearings on the record where parties provide testimony and argument and submit exhibits and evidence. And after each hearing, we're allowed to take our decision under advisement so that we have time to review everything and right our decision. And there have been a number of times when I at the end of the hearing, was thinking that this is the way I'm going to rule in this case. And then I start working on my decision. And as I get toward the end of the decision, I start to to continue to evaluate the evidence, and then I start to think that maybe I was wrong. It was a close call to begin with. And the evidence is, from what I see, is showing that actually, rather than the way that I initially thought I was going to rule in this case, I need to reverse myself. And so there's been a number of times when I've actually been almost completely done with a decision. And often these are, as I mentioned earlier, in cases where there's really close call and I've had to go back and say, you know, the evidence when I weigh it properly, it supports this other route. And so I have no no hesitation to go back and do what's right and do what's just. I train administrative law judges in my office. And right now we're training three new administrative law judges. And I had I'm reviewing their decisions. And so the other day, I actually had a decision that was provided to me by one of our new judges. And it was a case of first impression for both of us. It was a child support case. And I the issue was a complicated one that had a unique twist to it because it involved another state and upon. Analyzing the case. I thought I told her. I said, okay, this is the way that I would decide this if this was my case. And then she worked in that way and wrote her decision. And then she submitted it to me for her review. And I reviewed her decision. And as difficult as it was after reviewing it, I realized that there was one small exception in the in the law that applied in this case, but neither one of us were aware of. And so I went to her and I I'd rather than having her send out the decision incorrectly. I said, you know, we need to go a different route in this case because this is what the law shows. And I printed out the law, I highlighted the relevant sections, and I provided it to her so that she can make the correct decision in that case. I'd just like to make a follow up on that, something you said a minute ago. So I make sure I got my notes right. So you said you've been adjudicated for nine years with all of those as an administrative law judge? No. I was a hearing examiner for over four years with the Department of Licensing. And as a hearing examiner, I was responsible for doing about 90% of the 90% of my caseload, I should say, was driving under the influence hearings. There's a parallel proceeding when a person is arrested for driving under the influence that runs separately on a separate track from a criminal case. And they can a person can have their driving privilege civilly suspended prior to the suspension. They can request an administrative hearing before the Department of Licensing. And those are full blown hearings where troopers or other law enforcement can come and be subpoenaed to testify. And we actually admit evidence and have some of the top defense attorneys around the state, especially the DUI defense bar, making arguments in these cases that are really contesting these suspensions or revocations of people's driving privilege. And then you said that you had done 2000 cases. Is that a year? Did you say ten years? Oh, over nine years. And a thousand cases in that in that time over the nine over the nine year period. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Question number four will come from Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair, and welcome. Thank you to our chambers. Just my question deals with racial disproportionality in the criminal justice system. And you began your comments by saying that you are born and raised in South Central L.A. and you got involved in the clean up after the racial rebellion. I'm assuming you're talking about after Rodney King and 92 because you don't look like you than 65. So. Yeah. So yeah. Oh. All right. Thank you. All right. I like it, actually. Let's keep in focus that. We we we want to know what some of your personal or professional life experiences have been as an inmate to addressing racial disproportionality. Of course, it would be helpful if one of the experiences you talk about is in the judicial arena, because we get a lot of questions, particularly from African-Americans, about the justice system not being very fair to them. Thank you. So I think that racial disproportionality is a is a very complex and involved issue that our society faces. And I think that to take a step back briefly, that our society as a whole needs to do what is necessary to begin to address the issue. And I think that the court should partner with others in the community, whether that's community agencies or community organizations with the police and law enforcement, are with prosecutors and defense attorneys, as well as with businesses in the local community and government, because this issue affects everyone. And so I think that it's a complex issue that has many different facets that need to be addressed, and it's a very tangled web, and it will take a lot longer than I have to figure out how to address that adequately. However, the court has a role to play, and so I believe that the Court needs to do its part and to make sure that it is addressing racial disproportionality because racial disproportionality, although in terms of when a person appears in court, there's been plenty of contact with law enforcement initially and a decision whether to file charges prior to it arriving in the court. Once it once it gets there, judges have the responsibility to do what they can to be fair and impartial and to make sure that they're properly analyzing and evaluating each case. When I approach him as a judge and court, I do my best to make sure that with each case that I hear, I'm properly listening to all the evidence I look at when I'm doing arraignments, I look at the conditions of release and make sure that I'm properly considering the whether a person is a flight risk or a danger to the community, setting any types of conditions of release. And so that also impacts people disproportionality disproportionately even further along. And in the process, I think courts need to do a better job at increasing the diversity in our in our jury pools to to make sure that our juries are more diverse. And then at the sentencing stage as well, I think that courts need to do do better. And one of the things that I do when I am sentencing individuals is that I make sure I'm inquiring about whether or not they're able to pay some of the fines that are requested and and how likely they're able to do that. And part of my benefit of the experience I bring with my social help services caseload backlog background from the Administrative Hearings Office is that I'm able to know a lot more about the eligibility of some of the public assistance programs and how that can impact the individuals that appear in court on the on the social health services side as well as on the criminal side. Thank thank you, sir. Thank you. Okay. And our fifth question will be from Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Thank you and thank you, Jason, for being here in your preparation for the interviews. I've got a general fund question. The County General Fund, which supports district court, has an ongoing structural crisis. And we are really asking the court to help us find ways to do more with less. What ideas do you have for how the district court might operate more efficiently? I would say I don't want to take anything away. I think the district court is probably doing the operating as efficiently, as cleanly as they can. I know that a lot of the budget for district court goes to salaries and just to keep the personnel and keep people in the seats and the doors open. But I think that one thing that I would suggest and I know that the court has a new case management system that it is rolling out. And I've had experience as an administrative law judge with the implementation and rollout and subsequent support of a new case management system at the Office of Administrative Hearings called PRISM. And in doing so, I help to support our agency and our local office, more specifically as we came up with processes and procedures for analyzing the cases that we have. And one of the things that I've learned through this experience is data can be very powerful. Data can begin to show where the resources are going and whether they're properly being distributed or not. And so one of the things that I would propose is that with this new case management system, to the extent that it can, that this case management system be used to collect and analyze court data so that we can see where, if anywhere there's extra room in the budget or where or funds need. To be reallocated or distributed differently because there's a there's a good chance that the data will show some things that we may not have other otherwise seen. And so I think analyzing data is a is a big first step in terms of looking at how we can distribute resources. Because I, I know that there's only so much funding available. And I do want to thank the Council for its efforts in continuing its mental illness and drug dependency funding, because I think that that can also be used to do things like therapeutic court and other type of restorative justice programs. And then in doing so, that may ultimately result in people being in jail less or people having to having less of an up and lengthy process in the in the court proceedings. And so that could also lead to some savings over over time. However, there have to be a lot of data that would be collected in that regard as well. Yeah. Okay. We've reached the end of our planned questions. Do any members have any follow up questions I would like to ask at this time? Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Jason, if it correct me if I've got this wrong, but your adjudication experience and nine years is significant but has been in the context of what I would say is at least envisioned, is kind of one case at a time coming before you, rather than say a district court courtroom where you may have a jam packed calendar with a lot of quick decisions required and a lot of people appearing in a very short amount of time. If that supposition is correct and if I'm wrong, you tell me. But if that's correct, could you tell the council a little bit how you might and what skills you would bring, manage that different kind of calendar in district court? Sure. Sure. And thank you for that question. And one of the things that not to I say this as humbly as I can is I have a very strong work ethic, and that is something that gives me the preparation necessary to manage a large calendar like that. I have pro tem in district court and so although my work as an administrative hearing, as an administrative hearing officer is different in some respects as it pertains to the volume on a particular day, my work as a pro tem has given me the opportunity to manage, manage very lengthy and full calendars. And one of the things that I do is I make sure that I'm there early. I get all of the files ahead of time and I prep and review them to the best I can. And in doing so, that helps me to make sure that I am aware of any potential difficult or complex cases, and I can identify those ahead of time. And so I can know how the docket is likely to flow, assuming that people show up and cases aren't continued. And so it's a big part of it is preparation. Another thing that's important is making sure to start on time. When I am a pro tem, I start court on time to the best of my ability, even although the attorneys may not appreciate that in terms of the prosecutors and defense attorneys, once I once I start court, I don't leave the bench. I stay out on the bench, even if there's no matters ready, because I want the court, I want the people in the audience that are there that took time off from work or take time away from their child care, that can can see that the court is ready to go. And so we're we're waiting on the cases to be ready. But the judge is in off somewhere doing something else. The judge is there. The judge is viewing the courtroom and is ready as soon as cases are ready. And so those are those are ways that I would manage a caseload and doing so that also helps in terms of being able to deal with cases that might need a little bit more time with the preparation and being on time and starting and running the courtroom as efficiently as possible, sometimes you're inevitably going to run into a case where it requires more time and attention. Maybe there's some sort of a sensory impairment or a language barrier or like we discussed earlier, maybe someone's having a difficult time in that proceeding. And so by with the preparation, I'm able to efficiently move through the cases that don't require as much time so that I can come back and offer more time to those cases that need it. So thank you. Councilmember Gossett has a follow up question. Thank you. And hopefully thank you, Madam Chair. Hopefully that's me. Real quick, in your application, you mentioned that you had very little district court experience, but just now you were talking about having brought down as her experience. And then earlier when you. You were talking about having had a thousand quotes. I thought that comes around. And Bosca's remarks are very relevant because I would imagine when you were working for the Department of Licensing and dealing with your eyes, that's a lot of cases in a short period of time. Yes. As well as an administrative law court. Was that for DSH? Yes. The administrative law judge. It was the Department of Health Services. Yes, sir. Is for Department of Social Health Services. We also handle cases for the health care authority and the Department of Early Learning. So it's a lot of them. Okay. Yes. So can you answer my question about why you put no experience in and talk about being a pro tem? Well, I've been a pro tem in municipal court, so I've been a pro down in the municipal court as well as in Edmond's municipal court. And this year I've actually pro tem for the first time in district court as well. So there's been some some updates since my application was initially created. Councilmember Caldwell. Thank you, Madam Chair. Have you received the rating from the Loren Miller Bar Association? We don't have that on our records. Well, and it's a disadvantage for me slightly as my resum\u00e9 shows. I'm actually a member of the Loren Miller Bar Association Judicial Evaluation Committee, so I have to wait one year before I can be rated by them. And I signed up for a three year term and I didn't want to I wanted to fulfill my term obligations . And so rather than stopping early, I decided to keep going. And so I can't be rated by that right. Now for that. Clear. I'm glad you asked that question. That was a good clarification. Okay. With that, Mr. Burgess, would you please give us your brief closing statement up to 2 minutes? Thank you. Thank you. So I recognized that my road to district court and my experience as far as not a typical route because of that, I made a chart that I hope that you all received and I'll bring it out here. And this chart shows the core competencies of a district court judge, and it also shows how my judicial experience directly relates to those core competencies. As I mentioned earlier, some might say that I'm young and they might question that. However, as a judge, in terms of my ability, it's going to be analyzing the law and interpreting interpreting the law. The law is blind to my age. The more important consideration is my experience and I have extensive experience as an adjudicator. As I mentioned earlier, I have over nine years of experience as a adjudicator in handling cases, as a hearing examiner, as a administrative law judge, and as a pro tem judge. In that time, I've developed extensive judicial experience and additionally leadership abilities as well. However, all of this is grounded in my desire to serve the public. It all comes back to public service for me. I chose to pursue the legal profession based on a deep and personal commitment to serve others. And I desire to have the privilege to serve King County as a district court judge, to serve the community, and further expand my efforts to serve the community in the legal setting where they need it most in the court. I want to thank you for your time and your consideration of my application has been a pleasure to be here today. Thank you very much. Supporters, we know that this is a very detailed and lengthy process. We appreciate all the information you have provided for us to help us make this decision and your involvement. And as I said earlier, will be hopefully deliberating at the end of this meeting today. So time to move on to our next candidate, who in alphabetical order will be Krista Swain. And we will be at recess for just a moment while we wait for her to come in. On to our next candidate. Christa Swain, welcome again. Good morning. Thank you for being here. Just real briefly, because it's been a few minutes and we test your memory, but not this way. We'll be asking you to give a brief opening statement after 2 minutes. Then the council members will ask five prepared questions. There may be some follow up questions and a brief closing statement. So why don't you go ahead and start with your opening. Okay. Thank you. Well, as you know, my name is Christa Wyatt Swain. I've been practicing law for about 20 years, almost all in district and municipal courts. I have a background that goes back 20 plus years doing defense work and back 15 years doing prosecution. And I actually continue to do both defense and prosecution. And for the last five years, I've been working as a pro tem judge in King County District Court. So I sit in all the chairs. It keeps me very balanced so that when I do sit as a judge, I remember what it's like to be a prosecutor, to be a defense attorney, and to connect with everyone in the court. And I found that in the last five years, working as a pro tem judge, I really enjoy the work. And I find myself uniquely qualified because of my background of doing both sides prosecution as well as defense. And one of these attorneys that even though I've been working in district and mini court for a long time, I'm not jaded. I still remain idealistic and positive. I believe that everyone that comes before the court should have an opportunity to be fairly heard. And, you know, my job as a judge is to do the best I can, not only for that person before me, but for the community as a whole. I care deeply about the community and my connection with the community, and that's why I believe that I would be a good judge if I'm selected to do so. Thank you. Thank you. And the first question will be from Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you very much for being here today. And my question is, other than what you've already related, what do you believe is the single most important thing about you to prepare you to assume this position and also your top reason for wanting to be a district court judge? For me in particular, I'm going to say compassion. You said a single reason and it's hard. But I feel, you know, that connection with the community that I feel and that comes from my compassion. I care a lot about people. I connect with people really well and the compassion that I've had and that I've learned as a defense attorney working for 20 years, as a public defender, caring about people who really have limited means, limited abilities, mental health issues, drug addiction issues. I understand those issues. Currently, right now, the biggest problem that we have with chemical dependency is opiate addiction. It's incredibly prevalent and I'm working hard to find good treatment places to direct people to. And I do that in my work both as a prosecutor and a defense attorney. I see my job as making the community better with hopefully encouraging and helping people to access those resources to help them. Okay. And next question. Last May. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember McDermott, thanks for the assist. Good morning. Good morning. Question but how you would respond in a hypothetical situation? I'm a defendant in your courtroom. Is displaying mental health or behavioral issues and being disruptive. How would you mean to maintain control of your courtroom while at the same time respecting the rights of the defendant? Well, I've had this happen multiple times over the course of my career in all roles as a judge, as a prosecutor, and as a defense attorney. As a judge, the first thing I would do is see if I can get the situation under control by simply listening to the defendant. If this person is if it's if it's their turn to speak, if it's their case that is being heard, first, I want to give them an opportunity to hear them. I might have to lay out the ground rules and let them know, okay, stop what you're doing for a second. Let me give you the rules about what's going to happen. And then, you know, I'm going to tell you, you know what? I need to hear from you. Then I'm going to give you a chance to respond. So laying out ground rules to let the person know that I'm there, to hear them, that they're going to have an opportunity to be heard. Most of the time, that completely dissipates the problem. Once the person knows that, they are going to be able to talk. If the situation continues, then you have to, you know, let the clerk know. You got to bring in security. If it can't be resolved by an exchange between, you know, in talking with the with that particular person. But I find that simply letting them know that they're going to have an opportunity to be heard, they just have to follow the rules in that being heard usually dissipates the problem. Thank you. And the third question is from Councilmember Lambert. Hi. My question is, in your role as. A decision maker. Describe a time when you were wrong. How did you realize. You'd made the mistake? What made you change your mind? And how do you correct yourself when you made that mistake? I'm flashing back into multiple roles and as a prosecutor, as a defense attorney, but as a decision maker being wrong. Well, there have been I know that there's been at least one time when I made a mistake in terms of amount of jail to be served or how that jails to be served, or I've made a mistake on, you know, some administrative process. And that I think, you know, those are learning experiences for, you know, how to make sure I'm doing that process correctly and in terms of making a wrong ruling or or something that was legally wrong, I, I'm not saying that I've never done it, but I nothing has come to mind. But I will tell you that certainly if it's brought to my attention that I've made an error, I definitely want to look at what I've done and review everything and correct the mistake. Absolutely. And if it's a situation where I have to go back in and call all the parties back and let them know, well, here, here's what I found. I've made an error because of this. And, you know, I'll put it on the table and let everyone know I'm not afraid to be wrong. Okay. For question number four, I'll call on Council Member Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. One of the larger issues facing our criminal justice system, either here or elsewhere in our country, is the issue of racial disproportionality. So this question deals with that topic. Could you describe for us what you have done in your personal or professional life to address the issue of racial disproportionality? It'd be helpful if you could tie it to your operating in the arena, dealing with district court, but any example would be very helpful for us. I've seen this happen. There's a real clear memory that I have working as a defense attorney and as a defense attorney. We do a lot of work with people who have many challenges, whether it's the language issue or racial disproportionality. But there was a particular time, one of my public defense contracts, where the police officers thought it would be a good idea to come in and on the interpreter calendar and just, you know, see who might be an illegal on that just because they know that those people are going to be there at this time and they don't speak English and maybe they're illegals and maybe we can take them off to ice. And that was something that I absolutely could not tolerate. And I brought it to the attention of the judge, and it was stopped immediately. As a prosecutor, I see this more in just working with my law enforcement agencies that I work with to make sure that they are aware of the issues of race and racial disproportionality when they're out in the streets and how important it is to treat everyone equally and to be aware of those issues no matter who they're coming into contact with. So as a prosecutor, I try and make sure that the law enforcement officers that I work with are all being fair, impartial and aware of the issues of racial disproportionality in their jobs. All right. Thank you. Okay. Our final question will be asked by Councilmember Dan Bousquet. Thank you, Madam Chair. This is a systems and budget question. The county's general fund, which supports the district court, has an ongoing structural crisis. And we are working with the court to find ways to meet its needs with less money. What ideas do you have for how the court might operate more efficiently? I have a lot of ideas about that. Two years ago, I take it upon myself to change the way I do my files from paper files to electronic. I made a change in everything all at once just about two years ago, in May of 2015. It was very intimidating to me to think about not having all that paper in front of me, but I found that it was incredibly efficient. Shortly after that, my assistant, who had been working with me for years and years and years, she quit to become a full time mom and I was worried that I was going to need to find another person. And frankly, with the ease of the electronic system and the electronic files I'd made, I found I didn't even need to hire an assistant because it was so efficient. I really think that even though we have ECI right now in King County District Court, I think there's so many ways that we can take that to the next level and become incredibly efficient with electronic systems, with email, with all the technology that's available to us. I think that there's a lot of work that can be done in the future that can be incredibly cost efficient. Also, I really believe that alternative courts, even though it may seem at the outset that we're investing a lot of money, alternative courts are a wonderful way to prevent recidivism and to really get the people back into the community working in a positive way so we don't have the repeat offenders. I think in the long run, adding community courts, working with expanding on the mental health court system, expanding on additional systems that perhaps we haven't even thought of, can be a wonderful way to create cost savings and better the people that we are working with as well. So that was her last prepared question. Do members have any follow up questions at all? All right. Seeing that, I will give you an opportunity now to give us your closing statement. And again, up to 2 minutes, please. Thank you. As I indicated in my opening statement, I. Do you enjoy the work? I find that when I am serving on the bench, when I'm serving as a prosecutor or defense counsel as well, I enjoy this work. I enjoy working with the people who need it. I enjoy working with the other attorneys. I find that my background does serve me well in being able to hear both sides fairly and impartially. And this is a job that I would like to do and I feel like that I would do a good job at it. So thank you so much for your consideration today. And thank you. As I've said to the other candidates, this is a very detailed process and I really appreciate all the information that you have submitted so that we can make a good decision and your interest and your experience that you bring to this process. So thank you again. Thank you. All right. And we will move on now to our next candidate who should be with us in a moment. We will be in a brief recess until she arrives. So we will be out of recess again and moving on with our interviews. Welcome, Ms.. Walz. Thank you again for being here this morning. We're going to start as advertised with an opening statement of up to 2 minutes. Then we'll have prepared questions and closed with a closing statement. So why don't you please just go ahead and give us your opening statement now. Thank you. Good morning, counsel. My name is Renee Wiles, and I'd like to thank you for this opportunity. I am honored and privileged to be considered for a position on the district court bench. I've been serving the citizens of South King County since the inception of my career 17 years ago, initially with the King County Prosecutor's Office as a special deputy assigned to the Regional Justice Center, then as assistant city attorney for the City of Federal Way and for the past 12 years as a prosecutor for the city of Burien, practicing in the King County District Court six years ago, my husband and I opened a law firm, and we provide prosecution services for many Southern cities. This experience has allowed me the unique opportunity to see how different communities function and to understand the character of the many cities that make up South King County. I was elected by my fellow South End attorneys as the president of the South King County Bar Association. I'm also a volunteer for the Partnership for Youth Justice Program, serving at a district court in Burien. I was drawn to this community because of my background. I am an immigrant from South Korea, adopted by a farmer from Minnesota, my father and a doctor from the Philippines, my mother. I was raised in Arizona in a bicultural home within a multicultural community, which necessitated that I learn enough Spanish to stay out of trouble in Somalia. These life experiences have provided me with a unique lens through which I view justice. Communities are not monolithic understanding. This is what has allowed me to serve so many communities for so long, so well as a pro tem judge and a prosecuting attorney. The breadth of my experience working in South King County communities will be an asset to the District Court bench, and I welcome the opportunity to answer your questions, and I thank you for your time. Thank you. The first question comes from Councilmember Cole. WELLS Thank you, Madam Chair. I think you've given us a lot of information about your background. What do you believe is the single most important element to prepare you for assuming a district court judge? And what is most important to you about wanting to be a district court judge? I think the single most important element to me is the desire to do the right thing and the humility to admit when you make mistakes. I think that integrity is the cornerstone of a good judge. I believe that the diverse background that I have, where I was raised, who I am, what I look like, gives me a perspective. For the citizens of South King County. And I'm sorry, Councilwoman Caldwell's the second part of that discussion, the single. Most important factor for you in wanting to be a district. Court judge. So the district court ultimately is the final decision maker. And so, as a prosecutor, I may recommend different things. But a mentor of mine when I first started said, if you are looking for the conviction or the guilty finding, you are misplaced. If you're going to ask somebody to do something, mean it. Do it for the betterment of the person. Do it for the betterment of the community. And I built my legal career on that. And I'd like to bring that to the bench. Thank you. All right. Question number two will be asked by Councilmember McDermott. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, Miss Wells. Good morning. A question is, how would you respond to a hypothetical situation? And that is that a defendant in your courtroom is displaying mental health or behavioral issues and is being disruptive. How do you maintain control of your courtroom while at the same time respecting the rights of the defendant? That's happened to me on on a good handful of occasions. Mental health issues are growing in this county and pretty much across the country. I think that it's important that you keep a cool head. You stay. Calm. You address the issues that they're having. If they feel like they're suffocating literally when they're in their cell. Acknowledge that. I understand that you feel like you know you're suffering. You're suffocating. I hear that. Here's. Here's what we're going to do. And I think that when they feel like you've heard them, it calms down the situation. Council member Lambert will ask the next question. Thank you, Madam Chair. In your role. As the decision maker, describe a. Time when you were wrong, how you realized you had made a mistake. What made you change your mind? And how do you correct that mistake? Okay. I was wrong when I made a ruling about restitution, and I think that I considered things a little too quickly when I considered things a little further by the end of the day. I decided that the right thing to do was to change my ruling, and I did so. And I notified the parties of that and to bring them back at their next court date, which they were going to have to discuss that issue again and bring more paperwork. One thing I think bail hearings can be quite difficult and you question yourself the most, I believe, at bail. Hearings. And I remember this one occasion when there was a defendant who had assaulted his brother and and it involved a saw. He was in the hospital. It was a misdemeanor. Right. So not huge injuries. But but he had no criminal history. There's no reason to believe he wouldn't come back. And I ended up releasing him from custody. And then I started thinking, oh, man, did I do the right thing here? And I've had the support of some really good judges. And so at the end of the day, I called Judge Ed and I asked him, I said, what would you do in this situation? And before I knew it, I was on speaker phone. I had Judge 80. Judge Stephenson walked through that. I had her on speakerphone. And then Judge Christie walked through and I had him on speakerphone. And everybody gave me a different answer. And that made me feel much better at the end of the day. And everything went well. Everything's fine, thank you. Okay. Councilmember Gossett, very question number four. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. This is a question about racial disproportionality. And as a woman lawyer of color, I would assume you've had thoughts and opportunities to deal with this issue. But our question is asking you to describe what you have done and either your personal or professional life to address racial disproportionality if you think it does exist in our criminal justice system. Okay. If sometimes. It makes me a little bit prickly when people assume that indigency equals. Communities of color. Sometimes this does intersect. And there have been laws that have been passed by the legislature, especially with DUIs, saying you have to have alcohol monitoring. And if you don't have alcohol monitoring in some fashion, you may be subject to going back to jail. Right. But the problem is, is that that is not free. That is $15 a day, a day, a day. And so if you're indigent, you can't pay for that. And that happens at least where I practice to a lot of people of color. And so people who are wealthy don't have this problem. And I found that to be very frustrating. And so I went to the city of Berrien, and I explained what was going on. And I asked them for funds. To provide the service for free. And they did. And so now that people aren't going to be subject to that same penalty that they may be. Samantha. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. And our fifth and final prepared question will come from Councilmember Dombrowski. Thank you, Madam Chair. And I really thank you for your preparation and being here today. This is a general systems and budget question. The county's general fund, I think, you know, supports district court. And we've got a structural challenge here with our general fund. We're always looking for ways to do more with less. What ideas do you have for how the court might operate more efficiently or save some money? Okay. I'll start off by saying, you know, the I know that the King County District Court budget is incredibly complex, especially working for a city and understanding the reconciliation process and everything that goes into it. So I'll give you an example of things that I've done. I think that it's important to think out of the box. Where can we find the money to do something? And sometimes it's been a matter of. All right, I. We have to pay a filing fee to file this court, in this case in district court. A-listers. How can I save the city money while maintaining the ability to have justice while not putting a burden on an indigenous population? There's a lot that goes into that, but I had to think about that. And what it came down to is I thought, all right, let's switch up the procedures. So now we don't pursue that charge, but we still file certain things. So now it's $12 instead of $310. Any time something like that goes to court, also thinking, let me move one day we've got let me move the motions day after the readiness day. And so what that meant was that we saved a lot of money. We're not having needless motions. We're not clogging up the court calendar. And I think in the first year we did that, we saved over $11,000 in King County deputy overtime. All right. Do any members have any follow up questions that they would like to ask Councilmember Lambert? Thank you. It's a follow up on the question I asked earlier. Suppose you were on the bench and you made a mistake and another judge came in and said, you made a mistake. How would you notify the judge. Whose court calendar you were taking that that judge. That supervising her had told you you've made a mistake? How would you go about doing that? The judge that I'm sitting for, you know, I'm always willing to admit if I make a mistake and I ask the people that I sit for, if you ever see that there's an issue, I would request that. Please tell me, because I would rather not make a mistake again. And I've had the generosity of many judges, whether I sit for them or not, that have been incredible mentors for me and have given me a structure to be able to be effective, to be accurate. And it's really passed down a philosophy. That is that presents the King County District Court with a good reputation that you have judges there that are supporting each other, that are supporting the people who sit in there, that the goal at the end of the day is to provide justice to the best of everybody's ability and passing on knowledge. So the judge offered a mentor. You would follow up on that? Yes. And I have. I have. Yes, I have. I value everybody's experience and I seek it out. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. At this point, if you would like to give a brief closing statement after 2 minutes. Go ahead. Thank you. Okay. I would just, first and foremost, want to thank you again for the opportunity to share with you my perspectives, philosophy and qualifications. I know many of the other candidates here considering, and I'm grateful to be considered among them. As you make your decision, I hope that you consider the broad based support that I have from sitting judges and city leaders, which, combined with almost a decade of pro tem experience, make me an ideal candidate for this position. I care deeply about the quality of justice in this county and called to this work in large part because my values are King County values. I believe in access to justice. I believe in fairness and transparency. I believe in equity and equality. I believe that perceptions matter. How our courts are perceived by marginalized communities impacts the legitimacy of the decisions that we make. For this reason, it is important that we understand the impacts that our decisions have, not just on the individuals, but on the community as a whole. King County courts have been leaders on issues that affect justice, both in our state and across the country, from therapeutic courts to addressing issues of racial disproportionality, to mitigating the financial impacts on indigent defendants. Our judges, with the support of other branches of government, have led the way. But we recognize that there is always room to seek a new path and forge a brighter future. I'm thankful that so many of these current and former district court judges have placed their faith in me and have called upon me to sit in their stead. And I would be honored. To be counted as one of their colleagues. Thank you. Thank you very much. And I just want to second the comments that some others have made. This is a very labor intensive and detailed process. We really appreciate all the effort you've put into providing us so much information so that we can make a good decision. Thank you for your interest and we will now move on to our final candidate. But we're going to take a moment at recess while we change change how people think. Of recess now. And moving on to our final candidate of the morning. Mr. York, thank you so much for being here today again and for waiting as a person with the last name that starts with B, I always went first. You probably often go last and we appreciate your patience with us. I'm really thankful for the world. As we get started. Once again. Once again. Okay. It's been we're ready now. We will start with a brief two minute opening statement and then we have a series of prepared questions that we'll give you a closing statement. And at that point, we'll probably go into an executive session to deliberate. So if you would, start with your opening statement, thank. You very much. I was raised to try and make the world a better place while my mother was raising four children. As a single parent, she worked as many as six jobs. At one time, she still found time to give back to the community through Eastern Star and Rainbow Girls and helping me with my Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I learned this ethic from her. I discovered my calling to the law early on with my love of the Constitution and my desire to use my skills to make social change is the reason I went to college. The reason I went back to college after dropping out from financial difficulties. The reason I went to law school to become a trial attorney. And the reason I started pro tem judge in in 2008. I hope to bring professionalism, consistency, knowledge of the law, and an earnest desire to serve the communities of King County. My years of varied experience working with and besides some amazing judges have laid a foundation I hope to continue building on. I will never stop trying to be better on the bench, better for those using the system, but also better for those working in it. Literally, every time I leave the bench, I ask my court clerk what I can do to make her life easier, and then I take her words to heart, his or her words aren't. I feel very strongly that a judge has a responsibility to help his or her community off the bench as well. I have served South King County my personal life. I currently serve on boards for two different charity organizations Corners Ken Dam and the South King County Activity Center. One, providing helping the children of South King County. And one helping provide job training and placement for the profoundly disabled. I clean our parks every month, package food for the disadvantaged, help our, educate our children. And I have served on municipal subcommittees to help unite our communities in the years that I have served as an advocate and pro tem judge. I have worked with some of the best judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys and court staff in King County. I have joined with all of them to strive to make the world a better place for the accused witnesses, parties and victims in the system. It is my hope that I can continue to do this in the capacity as a district court judge. And I'm honored to be here today to ask for this appointment. Thank you, Mr. York. The first question will come from Council member Cole Wells. I thank you, Madam Chair. Mr. York, with all your experience, what do you believe is the most important in preparing you for taking a position on the bench? And and what is the most important part of your background that. You or why you would like to be a judicial. Have a judicial position? So two. Questions. And. I'm clear. That is a that is a big question. I think that the traits that have helped me become a good judge, should I be blessed enough to get the position, are, I think, over my varied experience through both King County prosecutor's office and through the Seattle Municipal Court system. I also was a pro tem judge for a long period of time as I helped develop what I think is what makes a great judge, which is professionalism, consistency and professionalism, consistency, a knowledge of the law and a perspective. And I think that has that has helped prepare me for the bench. The reason I want to be a judge started a long time ago. I have I have older siblings and they went through school and ahead of me. And I don't know if any of you have older siblings, but they were better at things that I wasn't as good at. My oldest brother was excellent at chess and theater. My next oldest brother was an athlete and a band member and really good at all those things. And I found his speech and debate and I as I mentioned in my opening, I've always had a desire to serve the community. And that started when I was young and Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts. And I tried to figure out the best way I could use that skill that I'd been given to help make the world a better place. And I looked at going into government and I thought that the judiciary would be a great place to do that. So as I've built through my career, I've worked towards that goal. It's one of the reasons I started in King County prosecutor's office under normally he was an amazing man, and I think we've lost something, obviously with him not in doing this job, but he one thing he ethic, he taught me while I was at the King County prosecutor's office was that it's about justice. It's about not about not about getting a conviction. It's about the outcome being the right outcome. And there's one story I can tell about that, where I had a robbery that I was prosecuting. And through independent investigation, I found a couple of witnesses who had placed the defendant somewhere other than where it happened. Now, we had another case where we had witnesses saying that they were there, but I believe these witnesses I had found. So I went to my supervisor, Dan Clarke, and I asked them, I said, I don't believe he did it. He said, well, then dismiss it, man. So simple as that. We didn't try and negotiate an outcome. We dismissed it, which was the right thing to do, and that was the ethic I was taught at the King County prosecutor's office to seek justice. And I think that's a very short step to the to being a judge is seeking justice, because that's your goal there. Then I was blessed enough to come over to the city attorney's office with Pete Holmes. And when he allowed me to open up and work on some projects such as the Restorative Justice Project, which has peace circles involved for people ages 18 to 24, I started that there where it's an alternate accountability system where you don't actually it's pre finally diversion where you can appoint a filing. And then I also always had the support of working on my proportional sentencing standard, where now the Seattle Municipal Court, the prosecutors make recommendations on the Top End as well as the bottom. And so normally in the system practice, the standard practice is 364 days or 90 days, depending on whether it's a gross or normal misdemeanor. The Seattle Municipal Prosecutor's Office doesn't do that anymore. We make recommendations on what we think the appropriate top end recommendation as well as bottom end. And I'm not aware of any other jurisdiction that does that. Thank you. Me? Okay. Councilmember McDermott, for question number two. Thank you, Madam Chair. Question is, how would you respond in a hypothetical situation and situation being that there's a defendant in your courtroom displaying a mental health or behavioral issue and is being disruptive, how would you maintain control of your courtroom while also respecting the rights of the defendant? Well, I've had that happen both as an advocate and as a as a judge in a courtroom. I've had I've had the luck and blessing to serve in mental health courts throughout my career. I stood in a mental health court a couple of times at the King County Prosecutor's Office, and I stood in a lot more over the first two years of my career at Seattle City Attorney's Office in Mental Health Court. So I have some experience in dealing with the mentally ill. I get a little personal. I also have family members who have parents schizophrenia, including my father, who did it before he passed. And so I have some personal experience in how to manage that situation and a lot of empathy and compassion for them. In my time as an East Precinct liaison attorney for the city attorney's office. I also worked closely with the crisis intervention team, which is I'm sure you're aware of the the great team that goes around instead of putting people in jail, tries to get them into beds. So I guess the whole point of all that is that I do have experience in dealing with people who are in mental crisis or have certain mental situations. A lot of times I've worked with great defense attorneys, either when I was a judge or a prosecutor who have very good client control and help manage that system. The last thing I want to do is, is swing a gavel and yell at somebody in my courtroom for something that's out of their out of their control. Usually, in my experience and the times I've dealt with this as an advocate and as a judge, I've been able to speak with them, communicate with them, calm them down and move them out. I haven't had a situation where someone's been completely out of control or something had to happen. Now that can happen and I'm prepared to deal with that. But obviously it has had you have to have kid gloves. You have to have compassion, understanding of the situation that person is in. So I suppose what I would do is I would work with the defense attorney and the prosecutor. I would make sure that if we had a heads up that might be happening, that they would go last so that they could speak as much as they wanted, so that they could have their privacy somewhat retained. I know it's on a public record, but having that in mind, everybody can also add stress and an amp them up in their crisis. So you can work to coordinate with the parties to make sure that they're later on in the calendar, if at all possible, hopefully at the end. And then their people speak to them like people that's that's the ultimate grounding of it is done. Don't forget that. If one thing I learned one thing I learned from my personal experience with paranoid schizophrenia is that if you take what their delusion is as fact, everything from their rational, every logical decision they make is rational. If the person is spying on them from the van across the street, then it's rational for them to put the the block to make sure they can't get spied on. So a lot of different mental illnesses have that paradigm where you can approach them and and give them the respect they deserve and not escalated up de-escalation techniques and and not taking it beyond where you forget that you're dealing with people. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert, we'll ask the next question. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. In your role as a decision maker, describe a time when you were wrong. How did you realize you made a mistake? What made you change your mind and how did you correct it? Well, that's that's one of the one of the difficulties in the system is that determining when you've made a wrong choice. It requires a lot of self-awareness. We all make wrong choices where people the system isn't perfect. I've had the benefit of watching a trial in China. And when I was there and I promised there's a reason for me bringing this up is that the prosecutor, they have a 99 something percent conviction rate. And I watched the defense attorney sit in the corner and not say a word for the entire trial while the accused stood there and had to answer the questions from the judge. So our system is great compared to that, but we still have our holes in the system and we. So have mistakes made. The mistake that springs to mind is I'm a regular pro tem in Kent, Washington, in Kenya's civil court for Judge Jorgensen. And Judge Phillips and I handle all of their pro se contested calendars, and I handle all their all their attorney contests in calendars and other by mails. And the one that comes to mind as a pro is a contested calendar. It was an accident case. And I went through the accident and I heard all the evidence and it was one of those borderline cases. And I made the call that they did it, that they by preponderance of evidence, they did it. And I went through the whole process and sent them on their way for appeal. And then I went home and I thought about it and I thought about it. And every time I get off the bench, I'm exhausted. I put everything I can into every case in front of me because it's the most important thing for that person in front of me. I don't care if it's an accident case or they didn't care or they didn't have registration or if it's a murder trial, which I haven't had to judge, but I've been an advocate for every case as a judge in front of me. It is serious because it's the most important thing for that person. So I went home and I thought about that one and I actually went back to my clerk the next day and I issued and issued a written order that found it not committed. We as judges, we as prosecutors, we as defense attorneys, we have to remember that we're fallible and that we're going to be mistakes. And it's okay to question those decisions. The minute you stop taking cases seriously from the bench, as serious as they are in the minute, you shouldn't be up there anymore and it's okay to second guess yourself and it's okay to go back and correct injustices that are in place. I don't have I'm sure I've made mistakes in other places that I can't cite because I maybe I didn't know I made the mistake. But that's one that comes to mind as I actually took the corrective action to follow through on it. So I never want to if I'm ever if I'm lucky enough to be on the bench, I never want to be that judge who doesn't anguish over every decision but everything they have and every calendar and walk off the bench exhausted every time. Because if I am, I don't belong there anymore. So I'm happy to try and point out when I make a mistake and I'm happy to hear criticism from attorneys when I do. And that's, thank goodness, why we have appeals court okay. The next question is from Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, Mr. York. Thank you, sir. I'm being here. And from your responses to all the questions to be very relevant, thought provoking, mine has to do with the topic that I'm assuming you are aware is a big issue in our judicial system, in our society, and that's the one dealing with racial disproportionality. Yes, sir. So my question to you is, could you describe a time in your personal or professional life that you've had to address racial disproportionality, either objectively, directly or personally, and what was outcome? Or you can use something in the court arena since you've been a pro-tem judge that you think is relevant to address this question. Yes, sir. Thank you for that question. Well, let me just state straightforward as you in agreeing with you that there's no debate there. The community, the criminal justice system disproportionately impacts communities of color. It's a fact. There's no argument over that. There's multiple causes for that. Dozens of studies have come up with with reasons for that. One of those being parties and practices and policies that affected one is implicit bias and another one that consistently has structural disadvantage, socioeconomic impact, having to deal with that. I'm lucky enough that I work for the city of Seattle, and the city of Seattle requires every one of its employees, whether you're a police officer, whether you work for the financial administrative services, or whether you're a prosecutor or civil attorney, as I have been both for the city of Seattle, you have to go to RTI training , race and social justice initiative. Every every employee has to go through that. And that is wonderful. And so I always noticed race racial disproportionate in the career field. I noticed when I was first at the King County prosecutor's office, I looked around at all the supervisors and there were no supervisors of color. There was white, male, white, male, white male and then white female. And I thought that was wrong. And I started working to try and correct that race and social justice and the impact of criminal justice system in the face. When it came to Seattle, I loved it. It's a great thing to hit me in the face with. One of the solutions to the problem is to have training and continued training on race and social justice. So every employee of the Seattle municipal system has not only race and social justice, there's a follow up class and there's one for management as well. So once that hit, I started paying a lot more attention to the implicit bias around my explicit biases. Obviously, very easy to point out, but the implicit bias is insidious. So how has it affected my career? Well, every time I take the bench, I'm thinking about implicit bias. I have to. If I don't, I'm not. I'm doing a disservice for the person in front of me. Not just for racial disparate disproportionality, but tattoos, long hair, however you want out, whatever bias you have inside of you, if you don't recognize it, put a pin in it and make sure that you're paying attention to it for every decision you're making. Then you're doing a disservice to the justice system and a disservice to the parties and a disservice to the person in front of you. So every time I take the bench, every time I made a prosecutorial decision, I was keeping an implicit bias in mind. Again, one of the ways to help solve that, I think, is continuing forward education. Studies have shown that that actually has a positive impact on stopping disproportionality. I also think there are some things we can do systematically that I've worked with with speed for the last five years. I've been housed in Seattle Police Department in both the east precinct, south precinct and Southwest Precinct. And we've been working with Officer Accountability in the Department of Justice mandate over top of that. And I've had some trainings with the officers as well to try and work on how they approach and answer their questions and work with them on this issue of race and social justice initiative, which they've all of course taken the class as well. So I've worked hand in hand with police officers to help combat this one where policing is occurring. Okay. And a final prepared question will be asked by Councilmember DEMBOSKY. Madam Chair, and thanks for being here and for your preparation. Thank you. This is a systems and budget question. As you know, the county's general fund struggles with an ongoing structural gap. And that fund is what supports district court. We're always looking for ways to save money and do more with less. What ideas do you have for the court in how it might operate more efficiently? Well, I already I made mentioned to my proportional sentencing policy in Seattle, so I can dig a little bit deeper into that because I think it does have an effect on budget as well. What ends up happening in the system is that a person gets sentenced to 364 days with, say, 364 suspended or 360 suspended where they spend four days in jail and have a bunch of jail time hanging over their head. And then any any small, minor thing, they have a new criminal charge. They fail to follow up with a treatment, whatever. They come back before the judge for review hearing. And this is done across the board. This isn't just done for DV and DUI. It's done for criminal trespass and resisting arrest and and other minor offenses like camping in a park. And there's no reason why you have to have a bunch of time hanging over someone's head for some minor offense like that. It's much better to have a straightforward this is your penalty and close the case. The reason that impacts budget is because if you do, in fact, you start having sentences where you don't have all this time hanging over your head, you don't have continually draw the defendant back into court. You don't have to continually have revocation, hearing after revocation, hearing after revocation, hearing, which costs money and time and also has the benefit of being a lot more fair, where a person who steals $5 should shouldn't have the same maximum penalty as a person who steals $500. So it has a benefit of being fair, impacting race and social justice issues and saving money. Another place where we could look to to maybe save some money, bless you, is we have the king. King County District Court has mental health court and they have veterans court, but they don't have DUI court. And there's lots of grant money available for DUI court. And I think it's something that King County District Court should seriously consider jumping into municipal court as a starting that in September, and there's grant money for that. And that could help manage a lot of money having to be involved with DUI defendants. So it's a therapy court. Therapy courts have been have been shown to be the direction maybe the courts should be going. They've been successful in mental health. They've been successful in veterans court. We've had some success at Seattle Muni with Community Court, even though we don't have that anymore. For the years it was in place, it was a model program for the nation. So specialty courts are important, but they also save money. You get people less recidivism. You also have the advantage of grant money available to get that taken care of and you can take some part of your workload and put it there. Also having to do with with budgetary issues. We have we have bail issues, if we can. One of the largest problems we have in the system right now is bail. People of means can make a mistake and stay out of custody. People without stay in custody. The reason that costs money is, is if you can figure out a way to educate the public and the people who are appearing in the court about when they have to come back to court, then you can avoid again repeated hearings over and over again. Furthermore, you have these people who have also been then it would be more fair. It wouldn't be based upon somebody's income level. Now, how do you fix that? Well, the problem is, as soon as you tell someone they're getting out of custody, they start paying attention. So somehow we have to intervene before that point and let them know when their court date is, but know how important it is. I'm run out of time, but something I started doing on the bench as I look back at their previous cases and I see when they last showed up to court, I make a note of it on the record, congratulate them for that and tell them they're starting to build credibility with the court by doing that. Let's do it again. Okay. That is the end of our prepared questions. Do members have any follow up questions? Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Madam Chair. I have one firm for Matthew and it's related to something that he explained when he was talking about the racial justice training at the Seattle city of Seattle provides to all of his staff. And within your department, the law department, you said you have three levels of additional training. Just a couple of days ago, the new federal attorney general, Sessions, said that he's going to stop the Justice Department for being so hard on police departments. I want to go through all this training and stuff and I don't do that job. What do you think about that? I think that's an awful idea. I've worked closely with Seattle Police Department for the last five years, and I've watched I've watched the shift in culture. I've watched it happen. The old guard is is dropping. The new guard is stepping forward and taking responsibility. I bring you hope. The Seattle police pardon me. The Seattle Police Department is making positive change to remove that training, I think would be an awful idea. And we have to find some way, if the feds aren't going to help with that, that that we continue doing that anyway. One example, one of the biggest problems that we have in the law enforcement community where why the training is necessary and imperative is that there's this culture where you have your good cops and your bad cops, but then the good cops don't report on the bad cops. We need to change that culture. We need to make it so that you have a freedom to say no. That guy, he did the wrong thing and you can step forward. And I've actually witnessed that personally happen a couple of times in the last few years now. And when I first started in as PD, I wasn't the most popular person in there because there was a to do a public to do about my by my boss Peter Holmes. But that is all that is all calmed down. And they they come to me and ask questions. We engage in candid conversations about these very issues, and I have hope that that is moving in the right direction. So to bring back to your question, if we cut funding for the training, we are going to be taking a step back on all of that progress. I've seen the progress working. I've seen some great officers embracing the changing culture speed. In my opinion, if you look around the country, is is becoming a model agency for everybody else to look towards. And I think that that training is a huge part of that. So I would I would I would I would urge this council, I would urge the city city Seattle City Council. If this remains and we use that lose that funding that we need to find a way to do it anyway. Okay. All right. With that, it seems we're done with questions. And if you could please give us your closing statement after 2 minutes. Thank you. Thank you very much. In my career, I have paid attention to what makes a great judge. I have given it a lot of thought professionalism, consistency, knowledge of the law, and a complete perspective that includes serving the community. I believe that I will bring these qualities to the district court bench. I have real, consistent and considerable experience on the bench. I have served as a pro tem judge in five municipalities and King County District Court. I have sat on the bench every month since September of 2008. That's 103 consecutive months. I also bring 15 years as an advocate in both King County courts and municipal courts, felonies and misdemeanors. That time has prepared me for the type of temperament, consistency and knowledge in the law. I will need to bring it be a strong addition to the bench. This diversity also gives me perspective on what is truly a serious offense. Many of the lawyers never work outside the legal field as an adult having to pay rent. I have spent time working these jobs. I have managed a movie theater, I worked at a 7-Eleven. I prepared roads in Clark County, Nevada. I will not let myself forget what it is like to be an outsider to the court system or how intimidating and scary a court experience can be. There's serious work to be done to increase access to justice for everyone. I promise to continue the work. I started with the city attorney's office where I started the Restorative Justice program and wrote our paradigm shifting proportional sentencing recommendation policies. For the last five years, I have worked closely with communities of East, South and Southwest Seattle Minority Advisory Councils and Crime Prevention Councils. There's close work with communities of color has helped me give me a stronger understanding of the challenges and strengths that diversity brings. I have six exceptionally well-qualified ratings from bar associations for this position. Five of those are from minority bar associations. That speaks to my earnest desire to serve all communities and their faith in me to do so. If you choose to appoint me to one of these open positions, I believe that I can bring professionalism, consistency, knowledge of the law, and a complete perspective to the bench. I thank you for the honor and opportunity to be considered to serve the people of King County. I ask for your appointment and I believe that I will be a strong addition to the King County District Court. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. York. And thank you again for your detailed submittals here. All candidates, I want to say, have done a really excellent job in this process, and it helps us so much to have all the all the information, references background that you've provided. Thank you. You're welcome. At this time. I'm sure. Oh, go ahead, please. I have a general question about. Sure. We have two vacancies here. Correct. And I wondered if staff or perhaps somebody in the know could tell me, is there any difference with respect to the length of term for which the appointment would be and when the election would come up? Are we sure there's no difference? All right. Now. Okay. All right. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you, Mr. York. Efficient. That's. I didn't care. For the record, it seems he's applied for a job here as well. Good job. Okay, so that. No, no, no. That was good. We've now concluded the interviews, and at this time, the committee will go into executive session to discuss the candidate's qualifications. When we come out of executive session, if we are prepared, we will entertain motions to take action on our two vacancy appointments, the grounds for the executive session, and to evaluate the qualifications of candidates for appointment to elected office as provided in RTW. 42.30 .110 h. I am going to say that the committee will be in executive session for about 20 minutes until about just a couple minutes before noon. I am asking the court to please post the. Doors to that effect. And I must now ask the members of the public, the candidates and all county employees who are not directly necessary for this discussion to please leave the council chambers. Thank you. But they're hoping that make. Did you work on? All of them. Mm hmm. Their projects at this time. Okay. And you begin. That process here. Okay. We will be back in session. Alright. And we are prepared now to take action on the two motions before us. So recall, we have two positions to fill. They are associated with two motions, both of which are in your packet. I will need a motion first on motion 2017 0161 with a do pass recommendation and then an amendment to fill in the name. So, Councilmember Lambert, if you would put this before you. I'd like to move. Proposed motion 2017 0161 with a do pass recommendation, and I'd like to bring the amendment forward also. Okay. It's been moved and we're ready for an amendment. Okay. I'd like to move that. We insert. The name of Matthew York as our. Appointment to the judicial vacancy. All right. Are there any. Which I should speak to the motion? Sure. Thank you. I think that it was clear today that Matthew has great experience. He has a. Dedication for this. And he has. Worked really hard at making sure that he was a valued member of the community that people can look up to as a role model. And I think he'll do an excellent job. Thank you. Any other comments? All right. We will have a voice vote on the amendment. All those in favor please signify by saying I, i any opposed? All right. On final passage. Any comments on final passage of this item? I will say a word I want to say, first of all, that we have to select two people out of these five candidates. All five are eminently qualified. All five have submitted materials that made me very comfortable that they will be a credit to the bench. We have to select two. And on this one, I'm very supportive of Mr. York because as I, to paraphrase him, it appears to me that he has been preparing himself to be a judge since he was a Cub Scout, and he has very sincerely applied himself to that in a number of different ways that have already improved the practice of law in our community. And I think he'll be a credit to the bench. So I will be voting yes on the motion. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you very much. I just wanted to echo and reinforce a bit your remarks. I thought that all five candidates, two were quite qualified and I was impressed and pleased with that because we need quality people leading our judicial branch of government. And some of the responses that candidates gave to our questions were very thought provoking. They were educational and thought about the things that they said. And I hope that the ones that are not selected on this forum will continue to push their desire to be judicial leaders in our community. Thank you. Thank you. Councilman regards it very well said. Okay. With that, I'll ask the clerk to call the roll. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. Councilmember Gossett. Oh. Council Member, Cornwall Councilmember Lambert. Hi. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember. I'm the Grove Council member. One right there. Madam Chair. Hi, Madam Chair. The vote is seven eyes. No nos. Council members up to Grove and Von. Right. They were excused. Thank you. Okay, so that motion will go to the full council with the do pass recommendation. Is there any reason to expedite? Yeah. Why don't we expedited that? A long process? Yeah. Okay, that brings us to item. Madam Chair. Yes. I know for the record that this Monday's meeting will be a special meeting beginning at noon, not 130. Thank you. Reason not to expedite, but that's to aim for my colleagues and be let the people being appointed know that it won't be the regular one. 30 meetings could be new. Yeah, we can swear you in here at the council on Monday. Or you can do a special swearing in if you want. Or we can share all those details. Thank you both very much. This brings us to proposed motion number 2017 0162. And I'm going to call on Council Member Dunn to make this motion. Thank you, Madam Chair. I would move proposed motion number 2017, dash 0162 and to speak to it. Well, first, we will need an amendment. To amend the. Name. I mean. Yeah, all right, before I make that motion for a minute, I just want to say that all of you, all five of you, I feel very comfortable with you on the bench, very high quality candidates, very important job. As you know. You know, every case, as some of you noted, that comes before you is the most important thing to that person. And I'll tell. I just appreciate your willingness to serve on the bench. I have seen over the years that those who don't get appointed here very frequently will get appointed in the next round or they get elected to the bench. And so I would not give up for those of you who don't make it, I continue on because you all have a special talent. But with that said, though, it's my distinct pleasure and honor to move to amend this ordinance with Jason. Address his name. Okay. Thank you. Any further comments? Just at this point is an excellent candidate for this. He's extremely well qualified, as noted, and like his is his judicial temperament and his work ethic. And I think he'll bring a lot of really important qualities to the bench. That's it. Thank you, Mr. Dunn. And the other comments. All those in favor of the motion adding Jason Poitras as his name. Please say I, I and he opposed motion carries. Any further comments on final passage? I will just again say that we had the benefit in this in this round of interviews of five eminently qualified candidates . And I think that I would be very comfortable and pleased and we would be fortunate as a community to have any one of you serving on the bench. So I want to second what Councilmember Dunn said about not giving up, because it would be it would be my pleasure to appoint any one of you at some point in the future, and I hope that you will continue in your seeking this role. Mr.. Put just some of the strengths that I saw. Although you have a unique you bring a really different set of background skills we haven't seen before, but I think that can be a good thing. I think those different experiences as a an administrative law judge, as a hearings officer, got you into into people's cases in ways that that I think will be beneficial on the bench. I really appreciated the diligence and the amount of time over your career that you've put into pursuing your goals. It's it's apparent from everything you do that you are intentional and that you are that you are driving towards a result. And I think you will bring that to your daily calendars in a way that will serve the people in the court very, very well. You had a very impressive list of references as well. I ran into one of them at lunch this weekend, so I was hearing about you. But I want to thank you all again for participating. And if there's anyone else I'd like to add. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you. My client that I would add and I think will benefit from from Jason, is that he comes from a very well known inner city community and our country. And because of those experiences, I think that the passion and compassion that I believe is necessary to combat racism and classism and other problems that we have in our entire government here are bringing some really solid benefits. And he's a few years younger than me, so he'll be bringing them for a while. Thank you, Councilmember. All right. With that, I'll ask the court to please call the roll. Thank you, Madam Chair. Councilmember Dombrowski. Councilmember Dunn. 1/2. Councilmember Garza. Votes five. Thank you. Councilmember Garcia five. Councilmember Cole Wells. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember up the Grove. Councilmember Yvonne. Wraith Bauer. Madam Chair. Hi, Madam Chair. The vote is seven is no nos. Council members of the Grove and one right GA excused. All right. With that, the motion passes unanimously with a do pass recommendation that should also be expedited. Thank you very much. And related to this, coming. To this coming Monday at the earlier time, as announced by our chair, and that concludes our business before the committee today. If there is any other business to come before us seeing none, we are adjourned. ", "output": "A MOTION making an appointment to fill a judicial vacancy in the southeast division of King County district court."}
{"id": "king_d532a7e5-1fdc-4537-b06d-48985caae66f", "input": "And I will call to order the March 3rd meeting of the committee, the whole for the King County Council. Welcome, everyone, to the meeting. And as we start today, I'd like to acknowledge that we're on the traditional lands of the Puget Salish peoples, past and present. We think these caretakers of the land who have lived here and continue to live here since time immemorial. I would also like to acknowledge the many urban Indians in King County who have brought their cultural ways of life here and continue to also enrich our community. In light of our public health emergency, the governor has issued an emergency order suspending the section of the Open Public Meetings Act. It requires that we have a public a physical space for the public to watch our meetings. And so we will continue, as is our practice for a year now in having our meetings virtually. I'm currently under the Zoom platform. We have a very full agenda today, including a briefing from director David Lee on the county's COVID 19 response. Interviews with candidates for a vacant judicial seat in the West District of district court here in King County. And legislation related to fireworks in Kim County and hazard pay for grocery workers in King County. It was to both effect in unincorporated King County. Two housekeeping notes as we begin to help us manage the meeting. I'd ask the public and members of staff, executive and council to please keep your videos off until just before you plan to speak. And additionally, if you are connecting to the media meeting, view cell phone and you wish to provide public public comment. I would really encourage you to connect through the Zoom application, if possible, if you're connecting to the meeting without using the Zoom application. We may not be able to unmute you, and we also may experience a time delay. With that. Madam Clerk, would you please call the Royal? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Bell, did you hear Councilmember Dombrowski here? Councilmember Dunn. Here. Councilmember Cole was there. Councilmember Lambert. Councilmember up to grow here. Councilmember Vaughn right down here. Council members online. Dear Mr. Chair. Dear Mr. Chair, you have the quorum. Thank you. Next on our agenda is public comment. I know we have a number of people here who provide public comment and items on our agenda today. Having an entirely remote meeting, though, now a year old is still relevant, a relatively new experience for us. So let me make sure that everyone understands the process and the rules for public comment. First, some ground rules. Public comments must be related to items on today's meeting agenda and may not be used for the purposes of assisting or opposing any campaign for any person, any office, or for the promotion or opposition of any ballot proposition . It must not. It also must not include obscene speech. If a speaker fails to abide by these restrictions. They may be ruled out of order and may be required to exit the virtual meeting. One. The process. As members of the public joined the meeting, they were automatically muted. We can see your name or the last three digits of your phone number. Our committee clerk will call the names and numbers for public comment. When you name or the last three digits of your phone number are called, staff will unmute your line. Please also make sure that you are meet your own phone. If you admitted yourself as a courtesy. And again, if you're connecting via zoom out, we would strongly encourage you to. If you're connecting by cell phone, we'd strongly encourage you to try to connect by the zoom out before you begin your testimony. When you've been called on, please begin by maybe simply stating your name and pausing, saying something and pausing so that we can confirm that we can hear you. And then if you begin your testimony by saying and spelling your name so we can have it accurate. For the record, you'll have 2 minutes to speak and then you'll hear a timer go off. When you reach your 2 minutes, you can certainly finish your thought, but if you would wrap up your comments to allow the next person to speak, if you go much past 2 minutes, you may be interrupted or muted. If you're listening on TV or streaming, please turn that volume off during your testimony so we don't have feedback. And if you might, after your testimony, hang up and follow the rest of the meeting through Channel 22 King County Television or Stream online. The link online is at WW W dot King County dot gov backslash counsel and then you click on the ever popular Watch US Live button. I will now begin public comment Madam Clerk and events. You start calling people and I remind people to start by saying their name and pausing to confirm that we can hear you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The first concern to you. Hold on a second. The livestream wasn't working, but it is working now. So if you are a council analyst or an. Executive staff, can you please get off the. Zoom while. Public comment is going on? Thank you, Aaron. Then first person is Ashley GROSS. Please go ahead and meet yourself and proceed. Oh, I'm sorry. I just joined because I couldn't get on the livestream. I don't have public comment. Thank you. The next person is Barbara's iPad. Please unmute yourself and give us your full name and privacy. Hi, this is Barbara Hopkin and that's Dobby in. Thank you. Go ahead. So I am a resident of Lloyd Center. I also am on the board of the North Highline Unincorporated Area Council. Have a calling in regard to the proposed fireworks fan. As a resident of White Center, I urge this Council to please move forward with the fireworks ban for the unincorporated areas. White Center being an urban area, it's the fireworks every year are getting louder, stronger and go on more in the days before and after July 4th. It's really out of control. We feel like we're under attack here. I don't leave my house for a week because I'm afraid it might burn down and I have to be here to protect my home and protect my animals. Additionally, the air pollution that follows this and the trash that remains is just not good for this community. We have enough issues here without having to deal with this every year. I urge you, please consider this ban. Move forward with it. I understand that there is groups that profit on this, but we don't this community doesn't benefit from any of the taxes. And so I don't think that is a reason to continue selling fireworks and allowing them to be excluded in our community. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next person is listed as Brent's iPad. Please go ahead. Unmute yourself and give us your full name. Yes, my name is Brant Havlicek. Last name is spelled a reason. Victor l. I. C. E. K. Thank you. Go ahead. Great. My name is Brant Havlicek. I'm the general manager for Western Fireworks. We are a Washington State licensed wholesaler, distributor importer from out of state. I am calling in just to testify that we as a company are opposed to any law changes that prohibit the sale and use of fireworks in unincorporated King County. It was mentioned earlier that nonprofit groups and service clubs will be affected, and yes, they will. They are going to suffer horrendously. I think you'll probably hear from more of those individual groups later today. But in this pandemic, local sports and churches and schools and families and all of our communities, not just Washington, but in our Pacific Northwest, have been affected and are hurting from COVID. I don't think it could be a worse time to look at affecting those nonprofit groups and their ability to fundraise. The other issue I think that's important to to look at is that the problems and complaints are not going to go away. Prohibition is not going to work on fireworks. There are other markets where they have tried to do that, neighboring areas to King County and proximity. And I don't believe that the ability to govern is going to exist. The prohibition, in my opinion, is not going to work. You have neighboring tribal sales within the proximity that you are not going to be able to control. They are their own sovereign land and nation with their own rules and regulations. In addition, you have cities and municipalities close by the do allow for the fireworks sale. So I think the policing is a task that is unsurmountable in the future with this prohibition because we haven't been able to do it at this point. So then you ask what what can be done? I think the death penalty doesn't work. I think that we have to try and educate and that requires time. And I can say that it does exist in other municipalities. We've been involved that as a wholesaler with other industries, and we would be willing to sit down and attempt to work in that manner. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person is Galaxy S9 Plus and unmute yourself and provide us with your name. Hi. My name is Dave Freberg. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. And you? Your last name? Freberg is f r u r g. Thank you. I'm just going to build on what Brant had to say. I am a local business owner and my family has run a seasonal operation and actually several locations for TNT fireworks since 1985. And in that time, we've we've supported many charities, including Little League, National Mars Society, Big Brother, Big Sister State, which is the local horse rescue that works with animal shelters in the region. And, you know, in addition, it's important to reiterate that this has created a tremendous amount of business learning opportunities for young teens and adults. And, I mean, this includes everything from sales to marketing, finance, inventory. It much more. And a handful of those kids have gone on to work for many of the largest companies in our region, including Amazon, Nordstrom, to name a few. But in line with what Brant had to say, I completely agree your prohibition is not going to do away with the issues that were brought up. As far as the urban concerns, the louder, the stronger. In fact, if anything, it's going to encourage that more dangerous class of firework to make its way into those those very urban pockets, which you're already seeing with the cities that have banned it in the region. And in fact, I would I would actually propose a compromise one, again, furthering what Brant had to say. As far as educating, regulating, we do it with everything else that requires respect because there's a danger involved. And I'd be more than happy to volunteer to be a part of a committee or whatever the council sees fit. But again, that's going to take time. And the other thing that's an opportunity, I think, is to find a compromise in the class, a firework that is sold legally within the county. And there is a class called Safe and Sane. And I can tell you that as the interest grew last season, because fireworks were a coping friendly activity, that's what everybody wanted. They wanted the fountains. They wanted the things that weren't the louder, the stronger. And, you know, I think they're still fun. It's still something that can be done as a family. So that that would be my my my thoughts. Thank you. The next person is Glenn Wallace. This. Go ahead. Hello, this is Glenn Wallace on the resident of District three. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Thanks much. Sure. My name spelled Julie and a l l ac. So I strongly support a ban on the sale and discharge of fireworks to the public by the public for three reasons. One, this is not just an issue that impacts unincorporated. We are people who live in the cities of King County where fireworks are already banned and they are able to easily buy fireworks right next door in unincorporated and discharge them in the cities. It's very difficult to police that type of valuable police resources driving around looking for offenders. The public sale of fireworks fuels these calls. Second is the fire risk. Climate change is causing hotter summers. One day a few years ago, one summer, every fire engine was busy on a fireworks related call in King County, and someone had a house fire or other urgent need. There would have been no backup. Number three, we have a dog with severe anxiety. And even though the local fireworks users say we should just drug the dog, we get an entire week of fireworks. It's not just one single day. People who are using fireworks are unable to restrict themselves to the appointed day and time window for discharge. To repeat, it is in two days of fireworks we have to endure. It is two weeks of random fireworks, including discharges at 3 a.m. and 4 a.m.. I understand that community groups get revenue from fireworks, and I'm sure groups fundraise from Cigarets at some point in our history as well. Maybe it's time for them to move on to other sources of revenue. I like the concept of self responsibility and I like the idea of having fewer restrictions in unincorporated King County. But in my 23 years of living here, all I've seen are people who are unwilling or unable to follow the simple rules about when and where the public can discharge fireworks. It is time to end it. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Jason Trout. Let's go ahead and unmute yourself. My name is Jason Trout. Can you hear me? Yes, we can. Thank you. I'm a representative of TNT fireworks. I just wanted to kind of reiterate what Mr. Wallace just said. You know, I think it's difficult when we talk about banning something outright. It forces people to other places. I want to remind everyone that, you know, currently the law only allows for the use of fireworks for 14 hours a day , and we can't enforce that as it is. And so, you know, there are many municipalities in and around King County where bans don't work. The mayor of Lacey in July of 2020 came out and said their ban does not work. So what I would like to propose from our company standpoint, we've always put an emphasis on safety and consumer safety. But I think maybe what I would make the pledge more is some education on time to shoot, places to shoot, safety for shooting. I think people sometimes don't take into account their neighbors and picking up trash and things of that. We have been very diligent about presenting Setpieces at the point of sale in King County. I would like to work with whatever committee you guys would like to come up with. We would be happy to redesign whatever they we're putting out at the point of sale to help the community of King County Unincorporated understand, you know, what the proper way to use fireworks are. You know, we'll be happy to go through and do an educational campaign, will partner with the fire department or the police department or whomever on enforcement issues, because obviously this is an enforcement issue. We can't even enforce what's on the books now. And so that's certainly an issue that AT&T would be happy to help the council as well as fire police personnel. Thank you for your time today. Thank you. The next person is Jerry Elrod. Please go ahead and mute yourself. There I was. This is Jerry Elrod. Thank you. My name's Jerry LRAD. My name's Jerry Elrod, and I've been with AT&T fireworks coming up on my 50th year, so I've been in the business quite a while. We've sold consumer fireworks to King County residents through our partnerships with local community groups, charities and school groups for for at least 50 years. Something that goes further than that. Included in that, we sell quite a bit to the Chinese community, which I know the fireworks is important to do. And he's a proud partner with these community groups and charities to help raise much needed funds, some of which were mentioned earlier to support their programs. In a lot of cases, the proceeds from these organizations, from selling fireworks, represent a majority or in some cases of the organization's entire operating budget. A decision by this council to ban the sale of all consumer fireworks could prove devastating to these organizations in particular. At the same time, the concerns and issues raised by residents about the irresponsible and at times use of illegal fireworks need to be addressed by the body. These fireworks are not what we sell. We recognize that there are more needs to be done to educate consumers about the safe and responsible use of consumer fireworks. And as Jason has mentioned and Brad has mentioned, and we wish to be an active partner in that regard, AT&T or it's our firms believe that a majority of King County residents support the legal use of legal consumer fireworks. The resident AT&T partnership is and we do cherish the American tradition of backyard fireworks shows to help celebrate the nation's independence and to help usher in each new year. And it was real evident this past July 4th season. We encourage the council to consider whether a better, more moderated approach may serve the interests and needs of the community. More proactive with these. Or alternative actions that we believe can address many of the concerns being raised by incoming presidents while preserving the right to use and sell certain fireworks for these residents who wish to enjoy them responsibly. From my experience, minister, the is that implemented outright bans struggle with enforcement. Matter of fact, a ban is unenforceable. Many communities to prove that the community concerns you are seeking to address are real. And TNT would like to work with this council and find workable solutions and discuss possible alternatives to an outright ban that can help address these concerns while maintaining the right to purchase and use fireworks legally. Taking an ax to the entire industry would be devastating and not enforceable. Are absolutely against this ban. Thank you. The next person is Judge Virginia Amato. Please go ahead and unmute yourself and proceed. I have nothing to add. Okay. Thank you. The next person is Kirsten Weiss. Please unmute yourself. I don't think I'm signed up to speak. Okay. Thank you. The next person is Danny. Are. You'd like to unmute yourself and provide us with your full name? Yeah, my name is Danny Richards. I have nothing to add. I just want to reiterate that I'm against the ban. I've been familiar with fireworks for years about the great non-profits that sell in the King County community, but the other speakers have been great as far as being against the ban. I just wanted to add my voice to that. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Keenan Auden, the Colin. Please go ahead and mute yourself. Hello. For the record, my name is Kim Norton McCallion and an O d and I can be a key ally. And I'm a Jordan Ramus PC. We represent Jakes Fireworks, Inc. in nationally renowned retail fireworks and wholesale distributor Jakes respectfully request. The council declined to adopt the proposed ordinance 20 10057, which would ban the retail sale and discharge of firearms first. As other members of the public have noted, this ordinance will eliminate the primary driver of fundraising for local seller groups, including churches and nonprofits. Many of these groups derive as much as 90% of their fundraising from the sale of retail fireworks. And unfortunately, this revenue is not so easily replaced. Second rate line rules are inherently inflexible and rarely achieve the intended goals underlying legislation. In this case, the primary driver of new nuisance and public safety concerns fireworks and eighties bottle rockets that are already illegal. I think the folks in the industry can better speak to this, but trying to adopt a wholesale ban on fireworks will not achieve the goal of eliminating these nuisances which are already being committed by these illegal fireworks. The better avenue here would be to increase the education outreach efforts to protect the public from the impacts these already illegal fireworks. And then finally, as Brant from Western fireworks noted, many of the tribes represent the primary driver of sale of these illegal and illegal retail fireworks. They're outside the control of unincorporated King County. I understand Councilmember McDermott's point that they would need to be that the county would need to sign agreements with these tribes before they can move forward with enforcing the ban on fireworks. But unfortunately, a lot of the tragedy outside of unincorporated Kane County. So the council's goal of intending to protect the public safety and welfare of its constituents may not be achieved by this ban. And again, as a national leader in the fireworks industry, Jakes recognizes the essential role fireworks play in supporting our local communities and American self-expression . Can we request? The Council declined to adopt this proposed ordinance. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person is Kelsey Knowles. Please go ahead and unmute yourself. Sorry. Not a not. Not a sorry. Not not testifying. Okay. Thank you. The next person is listed as Marcy. Please yourself and provide us with your full name. My name is Marci Beyer. And we are. Thank you. Go ahead. I just wanted to state that I'm against the ban. I am an unincorporated Kane County resident, and I also work with a nonprofit who uses it as a fundraiser every year. And if the safe and sane fireworks are not available, I do think people will go to the Indian reservation and it's not going to stop people from purchasing fireworks, but they will be getting ones that are quite a bit less safe. So I just want to state that I'm opposed to the ban. Thank you. The next person is Marissa. It's a meet yourself and provide us with your full name. My name is Marissa Hancock and it's spelled and they are, I say an S.O.S. K. Thank you. Go ahead. I am a resident of White Center and also a mental health counselor. I've been living in White Center since 2009, and I've been I just first want to thank Representative McDermott for proposing this legislation. I have been waiting for years and years and years. I had no idea what it was like around the 4th of July before I moved in here. But like other residents have said, we're not just talking about a day or two of fireworks. We're talking about, you know, I would say on average, ten days of fireworks that happen at all hours of the day. If anybody hasn't been around on, you know, the 24 hours around the 4th of July itself, it is like a war zone here. You are just constantly hearing loud explosions. The air is is unbreathable, especially in the nighttime hours. It feels like nothing I have ever experienced in my life. And so, like other residents have said, I try to be out of town around that time of year because it is so awful. However, I have I have pets and I have a house that I worry about. So it puts me in a difficult position. Like other residents, I want to say, you know, the main the main issues that I really see as a problem here are, you know, the effect that this has on humans. We're talking about people who, you know, vets who have experienced PTSD getting activated during this time, anyone who has survived trauma. Your nervous system cannot help but be activated while you're hearing bomb like noises go off unexpectedly. Every, you know, for for days and days and days. We're talking about issues for people with respiratory issues. We're talking about issues for I mean, one of the hardest things for me to deal with was when I was a baby and trying to put him down now he would just wake up. And I'm sure there are thousands of people who go through that same situation. Of course, we also have, you know, the animals that live outside birds, you know, who I'm sure have had their habitats destroyed. And we have the air risk and also risk of fire danger during this time. I mean, I think we do know that some of the wildfires last year in other states were caused by fireworks. So I'm curious about why people think this ban is unenforceable when we know we can look around surrounding municipalities and see that they do not have the same kind of fireworks activity that unincorporated King County and White Center have. It just seems ridiculous to think that that you wouldn't be it wouldn't be enforceable. And I just want to say, lastly, this seems like the people that are speaking up in against the ban are a handful of business owners, you know, versus thousands and thousands of residents and animals who suffer every year as a result of this insanity. So, please, I urge you to support the ban. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is listed as McNeil's immediate yourself and provide us with your full name. Hi, this is Erin and Jeff McNeil. E r i n and Jeff M.S. and I are. We're actually here to speak about the hero pay issue. Is this the appropriate time? Yes, go ahead. Absolutely. We are the owner operators of the grocery outlet that is located in Skyway. And we are here to talk about the proposed traffic. Oh, so our business is actually McNeill Family Markets Grocery Outlet is our supplier. And I think that's where the misconception come grocery outlets are independently, locally owned and operated and building. And the name grocery outlet is a parent company that is traded publicly, but we are not. So our our relationship to our employees or our employees, we are not an employee grocery outlet. We run a consignment business. That's how Voroshilov works. And the businesses are small. So right now we pay ourselves between to start, we have to buy weight. Our family markets brand is real market. Between the two. We pay our selves on average $0.26 an hour, more than our average pay for our employees, $4 an hour raised. We can afford to do that. We do that ourselves. It's enough to take us under. Again, I think the misconception is we're this big, huge company and we're not, oh, we have less than 50 employees. We're part of the community. We work in the stores. They're in fact, I'm the farmer. I'm the painter. I'm the picture. Oh, it's not. We generally are in underserved communities, so it would be a hardship that we went away. And I think it'd be really hard on people in that area. Even the rents or the stadiums, it's 40% over additional supermarkets. So anything can be a hardship on a lot of people in those areas because we're not competitive at high, we're just making all of it. So I mean, it is also a food desert. And if that store is that economically impacted by this proposed measure, it's going to create a situation where people will have to go further away than their local neighborhood to try to get groceries. We're not going to be able to operate properly in that condition is whether we should be lumped in with all the big box retailers. Because we're not we're McNeal Mart Family Market. Again, I think the big name everybody's looking at is the publicly traded warehouse really has nothing to do with us other than an agreement that we're going to sell their goods at commission rate. So I hope that helps with the. Understanding of what our business actually is. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Ray Pettigrew. Please go ahead and unmute yourself. Hi. My name is Ray. Had a group that's ah a y p t t i g r e w. Good morning. Council members and the Assistant Chief and Fire Marshal for King County Fire District two. We provide protection, fire protection and emergency medical services for Bear in Normandy Park in the North High Line area. I also represent the North Highland Fire District, which cover White Center area. Thank you for the opportunity to provide further comment on proposed Ordinance 2020 1-80057 prohibiting the retail sales and personal use of fireworks and establishing a procedure for public displays of fireworks in unincorporated Kane County. I ask that each of you council members support this proposed ordinance as the fire marshal representing two cities and the unincorporated area of North Highline. I get to see the difference between legal areas that have a ban, which is a city variance in an area that does not have a ban, the north highland area. There's a dramatic difference in the level of fireworks between the two jurisdictions. While certainly the ban does not completely eliminate the use of fireworks, it dramatically decreases it. And if we were to have a ban in unincorporated Kane County, so the residents of Berrien could not travel to North Highline and purchase fireworks. That would decrease it even more each year through education and interaction with the public. On the 4th of July, I encounter multiple people who have purchased the fireworks and at least claim that they did not realize that they were illegal in Berrien because right across the street their neighbors are viewing them now in Berrien. It's dramatically fewer fireworks going off when you travel than the North Highline area, especially the evening of July 4th. You literally have to stop and wait for people to move out of out of the middle of the road because they're lighting on off fireworks that they've bought legally from local stations. Certainly, there's people that are using the tribal fireworks, illegal fireworks, but the majority of the fireworks are purchased locally. I appreciate your time on this issue. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is Sara Sharon. Please go ahead. Council Member McDermott and members of the Committee for the Record, my name is Sarah, Chair and executive vice president of U.S. 21, the largest private sector union in Washington state. I want to thank you, Councilmember McDermott, for making time on the agenda for this urgent issue. Thank you to Councilmember Demovsky and the group for your sponsorship of the hazard pay ordinance. You're going to hear from workers, I think, after me. So their stories are the ones I would really listen to. The couple of things I just want to address is obviously the hazard is as high as ever. While cases may be going down, we know that grocery workers are 4 to 5 times more likely to contract COVID. The new variants exist. People are recommending. Public health officials are recommending that people double mask. That isn't happening in grocery stores and for grocery store workers. So the hazard is high. I just want to say about Biden's announcement last night, while that may be welcome news for somebody at some people, it does mean that grocery workers who have been going to work since day one will now be pushed even further back into the vaccination line. So making this making this, you know, very concerning and this ordinance very timely. I did just want to address the amendments. Thank you, Councilmember Balducci and Sallai, for putting those forward. We we are fine with the amendments. I will just say on the amendment around the food desert and grocery outlet, there was an investor call yesterday with the CEO of Grocery Outlet about their independent operators and they were asked about these hazard pay hikes on the West Coast and I'm quoting directly and I will forward this to the council. This is from the CEO. Our strong belief is that this will be something that sunsets as the economy starts to return to something we would sort of call normal. But ultimately, this is similar to what we've seen four or five, six, seven years as some of the West Coast states have increased the hourly wage for most employees on the minimum side, from 7 to 8 up to 13, 14, 15. Most of the operators have digested those. What it means for us is we have to invest in systems and technologies and processes that help save the operators time and make them a little bit more efficient. So we can't. Really do much. About the wage inflation, but we can do a lot more on the back end. So apparently they're not quoting anymore. They're saying as as as grocery outlet, they can help on the back end for some efficiencies. Full year 2020 financials for grocery outlet profit up 86.9% over 2019. Net sales up 22.5% and same store sales up 12.5% as customer shopping behavior change. Slim margins don't always mean slim profit. So I'll just say we support the amendments because we need this to move. Our members need this urgently. But I did just want to note that about grocery outlet. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you. The next person is Heidi Cooper, writer with Meet Yourself. Go ahead. Hi. I was just kind of listening and I didn't know we were going to speak today. But I just want to say it's been a family tradition for us. I have four kids and it's nice way to bring the family together. We do the Purple Rain and the, you know, the crazy little stuff that they just like doing in the yard that it's and I understand both sides of it. So I, I feel for both sides at this point, but I, I personally hope it's not bad because it is nice being able to go. The kids get so excited picking out their favorites every year and then waiting for that evening where we get to all come together and blow them off. So everything's been so turned upside down lately. I hate to see another tradition swept under the rug, so good luck. And and like I said, I feel for both sides. So I'm glad I'm not in your shoes where you have to make the decision. Thank you for your time. Thank you. The next person on the line has a phone number of area code 206. Last three digits are 774. I've asked you to unmute yourself. Please go ahead and provide us with your full name. Erica 206. Last three digits. 774. If you like to limit yourself, then proceed. I'll move on to area code 206788. Please unmute yourself and identify yourself. If you'd like to provide public comment. Hi. I'm sorry, I. I missed my opportunity for a second. There this is. My name is Stephanie Brown. Stephanie Brown and are you are you referring to your six, 857774? Oh, great. Great. Okay. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah. No, thank you for for having me. I just wanted to say that I've worked at the Roxbury so way for approximately a little over five years. And this past year has been tremendously stressful on a lot of us through this pandemic. I work I happen to work in the floral department. But the the flow of our customers through my department itself has has increased a lot. And we're under a lot of stress. I currently I well, I currently live alone. I had to move out. I was taking I was helping my mother, who's elderly and has some health restrictions. And because of my my place in the workforce, I needed to move out of her home because of my exposure. My anxiety has it has come to a peak and I have been having to see the doctor more often this year. Our. Sanitation in our. Store is not exactly what it should be. We've had to deal with a lot of. You know, customers coming in and. Not having them monitored or. Or having our. Customer. Hello? Hello. I'm sorry. I'm breaking up. Oh, we can hear you just fine. Okay. Now. We don't hear you. Madam Cook, it appears we lost Miss Brown. Perhaps if she comes reconnects, we could allow her to finish her testimony. But it seems like perhaps we should move on at this point in time. Will do. Thank you, Mr. Chair. The next person is area code 206. Last three digits, 8 to 4. If you like to meet yourself and proceed, that'd be great. Last three digits, 8 to 4. I've asked you to mute yourself. Hello. Yes, we can hear you. Can you please provide us with your full name? Liz Akiba allies the g i b a inc. You go ahead. Thank you. The North Highline Unincorporated Area Council asks you to support proposed Ordinance 2021, Dash 057 and ban fireworks in unincorporated Kane County on July four, 2019. Certainly can be a North Highland man and his dogs were killed by a house fire that was started by rogue fireworks. His wife was left to deal with the loss of her husband, pets and home. Mrs. Kennedy is next door neighbors. A large family was also displaced because their home also caught fire. There have been deaths in the past. Others have been scarred physically and emotionally. This is a public safety issue. Please end this dangerous situation and vote yes to ban the fireworks. Thank you very much. Thank you. The next person is area code 5036. Last three digits, 6 to 3. I've asked you to mute yourself from the word and please. Area code 503 last three digits 623. Hello. I have no comment. I'm just listening. Thank you. Thank you. Then. Next person is area code six. One, two. Last three digits, 117. Like a meet yourself and. Hello. Yes, go ahead. Can you give us. Yes. This is Jeffrey Idol's rule of last name. Age. Oh, yes. Are you ready? Thank you. So. Okay. Yeah. Good morning. Terrible duty and community members. Thank you very much for giving me the platform to voice my Australian support in advancing hazard pay for grocery workers. My name is Super Eagles. You know, I've been working for the QVC on Redmond Wrench for the last few months. I originally moved here from Minneapolis. I'm very grateful that I was lucky enough to find stable employment during the pandemic, while so many others can't. I am happy to be working, but honestly, it is one of the most dangerous things I've had to endure. My coworkers and I are going through one of the deadliest pandemics in our history. Constantly risking exposure to a deadly virus that transmits from person to person with ease. Also, there have been workers at my store who have tested positive for COVID, further highlighting the hazard we face every shift. I take as many precautions as they possibly can to prevent exposing myself and my loved ones to COVID. I live at home with my mother, who already has health complications and is considered high risk, and the thought of contracting and spreading the disease to her frightens me greatly. Working in a grocery store where some customers still refuse to wear masks is very dangerous. And I see this on a daily basis. One or two customers. And like one is enough to spread. Anything, and especially when management refuses to enforce mask mandates, it's also very concerning. Social distancing is also hard to abide by, especially when monitoring the self-checkout area as opposed to a text and because there's already not a lot of room in that area. So if this council acts in the best interests of grocery workers today, it would be a huge sigh of relief for myself and many coworkers. It would tell us that this essential and hazardous nature of our work doesn't continue to get on notice. I urge this Council agreed with the importance that it deserves to pass hazard legislation immediately. I also wanted to show that to makers who are struggling so badly that they've had to sign up for food assistance after working long hours in a hazardous environment and some still can't make ends meet. The fact that those are still up for debate today and not made available and the pandemic started a year ago is appalling. We need relief immediately. Please act now. Thank you. Thank you. The next person is area code seven. One for last three digits 002. Ahead and unmute yourself. I like to speak. Area Code 714002. Thank you for the opportunity. I have nothing to add. Thank you. Mr. Chair, I believe I've called everyone on the line. Thank you, Madam Clerk. To make sure that we didn't miss anybody on the line. And everyone has had the opportunity to offer public comment. In a moment, I'll ask the clerk to unmute everyone, and I'll ask you if anyone is on the line who wishes to offer public testimony and hasn't had the chance to do so. And if at that time you'll see your name, we'll take names and then move through any new list to make sure that we've heard from everybody. I'm just a catch all to make sure that technical issues didn't prevent anybody from testifying. Madam, you, if you will, please ask everyone to unmute their lines. Mr. Chair, I've just asked everyone to unmute. Thank you. Is there anyone on the line in the meeting who would like to offer public testimony and has not had the opportunity to do so? I I'm hearing no. One, we will close public testimony. And Madam Cook, I ask you to re mute all the lines, and I'll be prepared to meet myself. I needed all Mr. Cheer. And I needed myself. That takes us to our briefing from Dwight David, the director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, who will update us on the county's COVID 19 pandemic response. Mr. Jiverly, welcome and good morning. Good morning. Can you hear me clearly? Yes. Great. So for the record, Dwight Dave Lee, the director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, are back for our every other week update on what's going on with COVID response in the county. And this morning, I have six different items to cover with you, and I'm saving the good news for the end, although there might be some other good news in here, too. And so, as usual, I think what I suggest we do is I will do one at a time and then we can pause for questions after that , if there are any. So for the first one, very briefly, as we talked about two weeks ago, the executive is still planning on transmitting the seventh COVID supplemental appropriation ordinance on March 18th. So two weeks from tomorrow. That is, of course, dependent on the federal government having taken action by then, as they say they will have done . So we we're still on course for that, assuming the feds follow through. So that was just a very quick first note to share. Any questions on that one? We like celebrating St Patrick's Day with Green Directory Day. There will be a lot of the federal government comes through. I think we can move on. Okay. Item two. So with reference to that federal action, I believe today the Senate is going to start what they call I love this term, a vote a rama where senators are given the opportunity to offer amendments. I think everyone is probably aware that the Senate parliamentarian ruled that the minimum wage increase that was built into the House passed bill does not comply with what are called the Byrd rules and therefore cannot be taken up under the reconciliation process that the federal government is using for this legislation. So that provision, at a minimum will be different in the Senate bill than the House bill. I believe the current hope, at least of the administration, is that whatever amendments are put on by the Senate will then simply be concurred in by the House to avoid having to go back and forth, maybe do a conference committee. That seems to be about the only way that the legislation would actually be done in about ten days. So that's where we are currently with federal action, and we should certainly know more. The Senate presumably will be done by the end of this week, maybe over the weekend, with whatever actions they're going to take. So that's something I think we should all be tracking to see what they do in D.C.. Let me pause there on the second item. I'm seeing no questions. Okay. So let's move on to item three. And some of the council members have been very interested in providing support to communities, governments and businesses that are near where we have relocated some of our isolation and quarantine and homeless, the intensification facilities. And just to give you a quick update, the Office of Emergency Management OEM has been handling those programs and they have approved funding that has been requested by the Renton Regional Fire Authority and the cities of SeaTac and Issaquah. And those payments are in process so that the governments involved have submitted their invoices and have been paid. We also they also are working with some of the businesses that have submitted claims. They've gone out with a reminder to some who are kind of on a waiting list that that more money still is available. So those are also being handled. One of the things I think you should be thinking about is if the federal money is approved as currently proposed, is this something we should put additional county resources in to continue this this response, recognizing that at least as currently written, each of those cities would get a significant amount of its own money. So there's a question there of which funding source should be used that I think you should be pondering. We have not made a decision on the executive side yet about that. I just want to bring that to your attention, that that might be something that we would want to continue. So let me pause there. Mr. Davey. I can't remember about DC. Right. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Can you just share with the either on or off line what the order of magnitude is for this year's printout? And I will send that to you. I don't have that with me right now. Thank you very much. Mr. Chair. Council members are. Hello. I'm Dwight. Can you repeat what program we're talking about one more time? Yes. So you might recall council member that the council added funding in one of last year's COVID supplementals to provide funding to originally the cities and then later to businesses that are near the locations we have set up for isolation and quarantine are homeless. The intensification facilities, some of those governments identified that they had incremental costs. And so the county agreed that we'd set aside funding to pay for those. And so the cities of Issaquah and SeaTac, plus the Renton Regional Fire Authority, which is the Nelsons, the fire department for Renton, have all submitted requests that have been reviewed and approved. Thank you, Dwight. May I ask a quick question? That's kind of off topic, but maybe tangentially related. There's been a lot in the news about Seattle rejecting FEMA money for hotels, and people have been asking, can King County accept this money instead? Is that something you're aware of? You know, I think Seattle's rejecting it because of filing requirements and having to spend the money before you reimburse those kinds of reasons. What is King County's position? So, Councilmember, we have actively sought FEMA reimbursement for everything that is eligible. We recognize there are those cash flow issues that have been raised, but nonetheless, it seems to us to make sense to get FEMA reimbursement for anything we can, including for the homeless, the tens, vacation facilities, some of which we have actually already submitted. So we are not taking a similar position about FEMA reimbursement. I would note that from a cash flow perspective, because the federal government fronted the $262 million of Cares Act money last spring, we have been in a kind of a positive. And for a long time now, obviously, as we spend that money, some of it is is going away. But we have no control issues, nor do I anticipate we would have them. Just as as council members who have served on the Executive Finance Committee know on any given day the county is managing something on the order of $7 billion of cash, of which something over $3 billion is our own money. The rest is under the management of cash for them. And so from a cash flow perspective, we have the ability to to draw on that as needed. So waiting for FEMA reimbursement is not really an issue for the county. And I think I'd already know the answer to this. But what some constituents have been asking is, you know, Seattle has rejected a pot of money. It's not like that money, pot of money is sitting there for us to accept and correct. No, thank you. No, we have completely separate programs. And if they don't seek reimbursement from FEMA for something they're spending, that money doesn't become available to the county. Thank you. Mr.. JANEWAY My own my own question. I guess it's a point both for you and the executive branch, but also to make sure that my colleagues are aware of future legislation as worked on. I have grave concerns about the precedent we're setting in COVID funding. We are providing some sort of support to accommodation for communities, businesses and those surrounding states that we might have a deal in terms of location center in this case out of COVID funds. Yet. We don't have a habit of doing that in our general budget, in our other programs where neighbors might have concerns or argue there's impact . And so I think there's a a real equity in a message about what kind of services and who we are serving and in promotion of stereotypes. That becomes gravely concerning to me. And in isolation, I could not support. Other colleagues on this topic. And this item from Dwight not necessarily responding to me. Councilmember Caldwell's Thank you, Mr. Chair. Dwight. As we all know, it's sometimes takes quite a while to be reimbursed by have seen that there might be a difference in that the administration. COUNCILMEMBER That's a good question. The one real difference we've seen with the new administration is the policy. We've discussed a couple of times to do 100% reimbursement instead of 75% reimbursement, which we still haven't gotten any official paperwork about, but it seems very likely is going to be the case. I don't believe we've seen any evidence so far of faster payment other than, as you might recall, last year we took advantage of a existing feature that allowed us to do what's called an expedited payment, where we got half of what we typically would expect ultimately to get in a much faster process than normal. So we got that within a few months. We haven't yet received any more funding from FEMA since what we got last fall. So maybe it will be faster, but so far we haven't seen evidence of that. All right. Okay. Well, speaking of FEMA, the federal government is involved in my next two comments. Number four. Number five. So you might recall that one of the things you authorized funding for last year was a significant purchase of personal protective equipment in the fall. As I remember, about $18 million was appropriated. And I think you're all aware that some of what we received that was intended for our first responders turned out to be counterfeit N95 respirators. Fortunately, those were identified before they were put into use and they were all collected up. And now the federal government has seized them, which is a technical action to take them so that they can pursue charges ultimately against whoever provided them. I wanted to make sure you were aware that almost all of those now have been seized by the federal government. I also want to make sure you never paid for that. So the vendor who provided them did not get paid. So we are not out any money or the federal government is out any money. We've also, of course, blocked that vendor in our our procurement system and the Office of Emergency Management and our Finance and Business Operations Division have repurchased the same items subsequently. We have received them yet, but the order has been accepted and fortuitously it actually turned out to be $1,000,000 cheaper than what we had originally spent. So we didn't end up having any shortages of these products and we ended up with ultimately the right kind of thing for less money. So the end of the story is good. But I did want to make sure that you were all aware of that process. Questions. Mr. Daley. All right. And item five, it is very quick. I just want to always give you an update on where we are with FEMA reimbursement. Remember, we actually have three separate reimbursable events covered. Obviously is one of them. The second is the snowstorm and flooding from a year ago. And third is the windstorm we had in January. And there really isn't any change in any of those. We're still in the process of working through those applications. At this point, there is insufficient cost within King County to get these the windstorm in January to qualify. Really only the county itself, the cities of Seattle and Bellevue had significant costs and the total is insufficient to qualify. So unless other jurisdictions identify that they have significant expenses, the windstorm will probably not be a FEMA reimbursable event. And let me pause there before I go to my very last and best topic. Anybody want to delay us from the good news? Hey, no questions. All right. And so the last thing is at least a couple of council members probably are already aware of this. The latest revenue forecast came out on Monday from our Office of Economic and Financial Analysis, or IFA, as we call it. And I did want to give you some highlights, because the forecast is, I think it's fair to say, universally improved from what we had in August, which was the last forecast we were using. And I want to mention four things specifically, all of which are, I think, of significant interest. So first of all, and probably the most important is the sales tax forecast has significantly increased. As I think everybody knows and we've talked about several times, the our economy was hit very differentially by COVID. So some sectors like hotels and restaurants way down. Other sectors like the delivery of things to your home way up. And on balance, we were down last year, but not nearly as much as we were, say, in the first year of the Great Recession. So the good news is when you look at a three year period from 2020, so last year through this biennium, so 2020 and 2022, the sales tax forecast for the general fund is up about $28 million total. For Metro. It's up about $102 million total. And for the minerals and drug dependency fund were mid, it's up about $12 million total. So for all of those funds, there will be the opportunity, as we've talked about before, to potentially restore some of the reductions that we had to make when we adopted that 2122 budget. A second item from that that I thought I would mention is the new health through housing sales tax or the 10% sales tax that the council approved last September is projected to bring in about $53 million in 2021. And I think everyone is aware that there were several cities that, in a sense, opted out. They opted to take the money themselves. And so that's why for the county, the amount we get is less than what a 10th of a cent would normally yield. And so we're projecting about $53 million from health through housing this year. A third thing I would thought I would mention, this is a little less good news, but at least the trend is right. Just to give you a different sense of how severe the COVID impact was on our lodging industry, the incremental sales tax we get, the 2% sales tax we get from lodging industry was worth $36 million in 2019. In 2020, we don't we don't have absolutely the final numbers, but we think we're very close. Instead of 36 million, it was a little less than 10 million. So basically a decline of 75%. The forecast for this year is 15 million. So a gradual recovery. But but nothing like we saw in the past. And then by 2022, the forecast is about 29 million. And then kind of getting back to where we were in 2019, in 2023. So it'll take about four years, according to this forecast, to kind of regain what we lost in the lodging industry. And in the fourth and final thing I would mention, for those of you that have been following the emergency medical services levy, you might recall last fall that the forecast for that levy having been renewed actually went down a lot because the way to that levy was written and had a rate cap. And the forecast suggested we would hit that rate gap and therefore not be able to get the amount of growth that we normally would expect. Now, with this updated forecast and some updated and assessed values years, that is not the case. So each year, prospectively, the EMS levy forecast is now up about seven or $8 million a year. So something close to what was originally expected when the levy was renewed. You might remember that they had some plans of using reserves and so on to get through it. If the revenue had been lower. And it doesn't appear now that that will be necessary. So that's some good news for our emergency medical services programs, which obviously in the pandemic have been critical. So that's the end of the good news on the revenue forecast, and I'm happy to answer questions that folks have. Mr. Lead the sales tax figures, for instance, that you were giving the increases of the general fund of $28 million metro $102 million, mid $12 million. Are those from the August forecast? Yes. Okay. Yes. That that's the basis of the comparison. Thank you, Councilmember Carlos. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Quite on that same point. Do you have the percentage figures? I don't in front of me. Let me while I'm answering questions, let me see if I can do it in my head. They pull up that data the. So compared to the August asked for this year. It's about 8% higher for next year it's about 5 to 6% higher depending on which one of those sales taxes we're talking about. That tax base, as you know, Council Member Caldwell's is a little different because the general fund levy has a different tax rate in the end with very intimate, incorporated areas. And then some of the sales taxes are don't apply to the lodging sector in whole or in part. So there's a little bit of different job growth. But that general fund number I gave you of 8% for this year and five and a half percent for next year compared to what was in the August forecast would give you a good sense. Thank you. I will call in Councilmember Bell Dutchie and ask you to ask any follow up questions. I will step away for just a moment. Be right back as you're asking your question. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yeah, that's really good news. And it's great to hear. You know, the way you spoke about what's going on with the lodging tax was very easy to follow, sort of where we were, where we've been, where we're going. Is there a way to get that same sense of context about the sales tax, generally speaking? And is that an easy thing to do? Sure. I mean, and the way that the forecast is done, it's easy to just look this up. Okay. I could look it up, too. Yeah. Well, you know, since we're talking, it's easy to do this and let's use the sales tax base as what we're going to talk from. So this is all of the taxable sales were in King County. So it gets rid of all the weird distinctions between the Metro tax is a different base than mid tax and so on. So the taxable base in 2019 was about $76 billion. In King County. It went down in 2020 to 70 billion. So, you know, a significant decline. A little over 8%, but nothing like what we saw with lodging because, you know, this is obviously a much more diverse tax base for 2021. The forecast is about 73 billion. So kind of recovering half way. And for 2022, the forecast is 77 billion. So by 2022, we'd actually be ahead of where we were in 2019. So it's just helpful to be able to think in terms of how long is the recovery. So that looks like a two and a half ish year recovery. Yes. Okay. So Monday, for example, than the Great Recession, where it took us many years to get back to where we were. And in some ways mean I mean, in some ways of looking at that numbers, we never got all the way back to where we were anyway. We actually eventually did, even when you allowed for inflation. But if I remember right, it took eight years. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, my colleagues. I think that might conclude our questions. Mr. Dave, again, thank you very much. You're welcome. We're joining us in the briefing. We'll look forward to seeing you at our next council meeting and we'll look forward to federal action and the subsequent transmittal. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good morning, colleagues. I got so excited talking to Mr. Devery that we neglected to approve the minutes. Can I have a motion to approve the minutes of our last meeting? We will prevail. The minutes. Councilmember Bell has moved approval of the minutes. See? No discussion. All those in favor please signify by saying i i. I opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. The minutes were approved. That takes us to item six in today's agenda. This is where we make an appointment to fill a judicial vacancy in the West District of King County District Court. The process governed by King County Code for the appointment in front of us today, the West in the West District members will recall that the county advertised the vacancy last year in accepting applications through January 21st, 2021 . We received two applications from four eligible candidates during the application period. Since there were four applicants, a subcommittee process was used to narrow the finalists to be interviewed by the committee of the whole Council members. Following Caldwell's and I held interviews for all four candidates on February 24th and 26th to narrow the field to three candidates who are with us today. At this point in time, I would entertain a motion to select contender Dylan, Rebecca Robertson and Christian Shotwell as the finalists to be interviewed by the committee consistent with King County Code two 1720. So moved Councilmember Dunn has moved to. We consider Dylan Robertson and Shotwell in today's meeting saying no discussion of those in favor of the motion please signify by saying I am. I. Those opposed nay. The ayes have it. The motion is adopted. Before we proceed any further, I want to provide members of the attendees with an overview of how the process will work. Members who have received the application materials by email on Monday and those materials were sent around again this morning by email to be close to the top of your inbox. We'll begin to today's proceedings with a brief staff report on the proposed motion from Porter Central Staff. And after the staff report, the committee will interview each candidate one at a time. During the interview, the candidates not being interviewed will be placed in a zoom waiting room so as to not get an advance review of the questions or the other candidates answers. Each once each candidate has been interviewed. If there is interest among council members, the committee may go into executive session to evaluate the qualifications of candidates. We will then rejoin the Zoom meeting and take up the legislation. Are there any questions on how this will work for me, their members or our candidates? Before we get started. See none. Miss Porter. The line is yours for Mr. Presentation. And Mr. Chair. Sam Porter, Council Central Policy Staff. The documents for this item began on page nine of your packet oppose motion 2020 10056 would make an appointment to fill the current judicial vacancy and position five in the West District of King County District Court. Under state law, the King County Council, as the legislative authority is directed to fill district court vacancies by appointment. The King County Code provides a merit selection process for filling such vacancies. District Court is the county's court of limited jurisdiction and has responsibility for traffic infractions, small claims and misdemeanor criminal offenses in counties, unincorporated areas in cities that do not have municipal courts and contract with the court to provide those services and for the adjudication of state offenses, which are violations of state statute in the county, or when the arresting agency is the Washington State Patrol or other state law enforcement agency. Approximately 134,000 cases were filed in the court in 2020. Position five in the West Electoral District was made vacant by the retirement of Judge and Harper. As the chair mentioned, four eligible individuals submitted applications and there was a subcommittee process to determine the finalists last week. The finalists who will be interviewed today current bar association ratings for the final candidates can be seen in a grid on page 15 of your packet, and I will note that in its current form, the motion has a blank space for the name of the person being appointed, and a verbal amendment will be needed to insert the name of their selected appointee. And that concludes my remarks. Thank you. Are there questions of Miss Porter? Very well. I expect each interview to take roughly 20 minutes and ask each candidate to provide opening and closing remarks to be limited to minutes after time and their opening and closing remarks. Members should have received a prepared set of suggested interview questions by email this morning. In accordance with best practice, I will ask members to volunteer to read the prepared interview questions. Before the meeting, we randomly assigned an order of the interviews and we begin with and we will begin with Kristen Shotwell, followed by full gender Dillon and then followed by Rebecca Robertson in all three questions. Now, in a moment, I'll ask the clerk to place Ms.. Dillon and Ms.. Robertson in the zoom waiting room. And as a reminder to members and staff, please note the clerks admit people from the waiting room to avoid the temptation to click on the admit button questions. Seen none, Madam Couric. If you'll make the appropriate. Break out adjustments. You let me know when we're ready. Mr. Chair. Excellent. Thank you, Mr. Hartwell. Well, welcome. To the committee. The Hall. We want to thank you for your interest in serving in District Court and welcome you to our meeting this afternoon. This morning hasn't gone on that long yet, and I invite you to begin with opening remarks and ask you to limit them to 2 minutes. Thank you and good morning to the entire council. I really appreciate this opportunity to be here today to talk with you all. I am a community minded, hard worker and I just want to tell you briefly how I believe I became that way. I grew up on a farm in eastern Washington near Yakima in a small farming community. My grandparents were farmers. They had a sixth and eighth grade education. My parents were farmers, but they had the opportunity to go to college and they both became schoolteachers. So they farmed and they taught school. On the farm I grew up on, which I worked with my twin sister and my parents. I learned very quickly the value of hard work. If we wanted heat inside our home, we had to chop wood and bring it inside. If we wanted food on the table. We had to turn the garden and turn the animals. That really stuck with me about how I grew. Up. Was the kind of community I grew up in, and that's the kind of community that took care of each other. Neighbors helped each other as the neighbors animals got out. You went out and you helped round them up no matter what time of night and no matter how cold it was. But then you also helped your neighbor mend fences so that it didn't happen again. And that's the kind of community I grew up I grew up in, which makes me community oriented. I left the farm at age 18 to play basketball at Yale on scholarship. And you can imagine, I'm sure, that I was a fish out of water there having just left the farm. It took me a while to find my place there, and I eventually did learn to trust in my ability to learn almost anything. But most importantly there I found my calling in public service and. I noticed, I began to notice and I began to really bother me. The wealth disparity I saw between my classmates and the many homeless people in New Haven. And then as I studied sociology and history and kind of became awake, I realized it was part of historical racial injustice. And I see that one time went really fast. So I'll skip to the conclusion. You know, I love the district court. I've had many experiences that were positive as a pro tem, as a lawyer. My wife and I chose to be married there, and I've had many excellent teachers there in terms of the judges and the court staff. And I would be honored to serve on the incoming district court. Thank you. Colleagues to someone want to step up and ask the first question. Council Member Col Wells. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Greetings to you again. Thank you. What do you see is the most critical issue the court is facing and what you believe the role of the district court judge would be in addressing this? Well, you know, we talked about that in the subcommittee. I have thought about it and I thought about it some more, actually, since the last time we talked. You know, one of the critical issues in our society has always been the role of inherent and structural racism in our institutions and in our society and in our courts . The role of the court is is critical in that we have a moment now, I think, where we are all as a society, re-imagining how we want to be and what the court's role is going to be in that. Some really important things are happening now. For example, Court Rule 3.4 has been changed, which really eases the burden of defendants charged with crimes from having to come to court. Every month we'll see childcare and missed work and roundup transportation. And so the court should embrace those changes that move toward equity. The court needs to study its own practices and policies, and before any policy or procedure is adopted, the court needs to ask, you know, is it just is it fair, is it equitable? Does it promote equity? Of course it has to be lawful, but that goes without saying. And then, you know, always there's the budget impact, of course. But we can't we have to start asking our questions, asking ourselves on every policy, every decision, does this promote equity? So that's the role of the court. I can address the role of the judge or or what I personally have done later, if that's a question. But I'll leave it at that right now. But certainly self-examination for the organization as a whole is really important. Thank you. Next question. Thank you. Councilmember Belushi and myself a moment. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome. It's very nice to meet you and to hear from you. I want to say I was very taken by one of the anecdotes in your reference letters that concluded with Kristen. Shotwell knows it all by virtue of knowing the price of tomatoes. I thought that was said a lot in a in a very and very pithy way. This question is, please describe how you have incorporated equity and social justice principles into your work in the justice system and how that work would be furthered if you are appointed to this position. Thank you. So really important question. And I asked myself that for 25 years as a practitioner, I have stood as a social worker and a lawyer side by side clients for 25 years, nearly who face everyday the impacts of structural racism, blatant racism, implicit bias. And so aside from examining that, in every case, as a practitioner filing appropriate motions, asking what you're doing on implicit bias, asking for instructions, you know, the District Court and Superior Court judges made a wonderful video for jurors on implicit bias. Of course we ask that to be we played in an every jury trial the the. And so as a practitioner I've made all of those appropriate motions and talked about that in every case. But this is not as I said it, this is not academic for me. This is really important because it affects my clients and my work. And so I have when DPD formed its Equity Society and Justice Committee, I signed up right away, particularly the community outreach part, because that's something I really enjoy and working on that body. I worked with a group of wonderful people and and kids who've been involved with law enforcement before and who have negative experiences. And we produced a series of videos aimed at kids, teaching kids kids to know their rights when they come into contact with law enforcement and as deeply satisfying and so on. PROJECT Ultimately, the goal is to take that kind of know your rights assembly your presentation into schools codes delayed that a little bit but that's the goal. The other type of work that I do around race equity is that I'm on the legal foundation of Washington's Race Equity Grants Panel, which is work that is really satisfying to me because we that panel meets at least twice a year and reviews grant applications for programs designed all over the state, actually designed to promote access to justice and equity in the courts and justice programs. And so the panel I'm on gets to review all those applications and make funding decisions. And it's satisfying not because I get to figure out how to spend money, but it's it's satisfying because I get to hear all the amazing work being done statewide on that issue. And I've done that, I think, for two or two or three years now. And then additionally, I, I volunteer in the lab and see mock trial judging and the mock trial judge. And I really like to focus my outreach to students in those settings on students who might be interested in public service and make myself available to them. Thank you. Right. Thank you. And colleagues, next question. All right. The next question is. How is it? Maybe I'm getting it off the hook. No, no, no. Okay. In the subcommittee, you were asked to describe what your previous coworkers and would say is your greatest weakness. Yes. Please describe what you believe to be your greatest strength and how it would make you successful if appointed to this position. Okay. Well, I think I think a couple of things. My. I think one of my greatest strengths relevant to this position is my decades experience working with people who have substance abuse and mental health issues. Because I and I guess we can put that all under the rubric of social work training, because as a social worker, I'm trained to think in systems and systems and organizations and then think in terms of how individually how a person interacts with all of the systems in their lives. So I, I can't help but think in terms of a work flow process, operations way to do things the way we do. And I have a really strong sense of the treatment resources in our community. I understand that we don't have treatment on demand. Maybe one day we will. But I understand the barriers that, for example, criminal defendants sentenced to participate in those services. I understand the barriers they may face in accessing those services. And then to take it down sort of on more of a micro level, I think my social work training and my experience as a public defender really are going to enable me as a judge to see clearly the person in front of me and see what it is that we need to do to help that person so that we can reduce recidivism and make us all safer. Those are those are things I've been doing for over 20 years as a lawyer and social worker is trying to interrupt the recidivist cycle. So I think that's a particular strength. Thank you. Colleagues, are there any follow up questions? Then I would invite you to share your closing, if you will. And again, ask you to shoot for 2 minutes. Okay. Thank you. So, you know, each of us is the sum of our choices and our experiences and. I'd like to share with you on experience. I had that stayed with me now for almost 25 years because it's deeply meaningful to me when my first job out of social work, graduate school was as a social worker in a Latino nursing home, and one evening a patient was dying. And one day I called the priest. We customarily use his Spanish, but he wasn't available. So I called the next time I'm down on the list and that priest came very quickly, but he did not speak Spanish. And I showed him to the patient's door. And as I turned to leave, he waved me inside the room and then asked me to interpret last rites. And I froze. I was terrified. I had never done that before. What if I can stay Catholic, etc. but I didn't really have long to contemplate that because the priest grabbed my hand and began speaking and direct and he grabbed the dying man's hand. And so I began interpreting and I spent a little bit of time worrying I wasn't doing this right, etc. Since I've mentioned it pretty quickly , I looked at the man and I saw that his face went. It went from pain and fear to comfort and peace. And I it struck me in that moment, this is not about me. This is about doing it perfectly. It's about showing up in a moment. That's scary and challenging for somebody who needs me to be there and. It's not about me, and that's an experience I have taken with me through the last 24, 25 years in public service. And I guarantee you that if I get on the district court bench, if I should be so lucky that every person in front of me who appears in front of me. I'm going to see them. I'm going to show up and be present. And they're going to know that. I know it's not about me as a judge. Thank you. Thank you very much. No, thank you. I will now ask the clerk to admit Mrs. Shotwell into the waiting room and invite back in. Miss Dylan. Is the shot well in the waiting room now. Yes, Mrs. Thatcher. Thank you. We are ready with the second candidate. Miss Dillon, thank you very much for joining us today. Again, thank you for your interest in serving on the King County District Court in the West District. I want to welcome you to the full committee, the hall today. And I begin by inviting you to share your opening remarks and ask you to shoot for 2 minutes. Thank you so much. Good morning to you and the rest of the council. My name is called Gender Dillon. It is an honor and a privilege to appear before the council this morning. I am the daughter of East Indian immigrants who left India to find work and opportunities to build a better life for themselves. My parents settled in England in the 1960s. My family faced discrimination because of how they looked, what they wore, and how they sounded. In England, my father drove the city bus and my mother was a seamstress and raised three children. My parents dream was to open their own business. They instilled values of hard work, education and giving back to the community. My parents were able to buy their first home with grants from the government. My parents saved and were able to achieve their dream of buying their own business. A small grocery store in Edinburgh, Scotland. Unlike many clients I have represented over the last 17 years as a public defense lawyer and a private defense attorney. My story of coming to the United States is a story of privilege. My uncle sponsored our family through the family lottery system, and in 1990 we received our permanent residence cards. I moved to the United States when I was 17 years old. My parents followed a few years later. I'm the first person in my immediate family to get a college degree and an advanced degree. During college, I gave back to the community that I lived in by volunteering at a domestic violence shelter. I started to understand the power of a new language, the language of the law, and how that how the law could be used to ensure safety for those escaping abusive relationships. When I moved to King County 30 years ago, it was not the multicultural county it is today. Today, King County ranks as one of the wealthiest counties in the country. However, wealth and security are not equally distributed. Today, King County faces problems of homelessness, a looming eviction crisis due to the global pandemic and racial disparities. We see many of these issues playing out in our courts. There is much work to be done, but it is my hope that we continue to reevaluate and reimagine the justice system and use recent development and technology as an access to justice tool. I believe my unique experiences and perspectives are a valuable addition to the King County bench, and it is my hope that the parties who come before me and the community as a whole see in me a reflection of our diverse county. And I hope this leads to people having a greater trust in the legal system. And I am happy to answer your questions. Thank you. And our first question. Pardon me. It's a member of Cowell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and welcome. And very good to see you again. Good morning. My question is, what do you see as the most critical issue facing or is there crisis facing? And what do you believe that the role of district court judges is in addressing this most critical issue? Thank you so much and nice to see you again as well. And. I believe there are a number of critical issues that the district court faces at this time. And just to give you some background, I have been sitting as a pro tem judge for the last three years in the King County district court system. I have been invited to sit in each division, and I usually sit for 2 to 3 days a week. And during the pandemic, I have been sitting for weeks at a time in all the different divisions. And I do sit in the West District as well. What I what I have noticed is that COVID 19 obviously has had a tremendous impact on our courts. And the COVID 19 pandemic has caused a tremendous backlog of the cases that are waiting to be tried. It is my understanding from the bench bar meetings with defense counsel, private defense counsel at the prosecutor's office that there are over 2000 unfilled misdemeanor cases in King County District Court that have not been filed. Obviously, that will take a number of years to work through this backlog. Another issue that faces the district court is the lack of alternatives for incarceration. There is no work that is active. There's no work community work crew. As an alternative to pardon me that the judges can use. There's also limited places that court users can do community service and perform their community service hours. Also, the community court has been closed, but it is going to be opening hopefully fairly soon. And the court and the community court has also expanded. I also believe that another issue that the district court faces is the digital divide that folks are struggling with. In my experience as a pro tem judge, the people that I'm seeing who are physically coming to the court are from the Bipoc community and English language learners. Some of those issues the courts have addressed, and in my role as a judge, I've addressed the issue regarding the digital divide by speaking with using interpreters to let people know that they are welcome to use digital platforms and if they have capabilities. I've also spoken to people about alternate, how they can use digital platforms with their substance use treatment providers. We've had a number of substance use treatment providers who have logged on with their clients, and that has been really a terrific. One of the ways that I educate people in non-English speakers about the digital platforms is to ask interpreters if they have the time to and if the court doesn't have the digital platform instructions printed in their native language to go into one of the Zoom breakout rooms and help users understand the instructions on how to log on . And the interpreters are very happy to do this very quickly. In terms of community service, the Court has we have gotten very creative with what community service means. In the past. Community service was done at not for profit organizations in the community, but because of the COVID 19 pandemic, a lot of community service organizations were not able to have people do community service. And in the ways that people did prior to COVID, I have engaged with people who I have sentenced to do community service and helped them think outside of the traditional box. And I have helped them figure out what things that they are interested in. And then using the skills that I have developed in my private practice and as well as my knowledge of community services, I have helped court users understand that they are able to do community service and organizations online. So the court has been creative of accepting online community service with organizations that have helped benefit people such as community passageways. Thank you. Colleagues, council member Balducci. And Mr. Chair, and it's very nice to meet you and thank you for replying and congratulations on making it to be a finalist. I like to call out one thing in each application that that really spoke to me in ten years. I was I was taken by your experience working with victims and domestic violence advocacy and your involvement with the immigrant and refugee community right after that really tragic shooting in our own courthouse and just below where we would be sitting if we were doing this in person. So thank you for your work in that regard. And I think that gives you an interesting view on the entirety of the criminal justice system. Like often is, please describe how you have incorporated equity and social justice principles into your work in the justice system and how that work would be furthered if you were appointed to the position. Thank you so much for your words and. I have. I think before I answer your question specifically with examples of what I've done to address disproportionality and bias in the justice system, I do want to take a moment to say that I have been affected emotionally by the horrors of what we have seen over on our television screens and our cell phone screens over the last year. And I do appreciate you, council member Balducci, for making a statement about the fact that people who were from Asian-American communities have been singled out and have been assaulted and racist vitriol has been lobbed at them. So to answer your question, when I was a defense counsel, lead defense counsel in juvenile drug court, which is a therapeutic court in juvenile court, superior court, I worked collaboratively with the prosecutor and to restructure policies regarding sanctions and drug courts and violations and terminations from drug court in order to reduce youth incarceration and racial disproportionality. I also worked collaboratively with the drug court team to implement evidence, evidence based interventions and supports to make sure that services that the youth were receiving were culturally appropriate. I also worked in juvenile court in the juvenile system with prosecutors, defense attorneys, schools and probation counselors to end incarcerating youth on status offenses and specifically truancy cases. And I worked to strengthen interventions prior to those cases actually coming to court. Some of the community organizations that we worked with were Choose 180 and Community Passageways. And through that work, the number of truancy cases that were actually filed in court dropped dramatically. I've also taking taken a number of trainings in cultural competency and bias, particularly implicit bias and its impact on jurors. I've used the information that I've learned through those trainings in my practice and as a pro tem judge, and I work very hard to recognize my own biases and to set them aside when when they're influencing my decisions. Also, in the work that I that I do as a pro tem, it's really important to me that the people who come before the court understand the resources that are available to them. I will say just anecdotally, my parents have lived in English speaking countries for 50 years and they are very proud of their their ability to speak English. But there are still times, and especially in the medical system, that they too need interpreters. I use that anecdotal story, too, to tell people who come before me that that even though they are they speak English quite well, it is imperative that they use an interpreter to understand what is happening in court, and so that I can understand what they are trying to say if they are representing themselves. So I remind court users that they are entitled to use interpreters for their probation appointments as well as during the entire court process. Also, I'm active in the community through the South Asian Bar Association. I also mentor young lawyers, and when I say young, I should say I'm sorry. I should correct myself and say folks who are just entering the legal profession or or who are just are still in law school. And and that's really rewarding work. So I think all those experiences and the work that I've done collaboratively help me, will help me in my role to work with the partners in the justice system. Thank you so much. Thank you. And colleagues. All right. I'll have the last prepared question, and that is in the subcommittee. You were asked to describe what your previous coworkers would say is your greatest weakness. Please describe what you believe to be your greatest strength and how it would make you successful if you were appointed to this position. Thank you so much for the question. I don't know if it was if it's cheating to use the same weakness as a for but I do think especially with the backlog of cases that the King County District Court faces, I do think that my strong work ethic is definitely needed at this time. And but to answer your question directly, I think that my coworkers probably would say that one of my strengths is the fact that I am able to listen to people and connect with them on a deep level. I pride myself on being able to speak to people and make them feel comfortable. I've had a number of jobs that have helped me do that. I've been working since I was 11 years old. First at my parents grocery store, I sold shoes. I have made sausages. I've waited tables at some of our finest restaurants in Seattle. So I have held a number of jobs. And I think that that perspective and the perspective of having a number of jobs in the legal system. Councilmember Baldridge, she mentioned that I had been a domestic violence victim advocate. I've been a domestic I was a domestic violence victim advocate, advocate first in the community and then as part of the King County prosecutor's office. And I've also worked as private as a private defense attorney. So I understand some of the challenges that the private bar faces. And I also have work to the public defense attorney. I think these different roles that I've had will make me a strong partner on the bench. And I believe that my the letters that I've had written that that is included in my materials are varied there from judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors and community partners that I've worked with over the last 20, 24 years. And I think they all speak to my strengths and I look forward to being on the bench. The future. I'm Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I know you said. It was last question. I couldn't get my. And you've written and you've. Relative safety. Thank you, sir. I would like to know. A couple of weeks ago, there was a calendar of 70 people that came before one of the judges, and most of them had been arrested for a different crime within the last couple of weeks. How will you handle something like that when you see a recidivism coming through like that. In such a short. Timespan? Thank you for your question, Councilmember Lambert. You know, that is an issue that we struggle with every day. I do sit on the felony first appearance calendar as well as the first appearance calendars in the district court and arraignment calendars. And we do unfortunately see recidivism and people who have come before the court on a short period of time. And undoubtedly the council is aware that our crime statistics have increased dramatically. Many of those cases where the crime statistics have increased are under the purview of the Superior Court. I can assure you that with respect to violent crimes, the judges are bound by the rules that govern pretrial release, which require that I make specific findings of either a danger to the community or a likelihood of flight. And if I'm appointed, I will commit to be bound by those standards and rules in making bail decisions. And obviously, it will play into the step into my decision making, the number of times that a person has appeared in court in terms of nonviolent offenses, I will say that the district court is does a very good job . In our community court program to address recidivism and. It's a program that is proven to reduce recidivism rates. It's increases it. The research that I have done on community courts show that there's a decrease of costs to crime victims. There's a reduction of the use of jail, and there is a reduction of recidivism. So I hope I have answered your question. Thank you. Thank you. See no other follow up questions from colleagues. I would invite you to share your closing statement and ask you to shoot for about 2 minutes. Thank you so much. In my opening, I talked about why my personal experiences, my values and my unique perspective will enhance the King County District Court bench. I have served the community as the judge pro tem for the last three years. It's been a rewarding, challenging and enriching experience. I have a reputation. Pardon me? I have earned the respect of the judges. And I am asked to sit on voluminous and difficult calendars, both criminal and civil. I have a reputation for honesty, integrity and fairness. I've been rated exceptionally well qualified by six bar associations, including the King County Bar Association. I am proficient in all the technologies in the court, including the new case management system that the King County District Court rolled out in October of this past year. I've sought out training during the pandemic and so that I am fair regarding procedures in remote hearings and the trainings that I've taken. Help me make sure that I'm fair to not only folks that I can see on platforms such as this, but also if people just appear on the telephone. My experiences as a pro tem judge will allow me to step in on day one to address the backlog of cases caused by the COVID pandemic. I look forward to administering the court with my colleagues. I also come in to work side by side with my bench mates in King County and across the state to dismantle the policies and structures of racial disproportionality and and inequality. So we truly have a justice system for all. I want to thank you all for your time and your commitment to this important process. Thank you again. Thank you very much, Mr. Dunn. And Madam, critical invite you to excuse Mr. Allen from the Zoom meeting and invite Miss Robertson to join us. We're ready, Mr. Chair. Thank you so much. Miss Robertson, welcome. Thank you again for your interest in serving on the King County District Court in the West District. And welcome to the full committee the whole this morning. I need to check and make sure it's still morning. I will invite you to share your opening comments and ask you to shoot for about 2 minutes. Thank you. Can you hear me? Yes. I was just about to write a note to show you that I could not unmute. Thank you so much for having me. I very much appreciate the opportunity to come and speak to you all. I am Rebecca Robertson. For the last 11 years, I have been a full time elected judge in the City of Federal Way. I am a former president of the District and Municipal Court Judges Association, and I'm currently the representative from the District and Municipal Court Judges Association to the Board for Judicial Administration. For the last 11 years, my job has been to provide equal, fair and thoughtful and compassionate justice to the people of federal way and statewide. I had the experience and the passion to do this job and to bring these this experience to King County District Court. I grew up in King County. I was raised by my mom, with my sister in Bothell. When my sister and I decided to go to college, my mom decided to go back with us and we all went to college together. And I have to admit, she probably studied harder and she did get better grades than both my sister and I. My family raised me to believe that my job should be to help other people and to help to make the world better. And what kind of job would I do to make that happen? I did a lot of internships to find out what my interests were, where my skills lay. And I landed as a victim advocate for both the Seattle Police Department and King County District Court. I realized that the criminal justice system was where I wanted to be. I was a prosecutor for cities of Kent and Seattle for nine years, and while I was a prosecutor, I realized that I really could effectuate better justice as a judge. I started to protest in King County District Court, and in 2009, I was elected as a full time judge in federal way. As you may know, Federal Way is one of the busiest municipal courts in the state. We process thousands of thousands of cases per year. It is a very diverse community with all of the issues that King County is currently experiencing, including racial inequity in the justice system and society as a whole, and how we are going to address that. Homelessness. The Opioid Crisis. As a judge, I have dealt with administrative and budget issues as well as all of the other issues that I would handle as a King County District Court judge. I've been a leader in the District and Municipal Court Judges Association throughout the years, and I would like to take this experience and leadership and court administration to King County District Court. And I very much welcome the opportunity to speak with you. Thank you. Thank you very much. For the first question. Council Member Wells. Thank you very much and good to have you with us again. Thank you. And I have a question that is, what do you see as the most critical issue facing the courts? And what do you believe the role of the judges is in terms of addressing this most critical issue. In current times? The most critical issue is how we respond to the pandemic and all other times are most critical issue is handling the mental health, homelessness, drug addiction crisis is happening all over the country. The pandemic simply makes all of these things harder. The judge's role is to work with all of the executives and the councils across the state to really make the courtroom a safer place so that we can continue the business of delivering justice. That we have had a difficult year doing that, but we have risen to that challenge. Most of us are on Zoom court or doing a hybrid Zoom court. We are allowing people to continue cases out longer. We are making our courtroom safer with various PPE devices, etc. And we are also understanding that as it is harder for us, it is also harder for everyone appearing before us. Those who are addressing their mental health or addiction issues are having a harder time because those organizations have been affected by the pandemic as well. The judge's role is to really lead the entire court in responding to these issues, to understand the issues that the defense attorneys and the prosecutors are having as well. And certainly to understand the issues that this pandemic is causing for the folks who appear before us. Most of them have been economically affected by this pandemic, and that's something that we have to recognize and address as well. Thank you very much. Thank you. Maneuvering to my own unmute button. Thank you. Next question. Council member Banducci. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Judge Roberts. And it's very nice to meet you. Thank you so much for being interested in this position at King County. And I'd just like to make an observation about each of the candidates. You obviously stand out by virtue of your judicial experience. You have a lot. And I was taken, by the way, in your recommendations, you see that you're kind of a judges judge, that other municipal judges look to you as a a resource and a supporter. And that that speaks, I think, to the level of respect that you have developed in your career. So I think you just wanted to share that. I had noted that. And that's that stands out. The question is you're welcome. The question is, please describe how you have incorporated equity and social justice principles into your work in the justice system and how that work would be further if you were appointed to this position. So I think the first thing is to acknowledge that racial inequities and social inequities exist and they exist in the justice system, they exist in society before people even get to the courts. They have experienced a number of these inequities, and that's something that courts always have to recognize and look beyond what you see on paper to understand what someone has gone through, what their experiences have been. So a simple recognition is the first step. Secondly, I have educated myself as much as I can on what these social and racial inequities are, how I may recognize them, how I address implicit or explicit bias in my courtroom, and the best practices for having to dealing with those inequities. It's very scary for anyone to appear in court, but when you feel that society has everything stacked against you and you've never been treated fairly, it becomes even worse. So it's part of my job to explain the process to people, to explain to them that they are going to be treated fairly, to do so at every opportunity to acknowledge what they've gone through in the system. And I will take my 11 years of experience doing this and learning about this and federal way to King County, where I would hope that I would assist my colleagues in continuing this learning process about how to best address all of these inequities. Thank you. Thank you. And in the subcommittee, you were asked to describe what your previous coworkers might see as your greatest weakness. And please describe what you believe to be your greatest strength and how it would make you successful as appointed to this position. So I believe that my greatest strength, and I've heard this from people who appear before me is my ability to listen. I don't believe that the job of a judge is to lecture. The job of the judge is to listen to the people who appear before, before the judge. So I really spend a lot of time listening to what people have to tell me so that I can make a more thoughtful and appropriate decision when they appear before me. One of my other strengths is being able to efficiently run a courtroom and run a calendar. And when you have an extremely busy court such as Federal Way or King County District Court, that's important because. How long a court runs or how well it's run does have effect on the rest of the court and on the attorneys and on the defense attorneys and people who are appearing before you are taking time out of their busy lives to appear in court. So respecting that and I feel I'm very good at running a courtroom. Thank you. Thank you. Are there other questions from my colleagues? Same night, I would invite you to share your closing remarks with us and again to shoot for about 2 minutes. Thank you very much again. Thank you, all of you, for having me. I know that this is a very well thought out process, and I appreciate you doing this and recognizing the importance of the judiciary. I have the experience and the passion and the leadership that would work well with King County District Court. I could work well with my with the esteemed colleagues I have already on King County District Court. I've had the demonstrated skills and leadership abilities throughout federal way and in the statewide system. And I would very much look forward to bringing that to King County District Court. I live in the West Division. My family is lives in the West Division and we have for 20 years and I very much care about the West Division in this community. And again, I thank you very much for the opportunity to be here today. Thank you. Thank you very much. And. I'd invite all the can ask the court to have all the candidates come back into the main zoom call. They are ready, Mr. Chairman. All right. And colleagues for the executive session to discuss the qualifications of the candidates. Be valuable. I'm seeing some nods. We will we will now enter executive session. The grounds for executive session are under RTW 4231 ten. Though the committee is going into executive session to evaluate the qualifications of the candidate for appointment to elective office. The committee will be in executive session for approximately 10 minutes until about 1155. We'll post until 1155 and the committee will be off this zoom call for the executive session, together with only those county employees directly necessary for the discussion. Members, please note the executive session today is a separate Zoom meeting. This should be on already on your calendars for possible executive session. I will see council members there. And just a note to council members. You will have to exit this Zoom call before you can get into the executive session, zoom call and then do the same on the way back in. Thanks. I'm. It's. The chair has asked me to announce that the executive session will be extended an additional 10 minutes to approximately 12:05 p.m.. Thank you. But she was asked me to announce to the listening public that the executive session has been extended an additional 5 minutes to approximately 12:10 p.m.. Uh huh. Uh huh. Uh huh. The executive session has been extended an additional 5 minutes to approximately 12:15 p.m.. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you, colleagues. Thank you, Madam Clerk. I'm in many ways, you're doing the heavy logistical work today. We are back in session, and I would entertain a motion. To adopt a motion. 2020 156. Mr. Chair? Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'm a proposed motion 2020 156 making an appointment to a judicial vacancy in the West Division West Electoral District Judge Position number five of the King County District Court. Thank you councilmember Caldwell's this moved we give it to pass recommendation the motion 2020 156 making an appointment to the west district district Kim County District Court. Councilmember Caldwell's Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have an amendment to this motion. This is the appropriate time to commence. It would be. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I move that we add the name of Kristen Shotwell to be hereby appointed to fill the judicial vacancy in the West Division West Electoral District Judge Position number five of the King County District Court. Thank you. Councilmember calls this move. We insert the name of Christian Shotwell into the motion to make making the appointment. Councilmember Caldwell's. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I we were very impressed with every candidate who applied, and several of us have stated that, in fact, this probably has been the most amazing, outstanding roster of individuals who have made application for district court appointment. So it was very, very tough decision to make. And we certainly would hope that the other candidates would apply for future positions because we were so impressed with all three of you. We did come down to making our recommendation or I am making the recommendation that we select our Kristen Shotwell for this position and I will leave others to speak to their positions or perceptions. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues, Councilmember Bellevue Cheek. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I want to echo Councilmember Caldwell's statement. We've been appointing an awful lot of judges since since I've been on the council in the last several years. And I, I can't recall and I don't think any of us can recall the time when we had three exceptionally well qualified applicants who I, I could very happily appoint all of you. And I do hope that when additional vacancies come open, because they seem to come open relatively frequently, that you will apply again if you're not the recommended candidate today. Because I really think our district court would benefit from this Dunn and Judge Robertson being on the bench, and I absolutely would support that because you just all bring so much to the table. So thank you for that. But we can only select one. And and I think that you'll find that we're all we're all we're all very supportive of the recommendation. And I will vote yes for this recommendation. Yeah. I mean, this is just an incredible panel. It really, really is. There's no there's not one bit of daylight where I would say one is better than the other, but we have to select somebody. And there's some good reasons for each of you. So thank you. And I'm happy to vote yes on the amendment and the motion. Well, the discussion. Of all those in favor of the amendment inserting Christian Shotwell was named into motion 2020 156. Please signify by saying I. Those opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. The amendment is adopted. Further discussion on motion 2020 156 as amended. I would on my own behalf concur in the comments that councilmembers Caldwell's and Covenant Council Member Bill Dewji have already made or exceptional candidates. Three We heard from today and the work of District Court, as we so often hear, is the People's Court. We have very strong people seeking to serve in the court. We're blessed by having them serving already in pro tem or other capacities. And this motion I'm appointing the sharp well will serve King County District Court well. And the conversations I've had with people interested in engaging in the bench over the last two weeks makes me more confident in the ability to address the pressing needs we have within our criminal legal system and our civil legal system. And I look forward to being able to work with, perhaps soon to be Judge Shotwell and also the other three people we've had very meaningful conversations about our judiciary with. Further discussion. Being known. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Council member Belushi I. Council member Dombrowski, I. Council member done. I council member calls. I Council member Lambert. I council member of the group. I council member. Gone. Right there. Now. Council members. Hello? I. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chair. The vote is eight i's council member upon my thorough votes. No and no one excused. Thank you. By your vote committee to pass recommendation to Motion 2020 156 as amended. And unless there is opposition objection, we will expedite that to full council this coming Tuesday for adoption by the full council seat. None so ordered. We are going to give him the time today and the pressing need of or the timeliness, if you will, of item eight. Our agenda. We're going to advance to item eight, ordinance 2021, 93, which would require grocery stores in unincorporated King County to provide hazard pay for their workers. Mary Buchanan from Council Central South will provide a staff report. I'm Ms.. Brogan on the line is yours. Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record on Mary Burke and on from the council staff and the materials for this item begin on page 59 of your packet. In addition, there are two amendments that are proposed for today's meeting that were sent separately in a supplemental packet yesterday. The proposed ordinance would require hazard pay of $4 per hour for grocery workers who work at grocery business locations that meet three conditions which you can see outlined at the bottom of page 59 of the staff report. Those conditions are first, that the grocery business is located in unincorporated King County. Second, in terms of size, that the grocery business is either over 10,000 square feet, primarily engaged in the retail sale of groceries or over 85,000 square feet with 30% or more of floor area dedicated to the retail sale of groceries. And in terms of employee count, that the grocery business has at least one employee working at the location in unincorporated King County and employs 500 or more employees worldwide, regardless of where those employees are employed. And the ordinance is written that this includes but is not limited to chains, integrated enterprises or franchises. This ordinance is written that it would expire at the termination of the proclamation of emergency for the COVID 19 pandemic that King County executive Dow Constantine issued on March 1st, 2020. Moving forward, I will note that given both the executive's and the governor's emergency proclamations of about a year ago, which the council commemorated yesterday on March 23rd , the governor issued a proclamation, the stay home, stay healthy order that closed nonessential workplaces and banned gatherings. Since that time, although the governor has adjusted restrictions on gatherings and workplaces, essential businesses have remained open. And you can find a list of the essential businesses identified in the Governor's Order in attachment three to the Staff Report. Moving down to the bottom of page 60, hazard pay is something that is defined by the United States Department of Labor as additional pay for performing hazardous duty or work involving physical hardship. National reporting has indicated that many employers provided hazard pay at the start of the pandemic, but that most have since phased out hazard pay. In response, a number of local jurisdictions have implemented hazard pay ordinances during the last several months. And you can see a list on page 61 of some of the West Coast jurisdictions that have done so, including Seattle and Berrien, Washington, as well as Long Beach, Los Angeles and Oakland, California. Each of these ordinances, like the proposed King County Ordinance, have limited durations tied to local emergency orders. The next section describes in more detail the ordinance. I'm going to skip over that for now and move it to page 63 to just talk a little bit about what the ordinance would do and who would be affected by the ordinance. So again, as I noted, the ordinance would apply to employees at specific grocery business locations. This compares to the Seattle and Berrien ordinances in that obviously both of those refer to just grocery businesses within their jurisdictions, whereas King County's would be for the unincorporated area where King County is the local government. I'll also note that while the Seattle ordinance has enforcement and regulation to be managed by its Office of Labor Standards for King County, since there is no such entity, enforcement would be managed by providing that employees or entities representing employees could bring civil action in court if they felt that their right to hazard pay has not been met. In terms of the businesses that could be affected by this ordinance. And I'm now on the bottom of page 64 based on a review of grocery businesses using information from the King County demographer and Department of Assessments on the location building square footage of grocery businesses, as well as research on national employee accounts, including of franchises , alliances and brand names of stores, even where individual locations might be individually operated and owned. Staff analysis identified ten grocery businesses that could potentially be affected in attachment. Or you will find a list of those ten grocery businesses as well as their address, the district they're located in, and the square footage of the building in which they are located. You will also see in that attachment about ten pages of grocery businesses that would meet the terms of the ordinance, except for the fact that they are located in incorporated areas. Those are organized by district just so that council members can see if there is anything that you believe is missing from your district. I'll note in terms of the impact on grocery businesses both nationally and across Washington state. According to the Census Bureau, grocery sales have increased during the pandemic by about 11.3%. And based on earnings reports from some of the larger national chains, grocery business profits have increased as well during this time period. That said, staff do not have an easy way to identify potential profits or sales from individual grocery business locations. That is because the Washington State Department of Revenue does not collect gross business income for specific business locations, but rather for the entirety of a business. And in addition, King County receives sales tax information only for items that are subject to the sales tax, which would obviously excluding food, not include most sales at grocery stores. And in addition, aggregates that sales tax information, so it's not easily disaggregated to individual locations. That said, I will note that of the ten locations staff identified, approximately half are part of larger national chains. Half are part of either local chains or are potentially individually owned and operated businesses that are part of a larger alliance, such as the one that you heard from, from the owners of the Skyway Grocery grocery outlet who spoke to the committee earlier this morning. Next. In terms of staff's analysis, we identified health impacts as and looked at the vaccination status of grocery workers. And I'm now on page 65 of the staff report. There has been research done over the last year, including in the British Medical Journal Occupational and Environmental Medicine, that has studied grocery retail workers and found that they are at higher risk of COVID 19, particularly for those who interact with customers on a regular basis. In addition, this research noted that 76% of infected grocery employees had no symptoms, suggesting that those employees could be a source of asymptomatic infection. I will note again that this ordinance requiring hazard pay would expire upon the termination of the governor. This I'm sorry, the executive's emergency order. And I'll also note, and you can see outlined on page 66 that grocery workers would most likely be eligible for vaccination in phase one B tiers two and four, which would begin to cover workers who are either 50 years and older or 50 years and younger who are in occupations considered high risk. Now, it is unclear at this point what the status of grocery workers might be given the governor's announcement of expediting vaccinations for educators yesterday, or the follow up announcement that workers in essential congregate situations such as grocery workers would also be expedited to some level. We're waiting for further guidance from the Department of Health on that. Moving on. On page 67, staff also studied potential community access to food. In other words, if a grocery business that is required to pay hazard pay determines that it must close as a result of that, what would happen to the community? To do this analysis, staff used two metrics used by the United States Department of Agriculture or USDA to study communities with limited food access. And the USDA uses metrics for both low income census tracts that either have a poverty rate equal to or greater than 20%, or a median family income that is 80% or less of the metropolitan areas, median family income, and looks at a metric that they call low access, which are census tracts in which at least 500 people and or 33% of the census tracts populations may have more than one mile from a supermarket or large grocery store in an urban area or more than ten miles in rural areas . Based on these metrics and using the USDA Food Access Research, Atlas staff identified that of the ten potential grocery business locations identified as being potentially affected by the proposed ordinance. Four of them are located in census tracts that meet the USDA's definition of low income, and you can see those in attachment six of the packet. In terms of the level of access to food, using the low access metric, staff identified that in 2010 there were four of the ten census tracts that would meet that definition, and in 2015, three of them would. Now, because it's sort of impossible to say, well, a store now exists and may affect whether a census tract is determined to be low access or not. What staff also did, and you can see this in attachment five, is mapped each of the potentially affected grocery stores and the surrounding area and listed the distance to comparable grocery stores so that you can see is it a half mile to miles, six miles to the closest grocery store? So that information is all available. I will note that there has been litigation brought to both the Seattle and BURIAN ordinances, and we do have legal counsel on the line who would be prepared to discuss litigation issues in executive session if desired. And I will again just close by noting again that this ordinance would be terminated upon the termination of the Executive's March 1st, 2020 Proclamation of Emergency. I'll note again that there are two amendments happy to pause now and take questions or move into the amendments, if you'd prefer, Mr. Chair. Question. Union Council member LAMBERT Thank you. I have a question I got during testimony the other day that the person testifying from the shore industry said that they had divided outreach help from grocery and that. But 6% of the employees in grocery were susceptible and 20% in the government sector. Can you help me remember the background on that? Because in here it looks like they're more susceptible in the grocery sector than retail or government. And I don't remember that being what we heard in testimony the other day. So can you help me remember that? Thank you, Councilmember. I can't speak to the testimony that you heard the other day. I can simply cite the sources that staff used, which again was a British medical study that looked at particularly a group of grocery retail workers at a store in Massachusetts last year and identified the findings. You can see on page 65 of the staff report as well as information from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention about the impacts to people of color who are predominantly represented in frontline or essential industries. So I think one of the things the lady said the other day was. But some of those studies had been done in a conglomerate of all retail. And then it was just recently that they had because they were feeling that that data wasn't accurate to their sector to have them do that. The last thing I want to say, it's a little concerning to me on page 67, we can't do anything about it, but it's kind of what I deal with on a regular basis. So we all deal with on a regular basis. Is the USDA characterized as low access tax of those in which at least 500 people in or 33% of the population reside more than one mile from a supermarket, a large grocery in the urban area, it's not in a rural area. It's ten miles, ten miles to get to the grocery store. When you're 90 years old and somebody's taken away your driver's license, that's really quite upsetting. So I wanted to point that definition out because I think that's that's really very sad. So if this were to pass and one of the stores was to close as a result of this ordinance, what would happen to the people, you know, living in or served by hopefully, you know, with the new announcements from the president and the governor in the last 48 hours, this is going to be a short term thing . But what if in the short term timeframe we lose one of these stores and then there isn't a store coming out on the other end? One of the stores in question is across the street from a senior center, a senior living area. And I am very concerned that those seniors would not be able to get to the store. You might remember a number of years ago I tried to see if we could have golf. Carts. To move the people from their house to the grocery stores. And so, you know, we weren't able to do that for a number of reasons because there's a major road going there. But I still think that we need to look at that. But I'm very concerned that the ramifications to the senior community could be devastating. So I just want to put that on the record. Thank you. Councilmember Lambert, in responding to your point about the distance to define food deserts, they point out that I'm representing rural areas myself. If we had a grocery store within every mile of each other with no longer be rural, we'd be dramatically changing the character. People choose to live in rural communities and accept that part of living in rural communities, being rural and having more distance to go for such services. Further questions of mayors on Councilmember Bell Duty. Thank you, Mr. Chair. We had been working in my office on the definition of employees that are covered. I had some question in my mind reading the proposal about whether there might be unintended consequences in terms of including employees that are obviously not intended to be covered. One of the discussions in a different jurisdiction was about whether it covered people working in a home office. You know, in the headquarters office, truck drivers, etc. and it out. That work really didn't lead to an amendment, but I thought there was going to be an amendment, and I see that there is not one. So, Mary, could you just speak a little bit about the definition that's in the proposal as it sits today? Sure. Thank you, Councilmember. So the definition of grocery employee can be found in the ordinance on page 74 of your packet, starting at line 134. And it reads Grocery employee means a person employed by a grocery employer and works at a grocery business. And this gets a little circular, but grocery business is defined further up in the amendment at line 119 as a retail store operation located in unincorporated King County and then has the square footage requirements. So this clearly would not cover someone working at a home office. I think the question of whether it might cover, say, you know, a truck driver who serves that store would be questionable. You know, I guess it would cover them for the point of time that they were working at that grocery location. But this is pretty clearly defined to those specific grocery businesses in unincorporated King County. Certainly, if the council wished to amend this to add more specific, clarifying language about which employees would be affected, that could be done. That's helpful to know. I don't have more questions at this time. Thank you. See. No more questions. Very few brief amendments. Sir. Thank you, Mr. Chair. So in the separate packet that you were sent yesterday with the amendments, there are two. Amendment one, which is sponsored by Councilmember Balducci, would state that the council intends to review the need for the ordinance three months after it takes effect and may choose to repeal all or part of the ordinance. And then it adds clarifying language that states that if the Council does not act to repeal the ordinance, it would expire upon the termination of the executive's emergency proclamation. So then moving on. Amendment two, which is sponsored by Councilmember, I would exempt from the requirements of this ordinance a grocery business location that meets four criteria. First, that it is located in what is defined as a limited food access community, defined as a low income, historically underserved community that has one or no grocery businesses within its census tract that it is independently owned and operated with that owner having four or less locations operating simultaneously, that it is over two miles from the closest grocery business location that would satisfy the terms of the ordinance in terms of size and employment threshold, and that that location has less than 25 employees regularly working there. So those are the two amendments, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Senior questions on the amendments and having nothing before us now. I would call on the prime sponsor, Councilmember Dombrowski. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chair, and I appreciate my colleagues patience as we work through a good, long meeting today with a lot of issues. And I appreciate members attention to this legislation and the excellent staff report, which is, I think allowed us to digest the issues and reflect on where we might be on it and if it would be in order. Mr. Chair, I would move adoption with a do pass recommendation of proposed ordinance 2020 1-0093. The motion is before us. Thank you. I'll just speak if I could briefly get to it. Yesterday, the council adopted a proclamation sponsored in part by Councilmember Dunn, but signed by all members and the county executive. Reflecting on the past year in which we've been living with and responding to this pandemic, which has killed 500,000 Americans and tested our systems of government and society. And in that proclamation, we honored and recognized frontline workers, essential workers, including grocery store workers. And I think that that recognition was appropriate. This industry has been essential. And by that I mean our food industry and ensuring that we are able to deliver this essential function of feeding our community and the council's priorities in response to the pandemic. Housing, security and food security have been the top two areas of focus among those that we've identified. We really engaged in it. We cannot deliver this essential food without both the industry, but also workers who fill the stores and who frankly have shown up every day for the last year putting their health and safety at risk. You can't do it all for yourself. You can't do it on the farm. And without them, we couldn't be providing the food security to them, to the community that we need. So why should we pay them more for doing this? And why should government mandated? I think those are two real questions that are called to be addressed by this legislation. First, with respect to why government should do it, I think that we in our country have now, for over a century, a long history of bringing forth action by government to protect and support workers. There is an imbalance of power between the worker and the employer, and the equalizer in that equation can be and has been in our system, the government looking out for the broader good. We regulate workplace safety conditions. We regulate wages and hours with minimum wages and overtime. This is an area that the government engages in and has in our country for a more than a century. And in. Particular, I. Would say that the concept of hazard pay is well recognized and even our federal government. You go to the Department of Commerce and they have adopted regulations in the court of federal regulations to give somebody to give workers, quote, hazard pay when they are undertaking duties that were not originally contemplated when they started the job because of increased exposure to health risks, among other other things. And the code of federal regulations authorizes increased pay for hazardous duty, and that has occurred here in similar effect. We've got workers in the grocery stores carrying out this function who are putting their lives and those of their families that they go home to on the line. And I think in this case, that it is appropriate to recognize that on a limited, short term basis, this legislation would expire concurrently with the ending of the emergency proclamation, or assuming that that comes from Refugees Amendment. If the Council looks at it in 90 days and said we want to make a change or or alter it , that kind of component, but it's limited in nature. It responds to this particular need, and I think it's the right thing to do. A number of other jurisdictions, of course, have done it for Seattle and Palm Beach, California, L.A. County and others. And so we're not we wouldn't be, I would say, going out on a limb here. So for those reasons, Mr. Chair, I hope that the council will take this up with our values here that we have and keep telling and supporting frontline workers and have really supported us. Thank you. Thank you. Colleagues. Amendments. Councilmember Bell Dewji. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. The Amendment One. Amendment, what is before us? Councilmember Bell DEWJI. Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's been very succinctly and correctly briefed. This has been looking at this overall, and I'll speak to the ordinance as a whole on final passage. But I took a good hard look at implementation questions and, you know, making sure that it's clear and and can be implemented because the last thing we would want would be for there to be confusion and have people be disappointed and or not know what we're expecting them to do. So this the purpose of this amendment would be to just give us a moment in time, a fixed moment in time when we could take action if we choose to not take action. The ordinance continues by its term until the terminates by its terms, but especially given the announcements over the last few weeks and how quickly things are changing, we now have at least a credible promise that possibly every adult in America will be vaccinated within 90 days. And and we see that the cases have been coming down and the hospitalizations have been going down. Of course, all of this could change, right? Like everything changes very quickly in this pandemic. So I would not want to rely on that and say changes the expiration date. But I think we should take a good look and a reasonable but short period of time. And where are we at now as is necessary to continue? And that's the idea behind the amendment. Thank you for considering it, colleagues. The discussion on Amendment One. I like it. It's well thought out. Thank you for all those and see no further discussing all this in favor of please say I. Am. Opposed. Nay, the ayes have it. Amendment one is adopted. Council members are alive. I move amendment to Mr. Chair. Amendment two is before us council members. Hello. Thank you so much, Mr. Chair. And thank you, Councilmember Dombrowski, for bringing this forward. Thank you to the unions who have been supporting this. I'm very much in support of hazard pay and will be voting yes on this this ordinance. I've proposed a very limited exemption that would exempt grocery stores located in very limited food access communities that are low income, historically underserved communities, and where the grocery stores are independently owned . They're not part of this, these big national chains that have been making record profits because of the pandemic. I think that the fact that, as Mary mentioned, it's more difficult to understand the financials of each specific store and the fact that if anything were to happen to a grocery outlet, for example, we would further create a food desert. If you looked at the map that Mary provided, there aren't any other grocery stores in Skyway. So when we're dealing with a community that 70% people of color that has the highest proportion of African-Americans in the state of Washington, that many people don't have a car to get around and drive to the next closest grocery store , which is not in Skyway. I just want to be very careful about this very limited situation. Otherwise, I'm very much in favor of this ordinance and believe that we need to pay our workers who are been enduring all kinds of risk, putting their bodies on the line to feed our communities. Thank you. Further discussion. Mr. Dombrowski, I want to thank councilmembers, our ally for working collaboratively on this. And it was an issue that we identified when looking at the legislation. And of course, the history of that grocery outlet is that it took a lot of work to get it there. The one in Skyway, it was empty. The community was without a grocery store for a long time because the big folks, frankly, wouldn't come in because the margins weren't there, the profitability wasn't there. And so I think this amendment under the precautionary principle is well taken. And and we'll be supporting it because we don't want to do harm. And so I think it's very narrowly tailored and well done. Mr. Chair. The Chair. Councilmember Lambert, I. Have a technical question and then I have a comment. Could you tell me online 45 with the is? I've never seen one like that. Usually when you have hammered out with the rest of the line is there. So what is that on line 45? Thank you, Councilmember. What this represents, it's just the way that amendments are written because there are new sections being inserted. This is just instruction to the code revise or that when they add those new definitions in. We have to remember that there are two things going in in between two other things. And so we have to keep adding new letters and so that it's just instruction to the code. Revise here. Okay. I usually see the rest of the statement, but so that yeah. That, that is not there because it's not changing. So this is just telling the code revise or, you know, put this in here and then what had been l is now going to become M okay. So I agree with the statement of the previous speakers, the idea that we don't want to be creating food deserts and I too have a similar situation in my district where the access issue for transportation is very serious and it pertains to seniors. And also we have a lot of people of color in the area that are low income also. So and we don't have good transportation for the bus in that area. So there are a lot of issues where I want to make sure we aren't creating a food desert. So I was hoping that this amendment would say that all low access areas in the county would be treated equally. So I will be voting and supporting this, but I will hope to have an amendment for council that will say that all low accesses can be treated equally. So. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Ms.. Bergeron. Cannot I ask? What what locations are identified in the staff report? We might think this amendment identifies. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Yes. So the the belief is and I'm just going to scroll to the appropriate attachment here. The belief is, after much quality time spent on the USDA's Food Access Research Atlas, that this amendment could potentially apply to two of the locations identified in Attachment four. One would be the grocery outlet and skyway that meets all of the, you know, owner operated size, income and distance criteria. The other potential, although I do not know for sure, is the Red Apple Dominick's, which is located in District eight that appears to meet the low income, independently owned and operated and the distance criteria. I am not certain about the employee account and I actually have to confess I am not certain how many outlets that owner of that particular Red Apple owns. So that one is potentially affected by this amendment? Not 100% clear. So I hope that's helpful. Thank you. Yes. Further discussion of amendment to. Mr. WELLS. Mr.. QUESTION Thank you, Mr. Chair, of Council Members online and anybody else. But one concern I have here is that you have individuals who are working in grocery stores, are front line employees, putting their health and safety at risk. And at one store they would be able to get this hazard pay and then another store they will not be able to. And I'm just wondering if you have a response to that, to provide some comfort to me about it. I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. Councilmember Caldwell's. So. This grocery outlet is not owned by the national grocery outlet. It's independently owned. The national grocery outlet is just their wholesale seller. So financially they are basically independent from the national one. And so I would look at it in terms of which ones are owned by this specific grocery outlet rather than the national grocery outlet. And these owners own just the Skyway one and a rent and one. And of course the rent and one wouldn't be impacted by our King County legislation, since it's a different city. And I. Mr. Chairman, go on, please. Please. And I understand that. And I think that's a valid point. But my concern overall, again, is the individual workers at the stores who have their own one store, they get that hazard pay. The other store they do not. And I think that's the question we can't answer here. You mean that other grocery outlets owned by the national chain. Well, or even our stores in their area might not be skyway, but it might be in other areas where there is the store that would be required to provide that hazard pay, and there might be a nearby store that would not have to provide that transit plan. Gotcha. Yeah, I would. My position would be that each of these stores has a different circumstances and as highlighted by the very limited requirements of this amendment. And I can speak more broadly to the legislation in that regard. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chair. If I might, as a member. TOMASKY Thank you, Councilmember Cornwell's appreciate the inquiry. I guess I'm I think it's a good question slash point. The way I think of it is assuming that that that you believe there is value in the hazard pay concept for frontline workers. It's we don't operate in a vacuum. Right. That there are these other competing public interest issues, public policy issues that we need to account for when adopting that policy for workers. And one is in an area where there may be low margin that could perhaps tip the financial picture of the operator to the red instead of the black. The consequences of that are pretty significant in the communities identified by Council Members Alkalis amendment and that is you've reverted to Democrats creating a food desert in the Skyway West to one that isn't. We don't know the finances, but the risk of the food desert is real because that's what it was until grocery outlet came and council members. All my predecessor and his office worked very hard around zoning issues and development issues of the county to get that store in there to be viable. So I think of it as a as a a recognition that we're not operating in a vacuum, there aren't consequences, and that we want to mitigate against the risk of losing that fundamental service to the community of delivering food through this network. I don't know if that's helpful. Thank you, Councilmember de Basket. For the discussion on amendment to. See none of those in favor of amendment to please signify by saying hi. Those opposed? Nay, the ayes have it. Amendment two is adopted. Further discussion. On the on the legislation as amended. I will. I'm on my behalf. But I will say that I'm at this time of unprecedented profits for some national grocery chains to then discontinue making hazard pay for their employees, who we have seen documentation in the staff report and in pursuing since this legislation was introduced and over the last year of the pandemic, are at higher risk of contracting COVID 19. We need to step up in and encourage this type of support for frontline workers. We know that grocery workers are more at risk. And to use this type of legislation as a wedge in arguing that that's why they are closing stores in some hard hit neighborhoods. I think it is abhorrent on behalf of large corporations experiencing great profits during the pandemic. So very disappointed in how some of those actors have behaved. I think encouraging and supporting frontline workers in this legislation has great value. I would ask, and I think it would be the sponsor if you'd be willing to respond to a question about intent in that it be. Large, important, large stores and associations included, not individual ownership. Ms.. Brigadoon referenced in her staff report branding. And I think that might also apply depending on how ownership is structured. With some ideas and thrift ways in particular. Is it the intent to. Only apply to large own stores and not ones that might brand with other stores. Yes, Mr. Chair, it's my understanding and I'm happy to be corrected by Mary or legal counsel, but that the structure of the legislation applies to those larger entities and that a mere affiliation through a brand. This, for example, the main grocery outlet brand, if it's independently owned, it would it would still have to meet the criteria of the multiple stores and employees and square footage before the ordinance applied. Thank you. This is Mary. I'll just jump in to note that in the legislation itself, on page 76, in your packet, starting at line 172, there is a section that describes how business entities that would otherwise be treated separately are, for the purposes of this ordinance, considered as either an integrated, an enterprise or, you know, categorized as part of their larger body. And factors that are considered in the ordinance the way it's drafted, which again, could be amended if this does not meet the intent of the council members, our degree of interrelation between the operations of multiple entities, the degree to which the entity share common management, centralized control of labor relations, degree of common ownership or financial control over the entities, and use of a common brand, trade, business or operating name. So, you know, it's I think it's that final point that might get to some of the thrift ways. As you know, some of the stores that are independently owned and operated but operate as part of a larger alliance or as grocery outlet does as a consignment to that larger entity. So again, this certainly could be amended. This was patterned after the legislation that was developed in Seattle and the way that they made their definition. But but those those are sort of the clarifying points that the ordinance makes about how do you determine if a grocery business is part of this ordinance or not part of it? Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I might add a legal question. There's some that's turning around. We have legal counsel. So my legal question is this. If when this passes, it is prospectively not retrospective. Is that correct? Councilmember. I know we have Steven Tapley from the prosecuting attorney's office here. I will just note that this is prospective only. Okay, great. And I thought one of our in-house attorney, not not in Pasadena, but one of our members who. I'm covering more we're covering the intel is not. Giving legal advice. No, no. The intel the makers that are being prospective only effective upon effectiveness of the ordinance. But I just want to make sure that, you know, I it does concern me that we're telling a business what they will pay because it could become a slippery slope. But hopefully with the new information that we have out and the parameters were put in because of amendment number one, that in 90 days is will be gone and that this is the would that be able to make business decisions? Thank you, Mr. Chairman, to check that legality. Thank you, Councilmember Balducci. Mr. Chair, just a few comments on final passage. One of the things that we have all learned through this incredible last year that we've all lived through is, I think, and a renewed and deeper appreciation for the people and the things that make our everyday life possible. And I'm very grateful that I that I now carry around with me, as I think many people do, this idea that grocery workers are essential workers. But that was not something we used to say before a year ago. And and we learned it really clearly, because at first we were all so afraid. We didn't know if we were going to be able to buy food. We didn't know how things were going to stay open. And throughout all that time, all the uncertainty, not knowing how bad things were going to get and then how bad things actually did get over the last year at times. Every single time that any of us had to go and buy food for our families, there were grocery workers on the other end of those trips to help us get the groceries and feed our families so that we were able to say stay safe and healthy. And we've talked a lot in government and news and public and private about about that gratitude that that new gratitude that we feel towards essential workers like grocery workers. But truthfully, it doesn't mean a whole lot unless you honor people's work with appropriate compensation. That is when I mean, literally putting our money where our mouth is. And so that's why I appreciate this proposal that's been brought forward. That's why I support it. I, I want to answer just a couple of questions. I think a lot of questions have been answered, but that I have heard that have not been answered yet. So one of the questions I've heard about this is what if I'm a grocery operator who runs my business very safely? I've done everything I need to do with regard to each fact and improvements and and personal protective gear and making sure customers are wearing masks, etc., etc.. You know, why should I have to pay hazard pay when my workplace isn't hazardous? Because I've done everything I should. I think this is just a definitional question. Hazard pay doesn't mean that the employer isn't doing everything they ought to do. In fact, I hope they all are, and I think that many of them are. Hazard pay means that just by virtue of going out of your house and going to work every day and being around other people, regardless of what kind of protocols you put in place, there's a risk that somebody is taking on who's out in public working all the time, that those of us who get to work from home are not taking on. I've been asked why these employees and not other types of employees? Why not county employees? Why aren't we giving more hazard pay? Why aren't we do give Caterpillar some of our employees, especially the ones that are on the front line of actually responding to COVID patients. And to me, the answer to that is that grocery workers, among all of the workers who are out there doing what they need to do every day are some of the lowest paid just by virtue of the occupation and the industry. And so to provide a modest and temporary increase to their pay in recognition of the risk that the grocery workers have taken on for all of us, seems reasonable and fair. I do believe that it can be done without putting businesses out of business. If I thought a whole bunch of businesses weren't going to be able to afford this, I wouldn't support it, but I do support it. So I'm happy to vote yes. And I do want to warn that there may be one more amendment at full council, and that's because there's some contingencies around what the implementation date is. Kind of getting back to Councilmember Lambert's question, just by virtue of how we pass ordinances and how they take effect, it could happen on a certain date or it could happen on a contingent date, depending on whether the executive signs or doesn't sign or whatever happens. Right. So I may bring an amendment that says it will take effect on this day. So we will set a day that is, you know, at an appropriately short period of time, just like an ordinance would normally take effect on one of our two paths. But that way, everyone who's charged with implementing it will have a very clear sense on this day it starts. But I, I also want to thank Councilmember Dombrowski and the advocates for bringing this up, because I think it's important it's an important statement and important support that we should provide to important people in our community. Thank you, Mr. Chair. You're welcome for the debate. Scene nine Councilmember Best Q2 clothes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate the great debate today on the merits and opportunity to reflect with my colleagues about where we are and on this particular legislation. It is broad legislation for the County Council. This is a big deal and I think for me anyway, sometimes I think if we don't reflect and pause and think and look at things from different angles, maybe we shouldn't be in this business. But I think we all do that. And I, after introducing it, was, you know, looking at the debate and really reflecting, is this the right thing? And and one of my advisers, as you all know, I think, is my dad. And he happens to be the oldest former grocery store worker I know. As a teenager, he worked for Mr. Kreider, Kroger's store in Dallas, Oregon, delivering groceries and stocking the shelves. In fact, his dad, my granddad, said, I don't care if Mr. Crowder tells you to stock the shelves with the cans upside down and backwards, do it just as happily as if he told you to put them on the shelf, right side, up and forwards. In other words, he was the boss. But that was tough work and essential work. And I said, So, Dad, is this the right thing to do, paying four bucks an hour more? And he didn't hesitate. He said, of course it is wearing their bust in their tails and working. Hard. And dealing with the public. And and that was reassuring to me and gave me the comfort to know at least that that little check that I feel we are doing the right thing here today in courage member support. Thank you for the opportunity to bring this forward today, Mr. Chair, on a very packed agenda that can help. Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll? Thank you, Mr. Chair. Councilmember Belushi. Councilmember Dan Belsky. Councilmember Dunn. No. Council member Coles I Council member Lambert now council member of the group I like. Council member by night. The high. High Council members. I might. Mr. Chair. Hi. Mr. Chairman. About a seven I's council members, Dunn and Lambert vote no. Thank you. By your vote, we've given it to pass recommendation to 2020 193 as amended, and we will expedite that to full council this coming Tuesday. I'm pleased we are going on the 4 hours of Oak Hill meeting and I want to apologize and express appreciation to Councilmember Up the Grove, whose district executive committee his staff has been delayed from his old low tape 1:00 search. We also have on today's agenda legislation addressing fireworks in unincorporated King County. You've heard it our last meeting from residents of unincorporated King County who are dramatically affected by this legislation. I'm in fact, the testimony we heard was overwhelmingly in support. We had one person testify against one last time. Today, we heard from more people offering testimony on both sides of a allow me to note that a lot of the opposition to the ban today was from the industry. I'm from TNT, Fireworks and others. In no way if we had can we take action in and ban fireworks by the 4th of July this year? I'm giving the timing of implementing new legislation if we were to adopt it for council. There's a 30 day waiting period from the time it moves out of committee until it'd be taken up before council. I want to assure everyone this, that this legislation will not and cannot be in effect by this 4th of July. But it is imperative to me to make sure that we take up and address the life, health and safety issues that fireworks bring to unincorporated communities so we can make appropriate public policy decisions. This will be on our next agenda. And given the time and already delayed executive committee of the Fun District, we will not take up the legislation today without and having no other items on our agenda today. Mr. Clare throughout the month ago. Thank you. The Flood District Executive Committee will convene at 130. Thank you. Knowing of no other business can before us. We are adjourned. By. ", "output": "A MOTION making an appointment to fill a judicial vacancy in the west division, west electoral district, judge position number five of the King County district court."}
{"id": "king_f71bfe06-de4c-420a-bd71-834232016995", "input": "Welcome to the August 17th, 2022 meeting of the Committee of the Whole. And I'm King Cole Wells King County Council member and chair of the Committee. Before we begin, I'd like to take a moment to acknowledge that the King County Courthouse is on the unceded ancestral lands of the Duwamish people past and present. We honor with gratitude the land itself and the Duwamish tribe. Today's committee of the whole meeting is the third meeting on the topic of preventing gun violence. Today, we will attempt to build on the momentum from our previous two meetings and utilize the important information and experiences we gathered to develop ideas and the next steps to tackle the endemic of gun violence in our communities. Our panelists will share potential possible ideas for new legislation and funding opportunities, creative ways to implement meaningful policies in light of our state's strict gun legislation, preemption laws, programs that could make a difference. And and also to learn more about what to expect from next year's legislative session. We will close with a discussion among members of this committee on what we can do next as a council that would have potential to meaningfully combat gun violence and harm throughout King County. Before we get to the panel, however, we will begin today's meeting with possible action on the appointment of Alan Nance as the director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. We will follow that with a proposed ordinance relating to bonuses for non-representative county employees who refer candidates who are hired to serve as corrections officers, detention officers and sheriff deputies. And we will now call the role. Madam Clerk. Thank you, Chair Cole's Councilmember Balducci. Councilmember Dombrowski. Here. Councilmember Dunn. Here. Council Member McDermott. Councilmember Perry here. Councilmember up the grove here. Councilmember Council Van Bauer. Member, Zali. Charcoal wells. Here. Charcoal wells? You do have a quorum. Thank you very much. And I would like Vice Chair Councilmember Dunn to approve the minutes from the to make the motion to approve the minutes from our July 20th meeting. So move, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. All in favor of approving the minutes, please say I, I. Any oppose? Say no. The minutes have been adopted. We will now turn to public comment. Madam Kirk, do we have anyone in person or on the line wishing to provide public comment? Thank you, Chair Caldwell. There are two. People signed up in person for public comment and currently. No one is online signed up for public. Okay, very good. So we will have we will hear from two people unless anybody else joins. And a public comment must be related to items on today's agenda only and not be used for the purpose of assisting a campaign for election or any person to any office who is running or for the promotion or opposition to any ballot proposition. It also must not include obscene speech. If a person fails to abide by these restrictions and disrupts the meeting, I will rule the speaker out of order and have the speaker removed from the meeting. You have 2 minutes to speak and will hear your timer to go off. You can finish your thought, but please wrap up your comments as you go much past 2 minutes. You may be muted. So, Mr. Clarke, would you please call on those who are with us in person today? Thank you, Chair Caldwell. Jason Smith, if you wish to provide. Public comment, you may do so at this time. Hello. Speaking on the motion to approve. Could I. Could you speak a little closer to the microphone and identify yourself? Yes. Jason Smith. I represent King County Juvenile Detention Guild, speaking on the appointment of L'annonce. And I'm just asking the council to, before appointing visit detention center, speak with staff, speak with youth. The last three years, we've seen a drastic increase in staff assaults. Youth being locked in their rooms. We're losing staff a rate of almost 3 to 1 when 11 vacancies last year. We have 22 now and it's steadily climbing. There's this process is supposed to lend accountability and transparency. And I think the whole community, especially the youth in detention and staff, would benefit from the council seeing what the situation is there prior to making the decision. And that's all I'm asking for. We've also it's a great area, great situation to address gun violence. We've been asking for a gang intervention specialist to work with the youth for about five years now. Right now, we're locking the kids more in their rooms than we ever have. And it's sad as a worker of 22 years there, the conditions there and I'm I speak for most of my coworkers as well. And I'm just asking that you guys look at juvenile detention and see what's happening. Okay. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much for being with us. Alex Zimmerman. If you wish to provide a public comment, you may do so. Z, Kyle. Damn dirty Nazi fascist branded the in psychopath who speak to us from heaven. My name. I like Zimmerman and I won't speak about number seven guns violence for me very interesting. Two years ago Democrat mafia but in gang revolt revolt revolt this always money is this always dies and 10,000 people will be dead. It's nothing different from American revolt, French rebels or Russian revolt. You're doing this for one particular reason. Is this reason destroying America for the government? That's exactly what this happened in Take Trump out. So right now you want fix it. This problem is nobody can fix is this problem in never before 4000 years only God can fix this problem. Lenski You want this, sir? Thousand. 10,000 people will be dead. Why? Because you want control it. Make money in fast two year, you make a billion, billion dollars. Everybody knows it. So my opinion right now, who's this Democrat? Who's sinking inflation? Zero. You know what this mean in everything? Look very nice causes idiot cause happiness in only one chance But as we come back to our America is elected President Trump again. It's only one chance for all 300 million people. When we're done doing this, America will be disappear. Disappear? Totally. So I speak right now. Stand up, America. You know what this mean in clean this dirty chamber from this Democrat and Nazi branded the mafia what is totally destroy us and killing thousands and thousands of men. Thank you. You did not stick to the agenda, but your time is about it. No, I speak about the agenda gone wild. So we will now see if there is anybody else. Perhaps online. Charcoal wells. No one else is online for public comment. Okay, thank you very much. See no further requests. We will close public comment. The first item on our agenda today is confirming the appointment of Alan Nance as the director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. Mr. Nance served as the Director of the Trades Juvenile Division since November 2019 and has been acting as director designee ADHD Judy since his appointment on June 25th, 2022. We are. So is there a problem with that? I keep hearing these beeps. Okay. We also have with us Leah crackles IP from our central staff to provide the briefing on the site. And we are as well joined by the appointee who is on the zoom call with this, I believe, as well as Dwight Lively, who will introduce Mr. Nance when we after we hear the staff report. Sylvia, thank you for being here. And please go right ahead. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, council members. I'm Leah crackles IP Council staff and the materials for this item begin on page eight of your packet. As the chair said, the proposed motion would confirm the executive's appointment of Alan Nance as director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. King County Code provides for the county executive to appoint the head of each executive department and for the County Council to confirm such appointments. As you know, Mr. Nance has been or have been serving as King County's director of the Juvenile Division of the D.A., Judy, for the last two and a half years. In that role, Mr. Nance was responsible for managing operations of King County's 124 bed secure detention facility, as well as programs for community supervision. Notably, Mr. Nance has served as Project Lead for the effort to close the juvenile detention facility by 2025. Mr. Nance began his career as a probation officer and rose to eventually become chief probation officer for the city and county of San Francisco. In that capacity, Mr. Nance led efforts to expand alternatives to detention and diversion, leading to a record low population in the city's juvenile justice system. Mr. Nance has also served as acting director for the Mayor's Office of Criminal Justice for San Francisco Mayor Prior, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom. And Mr. Nance has completed the necessary background checks, and his appointment appears to be consistent with King County code requirements. So staff have not identified any issues. This appointment. Thank you very much. Are there any questions of the. Okay. Let's turn now to Director Dwight Di Lee of the Office of Performance Strategy. And that's it. Yes, I'm sorry. I'm wondering if I could ask the question in. Sure. And I'm sorry. If I didn't see you, that might be helpful. Individuals have their hand raised on this because otherwise. It's hard to. Tell. Yes. Thank you, Chair. Sorry about that. My question is regarding the staff member who just stepped up to speak with us and to share the the request that we look further and then and then. Your description. That the the staff have not voiced any. Objections to this. And in information that has been requested. Now, can you talk about that discrepancy? Because I've met Director Nance and really enjoyed him. And yet. This is the. Third time that I have heard from staff. A request to look. More deeply specifically into the center itself. And I'm just wondering if you can help me understand that a little more. Sure. Councilmember Perry, when I say that staff has not identified issues, I am speaking of your council, central staff, your analytical staff, that is 100% nonpartisan. And I'm not referring to any other staff. No internal staff to the juvenile detention center. Correct. So it's just a matter of our role of reviewing county code and what the requirements are for any particular appointment. We have no role in who the actual person being being appointed or confirmed is simply making sure that the appointment complies with the code. Thank you very much. I appreciate that. And Councilmember Perry, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions of the nominee, too. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Let's turn now to Director Dove Lee. Welcome. Thank you for having me. Can you hear me clearly? Yes. Great. So for the record, Dwight Dave Lee, the director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, I'm also the chief operating officer for the county. And it is my privilege on behalf of executive Dow Constantine to bring forward the nomination of Alan Dance, to be the next director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. I was going to go through Alan's background, but your staff has already done that quite effectively. So I'll simply say two things. First of all, as I think all of you know. Alan is an outstanding leader. The department is facing major challenges, unprecedented challenges because of COVID, because of the backlog in our criminal legal system, because of all of the challenges we have faced with staffing and hiring. And Alan is the perfect person to bring forward the leadership. We need to address those challenges. And secondly, Alan is committed. To reform of the justice system. That showed in his work at the city and county of San Francisco and has showed in his work since. He has been with us here at King County. And I am confident that with Alan's leadership, we will be able to move forward with all the efforts that the executive and the council is making to make our justice system fairer and more efficient and more equitable. So that is my absolute pleasure to bring Alan's nomination forward. To the Council today. Thank you. Thank you very much, Director Divya. Are there any questions of Director Divya before we go ahead with Mr. Nantz? Okay. Well, welcome, Mr. Nance and Director Nance, and I appreciate your being with us today and congratulations on your appointment. We, as you know, we are taking up that appointment and will be making I will see a recommendation to the full council for confirmation. So you, our staff already gave you an introduction, but we'd like to hear from you too, in terms of perhaps why you wanted to assume this new position and why you believe you are particularly qualified to do so. Thank you. And go right ahead. Great. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. And I first of all, I'd like to thank Director Timely for the introduction. Jericho Wildes and members of the Council. My name is Alanis and I am humbled and honored to be considered for the appointment as director of the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. After 33 years of public service, all of which were in positions committed to community safety, stakeholder engagement, and continuous efforts toward organizational improvement and changing lives of those in the justice system. I am excited by the opportunity to advance the quality of the services provided in our institutions and the commitment to partnership with our justice partners and the communities that we serve. I want to thank Executive Constantine for this appointment and his confidence to lead this critical public safety organization. I appeared before you today with a strong focus on equity and inclusion for people in our justice system, and by extension, that same commitment to the amazing men and women who make up the Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. I and our team continue to share the essential tenets of our work, which include creating and maintaining an environment where those in custody experience a place that is safe, secure and humane. I also believe that we need to leverage the opportunities we have while people are in custody to provide them with the resources that they need to address the factors that contributed to challenges in their lives that resulted in their arrests, while at the same time promoting and supporting their well-being as they contemplate the next steps in their lives beyond incarceration. I intend to focus our efforts toward building a sustainable workforce that leverages strategies to enhance recruitment, retention, and our capacity to hire and develop well-trained and motivated staff. We will prioritize risk assessment and mitigation approaches focused on reducing self-harm and incidents of suicide. This includes assessing structural, clinical and operational factors and acting with urgency and deliberateness. Our efforts must be trauma informed, grounded in best practices for behavioral health, medical care, and the safety and security required for modern day jail and detention settings. We must facilitate access to community agencies, programs and other resources while folks are in custody in order to effectively lay the foundation for reentry into the community once they have been released from our custody. If confirmed today, I look forward to working with the executive, the council, our legal system partners, the aged staff and community to operate jail and detention facilities, as well as community corrections program that serves the needs of our community and contributes to making King County a safer place to live, work and play. Thank you for this opportunity to make some remarks this morning. Thank you very much for being with us. I guess I should say, director designee designate. Would you please respond to Councilmember Perry's question? Absolutely. Thank you. First of all, I want to acknowledge the public comment that was made earlier today. I also want to acknowledge that we are dealing with some unprecedented challenges in our justice system. We spent we spent the last two and a half years managing COVID 19 in the institutions. We've been particularly successful in having relatively low numbers of our young people in custody at the juvenile facility that have contracted COVID 19. But it has continued to ravage that, and it continues to have additional impacts with respect to the morale of our young people, the morale of the staff. And, of course, it's reduced the capacity to have outside agencies inside the facility to the extent that we normally would. I understand Mr. Smith's concerns. We don't take them lightly. We've taken a number of very proactive steps to address some of the labor concerns. We're working with a workforce that is still relatively new to the juvenile justice system. Those folks require a lot of training, a lot of support before they get really good at what they do. But I will also say that we have a number of really committed, an incredible, tireless every single day to make sure that young people are able to be involved in programing, do have access to clinical supports, psychiatry, social workers, medical care and educational opportunities in our environment. And we'll continue to get better at that and will continue to be invested in improving our capacity to serve those young people up until the very day that we closed that facility in 2025. Our commitment is stronger than ever with respect to having trauma informed care for young people in custody, making sure that we partner with our other justice partners in solving the complex needs of our young people in custody. And with respect to gang interventions, we support strategies. But more importantly, we support partnering with community in solving those complex strategies. That's where our young people live. Those are the folks who can support them once they return to their homes. And therefore, we're committed to making sure that our staff are trained with respect to the dynamics of gang involvement in as you proceed into your conversation about gang violence. Far too many of the young people in our custody are there because they are charged with gang violence. And so targeting the core factors that affect what's happening in the communities where these young people live is in fact the goal for us. So while I would agree that staff shortages have probably created some of the most difficult challenges for our organization, and we're not alone. As we look at hospitals and schools and other institutions that are facing the very same challenges, we continue to work toward finding effective solutions. We've invested in recruitment and hiring strategies that include marketing, that include incentives. And one of the items on your agenda for today focuses on incentives as well. And so I would say that. While we have had some difficulties in keeping sufficient staff to to program our young people in the way that we normally would, I would say that when that when we have sufficient folks who are working from day to day, that is exactly what we do. And we will continue to do that moving forward. Thank you very much for addressing that question. Councilmember Perry, did you want to have any follow up? Thank you, Chair. Well, I can share that and thank you, director designee announce again. Very good to see you. And I've appreciated our conversations and and your interest in stepping up into this as a permanent position. I admit that I have not read the CJC Monitor report and I know that that gave the executives team some clarity around some of these issues. And so I commit to doing that. I also know that we are going to be visiting the center on August 31st. And as I came in and. The new position, I was encouraged. To visit the Seattle facility that I think it's the Kent facilities that it's in Kansas and and then the center, the Juvenile Justice Center. So I I'm interested or juvenile? Yes, I am interested in being able to take a look at their space and to hear the concerns. And my. Question, I guess. Is hearing everything that you've said and understanding that there since I started in January, there is just a huge number, additional number of residents in the Juvenile Justice Center. So I am now, you know, sympathetic to the combined lack of staffing and need for training and increased population and the challenges that that brings. So that said, I'm wondering what those who are bringing forward these questions or these concerns. Might. Say would be the unique. Concerns they. Have, knowing that this situation would impact any director. Anybody coming forward in that circumstance would have an untenable job, a very difficult job. And anybody stepping into that space is courageous, at least. And so so I'm wondering if there are distinctions that are being made specific to you as a director. And I don't know if you can answer any of those. I know that, you know, some sometimes there are politics or personalities or things like that that go into this. But I'm interested in that that question specifically knowing that all of these things are in play and would be in play for anyone. And so I do look forward to the visit and I look forward to doing my job of reading the Monitor report so that I understand more closely where those issues have been addressed and possibly where they have it. Well, we welcome the opportunity to have the council members visit the Family Justice Center. We're very proud of the work that we do there, and I'm extremely proud of the staff who are so committed to our young people. So I encourage you to have conversations with them when you visit. I think you will get a variety of perspectives from the folks who work there. But suffice it to say that I'm committed and my leadership team is committed to making sure that we tackle the challenges that we face each and every day with deliberateness, with urgency , with consistency, because we know that's the right thing to do for the young people that we have in custody. And I often say to my staff, I think about these young people as know you would think about your own child. What would you want for them? How would you want the system to respond to their needs? And that is the commitment that we bring to the work that we do. I remember that from our conversation as well. And it wasn't well. And I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you both. Are there any other questions of director designate Nancy? Dombrowski. Councilmember Dombrowski, go right ahead. Thank you. And as I've raised before, including most recently in our Budget Committee meeting, the smart broker got very serious concerns about the situation at the juvenile detention facility with respect to basically noncompliance with our with our law and state law telling ordinance and state law about making sure youth are not confined in cells. And I understand the cause of that is, is largely the staffing issue. But I. I but I want to understand more about is how it was, how we got to this crisis. Situation. You know, may be kind of the, the parable of the the frog in the boiling pot. The warm water gets warmer, warmer, warmer. By the time it's boiling, it's too late. But I don't feel we. I'd like to understand how we got there, but that we dialog a little bit about that and I won't be joining the visit on August 31st. In addition to the Monitor's report, I've also read the employee search base for the juvenile division of the adult division and the results aren't good. So just put it bluntly, the employees there are not happy. And turning to the adult jail, we recently had a few hour period where we stopped taking bookings. We've had five deaths at least this year, noncompliance with state law and reporting on those deaths as documented in the Seattle Times. And for years now, years later by the Council, our corrections officers have come to us with really what I point to legitimate concerns about forced overtime and some of the very severe and director designee announced. I guess my question to you is what is your plan at the adult facility to make sure we one, keep it open in Seattle and two, with respect to both of them, the catch your mailing a regional nurses center down there and then our Seattle one. What is what is your specific plan to address this chronic problem of mandatory overtime which degrades morale and really is a probably a problem with recruitment, too? I think it's time we really tackle this. Well, thank you for. The question, Councilmember Dombrowski. And let me say that first and foremost, we're extremely fortunate to have an office labor relations that is very engaged and has been working very closely with us and our labor partners, particularly the Corrections Skill Guild, with respect to the challenges we face with mandatory overtime. And we've been able to craft some agreements with our Adult Guild to be able to incentivize our folks to voluntarily work overtime. Unfortunately, we have a number of folks who have overtime restrictions that limits their ability to to work either voluntary or mandatory overtime or both. And since we've been able to craft some agreements to incentivize overtime, we've actually seen more folks voluntarily working overtime for those individuals who are working the mandatory overtime shifts or working multiple shifts in the day. We've created some opportunities for hotel stays so that they don't have to drive long distances to get home, only to turn around and come back again. We've been very committed to facilitating opportunities to ease some of the burdens that these folks have with respect to getting their their uniforms cleaned by creating some opportunities for some dry cleaning services. We've looked at a number of those strategies, and I will say that since we've implemented the incentives for folks to work overtime, that we have more folks working voluntary overtime. So that certainly reduces the need for mandatory overtime. But at the end of the day, we have to grow our workforce. We have to identify folks who are interested and committed to working in corrections as a form of public service to community to make sure that we have sufficient folks in those positions. Right now, we have 92 vacancies at our correctional officer ranks. And as you heard earlier, 22 vacancies at the June. The detention officer ranks. Those are huge holes to fill. And the fact remains that the over 1500 folks that we have in custody in our jail and the 42 young people we have in our juvenile facility, they're there 24 hours a day and we have to be there for them 24 hours a day. So that means we have to have sufficient numbers of folks working in order to make sure that we're fulfilling those obligations. So there is no singular strategy here. It is a combined effort with respect to recruiting, hiring and retaining the workforce that we have. But that also means that we have to find ways to consolidate. So we were able to move some of the folks that we had in custody at Kent down to the correctional facility in Seattle , so that we could also move some of those staff, consolidate and leverage those resources and staffing resources more effectively. And we will continue to look at other opportunities to to address these very vexing, challenging needs that we have in our justice system. But let me just say that. We spent every single day looking at ways to solve these problems. And as you are, director, I intend to make this a high priority, and I've communicated that to the Corrections Guild when I met with them on June 29th in their offices. And I'm committing that to to you and the public today, that we will continue to work on these problems because we are committed to solving them. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments? Okay with that, I. Councilmember Belge. Thank you, Madam Chair. I recognize that there's some interest in getting more information, and I hope that will put those requests on the table here today. I'm sorry. I was a little late, so I don't know if that's been done or not. But if there are requests for more information before we act, I hope that members will state them. In the meantime, I'd like to make a motion to move this out of committee with the do pass recommendation. Okay. Thank you. Councilmember Bell Tucci, who did make a request to hear if there are any comments in terms of perhaps holding off. And so, Councilmember Perry, it's hard to see that hand on your background. Is it? Yes. Sir. Go right ahead. Thank you. I am very supportive of director designee dance and would love to see this appointment go through. I also am feeling like, you know, we have. A visit which has been requested. Of everybody that I've visited, different folks in Seattle and they are very appreciative as director Nance is of council visiting and hearing the different positions and I know that different people have different positions about this. Feel differently, some supportive, some some challenging. And so I want out of. Interest in. To support those voices and to participate as council members. In this process, knowing that we already have that visit set up for the 31st. It would be helpful to be able to go through that. But that experience and to do my due diligence, which I apologize for not doing it to this point, I'm reading the monitor report. I'd like to do that and I know that that nine Justice are having a presentation on that. I think it's next week as well. So I just would like to see the possibility of having the opportunity to visit and to have discussions and to read that report and then have the vote for the appointment. Thank you. Councilmember Perez. So the request is to defer action of to our next meeting, which I believe is September 7th. Councilmember Belge. Thank you. I think the the timeline can meet both of these both of these interests if we are willing to be flexible. I would strongly urge my colleagues not to defer moving this out of committee until September. But if we move it out of here today and we can do that without recommendation, we can take it up instead of taking it up in the normal course, which would be two weeks from today. We could take it up the week after that. That's two weeks plus a one week courtesy delay. And that would allow for the August 31st tour to happen whatever discussions and additional due diligence members want to have between now and then and then take up a vote on, you know, on on final passage in early September instead of it being in mid to late September. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmember about two g. Councilmember Perry, do you want to respond to that? Yes, I think that's a great idea. Okay. Thank you. Does anybody else have any comment to make? Okay. And I think our councilmembers are. Hello. Go ahead. Okay. Thank you, Chair. Cole Wells. I'm also sorry for being late. I thought we were starting at our usual 930 time. That was my fault for not checking the calendar for the special. For the special time. But I also want to state my support for Director Nance and also validate all of the concerns that we've heard from our union members and the things that Councilmember Dombrowski listed. I think all of those things are true. At the same time, we're living through crisis times right now, the macro environment that impacts our jail systems, that is all very real stuff that is impacting our operations. And I take very seriously the things that we've heard from the Guild and I've met with them multiple times. I've requested an audit. You know, we have independent monitors, reports. We're constantly inviting the director to law and justice to report out the things that are happening in the jails and asking them difficult questions. We're honoring budget requests. We're meeting with the Guild multiple times. We're taking our oversight role very seriously. And so I just want to put that out there so that it doesn't seem like supporting the director is a dismissal of the valid concerns that we're hearing. Those both of those things can be true at the same time. I haven't heard an argument that would lead us to the conclusion that not supporting the director would lead to better outcomes, you know, going through a whole new system of further causing disruption to the operations, going through a whole new interview process and national search and all. To me that sounds extremely disruptive, especially toward a candidate who has been responsive to the requests that we've been making. And so I just wanted to put that out there as chair of law and Justice that we take all of these super valid concerns seriously. There don't seem to be easy answers that are that are just the silver bullet for how do we solve the staffing crisis, how do we solve the macro environment of a behavioral health crisis and a housing crisis and all the other issues that feed into extremely difficult operations in the jails? I don't have the clear answer to that, but I don't think the answer is to cause further issues through this process by not supporting the directors confirmation. So I just wanted to put that out there as a few thoughts. Thank you. Thank you very much, council members. I think that was particularly well stated and really eloquent and I appreciate everything that you said. Any other comments? Councilmember Bell, did she I'm sorry. Councilmember Perry I just wanted to share. Thank you. Chair Colwell So I just wanted to share my appreciation for Councilmember Hill's perspective and usual thoughtful depth of understanding and commitment to many levels of justice in the deliberation of these issues. So I appreciate the response and. And I. And then that carries a lot of weight as chair of Law and Justice Committee and because of the due diligence that that he has shared in that perspective. So I just want to show my level of appreciation for that. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Okay. We will now turn to Councilmember Bell duty. Just before we vote, I wanted to make the change to the motion that we move it out without recommendation. Thank you. So that motion is before us. Is there any comment at this point? Okay with that. Will the clerk please call the RO on proposed motion? 2020 20269. Thank you for your Councilmember Balducci. Councilmember. Councilmember Dombrowski. I. Councilmember Dunn. I Council member McDermott. Councilmember Perry i. Councilmember up the growth. I. Council Member van ryk bauer. I. Council members alkali. II. Charcoal wells. I. Charcoal wells. The vote is. 8i0 nos with Councilmember McDermott excused. Thank you. And with our vote, we have approved proposed motion 2020 20269. We will send this to the full council without recommendation. And with that, we will now go on to our next item on our agenda. Number six, proposed ordinance 2020 20300. And this one relates to referral bonuses for non represented county employees, for referring employees to the positions of deputy sheriff, corrections officer and detention officer. And we have Jeff Mumm from our central staff to provide the briefing on this item. We are also joined by Richard Hayes from the Department of Human Resources. So with that, Jeff, please proceed. And I think it starts on page 16. That is correct. Madam Chair. Thank you. Chair corrals for the record, Jeff, ma'am, chief policy officer for the County Council. So as you pointed out, the STACK report for this item starts on page 16 and this is proposed ordinance 2020 203, 100. This would offer referral bonuses of $5,000 to county employees who refer candidates who are then successfully hired and serve as correction officers, detention officers and sheriff deputies. This would apply to non representing employees and it is substantively identical to the proposals that the Council approved in July for the represented employees. And just as a refresher, the provisions of the the proposed ordinance are that only one bonus would be offered to an employee for referring a successful candidate. Those candidates would have to not only be hired by the departments, but also complete the probationary period before the bonus would be paid out. Employees cannot refer themselves to be employed, to be hired as a as a deputy or corrections officer, detention officer. And also, if it's your job to recruit people for this position, you're not you wouldn't be eligible for the bonus at C at the it expires on December 31st, 2022. So candidates would have to have their applications in by that day and is expected because they would have to be hired and then go through the probationary period that the payouts won't happen until 2023. And there is also a technical strike or amendment to the underlying ordinance, but that's the summary and happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Jeff, very much. Are there any questions? Okay with that. This measure is sponsored by Council Members Bill Dutchie and done. And Councilmember Bill, do you would you like to make the motion and speak to the happy. To move approval of the motion with a to pass recommendation or ordinance for the do pass recommendation. And just as was said, we've already done this for the represented employee. So represented employees who meet the criteria that were just described throughout King County are currently now or soon will be eligible for this bonus and this will add non represented employee. So now we're expanding the group of people who can have this incentive to refer folks. I will just say that as we have been just talking about, one of the root causes, one of the key root causes of the challenges we're seeing in juvenile detention and adult detention and in the sheriff's office is a real large vacancy rate. And what we can do here at the council is we set policy, we set law, we set budgets, and so we can help to provide funding to incentivize filling those holes. I'm very happy to support this. I want to say that as we go into the biennial budget process in September and beyond, we now have hiring incentives in place for these kind of headhunting hiring incentives, but also just incentives for people to take the jobs we may have to. Given what's going on out in the world, we may have to revisit the amounts we may need to make these more attractive. And I really hope that we talk about that during the budget process. But this is a good step for now and I urge your support. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Bowdich. And we we do have an amendment and I believe that's a striking amendment. Or is that a technical? It's a it is both. It is a technical striking amendment. It clarifies some language and then it pulls in language from the previous agreements just to show an example of there's a job fair example, for example, of just to clarify what type of work disqualifies you for the bonus. Okay. Thank you. Jeff. And I should have brought up again that Mr. Richard Hayes is with us from the Department of Human Resources. I don't know if Richard would like to say anything or available for questions. For the record, Richard Hayes, a senior policy adviser in the Department of Human Resources. And no, I don't have anything to add, but I would urge your support. Okay. Thank you. Are there any questions of Mr. Hayes? Have a lengthy series of questions for Mr. Hayes? No, I'm just kidding. Thank you, council member, for your question. For the record, Rick hired me at King County many years ago. Yeah, I've worked for him before, so just a little hazy. Welcome. Thank you. Are there any questions among any of the members of the committee? Okay. With that, we have a striking amendment. Would you like to make the motion councilmember do? Yeah, I'm. Move. Adoption of the striking amendment. Any questions or comments? All. All in favor indicate by saying i. I. I. I any oppose say name could be strike an amendment striking technical amendment or technical striking amendment has been adopted. Any further comments? Anything to close Councilmember Bell, do she or I should say Councilmember Dunn as well? Councilmember Janice ISO is a co-sponsor of this legislation. I agree with everything. My good friend and colleague, Councilmember Bell, she said moment ago, but I'm glad, I'm glad we're doing this and we should revisit the amounts as you saw Seattle that a significant increase in theirs as well as we come up to budget. Thanks. Thank you. Okay. And could I clerk please call the roll? Thank you. Count charcoals. Councilmember Baldacci. Councilmember Dombrowski. By. Councilmember Dunn. Hi. Councilmember McDermott. Councilmember Perry. I councilmember up the growth i. Councilmember von Reich Bauer. I Councilmember Zavala. I chair Caldwell's. I. Turco was the vote is eight eyes zero. Noes with Councilmember McDermott excused. Thank you very much. And with our vote we have approved proposed ordinance 2020 20300. As amended, we will send this ordinance with the do pass recommendation for the consent agenda to the September 6th Council meeting. The next item on our agenda is our third briefing on the topic of preventing gun violence. And before we get started, I would like to advise that today's panel, whom will be speaking with us shortly, will be discussing topics that may be upsetting for some people. The panel will be discussing issues related to gun violence, including suicide, domestic and gender violence, homicide, and other disturbing outcomes that happen as a result of the use of guns. If you believe that any of these issues may be disturbing to you, you are free, of course, to turn off the livestream as necessary. If you do decide to participate, please remember to practice self-care. Our panelists today include Daniel Webster, who is director of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. Kate Kelly, executive director of the Washington State Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which is housed in the State Department of Commerce. Renee Hopkins, executive director of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility. And Jack Nicholson, director of our council's government relations. And Jeff Bornstein, art contract lobbyist and president of Federal Affairs for Washington to advocates. And lastly, retired judge and Levinson, who is not on the panel and whom we did invite to participate but they were unable to do so, was Councilmember Lisa Herbold from the City of Seattle council and also someone else to represent her. And they just were not able to make that work. Councilmember Herbold has been leading a discussion in the committee she chairs on this same issue. And we're working together. And also, we had hoped that we would have somebody from Children's Hospital who is working on gun violence issues, and we'll hear about that a little later. Kate? Kelly Well, excuse me, we will begin by hearing from Jack Nicholson and Jeff Buehler instead about the recently passed Safer Communities Act by Congress. They will also provide an overview about possible funding opportunities, federal funding opportunities that could be made available to regional and local governments as a result of this legislation that is now federal law . Kelly will present next on the current and future statewide work of the Washington State Office for Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. Daniel Webster will follow by presenting research based gun violence prevention actions and options for local jurisdictions that would be able to have a large impact. We will then turn things over to Renee Hopkins, who will present the Alliance for Gun Responsibilities, Legislative Priorities for the upcoming legislation. And the meeting will conclude with an Levinson Judge Levinson, about further steps and actions that we can take as a body, as a way to kick start what we we we may be doing in our budget, our biennial budget that is coming up, as well as any policy measures that we would like to take. So with that, we will first turn to Mack and Jeff. Welcome. Thank you. Jericho Wells, councilmembers. Nice to see you today. And thank you for watching. We present some information. With me today is Jeff Lawrence. Dad. As was mentioned, there are federal lobbyists. That's a lot of Washington to advocates. So today we're going to provide just a little bit of information about some of the funding streams that we see through the Bipartisan Support Communities Act. This is the bill that was passed a little bit earlier this year aimed at really gun safety and mental health, about mental health resources. So in the sort of the appropriations funding structure, you really see three federal agencies that get quite a bit of funding through this bill. The Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education and Department of Justice. When we're looking at potential funding sources coming to the county or to our municipal partners or the RPO and other legal programs, we're really looking at the Department of Justice funding grants that that the funding going through the department, Health and Human Services really aimed at sort of the mental health side of of the school, providing students with mental health services and schools and those sorts of issues. Similar programs are funded through public education, but really by the criminal justice side of this, through the Department of Justice. And Jeff, I'll kick it over to Jeff. He's been talking with our federal partners about how they expect to see some of the funding in the Department of Justice grants being pushed out. So. Jeff, thanks. Mayor, Council Member, Staff great to see everyone at the August. Council member Wells Caldwell's I think I'm in your district analytic manner of my uncle, so it's nice to be, I think in your district I don't want to make any sense to him. Belsky Council Member Dean Belsky Sorry. Great to be here. So as Max said, with the bipartisan gun safety bill that passed. We had conversations with our Senate partners, Senator Murray, Senator Cantwell and some of our congressional partners called Smith, others in in King County, just to get a sense of how the funding streams will be enhanced, whether or not there'll be new programs that we can partner with, with the state and with our community partners that everyday do such a good job of trying to reduce gun violence and create safer communities. Where you'll see and what Mac and I are working on the direction of the council and the executive is okay, so there is a plus up. For example, traditionally there are many ways and many there are burn grant burns and grants and the COPS grant programs that DOJ has to help states and communities in this policy area. When I talked to Senator Murray's office, they expect both of those pots to increase, which means that knock on wood, they'll shoot more grants across the country, including for King County, Seattle, Puget Sound region, Washington State. And it's something that, well, we don't know quite yet is does DOJ establish new grant programs that will help enhance what burn and what the cops grant programs currently do not do? And that's to be determined probably later this fall. And we'll keep on top of that from the direction from the Council on the Executive. But I do anticipate you'll see a robust increase pots of funding in that we will have more direction from the Department of Justice and other federal agencies, as Mac articulated well on just making sure there's a bigger pie for us to apply for with our community partners. And it's as we've talked, I think, in a previous call, or at least a g r call, you know, that bipartisan bill was really the first major piece of gun legislation that passed into federal law since 1993 and wasn't, as far as some would have liked, gone after that horrific shootings were all seen. But the additional funding and some of the red flag will be able to help our communities. And so we stand ready to help from the federal level. I'll stop there and take direction and questions from the council. Thank you. I think given that we have a little more time today than we did in our previous two sessions on preventing gun violence. I will allow for questions to be asked after each panelist and then we can have a discussion afterwards. Are there any questions? I have a question. Councilmember Bell. Thank you. Thank you both for this report. I've been wondering what this legislation will look like here. Do you have any sense of the timing or process for the agencies to give direction? It would be really good to be getting ready, right? To be coalition building, making plans, thinking about how we might want to position ourselves to be successful, to get resources to attack the problem in new ways based on this new opportunity. And it's hard to do that when there's sort of a they'll let us know when they let us know. Is there any sort of pre sense of the direction that we might be hearing or things that might be programs or approaches that might be favored based on what's in the law? Councilmember I'll, I'll take a stab at that. Thank you for the question. You know, I think part of the the cops and burn grants, right? That's existing grants that have been around for many years. And so for our partnership with our community partners, I want to defer a little bit to Kate and maybe Rene to talk about , you know, whether or not we've had success as a state and a community on cops and burn and that way. We're grateful to your point, Councilmember. We are already loaded and ready to go on our kind of joint list. Let's not use ammunition, ammunition, metaphors here. Sorry. Thank you. Councilmember Apologies. But, yes, I do think it's I do think, you know, we already know that burn grants and cops exist. We know that new law expanded the use of burn grants, which I think is probably tailor made for the work that we are doing with our community partners. And so we can definitely start that process now, which I'm sure has already begun. And then we're ready. If Department of Justice announces new grants that we can just jump in because we've already done our homework. That would be my strategic suggestion. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions of Marc or Jeff? I would like to say that. And Councilmember McDermott, the chair of of our budget committee, might want to make some remarks. But I do you do believe, Jeff, that by the time we start our budget biennial process, biennial budget process in earnest in the last part of September, the first part of October, that we are likely to hear more. Or are you thinking that this will be further out? I believe we'll have more vision for that times. I think time as well with the King County budget process cycle on calendar. Again, I expect that we will have more for you, council member and council on the staff within the next few weeks in terms of new grant opportunities. At the same time, right, we'll run the second track on existing burning cops and be hopefully very competitive for those given the expansion of working with the burn grants can be used for. Thank you very much. And I should also mention that we did invite Director Dwight Titley with us from performance, strategy and Budget. But the timing was a little off for today because the executive's proposed biennial budget obviously has not come out yet. And so it's not been finalized. But we will be hearing from him before too long on what the executive's budget might include. Any other questions? Thank you very much for being with us, both of you and Mac and Jeff. Okay. Our next panelist is Kate Kelly. And just as a reminder, Kate is the director of the Washington State Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. And welcome, Kate. And we really appreciate your being with us. Well, thank you, Chair Colwell. I'm delighted to be here and honored to be part of this series of panels that you're having. I will say that I am, as we speak in New York, Washington, D.C. and I've been meeting with federal officials about that potential new funding coming down the road. So I do think we're going to see some opportunities to confirm what you just heard. We are going to be seeing new opportunities coming up soon. We expect mid-September to see a burn JAG grant announced. So if that's any help in terms of timing. Thank you so much. Okay. So I have a slides to share that can share. Be fine. Thank you. Okay. In fact. Okay. Come in. Here. Is that working? Yes. Okay. Perfect. And I did to anticipate perhaps the question, I did send a copy of the sites to staff so they weren't in your packet, but they will be available to folks thanks to that round. Okay. Well, again, I'm with the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which, as Chair mentioned, said in the Washington State Department of Commerce, our agency does a lot of work in community and historically have done community safety work through our our Office of Crime Victims Advocate the WHO, which you might be familiar with. And so through the Burn JAG program, which we administer, as well as a number of other community safety programs we administer. So those. Oh, I'm going to actually go back. Back. So those programs are in ministry. Some of them through that, what we call our community safety unit. And as part of the community safety unit, we have placed the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention under that unit and under that umbrella. So so the team that I lead manages all the community safety grants, and in particular, I lead the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention, which is a statewide office that was created by legislation in 2020. We really didn't get started until Director Brown appointed me as executive director in 2021. So we've been up and running for about a year and a half, just to give some perspective there. Again, the hearings that you've been holding and the panels had been so rich with information and really an awesome primer in firearm violence years in King County particular. I just wanted to show this map. It is not super current, but I just confirmed with the Health Department yesterday that it is the most current information we have. It just gives you a little bit of an idea of the spread of firearm violence throughout our state and some ideas about some of the areas where we see particular hotspots. This, again, is is data that from a five year period and only goes through 2020. But it is consistent with what we're currently seeing in trends. Although as we know and as you've heard, there have been spikes in firearm violence, homicides as well as assault during the pandemic and in particular and in 2021, we saw a spike. So but this gives you an idea of the areas of focus for a statewide office. And obviously, King County is right in there. This gives you some relative perspective on the various counties in the state. This is not adjusted for per capita. So as Yakima is way at the top, for example, but in terms of per capita, they are way at the top just because their population is much smaller than King and Pierce County. But they they have a high rate of violence, which we have seen persist in in the years since this data was generated. So again, Office of Firearms Safety and Violence Prevention, created in 2020, we were on the cutting edge of the creation of these sorts of offices statewide. By last count, there are 14 states that have comparable offices, and I work very closely with them and we coordinate and share best practices. And I was just talking to New Jersey yesterday, and they're trying to adopt. So I should probably say 14 and a half programs statewide. But I'm wondering what I thought I would do and what would be most helpful to you is just to kind of walk through the roles and responsibilities of our office and give you an idea of what kind of support we're giving to King County in particular, but also how we're standing up work throughout the state. So one of the main responsibilities of the statewide office in Department of Commerce is to administer grant funds. That's something the Department of Commerce does routinely and certainly something that this office is doing right now and will continue to do. I've identified here a couple of different programs that are specifically in King County that might be of interest to you that we're implementing this fiscal year. So that fund became available July 1st and will expire for the most part, June 30th, 2023. But we've been working very closely with Virginia mason there out of Pierce County, but they're expanding firearm violence, tension efforts that they've been already standing up, but they're now expanding them into South King County. So we're hoping that things from that program. The Department of Commerce currently supports the King County prosecutor's office, their shots fired program, and work closely with the Crime Strategies Unit to implement that program and then make referrals to community based programs, which you've heard about. The Shots Fired program is a state model that we are hoping to replicate in other communities throughout the state. And so we've been in conversations with the prosecutor's office about how we might be able to make that happen. But it's definitely something that that you should be proud of supporting. And then recently we got some funding to work on protection orders and extreme risk protection orders and domestic violence protection orders, which can result in firearm relinquishment. And we've been working closely with the King County Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit, which you heard from a couple weeks ago. And as you know, that program is a national model and it's a state model that we're hoping, again, to replicate. And they've been super generous in helping support other work across the state in that area, which we hope to continue to build on. When there are some other roles and responsibilities of the office. A Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention. One of the biggest role is to support community based organizations by providing training, technical assistance, evaluation support and just generally capacity building for these programs. One of the things that we've done over the past year is we commissioned a landscape firearm violence intervention program, landscape analysis statewide. We've focused on 15 higher risk communities, both urban and rural, big and small, and kind of to get an idea of what programing is out there and and to also understand better what the needs and gaps are in communities. And those needs are great. And so the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention will have a role in helping to support those communities. And we're doing that right now with some funding that we receive from the legislature. We're working closely with the University of Washington to help evaluate programs and also to give programs technical assistance that we're hearing they need. And now their role for the statewide organization is to convene and connect folks from across the state. And in that way that they can share best practices. But also just in terms of them understanding what else is going on and what the need is, as we know by armed violence, does that stop at jurisdictional boundaries? So it's really important that we're talking on a regional basis and even a statewide based, as we saw from the map, where we're seeing violence issues sort of on the interstate border corridors. And so trying to connect people, it's a big function that our office will have the cooperation. And just again, to praise King County, the cooperation that we've seen between King County public health, the prosecutor's office is just remarkable and something that that sort of model that we hope to build on statewide as we go about helping communities and connecting both state agencies and local agencies with each other. And then public awareness and education is another function of our office, where we see gaps both in the firearm safety kind of space as well as in the community violence intervention space, helping to get the word out, to educate, to provide useful information on on our website. And as we talk about these issues and produce report, consider that a big part of our officers role. And then finally and this is last but certainly not least, the Office of Firearm Safety and Violence Prevention has a has an important responsibility in terms of data collection and data sharing, data reporting, in particular with regards to firearm related violence and to include death, but also just injuries. And so we've been working closely with University of Washington, their firearm injury and policy research program, who you heard from also a couple of weeks ago. Dr. Rivera leads that program. We've been partnering very closely and successfully with them with we inventoried over 31 existing Washington firearm related databases, produced a product that describes each of the databases and the pros and cons of them. And then we can be into owners and users of those databases to talk about how we can improve database sharing and access to to better help inform not only researchers, but also policy makers and folks who are implementing programs so that they can do a better job of knowing where to direct their programing, but also measuring how successful it is. So then just a little bit to talk about next step. And I know you've been asking about that. We are that where we're at right now with the firearm safety and violence prevention. We we were very sixties. We received a good amount of money from the legislature to start standing up our grant programs. We intend to allow you to continue to grow those programs and working with the governor's office and legislators to grow our intervention programs, but also to grow our ability to provide technical support to organizations throughout the state, both big and small, and expand kind of our geographic and demographic reach as well, and then continue to facilitate collaboration and communication among our stakeholders. Firearm data related data collection and then focus on outreach and education, but also take advantage of the federal opportunities which you just heard about. It's been extremely fortuitous for us to have this office located in the same office that's administering the project funding, because we will be receiving additional funding from Department of Justice to direct specifically at some firearm safety areas and protection orders and crisis intervention in particular. So we will be able to coordinate that with the other firearm work that we're doing. And also we are looking closely at other federal opportunities, particularly community violence intervention opportunities that are coming down the pike. So we will be working on that and very much welcome partnering with local government on that as well as community organizations directly. As I conclude, I just want to compliment you again for for this focused panels that you've been doing on firearm violence. It's really I mean, just having those resources available to folks to be able to watch the panels that you pull together and learn about the issue. It's just a wealth of information. And thank you. Thank you for taking that time to do that and to raise awareness about these issues and for the work that you've done in King County to support these programs and to provide a statewide and in some cases, national model for how some of these data driven, evidence based practices can be implemented and how we can help to intervene in firearm violence and maybe get out in front of some of these trends that we're seeing. Finally, I just want to acknowledge, which is just the impact of this issue we're dealing with and the trauma that we're trying to get out in front of with some of these efforts. And what we know is that the root causes of this firearm violence is much greater than just any violence intervention program that we're implementing. And again, and one of the advantages of our office being located in Department of Commerce is that we I have colleagues within our agency are working on housing and workforce development and business development and many of the other issues that not peripherally but directly result in the outcome that we're seeing with firearm violence. And so all of this working together, hopefully we can start to get out in front of this problem both by treating this as symptoms in some ways with our firearm by intervention violence intervention programs, but also with with the many other initiatives we're providing to get it to some of the social health determinants of what's causing this problem. So with that, I will conclude. Okay. Well, thank you ever so much for being with us today. I'm really excited about what the work is that started up in this relatively new organization under the Department of Commerce. And I was very excited about the legislature passing the enacting legislation, and it's going to be terrific. To have you as a resource in a clearing house. And I'm sure we will be taking advantage of what you're able to provide to us. Thank you again. And I think it's terrific that you were able to point out some of the great work that the county has done, along with the board of Health, the prosecuting attorney's office and other partners. So, again, thank you. Are there any questions of Director Kelly Kate? Dombrowski. Councilmembers Dombrowski. Thank you, Chair Cowles, and thank you so much for this presentation. I really appreciate it. And I am proud of the kind of comprehensive, thoughtful approach that we in our state and our county are taking to this issue and really drilling down to look for root causes. And I appreciate echo the last sentiment that so much of it is driven by systemic economic disparities, lack of housing, lack of the jobs that these folks believe to sometimes have instability. And so I wholeheartedly agree with looking upstream as far as we can, kind of root causes. I am curious, though, with respect to the powerful database that you mentioned, know one thing we. Have with these wonderful series. Of panels that our chairs put together, which I think is just exceptional. But one of the things that we haven't drilled down as much into is kind of firearm crime associated with folks who have been involved in our criminal justice system. And I wonder if that if there are any trends or things that you could talk to us a little bit from that perspectives. So I want to make sure I understand the question. We. We. And you heard about the shots fired program, which is looking at criminal data and criminal justice involved folks who are either victims or perpetrators of firearm violence in King County in particular, and in fact, King County and Seattle. Yeah. And it was kind of a general sort of joke then. It's a it's fair question. Maybe was a little bit open ended in general. But I guess what I'm wondering, are there any takeaways, statistics that that would help educate me as to with respect to firearm violence, how, how, how what percentage or what kind of numbers are associated with individuals who have a history of involvement in our criminal legal system? I mean, we know that three quarters of firearm deaths are suicides. Right. But so the other say quarter and those are just deaths, but a firearm incidents overall. What element, if we're looking for part of our strategy would be similar to traditional law enforcement focus where we look at folks with a is is there a traceable pattern of folks involved in the criminal legal system where they maybe have a higher propensity. To be engaged in gun. Violence? What does the data tell us about that? Well, the data certainly tells us, Councilmember, that that if someone is a victim or a perpetrator and and there they are back out on the streets, that the likelihood of them being again involved in firearm violence is very high. That is firearm violence in particular in terms of just justice involved individuals and connecting that to firearm violence. I would leave that to the researchers. One of the the frustrations in working in this area is the fact that we did find 31 firearms related databases that are and that's in our state alone that are collecting different parts of information from different parts of our system. And some of them are doing it inconsistently or not talking to each other. It's particularly important that the health system talk to the criminal justice system. And just an example someone presents at an emergency room with a firearm injury and then tracing that individual back to the criminal justice system or or the perpetrator who injured him is can be a very helpful data point. But our systems just don't always talk to each other and obviously want to protect privacy and, you know, a law enforcement system and other sensitivities around our data. But we are trying to track those trends. And I'll leave it to the researchers probably to answer. I think any more the question. Your answer. Well, thank you very much and helpful in Italy with our background check laws, the laws prohibiting sales tell us running firearms. It just I wonder if there might be if we can look at the data some strategies that could be developed in terms of interdiction to get guns that are traded out of the regulated system and sold out of the regulated system. You know, whether we can up our level or our efforts there, if there is a higher propensity for firearms. In those cases to be used in in dangerous conduct. So I look forward to exploring that and hearing more. Thank you to the coalition. Thank you. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you again, Director Kelly, I really appreciate your being with us. Well, thank you for having me. Thank you. And one of the advantages of having Zoom is that we are able to hear from people who are not able to be with us in the chamber. And one of those is Daniel Webster, director of the John Hopkins University Center for Gun Violence Solutions. He was highly recommended to us and I was thrilled that he was able to join us. So, Director Webster, welcome. And we look forward to hearing from you. Go right ahead. Thanks. It's it's been an honor to be with you today. What I want to do is give you an overview of public health strategies and how we think about the problem of gun violence. I'm going to cover a lot of things, not a lot of depth, but I hope leave a space for answering questions. I've been studying gun violence for about 30 years and look at gun laws, enforcement practices, community interventions through the writing of things I can I can address. I do have some slides I'm going to share. So I think I have that capacity. So bear with me one minute. Okay. So what is a public health approach? It's a diverse field, so you might get slightly different answers to this question, but I'll give you the Daniel Webster version. Is anything in public health has to be data driven and very pragmatic. Public health is about solving problems efficiently and in a just manner. And that, of course, is highly relevant when you talk about a complex problem like gun violence. We focus not only on changing unhealthy or unsafe behaviors, but also the really thing that is unique about public health is our focus on environments. We know a lot about environmental conditions that promote violence and gun violence in particular. And I'll talk about some of those. And the way that we address that is through system reform. You got to create new conditions that are that are sort of at these root causes. We need smart laws and enforcement of them. We talk about that briefly. But at the same time, we want to minimize exposure to very costly and harmful criminal justice system. So public health, we tend to try to look upstream to more prevention oriented laws rather than simply after the fact harsh penalties after violence has occurred. And we're going to be very risk focused. I focused on not only on high risk individuals, but also on neighborhoods and spaces and looking for where we can reap the biggest return on investment for these changes on an incredibly costly problem like gun violence. I started with data driven and I just want to hold up what I consider to be a model for local local efforts to have data driven responses to a problem of lethal violence. Roughly 20 years ago, Milwaukee developed a Homicide Review Commission under the leadership of Dr. Mallory O'Brien. I'm very pleased that she has recently joined our center to help us spread this model. It's a very intentional way to collect and analyze data, to look at strategies for problem analysis. It's a collaborative endeavor with law enforcement, community based organizations and social service providers. And it's oriented toward, again, sort of offering data driven solutions to to the problem and also to to direct and prioritize the resources you have available for it. I want to mention a report that was put out in the fall of 2020 that I contributed to called Reducing Violence Without Police. Quite frankly, I don't love the title because none of these things were done in an environment void of police. But what we simply did is we examined a variety of policies and programs not focused so much on law enforcement, but more on these other conditions that drive violence with a set of evidence to guide prevention efforts. And I'm not going to touch on all of these, but I'm going to mention a few of them. Changing the improving physical environment, addressing anti strengthening intervention beyond social norms. These are the things touched upon or addressing substance abuse, financial stress and the gun problem. I'm going to focus more of my comments on that last part, but I want to mention the environmental issues as well. I think they're least understood and appreciated. One strategy that has been studied very rigorously in a number of settings, the data that I'm showing you here are from a study in Philadelphia, a so-called cleaning and greeting , vacant lots that collect a lot of trash, debris and other sorts of things. And you can really transform these into very pleasant green spaces for neighborhoods to help build community and people feel safe. This very modest investment is associated with an 8%. Reduction in gun violence, as well as other public health benefits as well, and particularly with mental health, are a remarkable return on investment for a modest intervention and not more costly, but has a more robust effect, as is really securing and changing dilapidated homes that are vacant and sort of attract. They're sort of magnets for crime. There are ways you can secure and make these entrances look as if they're any occupied home. And a randomized trial in Philadelphia found a 39% reduction in gun violence in the blocks where they focused these efforts on vacant homes. Really, when when there's disinvestment in communities, you have high rates of foreclosure and other residential instability. These kinds of things lead to more violent crime. When Philadelphia developed a program for low income homeowners to help keep up with the repairs and maintenance of their homes, but they don't decrease in value. Those efforts were associated with significant reductions in crime, including homicides of over reductions of over 20%. I won't go into detail here, but it is well known that alcohol abuse and to a lesser extent drug abuse, play important roles in violence, including gun violence. And there's, again, evidence showing that when you address these problems by expanding access to treatment, reducing concentration of alcohol outlets in neighborhoods, and reducing the hours you can sell or serve alcohol into the late evenings and early mornings, these have been found to lead to significant reductions in gun violence. Of course, the biggest environmental thing relevant to the problem of gun violence is guns. And of course, most guns start with regulated sellers, licensed dealers. The data are a little bit old now, and partly because Congress keeps some of the data bottled up to protect gun dealers. But we know that a very small number of gun dealers account for the overwhelming amount of gun crime in the United States. That is that is true in every locality that I've studied. And we know that problematic dealers are perhaps the biggest contributors to the diversion of guns into the underground market based upon gun trafficking investigations with the ATF. We found in a study that we did of individuals active in the underground gun market in Baltimore City, that 31% said that there were certain gun shop employees who sell guns off the books and facilitate straw purchases. And 24% reported that there were gunshots known to make it easier to get guns without a background check. I give that background information because I want to, again, focus on policy solutions. When we studied well, first of all, it should be recognized that the federal regulations and oversight capacity for licensed gun dealers are not nearly up to the task. So states have to step up. States and localities have to step up with regulations and oversight of licensed gun dealers. We found in a study that looked at one metric for the most common metric used for measuring diversions of guns for criminal use. These are guns that move from a retail sale to crime involvement by someone who's not the legal purchaser in less than 12 months. We find much lower rates in places that have strong state or local regulation of gun dealers and regular inspection and compliance compliance inspections. Excuse me. We also have done studies that have shown that when you do undercover stings and and lawsuits against these problematic dealers, that these have those actions have led to significant reductions in the diversion of guns for criminal use shortly after retail sale. There are some federal laws that restrict these prohibitions, but many states are taking actions to change their laws so that basically that these kinds of activities are considered public nuisance violations and therefore not protected by the protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act. We've even found that in in one instance, in the case of the number one seller, a gun dealer of crime, guns in the nation, a gun shop right outside of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, when it was simply publicized, their data on how many guns were moving from their shop into the criminals hands, they voluntarily took measures that immediately dropped the rate at which guns when went from a sale, retail sale to crime involvement. And then perhaps know, not coincidentally when Congress put protections in with the so-called Tiahrt amendment that. Sort of kept this these data available to the public. There was a 200% increase in guns going into criminal use after retail sale from this dealer. So localities do trace guns. They can publish where they're coming from if they choose. And I encourage localities to do this. All right. And in my talk, focusing on the policy that our center has studied the most and with the most promising impacts, this is handgun purchaser licensing. This in these under handgun precursor licensing. Rather than go to a gun shop, you first. Your first step is to apply with the law enforcement agency. Typically, they're going to verify identity fingerprinting, much more rigorous background check process, and often have safety training requirements as well. We've studied in particular what happened in Connecticut when they enacted a licensing and law purchaser licensing law in 1995. And conversely, what happened when Missouri had a similar law in place since the 1920s. Repealed it in 2007. And what we I'm not going to explain all the statistical modeling, but the the solid line here simply indicates the rate of firearm homicides in in Connecticut. And then the dotted line is the forecasted counterfactual. What would have happened had they not adopted this law over a 22 year period? We estimate 28% lower rate of firearm homicides. And while I don't have a graph of this in this presentation, we saw a 33% reduction in firearm suicide. We found the mere opposite. When Missouri repealed their law, we saw immediate increase in firearm homicide rate as much as 47% in this analysis. And again, we saw substantial increase in firearm suicides as well. And it's noteworthy that we did not see these changes when we were looking at firearm and suicides, did not involve firearms over a series of studies. We find it reduces gun trafficking, reduces homicides. Suicides has a very large effect and a protective effect against fatal mass shootings, as well as preventing law enforcement who are shot in the line of duty, as well as law enforcement shooting of civilians. Basically, this law keeps guns out of risky conditions that law enforcement respond to. Therefore, their risk is lower as well as individuals that they engage with. In recognizing that the Supreme Court just put forward an important change to the Second Amendment, fairly profound one that's going to change at a minimum, how concealed carry is regulated. I want to note we'll have a study coming out within weeks now that shows that you do. You can minimize the harmful effects of going from a made to a show issue concealed carry license. When you have high standards for meaning, no prior reckless violent behavior as well as rigorous safety training requirements mitigate the harms connected to that type of policy. And I'm going to end it there. Thank you so much, Director Webster, really helpful and very concrete examples that some of which we may be able to explore here. Are there any questions for Director Webster? Or comments. So council members are. Hello. Thank you. Charcoal Wells. Thank you so much, Director Webster. That was really, really helpful and insightful and just very appreciative of that work. You know, there's a talking point that some of pro gun lobbyists use that says, you know, there are all these cities that have gun restrictions and they have the highest gun rates. You know, that's a talking point that's used. But at the last committee where Councilmember Caldwell's held this discussion, someone presented a chart that shows that the states that have the the most gun regulation have the least gun deaths per capita. It was a chart that would almost look linear in relation. It can you speak a little bit to that? Is that a pretty well founded and understood trend that is pretty well established by the data? Yeah. Thank you for that question. So this is a pattern that's been we've seen in a lot of studies that basic relationship that you just described in the research that I've led and many of my colleagues in my center, we try to delve into which of these laws are really the most important, because there's a lot of laws on the books that honestly don't translate into public safety gains. So we try to really boil it down to among all of these different options, what are the most effective? And in some ways, it's a simple or straightforward conclusion, which is most gun policy boils down to where do you set your standards for legal gun acquisition and caring? Are you allowing people with histories of violence to access and carry firearms legally? And it's it's very misunderstood where people think that our laws cover those bases, but often they don't. So that's that's step one. And then step two is, do you have a robust enough regulatory system to keep guns from those who are prohibited ? We find, as I highlighted in my presentation, the two things that are critical to this is a licensing process for purchasers which greatly reduce the straw purchase and secondly, appropriate regulation and oversight of licensed gun dealers. You know, again, most gun dealers are very law abiding and fine. But there's a there's a small amount that do a great deal of damage without proper oversight and and some threat of, you know, whether it's litigation, losing your license or whatever. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Council members are alive for the question. And are there any other questions or comments? Okay. Again, thank you so very much for being with us. Director Webster for a really exceptionally helpful presentation to us. We will now turn to Renee Hopkins, executive director of the Alliance for Gun Responsibility and who has been part of all of our sessions. And I thank you for being with us again, Renee. And would you please tell us a little bit about what the alliance's legislative agenda is for the next session? Absolutely. And thank you so much for having me here today. And I just want to give an overall thank you to Chairwoman Caldwell's for really being willing to spend so much time on this issue that really devastates communities across our state and definitely within King County. So just a lot of gratitude from me and my organization for your willingness to spend so much time here. I have a really short slide presentation that I will. Attempt to pull up here. 1/2. Excuse me 1/2 year. You would think I would have this down by now, but here we go. Okay. All right. Can everyone see that? Yes. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. So I just want to start today by just I know you have heard this in previous panels, but Washington state has really been a leader in advancing common sense gun laws for the past almost decade now, which have included three statewide ballot initiatives and a fourth that we helped support that really focused on police accountability that is definitely intersectional with gun violence from our perspective. And we've also passed an additional 40 common sense gun laws that address all kinds of gun violence, including the intersection with domestic violence, suicide, interpersonal homicide and unintentional deaths. I want to talk a little bit today about what we're looking at for future legislation in Washington state and really encourage all of you to join us in really continuing to demand change from our state leaders. The first one is to align waiting periods and training requirements. These are two important components that can lead to a successful licensing scheme. As as Dr. Webster talked about just a minute ago and in 2018, when we passed Initiative 1639, we required a ten day waiting period and training for the purchase of semiautomatic assault rifles. In the next legislative session, we'll be looking at expanding those requirements to all firearm firearms. Also mentioned by Dr. Webster, really focusing on the supply side, both manufacturer and dealer accountability, and really holding them accountable for irresponsible practices that put guns in the hands of people intending to do harm. The third area, which I know is of interest to many of you, is to restore local authority to enhance gun laws. I think a really important point here is that this restoration of authority to cities and counties is to implement laws that are go above what is happening at the state. It does not allow for cities and counties to have less restrictive gun laws. The fourth option that I will mention is community protection sensitive places. I know Dr. Webster mentioned the Bruin case and the implications from the Supreme Court decision. They were actually very clear that restricting firearms and sensitive places is, from their perspective at this point in time, is is constitutional. So we have done that in a number of places already in Washington state. But looking forward at parks, libraries, hospitals, community centers, and we've already done in a number of government buildings. The fifth policy I will mention is permit to purchase or licensing in 2018. Washington State. Washington State passed a law that is required centralization of our background checks, which is really much more efficient and less costly for local law enforcement agencies that centralized with Washington state patrol. That process will be done at the end of next year. And we will then be looking to going to a. Full licensing structure within our state for the purchase of firearms. The sixth, I think if I don't count, is liability insurance. So this really would encourage safe firearm practices by requiring firearm owners to have liability insurance to cover damage or losses from accidental use of firearms. And then the final policy that I will talk about today is assault weapons restrictions and looking to continue the the push at the state level to prohibit the sale, trade and possession of assault weapons. I also just want to mention that in addition to our advocacy for specific laws, we are also we will also continue to advocate for investments in programs. And those include the protection or implementation of our bows and orders to surrender weapons. And I know Kate already mentioned this, but I really think it's important to continue to applaud King County and the city of Seattle for your investment in in what has become a national model. You heard from Sandra Shanahan at a panel. I think it was the first of. These series of committee meetings. And continued investment in that work we know is saving lives. The third area that the second area that I will mention is community violence, intervention interruption, which has also been mentioned by both of our previous panels. And we will continue to advocate again at the federal, state and local levels. And again, applaud you and the city of Seattle for your investment in hospital based solutions, as well as community based solutions. And then the final area that I would like to talk to is just public education, and we're so excited for our statewide office. That will play a really significant role here, as well as our partners at Children's who have been playing a really important role here. But looking at safe storage and risk mitigation, which we will be pushing forward a policy or a law next year that will require that information to be shared from school districts to parents annually. Locks Lockbox Giveaway programs, which our local children's hospital has been doing a great job of over the last number of years, and public education about extreme risk protection orders, which are a very evidence. Based. Tool to be used in all sorts of of gun violence, most notably suicide and and mass shootings. So that is what we will be working on next year and really invite you as individuals and as a county to join us in advocating for these really important lifesaving tools at the state level. And I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you very, very much, Winnie, not only for your participation with us today, but throughout the planning for this series of three sessions. Are there any questions or comments for Renee? Do I see Councilmember Dombroski wanting to say something? No. Nope. Thank very much. Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Well, again, thank you. And I appreciate your PowerPoint that you provided to us the slides. Are you able to get those to our staff, too, so we can distribute? Yeah, they are. They should have already. Great, everyone, thank you so much. Okay, thank you. We will conclude our meeting. Now our session on preventing gun violence with remarks from Judge and Levinson about further actions that we might take as a body, but also to kind of wrap up everything over these three sessions. She and Renee Hopkins were indispensable to me in planning for these meetings. So I'm very pleased that Judge Levinson is able to join us now. Please go right ahead. Morning. Thanks for having me. It's great to see you all. As is Director Kelly said, I just want to reiterate that I think each of the panel discussions you've had have been so important to better understanding the public health crisis of gun violence and the solutions that are going to be the most effective. Just to recap, you all have heard now from families who have been directly impacted by gun violence, who so eloquently spoke to the scope and the scale of trauma that firearms violence brings, and that you heard from those who've been leading the way on community violence interventions to interrupt cycles of violence by reducing shootings, particularly among young people in communities who are disproportionately impacted by interpersonal and community violence. You heard from those helping to identify and educate across systems about when and where gun violence is occurring and by whom in our region to help us with an informed approach. We heard from those helping to reduce gun violence and enhance survivor and community safety by ensuring individuals who present a heightened risk of harm to themselves or to others are prohibited through civil court orders from possessing, purchasing or accessing firearms and helping make sure those prohibitions are then complied with. Well, you heard from those working on strengthening state, federal and local firearm safety laws, because the data, as Dr. Webster summarized, is so clear that states with stronger gun safety laws that are empirically based have less gun violence. And then you've heard from researchers whose work is so important to all of us in helping to debunk the myths and to identifying gaps in our laws and our systems, to explaining public health approaches, and to educating the public and policymakers about the most effective and empirically based prevention strategies. Together, they reinforced what the research tells us that gun violence is a complex problem that must be met with a range of solutions, and that local government can play a critically important role in implementing multi-pronged, research based approaches to prevent harm that comes from guns, whether guns used in domestic violence and suicide in community based violence, or other types of threats and harm. I think also that your discussions have helped highlight the opportunities for collaborative inter jurisdictional actions and investments, particularly as the county and the city of Seattle are both discussing their budgets and their state legislative priorities for next session. And as you've heard from Director Kelly, the timing is also good for collaborating with the State on implementation of the new Federal Safer Communities Act through the DOJ grants that we expect to see. And those grants will be primarily in our state to help broaden the use of the extreme risk protection under law and to enhance the screening processes for gun purchasers who are under the age of 21. The two prongs of the gun violence prevention work that the City of Seattle and King County both already find present particularly good opportunities for the executives and counsels to work collaboratively in the weeks ahead. Those would be the community violence intervention interruption programs that you find in the Regional Domestic Violence Firearms Enforcement Unit that you heard about it. The first the panel discussion since the units program manager couldn't be here today. Charcoal Wells had asked if she would send a written summary for your review as you move forward to consider next steps and have your discussions starting today. So she has sent it along and I'm happy to review that charcoal wells, if that's helpful. Now we're happy to pause and let you all ask questions and discuss and be available to answers is helpful. Thank you, Judge Levinson. And and well, how about going ahead and referring to the document that Sandra Shanahan sent us? We did get that out to all the committee members. So great. Well, just as a reminder for everybody, the regional domestic violence enforcement unit along Main, the unit was established in 2018. It's collaboratively funded by the City of Seattle and King County, and it's intentionally multi-disciplinary and inter jurisdictional, and it's focused on reducing gun violence and enhancing survivor and community safety by proactively assisting both with orders to surrender weapons. And they're now called orders to surrender and prohibit weapons for clarity for respondents to know their responsibilities. And by assisting with extreme risk protection orders, as you've heard before, it's so important that all parts of. A system worked together to get information as early as possible, as far upstream as possible. And the courts have information they need to effectively issue these orders and that then there's follow up. There's work with survivors, there's local law enforcement, all aspects of the system so that those who pose the most imminent high risk to themselves or to others have these firearms relinquished, as the courts have ordered, and that they continue to comply for as long as the prohibitions are in effect. So program manager Senator Shanahan put together for you some options if you want to expand the capacity of that unit. She highlighted some of the areas where they have seen a real need in the first couple of years. The first is what's called a civilian threat assessment investigator excuse me. This would be to help all the jurisdictions in the region engage in real time threat assessment and in-depth follow up on particularly the most high risk cases because of the nature of the unit's workflow, because they need to handle many cases. And on a very quick turnaround, with new cases coming in each day, they really do need someone who can who has the expertize and can lead in terms of case assessment and investigation, serving as a resource to all the different agencies in the county , as well as the federal and other state agencies who look to us when there's a respondent who's now in King County. So this individual would provide that immediate and ongoing consultation, help triage these cases, track and monitor the high risk respondents across the civil and criminal cases for further investigation where needed that some of the things they would do, for example, the state had adopted in recent years what's now called law and try regulations where there's a report put out regularly about those who are prohibited possessors who attempt to purchase firearms. So being able to follow up on that and work with the agencies now on any actionable information to be able to work on those cases, in particular where there's been a lack of compliance since quick intervention is so important. Conducting interviews, reaching out to those to provide additional information. So for example, when a respondent says, I don't have any firearms, but the survivors saying, in fact, that's not true, here's the risk that we're facing that individual. Now, the investigator could help follow up, get the information from the pawnshop if the respondent is saying that they, in fact, sold it to a pawn shop or gun ranges or retailers, other victims, other individuals and sources of evidence. Sometimes it's video evidence. So there's a number of ways that additional that initial in-depth investigation for the high risk cases would be very helpful in reducing the silos and allow for the cross communication on these types of civil protection orders across the jurisdictions. And this, again, could be would not need to be a sworn person. It could be a formally sworn person or civilian who's got that investigative expertize. The second area that the unit had highlighted as a possible way to expand their capacity. There are additional cases that they haven't really been able to provide the support and expertize on given the current workload. Their focus has been on the Superior Court and some of those Seattle Municipal Court cases, but there are other cases that would be helpful to review at the time of filing and to screen and see if search warrants are needed and survivor planning and help support is needed. Those would be in more of the municipal court cases, the district court protection order cases, and in the specialty courts, in particular, the therapeutic courts that currently don't have that kind of support where loved ones are involved in those court processes. And then there's still a gap in the compliance. And this individual, this attorney and advocate, would help also in particular on compliance review hearings that are set every week in King County Superior Court to help ensure that those firearm surrenders have been as comprehensive as they're required to be, and they're not still dangerous weapons left to be accessed. So they would triage those cases. The third bucket, if you will. So the second one is probably an area where well, let me go back to the first one. I would say the first one is a particularly important area. I think there's county the funding. The second one might be where the city of Seattle would provide funding. And then this third one, which would be a King County Sheriff's Office detective and a non sworn support staff. And this is because that unit has heard from the various interpreters that just don't have the capacity to follow up on. These orders in a timely way, don't have the expertize, don't have the specialized units in the city of Seattle and in some of the other jurisdictions have. And that's to make sure that firearms are, in fact, temporarily removed when the protection orders initially served. As you know, that's a very high risk time and they're removed at the time of that DV 911 response where it's a criminal response. As you all have heard, the research is really clear that that swift and certain removal is critically important. And one of the barriers that we've seen in some of the larger jurisdictions, for example, if you're going to travel across the county, if officers do remove firearms from a scene, but they have to go back to the agencies evidence storage and log those in and package them, do the prep work and the data download there before they can go back out again. That really minimizes the number of chases they can be attentive to in a day. So the idea here that was recommended was a mobile vehicle support person to be working in partnership with the sworn officer to be able to remove those firearms and then be on call across these jurisdictions and not have to go back to the evidence storage after each interaction with the respondent were weapons, so the unit would provide this temporary, secure place to store firearms so that multiple orders can be addressed in a day. That going to be particularly helpful for those agencies in the region that just don't have this capacity or expertize. And then the last, which might be appropriate for either jurisdiction or for foundation funding or from the federal money that might be coming forward, is a capacity increase for training, outreach and partnership. And this is, as you've heard, because the unit has called on frequently to ask for help with education and training, to help with development of laws, to work with researchers. There's just not staff capacity to do all that and handle the day to day cases. So this person would be prioritizing that work. So the information sharing, the replication, the training and the collaboration, and it should be externally focused. It would also help you with the collaboration with the Criminal Justice Training Commission and other state associations for work on ongoing best practices, training and protocols. So that's an abbreviated version of all of that. Those are areas, if you do want to expand the capacity of your specialized unit that have been highlighted for you to consider. Charles there, happy to take any questions or refer to others on the panel. Okay. Thank you so much. And I'm sorry I always say end but Judge Levinson so and I would like to see outstanding presentation really helpful that you were able to go over Sandra Shanahan's document. She did want to be with us today, but could not. So thank you. Are there any questions or comments for Judge Levinson? You were just so comprehensive. We don't have any questions. It was all just very clear. Just to conclude on that charcoal wells that just went for those who maybe weren't on the council at the time, that unit in particular came out of the work of the public health reform discussions starting in 20 1617 and leadership of several of you on the Council. So it's great to see that it has really made a difference. And I think that thank you. And I think Councilmember McDermott deserves a whole lot of thanks for all the work that he led on. Okay. We've come to the end of the panel, but not of our discussion. What I had mentioned to all of my colleagues that I was hopeful that we could have some discussion at this point to go over what we have taken up over these three sessions of the committee, of the whole meetings. But I first would like to thank everybody who has participated today, but also over the three sessions. Some people have participated each time, and there are others who are not with us today, but were invaluable in providing very essential information to us as we take up what I think is a really critical issue in our country. I especially like to thank and Levinsohn and Renee Hopkins, who were just outstanding for me to work with in terms of planning out these three sessions. They were right there with excellent suggestions along the way, and I don't think I know we could not have put this all together without the two of them. So thank you. Also, I'd like to thank our committee of the whole staff and very much in particular, my Deputy Chief of Staff and policy director John Fowler, who really did an amazing job of putting this all together with me. So I'd like to hear from you all now. Anybody who would like to bring up anything that was particularly meaningful to you, and I'm talking about my colleagues on the committee of the whole. And any suggestions that you might have at this point? I think this is an area that we may want to noodle on a little bit, chew on in terms of thoughts about where to proceed from here on. It's it's very helpful that we will be going into our biennial budget time frame and working on a budget, the proposed biennial budget that the executive will come over. We'll be developing our legislative agenda with Jack Nicholson and Simon Ferrata to prepare for the next legislative session, which begins the second Monday of January in 2023. Also, a number of us are going to be going to our nation's capital, Washington, D.C., the week of September 19th to meet with our congressional delegation and staff. And so that will be very timely to in terms of bringing out what is important to us as council members individually, but also with regard to our Council. To start things off, I'd like to bring up one thing I mentioned earlier in my introduction at the beginning of the meeting about Seattle Children's Hospital being involved in a program. And it's unfortunate that that we cannot have them with us today. But I had it had come to my attention that Seattle Children's Hospital is has a program that gives away free trigger locks and guns storage boxes at events across western Washington. I believe it's this week that they're doing so up in Bellingham through the city government and the city council. And of course, Children's Hospital has partnered with our Board of Health many times in recent years on this issue. But I'm very interested in exploring a program such as that where this could be a budget proviso that I'm looking at and how we could be able to provide free gun storage boxes and trigger locks to those who request them in our community. But I would like now to hear from you. So I'm looking at any of my colleagues who would like to make any remarks, give us suggestions or whatever. Do I have any takers? I'm sure. Yes, Councilmember. But thank you. I am thinking about your request and I find myself wanting to take on board all of the very detailed and deep information that we've received. Maybe you have some time to think through roles because there have been a lot of really great policy suggestions, and that's been one of the really wonderful things about this series. It wasn't just academic, although we did get a lot of good academic information that underlies the policy suggestions. There were a lot of really strong recommendations for action. I find myself struggling with which are the things that the county does can do alone, which are the things where we need to work with partners and which are things that are really others to do, and perhaps that there are lobbying efforts on our part. So. That's where I sit with this today, sort of wanting to maybe have some kind of a compilation of the various policy prescriptions that we've heard about where they're at in terms of implementation. Because one of the things that came through very strongly in today's presentation was that we're not starting from zero here. There's a lot of really good work going on in the area of gun violence within King County, but what are our best next steps? And then secondly, where we open today with the idea that there's going to be more resource for this activity makes it makes it an urgent activity. I mean, it's an urgent activity anyway, because the problem is so, you know, damaging to people's lives. But knowing that resources are increasing, we should really be working hard at identifying where our actions are best placed, what resources or resources are required, and then position ourselves to go get those resources when they become available. So kind of general reaction to what next question and I want to add my voice publicly to everybody else's. This has been a really remarkable series of panels. Very I can't remember a time when I sat through a series of panels that I took so much away from and want to go back and revisit and really relearned, learn more. So congratulations and thank you for pulling all that together. Oh. Well, thank you. That, I think, is very important endeavor to do. And I understand that this is something that we all need to give a lot of thought to or those of us who wish to anyway, because there's such an enormous impact in our community here, but also across the country. Thank you for your words. And is there anybody else who would like to make a comment and if you have anything specific that you'd like to float out there in terms of ideas for legislation, for policy or for funding, please bring it up if you're able to at this point. Not low. Councilmember Siler. Thank you. I want to echo what Councilmember Belushi said about the value of these discussions. You know, we kind of spent a lot of time on the problem statement and we all know how big the problem is. And we did spend a lot of time on the problem statement, but it was so remarkable that we had concrete lists of solutions. Data driven solutions. What has worked? What hasn't worked? What are the trends? I thought that was such a good use of time and I wanted to thank you as the chair and all of our presenters who came in and presented on that. I would also echo another statement that Councilmember Baldwin, she said, which is a lot of the work that we heard that the county can do, the county in some shape or form is already doing. And so I think it would be really helpful if we, as the council plugged in with our executive branch, see what work is already happening and see how we can add our efforts into there rather than starting new tracks on things I know initiatives like the Regional Peace Keepers Collective, they're doing a lot of the intervention prevention, space activation, integrating different systems like the hospitals with local service providers, and making sure that we have a truly regional, seamless approach where all different levels of society are communicating with each other to respond to the gun violence epidemic and to share data with each other. And so a lot of these solutions are underway, and they have laid the groundwork for engaging different communities that they're doing lockbox events and unincorporated King County. I went to one a couple of months ago. And so I think just making sure that all of our branches of government are in communication and being additive to one another is really important, as always. Thank you, council members. And you mentioned some of our programs. We do have a wealth of programs in our county and we've been presenting some of them, hearing from some of them, but not all of them. And so I'm very proud of what we have managed to accomplish. But there's so much more to do as you've recognized. And we do have the state legislative session coming up in our meeting with our federal partners in the nation's capital. So I'm very encouraged by what we may. Able to accomplish. But as a locality, a local government, we can't do as much as we want without some changes being made at the state level and more funding from the federal level as well. Is there anybody else who would like to make any comments? We did have one measure pass from Councilmember DEMBOSKY. We did that at our last meeting, and I'm really looking forward to that being implemented with the voluntary turning in of weapons. And but and anybody want to venture forth with some other ideas. It appears not at this time. My staffer, John Fowler, will be working with any of your staff if they would like to contact him. And we'll see what we can manage to accomplish in the budget or through legislation that we can introduce. And I really thank you all for participating in this series of meetings and roundtable panel discussions. I think it's been very valuable, at least it has to me. And I think back of not only the progress that's been made, but some of the real difficulties and challenges. Tom Weil's a federal prosecutor and residing in Seattle who was a friend of mine, and he was part of the Washington Cease Fire Organization, which was the predecessor to the alliance that we have now. And there was another group before that which he was involved with then. I don't remember the exact name. It was a lengthy committee for something, but he was murdered in 2001 and I had seen him just a few days on the top of Queenan Hill at Starbucks. I had served with him on the Clean Air and Community Council before I went to the state legislature, and his killer has not been prosecuted, has not been located or prosecuted, and he gave his life to this work that I find is so critical. I wish he was still with us, but he's not. And I, for one, am determined that while I'm in public office and afterwards, that I will do as much as I can to continue progress being made . I look forward to our upcoming budget process and we'll work hard to come up with a provisos that I think could be helpful. I, I am very pleased that we've been able to engage in discussions with everyone at the table, including academic researchers, community members, elected officials. And most importantly to me, we were able to hear from many people who were so brave in sharing their own personal traumas, tragedies and experiences caused by gun violence. I want to always remember what they said, but we do need to be cognizant of what can happen from here, what we can do. And I look forward to being able to continue this discussion that's been very illuminating, but heartbreaking but hopeful. I hope beyond hope that we can have the legislature and act signed into law by the governor, many of, if not all of the priorities that the alliance is setting forth and so many community partners are working on. And I'm optimistic that we are going to be able to get quite a bit of new funding from the federal government. And I. I look forward to working with all of you. Okay. This concludes the action items on our agenda. And I do believe we may have had a couple of members miss a vote. Madam Clerk, are there any. Councilmember McDermott was excused from the meeting, and he's the only one that missed. Okay, great. Okay. With that, we will meet again at our next regularly scheduled meeting, which is on September seven. Thank you again for all who participated in our meeting today. And if there's no other business to come before our committee, we are adjourned. ", "output": "A MOTION confirming the appointment of Allen Nance as the director of the department of adult and juvenile detention."}