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.