Welcome everyone. This is Mary Lou Polly, the mayor of Issacole, and I'm calling the
June 15th city council meeting to order. And you just heard my fake gavel calling
us together. Before we start our meeting tonight and move on our agenda items, I'd
like to acknowledge that we're using a remote meeting format. On March 6th, I issued
an emergency proclamation declaring a civil emergency in the city due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
On March 24th, the governor issued Proclamation 20-28 prohibiting meetings that fall under the
Open Public Meetings Act, such as our city council meetings, from being conducted in person.
The prohibition has been extended through June 17th, so thank you very much for joining
us online today. Tonight's meeting will be held entirely remotely. This meeting will be recorded,
streamed live, and available for later viewing on the city's YouTube channel. A call-in number
was provided on the meeting agenda for members of the public who wish to call
in by phone to listen live to the meeting. Before proceeding through our agenda this
evening, I'd like to take a few minutes to just share some of my thoughts.
I feel heartbreak and anger over the murder of George Floyd, the wave of racist
events and treatment of protesters across the country, and the systemic racism that continues to
exist in our country. The council and I are committed to take action for change
in Issaquah. In these last few weeks, demonstrators on the steps of Issaquah City Hall
have been asking for change and accountability. Informal conversations with council members, the
police chief and I on the steps have been positive and informative. There have also
been emails to council and the mayor with questions and thoughts. What we are hearing
so far includes the following requests, reviewing policing policies, in particular the use of
force, review our approach to community policing and redirect funding from enforcement to
social services, to use the principles of eight can wait in our policy review,
to sign on to the Obama pledge, to incorporate body cameras into our policing policies,
and to listen, to review, and to reform. I would like to share with our
audience how tonight's meeting will flow. The Council and I have pushed out topics that
were scheduled for tonight's regular meeting to provide an opportunity for our community to address
their Council about the Black Lives Matters movement and ongoing demonstrations throughout the region,
including in our own town. The City Council will hear from the community this evening
on the events of the last few weeks that have focused our nation's attention on
issues of race, equity, and how we police our communities. We have changed tonight's
agenda to focus on listening to members of our community share their feelings and concerns.
The first portion of tonight's meeting will be audience comments, which is the time for
the public to address the council. I will provide some additional guidance just before this
section, but wanted to let speakers know that we anticipate more community participation tonight
since our signup list is fairly long. For those who have joined us tonight and
would like to speak, but did not sign up in advance, Can you please text
410-941-9377 410-941-9377
and state your name and desire to be added to the speakers list. For those
who would like to send comments in this evening, please send them to citycouncil at
isquellwa.gov, citycouncil at isquellwa.gov. We will
summarize the comments we received this evening and include comments submitted to the Council email
throughout the meeting. Following community comments, City staff will detail current work on racial equity
issues within our organization and in the community. Chief Baerbaum will discuss current policing policies
and plans for changes in the future. We know that mayors and City Council members
are uniquely positioned to introduce common sense limits on the police use of force. The
City's recommended approach for moving forward will mirror the key elements of the Obama Pledge.
Review our police use of force policies. Engage our community by including a diverse range
of input, experiences, and stories in our review. Report the findings of our review to
the community and seek feedback. And reform the community's police use of force policies.
As we begin discussions of our fiscal year 2021 budget, The administration will take a
close look at the police department budget and determine what changes make sense to better
align our law enforcement services to serve this community. The last part of our meeting
this evening will be a council conversation to provide direction to the city administration on
some next community steps. So at this point in time, I'd like to take a
moment to do the roll call of council members in attendance. Please say here when
I call your name. Council member D. Michelle. Here. Council member Goodman. Here.
Council member Hall. Here. Council President Hunt. Here. Council member
Martz. Here. Deputy Council President Wray. Here.
And Council member Walsh. Here. All seven council members are here this evening.
There are various staff that are also participating in tonight's meeting and you should be
able to recognize them if you're watching us on channel 21 or the streaming channel.
We have city administrator Bob Kowitz and staff is identified by comments in
brackets beside their name. We have police chief Scott Baerbaum. We have judge Scott Stewart.
We have our human services coordinator Monica Negrela. We have our senior human resources analyst,
Lauren Knox, our deputy city administrator, Andrea Snyder. our city attorney, Jim Haney, our city
clerk, Tina Eggers, and our deputy city clerk, Tisha Gieser. Other city staff may also
be in attendance this evening. For those members of the public on the call, welcome.
The clerk or I will call on you to make comments when we reach that
portion of the meeting. So some meeting guidelines. For all meeting
attendees, please speak clearly and pause frequently. State your
name each time before speaking. Mute your microphone when not speaking.
And if you are also streaming the live video feed and you have phoned in,
please turn the sound off as there is a delay. For council members, please continue
to use the chat to indicate when you wish to speak. Please identify yourself before
you ask a question, make a motion, or second a motion, or participate in debate.
The next item on the agenda this evening is the Pledge of Allegiance, and I
would ask that everyone keep their microphones muted, but I do welcome you to join
me in the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of
America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God,
indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. We will now move into the audience
comments portion. When you are addressing your council this evening, please direct your comments
to the whole council and not individual. While this is not a question and answer
session, we will contact you to follow up if needed. When you are recognized, please
unmute your microphone, star six, maybe an option on your phone, maybe not. State your
name, address and relationship to the city. Speak clearly and pause
frequently. Please limit your comments to five minutes. And when you're done, re-mute your
microphone, please. If you do not respond after your name or phone number is called,
or if your connection is lost unexpectedly, the meeting will need to proceed. So you
are encouraged to rejoin the meeting if able. And again, if those who have joined
us tonight and would like to speak but did not sign up in advance, please
text 410-941-9377 and include your name
and desire to be added to the list. Also, a second reminder, you can also
send written comments anytime tonight to citycouncil at iskowa.gov and all of your council members
will see them. Personal attacks, obscene language, derogatory remarks, and
disruptive behavior will not be permitted. If a speaker is out of order, I will
ask them to stop and mute their microphone. If a speaker does not comply, I
may direct staff to mute their microphone. If a disruption to the meeting occurs and
order cannot be restored, I may direct staff to remove you from the call. The
council appreciates citizen comments, whether they're written and verbal, and it's an important aspect of
the public process. The city council takes these comments seriously, and we thank all of
you for coming tonight and taking the time to address us. City clerk, can you
please identify the first person who has signed up to speak? Yes, Rebecca Jane. Hello.
Hello.
So my name is Rebecca Jane. I have been a resident of Issaquah for a
little over three years now. You may know me. I recently emailed all the
members of the City Council the justice, path to justice pledge that was created by
the grassroots law project. So I'm heartened to see
a commitment to the Obama pledge and the City Council and the mayor at the
protests in our city. I'm a little confused to the hesitation to sign on
to the pledge from the grassroots project, which has a much more
complete set of kind of guidelines. Not that all of them need to be made
to fit to our community. They're not meant for every space, but yeah. So, I
mean, if you're going to reach back out to me, that would be something I'd
be curious about. And then just also as a comment, I've been looking
at the city budget and we're spending 11.5 million dollars on
our police force for the year 2020. They have the highest budget of any city
department included in the general fund, yet our crime statistics have about 30
violent crimes and 1,357 property crimes.
To me, I guess I feel like that money could be better spent on our
community rather than protecting people's property. We
have $11 million going to the police, yet we still charge children to play at
the community center. And if they're not residents of Issaquah, they pay even
more, which is another problem in that on the government, the city of
Issaquah government website, when looking at the demographics of our community. You have
it listed as 64.7% white, 20.3% Asian,
and 8.54% Hispanic or Latino. So my question to the council is
who are the other 6.46% of people living in our community and why are they
not mentioned on our website? Why is there no mention of any African American population?
There are people here. I think that we really need to
do a lot of self-reflection as a community and see how we are actually welcoming
all people here and not just certain people. And also, I
think we also need to take a deep look at our history. There's been a
lot of racial covenants in properties in this area that while they're illegal to enforce
now, we can't deny that they've taken it. been a huge part in the history
of this community and the people who are and have been allowed to live here.
And I just think that there's a lot of actions and a lot of work
that we need to do. Thank you so much for your time. That's all. Thank
you, Rebecca. City Clerk, who is our next speaker this evening? Christy Girard.
Christy, go ahead. Good evening, Mayor Pauly and members of the City Council.
On behalf of the Issaquah Highlands Council, I want to share that we believe Black
Lives Matter. The mission of Highlands Council is to foster the development of a
vibrant and caring community committed to service, diversity,
stewardship, and well-being. The Highlands Council's assurances to the
community include providing opportunities for collaboration between public and private interests,
providing all stakeholders with a voice in community matters, being proactive in
addressing community needs, and valuing and promoting diversity and
fostering a sense of inclusiveness in Issaquah Highlands.
Highlands Council stands with the citizens of Issaquah who have experienced marginalization and
discrimination. In recent days, we have been made aware of overt acts of
racism in our community, dog waste thrown at the doors of our Chinese neighbors,
violence and racial slurs used against black community members. Highlands
Council denounces these actions and is committed to work against racism and
injustice not only in this moment, but ongoing in partnership with
the many Issaquah Highlands neighbors that share the same position and with community partner
organizations who have experience promoting social justice and combating racism.
This year, Highlands Council will launch our first celebration of Juneteenth,
Emancipation Day. Juneteenth recognizes the
emancipation of the last remaining enslaved African Americans in the Confederacy two
years after President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Our efforts
are small, but sincerely heartfelt. We have created a webpage at
issaquahighlands.com with a downloadable Black Lives Matter image for our
community to print and place in the window of their home or place of business
in solidarity. We have a link to resources about Juneteenth
for citizens to learn more about this moment in our nation's history. And we have
also provided the link for neighbors to share their stories, good and bad, related to
race relations in Issaquah Highlands, and make suggestions about how Highlands Council
can best support our neighbors and contribute to bringing social justice to the greater community
of which we are a part. We are stronger together.
Thank you for your time. Thank you very much, Christy. City Clerk, next on the
signup list, Christy Derringer.
Christy, are you able to proceed? Sorry, I was on mute,
which sometimes is where I belong. You have the floor.
Thank you. I'm a resident of the Highlands. My family used to own a business
here in Issaquah. And I have a very unique perspective having law enforcement
as family and friends for many years. But that has allowed me to see
some systemic issues. And that's why I'm speaking today. And this is very difficult
for me to do. But I'm doing it because I believe that it's very important
to speak up now because I have not in the past. I don't
believe in complete defunding of every police department in every city and state in our
country. I do believe that our police department can be the start of something much
more positive that could influence and be a model for other departments in our state.
It's shocking for some to hear from people who don't want defunding right now.
But I don't believe that when a system is broken that you just abandon it,
even when that system was broken from the start. There are officers of color all
over our country who got into law enforcement for the right reasons, and many that
still want to. Further, we still have murder, theft, car accidents, fights, et
cetera, that social workers and other government workers are completely unequipped to
handle. I understand the argument that defunding police and funding the
community improves crime, and it improves everyone's outlook.
The reality is that there's still psychopaths being raised and people who will not be
using good judgment and are out there to commit crime. And as long as there
are people with bad intentions, we have a need for some type of law enforcement.
And perhaps that need evolves and looks differently a year from now. I am 100%
in agreement with the outrage at police brutality, abuse of force and power.
I've watched it for too long. and it has to stop now. I feel that
there are ways to solve these types of issues and I won't have all the
answers and maybe I don't even have a single one right, but I have some
idea of how it can improve based on my vast knowledge and experience with police
officers and the system under which they operate. Every police department has issues,
but not every department has the exact same issue. Issaquah PDs
should make available to the people of Issaquah a report showing the number of
lawsuits, use of force cases, shootings year by year for
the past 20 years. This data can help locals understand
what our specific department is experiencing. The crime rate, clearance rate, and
arrest rates don't matter. that's not an accurate representation of what
the issues would be in a specific department. Also, I believe
that Issaquah Police should publish all of their policies for the community to
review and comment. The more information everyone has, the more they can make
educated requests about whether or not to defund now or in the future.
I believe that there's some control measures that should be put into play within the
third quarter of 2020. And I think that this department has the resources to manage
this. Psychological and personality tests and assessments are
administered by licensed psychologists on a panel. And I think that this should happen
immediately for all officers. Any that don't fall into the know
to low risk category, which is how they are assessed, should be removed from their
positions immediately. Tests and assessments should be repeated every 12 months at
least in a low crime city or low use of force.
Any officer who has had an abuse of force or violence complaint against them should
be discharged immediately. The funding that the department
has saved from that should go directly into public funding. I also
believe that the police department funding should be cut by approximately 25% as a start.
Also to go immediately into publicly funded programs. There should be a civilian
review board of the police, control of police shootings,
actively reducing, well, I think abolishing police brutality.
There should be complete oversight of police policy, improved training,
equal employment opportunity,
certification and licensing of police officers. And while
accreditation of the police department is voluntary. Excuse me, Kristi. Yes, ma'am? Excuse me, you've
reached the end of your comment time. Please summarize. Thank you so much.
Basically, I just feel there needs to be a lot more in-depth training and
oversight of the police department so that we can put an end to this and
be a positive model for other cities in our state moving forward, including
sensitivity training and anti-bias training needs to happen more than annually. Thank you so much.
Thank you, Christy. City Clerk, who's next on the list this evening? Tina Proctor.
Tina, you have the floor. I'm
not finding the phone number. Let me try again.
And I don't see that we have that phone number on display. We can certainly
come back to that number later in the meeting. Thank you. Who is
on the list after Tina? Next, we have Marina Breidenbaugh.
Marina, you have the floor. I have unmuted you and you're ready to go. Thank
you. Great. Thank you so much. Hello, I'm Marina. I'm a lifelong resident of Issaquah
and I'm feeling really energized after silently marching with over 750 members of my
community on Friday. Feeling the collective grief that was present was deeply moving and brought
tears to my eyes and goosebumps more than a few times. I appreciate that the
city council the mayor and other local representatives are coming out to listen and be
part of the biggest civil rights movement in the history of our country. To quote
Ram Dass, at this moment, we feel the potential for change. Whether things are ending
or beginning, the best I can do is sit quiet with my mind so I
can hear. The opportunity you and I have here is to listen, is to open
our hearts to grieving with each other. Before we can hear each other, we have
to be able to grieve with one another. We must stay wide open to what
is and listen your way into hearing your part in the game. When I quiet
my mind and I'm hearing the call for change and I'm being intuitively driven into
action, I love this community and admit that I've never felt the pull or desire
to ever get involved in the process of change until now. We've been presented with
the civil rights movement and have seen our community come together who are clearly seeking
change. I heard a neighbor say that I've been waiting to see Issaquah energized like
this for 30 years and I understand where they're coming from. Many of us feel
that finally the moment has come where the people who have quietly prayed for systemic
change have found each other. Sadly, it's in the wake of yet another tragedy in
our country with the death of George Floyd and the continued violence that's happening around
us being perpetuated by police. Over 40 years ago, budgets all across this country were
more evenly split between police and community services. When Ronald Reagan declared the false war
on drugs, the budgets of those communities, services, were slashed and reallegated to police forces,
and again in 1994 with Bill Clinton's Crime Act. Those laws were modernized ways to
perpetuate systemic racism, and its effects in communities all over the country are still felt
today, even here in Issaquah, as reflected in the militarization of our police with the
weapons, materials, and vehicles that we see. The police are allocated over $11.5 million,
while community services are given less than $1 million. I'm calling for you to reduce
the amount of police on the force, starting with firing the two police officers being
sued for excessive force in the death of Mr. Lange. I want police with domestic
violence charges on their records to be ineligible for duty and employment. We must hold
all officers accountable for their actions and potential future actions with predicted policing measures.
I am okay with fewer cops and slower response times. I want police officers out
of schools like have been done in Seattle, Minneapolis, Portland, and Denver. After Columbine, over
10,000 school police officers were hired just in case there was a school shooting. And
two decades later, they haven't stopped a single one and instead have arrested over 1
million children, mostly students of color, for routine behavior violations. I
do not support giving more money and power to our local police department. Police in
our city are taking on tasks not intended for them. Our main community service, the
food bank, is being stretched too thin with our budget reductions over the years in
this era of COVID-19. The city and police rely heavily on the number of services
they provide. Unarmed professionals are needed more than ever to create bridges in the community
and ensure a sense of safety as the mental health crisis worsens with job losses,
higher abuse rates, and overall lack of human contact with the ongoing threats and potential
of COVID. Reinvesting in our communities will drive down crime It will provide much needed
support for our neighbors. It will aid in homelessness and public health, and it will
help educate our children about diversity and recognizing that our differences are to be celebrated.
I want to raise my children in a community that is at the forefront of
change that supports anti-racist education. I want them to see that we must stand up
for what is right, even if the institution is resistant to that change. It is
essential for our city's economy and overall well-being of the community to greatly reduce the
police budget and reinvest it into services that will have greater effects on the citizens
of the city. That is what the Black Lives Matter movement is calling for and
what I am calling on the city to enact. The ripple effects of kindness and
compassion have the potential to make big waves. The information age has shown us what
it's like in communities all over the world, yet not anywhere in America. What are
our priorities as human beings? Let Issaquah be an example of the change that needs
to happen in cities all over this country and show the world that we can
rise up to the occasion and focus on what matters most, equality for our friends
and family and neighbors. Thank you.
Can never find that unmute button. Thank you, Marina. City Clerk, who is next on
our speakers list tonight? Rachel Benick. Thank you, Rachel, you have the floor.
Thank you very much. Before this meeting, I have sent a list of references to
the City Council highlighting some of the actions of the police department of our neighbors
to the West. I think it is important to see why those of us in
Issaquah are demonstrating, marching, and calling for the changes that we are. I know that
Issaquah is not facing the same challenges that many cities in the nation are. However,
one of our closest neighboring cities is a hotspot for police brutality and misconduct. Seattle
is a city that almost everyone in Issaquah visits regularly. Many of our citizens work
there or have friends there. We cannot ignore what is going on, nor are we
exempt from the issues and the conversation. We have room for growth and change along
with the rest of King County and the nation. This starts with holding Seattle accountable,
not just to its citizens, but to its neighboring governments. We need to condemn what
is being done to the peaceful protesters, to the medics and to the journalists. But
asking for change outside of our own city won't be enough. We as a city
spend over $11.5 million on the police department and less than $1 million on community
service office. In fact, it appears from my initial review of the city budget that
the police department receives the highest percentage of the city's funds of any single line
item on the budget. This is a system in which the police are asked to
do too much. They are expected to be marriage counselors, mental health crisis professionals, conflict
negotiators, social workers, child advocates, traffic safety experts, sexual assault specialists,
social workers, and every once in a while, public safety officers authorized to use force.
And while I hold the utmost respect for our police department, I would like to
see a world in which they are able to be just police officers. I was
speaking with a coworker recently, and she relayed a story of her interaction with the
Issaquah PD. Late one evening, she called on their services because there was a woman
on her front porch in desperate need of help. The woman was cold, wet, incapable
of coherent speech and weeping. My coworker brought her into her home to get warm
and called 911. Two officers came up and when the woman finally said her name,
they knew who she was and took her to where she would be safe. Now
I'd like you all to come with me for a moment as I paint you
a picture of how things could be with a different set of priorities. Imagine it's
2025, someone approaches you as you park your car. It's not a cop, it's a
community representative telling you that you have a tail light out. They don't write you
a fix it ticket because you're not in trouble. but now you know, so you
can fix it. Your neighbors got into a loud spat a few weeks ago and
without fear or hesitation, you called a domestic assistance number. The counselor arrives and was
able to talk to the couple down and suggest solutions for their disagreement. No one
showed up with a gun and the situation did not escalate. Your friend has been
struggling with addiction and you fear they may be in danger to themselves or others.
You call a substance abuse specialist and they talk you through ways to help your
friend get treatment. They offer to send an agent out to speak with your friend
directly and provide information about resources in your area. In this universe, those who felt
fear when they saw police officers on the street maybe don't anymore. The police don't
show up if no crime is being committed and those who are found to have
acted wrongfully are held to account. Under the system, teachers are being paid a living
wage and students are being given more time, attention and education. Books are up to
date and classrooms are optimized to keep up with technology. The food bank, affordable housing
and job programs are all there when they are needed and the crime rate has
dropped dramatically as many no longer feel so helpless that they feel the need to
turn to crime or to lash out against others. In this world, the woman in
the story related above has the resources she needs. She has housing options, food options
and health options. And if she were to find herself on someone's porch crying out
for help, there would be a mental health counselor or social worker ready to respond
to the call and connect her to the community resources she needs. This is the
world I want to live in, not one of fear and punishment, but one of
compassion and community. It will not be an easy road and it will take perseverance
and hard work over years of effort, but it will be worth it. We are
ready to invest in the community and we are ready to work towards a more
equitable future for all of Issaquah. We are standing in a moment in history right
now. All of humanity will look back at this, the biggest civil rights movement in
world history, and look at the actions that were taken at every level of government.
I implore you to be on the right side of history and to help move
us towards a brighter tomorrow I know we are all capable of entering into.
Thank you. Thank you, Rachel. City Clerk, who is our next speaker? Lena
Palladina. Lena. Lena, you have the floor. Thank you.
My name is Lena Palladina, and I have been a resident of Issaquah for two
years. I'd like to begin by addressing the nature of the national movement to defund
the police. Black scholars and organizers have been writing about the racist history and systemic
inequalities of policing for decades. Redistributing funds from the police to community services
is what Black activists around the nation call for as the first step in addressing
these inequalities. I want to acknowledge how challenging a concept like this can be to
understand And that is because it asks us to imagine a new system of community
safety that is radically different from the system we have lived our whole lives in.
You may already know that the Minneapolis City Council recently announced that they will be
moving to disband the Minneapolis Police Department and replacing it with a new community safety
model. What you may not know is that grassroots groups in Minneapolis have been
petitioning the city to reallocate police funding into underfunded community anti-violence work since 2018.
The road to change is incremental and we're likely facing years of work ahead of
us to make lasting change. I am not calling for the police department budget to
be drained overnight or for officers to immediately lose their jobs. I'm asking that we
seriously consider how we can support the community not only theoretically but also tangibly with
some of the police budget being redistributed to human service programs. and that the decisions
on where the funding should go be informed by the community, especially our marginalized neighbors.
I often see a patrol car slowly circling my apartment complex, which is home to
many lower income people of color. I feel that the resources spent on looking for
crime where none exists would be much better spent on crisis counselors and other non-police
safety officers instead. We should focus on reducing the occurrence of crime in the first
place rather than simply being on the lookout for it. I ask that you imagine
for one second a world where 911 calls can be redirected to trained mental health
counselors, addiction specialists, and domestic violence counselors, to name a few. I ask that we
look to programs already in place in Eugene, Kansas City, and Camden, New Jersey, which
is a city that rebuilt their police department from scratch as a framework of success
and community safety. Anti-racist work can be uncomfortable because it asks us to place the
needs of our Black, Indigenous, and POC neighbors ahead of our own comfort as their
white peers. To bring true racial, economic, and cultural equity to Issaquah requires all of
us to question the status quo and challenge each other to continue to do better
by our neighbors. We cannot let the momentum pass us by. It absolutely cannot stop
at a few weeks of demonstrations, one community march, some social media posts, We have
a responsibility to ask ourselves how we are actively fighting against a system that discriminates
against our most marginalized neighbors. I urge the city council to use their positions of
power to advocate for community needs, the mayor to continue to use her platform to
bring these issues to light, and the police chief to aid in the gradual redistribution
of the police budget towards human services. Black Lives Matter, thank you.
Thank you, Lena. City Clerk, who is next on our speakers list? Camille Kelling.
And this caller I cannot find through either phone numbers provided. So we can make
a note and check back later before we conclude audience comments and see if they've
joined us later on the agenda. Can we proceed to the next caller? Yes, Leslie
Hewlett. All right, give me a moment. Leslie, if you're with us.
You have the floor. Hi, my name is Leslie Hewlett and my
family and I have lived at Issa Claw for six years. I keep odd hours
and I'm usually up around 4 or 4.30 in the morning. I throw in some
sweats, feed my pets, grab a flashlight and take the dog out for a walk.
At that moment, every morning while I'm walking my dog, I put my life at
risk. I'm sure that if a cop comes down the street and sees a black
person in a hoodie, carrying a flashlight, they will shoot first and ask questions later.
I believe the biggest threat to my life in Issaquah involves an encounter with police
at my home. I am originally from New York City. My dad, uncles, brothers and
cousins are police officers. I come from a family of proud members of the NYPD,
and I am intimately familiar with how racist the police are. I grew up listening
to countless stories of racist abuse black cops are subjected to from their white colleagues.
And it should be no surprise that my family members are as likely to have
been under that cop's knee as any other black person. We keep hearing about the
bad apples and how getting rid of them will fix the problem. Policing in America
evolved from the slave catchers. They were law enforcement groups
that were to maintain order among enslaved Americans. or they're in slavery. It should be
no surprise that the system has evolved to the point where racism is institutionalized in
American policing. These are not a few bad apples. These individuals are the expected outcome
from a policing system that evolved from slavery and is racist at its core.
Policies and procedures developed within the current system of American policing tend to end with
different forms of racism. What chance do a few rule changes and a sensitivity training
session have against generations of individual and institutional racism? That's why I
support the movement for defunding the police. This does not mean eliminating the police.
This approach means creating a more equitable system based on public safety as opposed to
racism. The goal is to use the resources to address all of the issues that
contribute to public safety. This approach would make all stakeholders accountable for their roles in
the health and safety of our community. This would shift social issues to train professionals
and away from the police. Then we can define what policing in America looks like
when the goal is to truly protect all of its people. I would like to
see the city of Issaquah to use the defund the police as the approach to
reinventing policing in Issaquah as we move forward.
making change. Thank you. Leslie, thank you so much for sharing your story and
your information tonight. City Clerk, who's next on our list of speakers this evening? Elena
Sivadasen. Elena, if you are on, you have the floor. And
that phone number that was provided is not on our list. So we'll mark it
and we can return to that one. Let's proceed to the next caller signed up.
That would be Alla Zaremba. Alla, you have the floor.
City Clerk, are you seeing her phone number? I do, and it has been unmuted
on my end. Great. You may need to unmute your personal phone. You can try
pressing star six and see if we can hear your voice.
Ella? Okay, I think we will move to the next speaker
and if Ella is able to join us later, we'll get her back on. Next,
we have Wes Howard-Brooke. Wes, you have the floor.
Give me just a moment, please. Pardon me.
I don't see that Wes is on the line. Let me see if there's a
secondary phone.
One more moment. Thank you for your patience. No, I do not
see that caller. Thank you. And thank you for all you're doing, city clerk. This
is a lot harder to do than when somebody is sitting in a chair and
is able to step up to a microphone. So thank you for what you're doing
and we will come back at check in at the end to see who we've
missed. Who else has signed up this evening? The next speaker would be Lorna
Gilmore. And I do not have that caller on our line.
Let me see if there's a secondary phone and there is not. And who else
do we have? Next would be Matt Brackell. Give me a moment here.
Yes, I have found the caller. I have unmuted you. Matt, you have the floor.
Great. Hi, everyone. My name is Dr. Matt Raquel, and I'm a resident, a property
owner, a business owner, a renter, and the landlord here in Issaquah. It's because my
privilege as a straight, white, cisgendered male doctor that I was able to move to
Issaquah, buy my own home, and start my own business as a psychologist in this
community. And my goal tonight is to use my privilege and my education to amplify
the voices of Black, Indigenous, and people of color leaders and community members across the
country that are asking for support with changing the police and the justice system in
America. We've all been hearing calls to reform, defund or abolish the police. And I'm
speaking to all of you right now to ask for your support and re-imagine the
police. I'd like us to imagine a police force comprised of social workers, of resource
coordinators, of housing experts, mediators, crisis workers, investigators and traffic controllers,
a police force that relies on human connection and providing for those in need, as
many police forces currently do, but one with the education and support necessary to do
this very challenging work. Right now, the police in Washington state receive a 40-hour mental
health and de-escalation training every three years. That's exceptional compared to many other states in
the United States. However, that's like giving me, a psychologist, a week of firearm training
at the gun range and asking me to respond to an active shooter scenario. I
would not be the best choice for that situation and someone would likely get hurt.
Just like right now, people are being hurt and killed because we're not responding to
certain situations in the best way possible. What I'm proposing with reimagining the police force
isn't impossible. It's been done in cities across the nation and countries across the world,
as has been noted by previous speakers. I have personal and professional experience with a
city that had a diverse police force comprised of a variety of professionals. My job
was to respond to 911 calls from people thinking about killing themselves or considering hurting
or killing somebody else. I responded without police presence, except in the rarest of situations,
because that was my specialty and bringing a weapon into those situations almost always makes
them much worse. That community saw great success with that program, and I think our
community would greatly benefit from reimagining our police force and what we're asking them to
do, because the current situation is unfair to both the police and our community. I'm
a psychologist, so I could really talk about this subject for hours, That being said,
I can be reached at email via Dr. Brackell at brackellpsychological.com if anyone has questions
or would like to engage in further discussion, and I yield the remainder of my
time. Thank you, Dr. Brackell.
City Clerk, who else do we have on our list this evening? I understand that
our next caller, Dane Chaney, is not currently on the call, so we'll move to
Daniel Gold. Daniel. You have four.
Hello. Hello. Hi, my name is Dan Gold.
I live in Old Town Issaquah and I appreciate you all taking the time to
listen tonight. Some will say that yes, our country has
problems, but not Issaquah, not the Issaquah Police Department. I say yes
here. Yes, our police department, because nowhere in this country is exempt. Now, I'm not
here to vilify IPD. I don't think they're evil, and I do think they've been
doing their best in a system that asks them to handle situations way outside the
scope of their training. It is their job to protect the community, but what we
very often need isn't protection, it's help. When a homeless person is sleeping on a
bench in the park, they don't need the police, they need a place to stay.
When the food bank wants to reach more of those in need within our community,
police officers handing out food packs may be helpful, but what they really need is
more funding for the food bank. And when a man with Alzheimer's disease yells incoherently
at his wife during an episode, what he needs isn't the police, it's a social
worker. That's why I'm calling on the council today to redirect some portion
of the $11 million that currently goes to our police force to instead hire social
workers, give more assistance to our local food bank, and to further explore other unmet
needs amongst our most vulnerable citizens. I'm not calling for the abolition of our police
department, but I'm here to tell you that our police officers are not, cannot be,
and from my conversations with them, do not want to be a panacea. When my
colleagues and I call for defunding the police, this is what we mean. Let's take
some things off the police's plate that never should have been there to begin with.
I asked the council today to stop asking our police officers to act as social
workers and let's hire social workers to act as social workers. I know that
in light of a looming budget shortfall, many will say now is simply not the
time for new programs and new investments. They'll say that our police department is already
running as lean as possible, that it can't sustain further cuts, There will be a
laundry list of reasons why, while we agree that these issues need to be addressed,
action cannot be taken this time. Later, yes, but not now. And I say to
all of you that the only time better than today to take action was yesterday,
and that later all too often ends up being never. I implore the council to
take immediate action in directing city funds towards social workers and other non-law enforcement personnel
who can respond to the needs of this community in the many situations where a
person with a gun is not what is needed. Further, and especially as we are
experiencing a budget shortfall, I urge the council to take a serious look at taking
the money needed for these new programs out of the current policing budget. In closing,
Let us not think that we are exempt from this moment in history and let
us not think that we're powerless to be part of the change that this country
so desperately needs. It's time for us to write our page in the history book
council. Let's make it a good one. Thank you. Thank you, Dan. City Clerk, do
we have anyone else on our list of speakers? Before we move to the next
caller, I'd like to remind anyone on the line that if you're interested in making
comments tonight, you can text
That's 410-941-9377. That's 410-941-9377 and include your name
and desire to speak. The next phone-in caller is Brian Weinstein.
Brian, you have the floor. Good evening. My name is Brian Weinstein.
I've been a resident in Issa Cloud for about 20 years now. I'm a public
school teacher. When school is in session, I teach not just my subjects, but I
infuse my lessons with equality and work to teach with equity. I
teach in Auburn at Cascade Middle School, a primarily minority-majority school.
Each time there is a police incident with a person of color, my students live
through yet another act of racism, relive another murder. are
traumatized with another message that says they are not valued as human beings, all because
of the color of their skin. My work and the work of all teachers is
eroded again and again by what our children are living through and what they see
our police do. Everywhere in the United States, and at some point, like all
things that are eroded, eventually there is nothing left. I've read
the presentation as advanced reading material for today's council meeting. I must say
they all seem very thorough with existing and new education, training, policies, and
procedures for all to follow. But that's the problem. We keep putting Band-Aids
on what is a systemically broken and flawed at the foundation function, policing.
At some point, we as human beings have to look deep within the organization that
are designed to serve us and inquire if they serve all. We have 400
years of history to review that informs us that not all of us are being
well served. And in fact, some of us are being murdered. I urge you to
look beyond community engagement here in Issaquah towards the broader society of
Washington and the USA. What is equitable for all? Where is
justice for all? How will all be served? I ask you to look
beyond this because as I look at our municipal board and commissions, I do not
see a cross section of our nation. I do not see people of color, although
I know they live in Issaquah. And in reality, it's not me you should be
listening to, it's black people we should be addressing. And if there are problems
finding black people who live in Issaquah to inquire of them, how our municipal services
can best serve them in a systemically new way without 400 years of bias,
then perhaps that's one of the bigger problems that needs to be solved as well.
Thank you. Ryan, thank you for your comments. City Clerk, who else do we have
on our list? Jacob Lessing.
Jacob, you have the floor. Thank you for having me here tonight. My
name is Jacob Lessing. As of this past Friday, I am a graduate of Issaquah
High School. I appreciate the City Council's commitment to substantial change on issues of
racial justice, both by working to prevent incidences of discrimination and to
mitigate racial disparities in our city. Thank you. That is all.
Thank you for joining us tonight, Jacob. City Clerk, who else is on our list
this evening? Next is Chris Petzold.
Yes. Great. Thank you, Chris. You have the floor. Excuse me. This is
Clerk Gaggers. The phone number identified with that individual is not present.
Okay. City Clerk, do we have anyone after Chris? Yes.
Anusha Minaj. Anusha, you have the floor.
Let me find that caller for us. And let
me try again.
And no, I'm not locating that phone number. Thank you. City Clerk, is
there someone after or still on the list? Yes, Bob
Swanson. I was able to locate that number
and you are unmuted. Thank you, Bob. You have the floor. Thank you very much.
This is Bob Swanson. I live in Issaquah, up in the Issaquah Highlands. And I
just want to personally say I'm grateful to the police here in
Issaquah. I think I've lived here for 18 years and I can say,
I have a lot of friends in Issaquah and of many, many different nationalities,
backgrounds, and I just haven't run into anybody that has said anything bad except
they give me a traffic ticket once. And other than that, but I am grateful
that I've been able to have a sit down on the phone with the chief
police for an hour, and we were able to go over a lot of his
hiring practices, the policing policies,
the policing biasing, or the ways they do not want to have
police biasing in Issaquah. And I brought up
the gentleman laying. I realized that there is a lawsuit going on, so we really
couldn't talk too much about that. I found that on the news
when I did a search. So I haven't found out as much detail as I
would like at this moment, but I know there's definitely two sides on the story
there. And just to let you know, I know police are put in horrible
situations all the time. Just one is my mother is schizophrenic and she used to
come out with people with knives and so forth and police would have to be
called. And so it was a very difficult situation. And thank goodness she was, the
police were very professional and they were, They never harmed my mother in any way,
but she definitely had issues throughout her life.
So I am appreciative of the police that were able to do that. Now,
when all this hit, friends of ours from the church go to, we had
about 600 people. We did a Zoom call because we have people from way
different backgrounds, black and white in every country under the sun, definitely
multi-international cultural. And so we had an opportunity to let the
black members be able to express what they're feeling. And I didn't realize how many
times that people have been pulled over, not in Issaquah, I just want to let
you know, not one person has ever mentioned being pulled over in Issaquah, but
one person particularly I want to mention, his name is Derek Morrell. He just
was named last year as Tacoma Fireman of the Year. He's on Facebook, on the
Tacoma Fireman Facebook page. He's a chief of
his firehouse, excellent man, raising four kids, excellent wife, man of character. His wife
has actually helped out my daughter when she was younger. But he's pulled over on
the highway because they were looking for someone who, that fit his description.
And they had him face down on the highway, handcuffed off the side, obviously not
on the highway, but handcuffed, checking his car, so forth. Ended up, obviously, the man
has got extremely high character. He had never done anything wrong in any way, shape
or form. But long story short, it was because they wanted to pull him over.
There was no real description. that they were looking for, they just saw a black
man in a car and they wanted to pull him over and they wanted to
talk to him. And so I got a chance to email this to both the
mayor and to the chief of police, not to the city council as a whole.
That's something I should do. But I think an excellent idea is that if somebody
is stopped by a 9-1, somebody called a 9-1-1, said, hey, there's somebody walking around
or a police officer pulls somebody over, they stop them on the street because they
look like somebody, they should be able to give them a form immediately saying here's
the reference to the 911 call, here's the reference to the case number, here's the
description of the card, the description of the person. So the person can actually go
back and take a look to see if that truly fits. Or are they just
pulling them over for, because they wanna stop, talk to them, they quote unquote look
suspicious. I've just, in that Zoom call that we were on,
It is amazing how many people were stopped by the police and stopped outside their
own apartment and asked multiple, multiple, multiple times, do you live here? And all of
them that were saying this were all black. And I can tell you, I asked
friends of mine that are white, none of my friends outside their apartment building have
ever been stopped and asked, hey, do you live here? Or they had been pulled
over and handcuffed and put on the side of the street or stopped by the
police over and over again. because they live in a nice neighborhood. Now, another friend
of mine in Issaquah, he has to go, he has another business. He has a
business where he goes, has high-end clients, so he has to go to Redmond and
so forth, areas like that. And he has to park outside their place and wait
until he gets there early, so for a four o'clock meeting. He talked about how
many times a police officer stopped and said, why are you here? Can I help
you, sir? That kind of thing. And not one of my white friends, I never
have, I have been stopped, never, I've stopped in front of houses waiting for my
daughter to come out. Never once has I ever been stopped by police and asked,
hey, what are you doing here? Or why are you here? So that's one thing
I think would really help out. Excuse me, Bob, you have reached the end of
your comment time. Please summarize. Long story short, the June 19th, I'm looking
forward to being a part of that, the Juneteenth. Thank you, Issaquah, and I appreciate
you listening. Thank you. Thank you, Bob. I believe we have one more
speaker tonight. City Clerk? Yes, we have one more caller and we have one caller
who has joined us on the line, Chris Petzold. Great. And who is our next
speaker? Is it Chris or someone else on the list? Yes, we can move to
Chris Petzold. Oh, Chris, you have the floor. Give me
just a moment. Thank you.
Chris, you are unmuted. Hi, thank you. My name is Chris Petzold and I am
a 13-year resident of Issaquah. I live in the Highlands. Thank you so much for
proactively addressing social justice, equity, and policing. You're definitely a role
model for other cities in our area. And I really appreciate the opportunity to speak
here. I'll be very brief. I sent an email earlier today with some specific recommendations
on improved policing called for by people of color and social justice leaders. Please
consider these proposals, which include de-escalation, accountability, and use of force restrictions.
This is just a start. I'd like to call for all citizens and employees of
the city of Issaquah to embark on a journey of education and soul searching about
racism. Please also consider the city's budget as has been mentioned before on this
call. An organization's budget reflects their values. The city's police budget
starves other resources like schools and housing. With the expected budget
impact of COVID-19, I ask you to please consider cutting the police force first and
leave other services intact for the people of Issaquah. George Floyd's last words
were, I can't breathe as he lost consciousness under the knee of a police officer.
His last breath was our rallying cry to finally close the door on systemic racism,
the original sin of our country. George also cried for his mama.
Some of the protest signs I saw in Seattle said that when George Floyd called
for his mama, he summoned all mamas and that's why I'm here. The times call
for a fundamental reevaluation of our systems. This is important work. We are
living in historic times. Please do the right thing. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Chris. I'm going to go back to City Clerk and see if there
were any other callers that joined us later. Yes, Zoe
Kapusinski.
Thank you, Zoe. You can be here. We can hear you. Go ahead, Zoe. Hi,
my name is Zoe Kapuzinski. I grew up in the Issaquah Highlands. And while I've
moved away, I've come back to visit my mom who still lives in Issaquah Highlands.
I'd just like to give a little bit of context and story. So I am
an Asian person. I grew up with white parents. When we moved into the Issaquah
Highlands in 1999, it was a very small community. mostly a white
community with a few other Asian families. And a couple of things that I've
noticed since coming back here during this time and comparing it to where I currently
live, which is Oklahoma City. One thing is that when I attended the Issaquah
March on Friday, I really appreciated seeing so many members of our community coming out.
And I posted on social media about it. And one of my friends who also
grew up in Issaquah replied about time. I know that as a student who
I grew up in the Issaquah School District, especially in elementary school.
I remember growing up specifically with a colorblind ideology where we don't really see color
because it doesn't matter, right? Everyone is equal. I remember every year when we had
Martin Luther King Junior Day assemblies, because we always had an assembly to commemorate Dr.
King. This assembly without fail was about anti-bullying. There was no discussion, no
history or context really truly given about the racial dynamics of,
or really any mention of the civil rights era. It was just about anti-bullying. This
lack of inclusion and
colorblindness ideology really impacted the way that I
experienced the world. And I had to do a lot of unlearning and learning of
new things once I left this community. Since getting to college, as I think many
students did, like me, I've seen so many people, mostly my friends of color,
comment about all the microaggressions they faced while attending Issaquah
schools, like Issaquah High School, and how we didn't realize at the time, like maybe
we felt a little icky about it, but we didn't realize at the time what
was going on. So I would really urge the
council to also put out a strong statement related to our education system and the
importance of including explicitly anti-racist education in our curricula.
The other thing that I'd like to mention is that where I'm currently living,
Oklahoma City, the budget, I mean the city is obviously much larger than it is
a club, but the budget is over $200 million for the police. I thought, wow,
that seems like a huge number. Let me compare how that fits with just like
kind of a population versus budget comparison with Issaquah. Well, the percentage of money
spent on the police department in OKC based on its population versus that same figure
for Issaquah doesn't really, it's not really different. The amount
of dollars spent on the police department here is only marginally less than the amount
of dollars spent person in Oklahoma City.
One of the callers before said that the budget is an indicator of the morals
of our city and I would agree with that and I think that we can
really reallocate the funding from our police department into new programs that are much
more helpful in meeting the needs of all of the people in our community.
is what we're talking about when we say defund police. It doesn't mean we snap
our fingers and nothing exists the next day. The last thing I'm going to say
before I leave is a story, which is in 2015,
my mother called the Issaquah police because my father, who
suffers from addiction and alcoholism, was acting very erratically
and holding a knife and threatening himself and my mother.
And the police came screaming into, their squad
cars came roaring into the highlands. They surrounded my house and
they came out in their full gear, guns out.
Ultimately, they put him in the back of a police car. He's a middle-aged white
man. And they took him to Swedish hospital and they left him at the emergency
room. No police report was filed. Nothing related to
domestic violence. Before the police left,
I had found something odd in the house. A little baggie with something in it.
We showed it to police officers and, you know, he said, we think this is
some of his heroin. And the police officer said, you can just throw it away.
And I just remember being surprised and confused and shocked. And I was kind of
shocked anyway. I said, like in the trash? And he's like, sure. Excuse me,
Zoe. Zoe, you've reached the end of your comment time. Please summarize. Yeah, my point
is, The response to the police in that situation
probably would have been a lot different if my father had been black. But regardless,
there are better alternatives to meeting somebody with addiction or mental health issues
than coming in with blaring police sirens and outstretched guns.
Thank you for the time. Zoe, thank you so much for sharing your personal story.
Very impactful. I do not believe we have any speakers this evening, but I'm just
going to check back with the city clerk. We do not have any other speakers
on our list. I did loop back on the calls. We do have three unidentified
callers on the line that I could unmute and see if they'd like to make
a comment. Sure. Let's do that. Thank you. All right. We have a 612-308.
I've unmuted you. If you would like to make a comment, please let me know.
Calling once, calling twice. No, thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much.
Moving on to the next line, 206-330. If you'd like to make a comment, now
would be the time. Would you like to speak? No, thank you. Thank you.
And the third caller, it's a 206-619 number. If you'd like to make a comment,
please identify. Calling once.
Thank you. I would like to thank everyone who came and spoke this
evening and those that have come to the meeting to attend. There were some themes
that carried through the majority of our speakers tonight. I heard review your policing
policies, provide more transparency, create some community reporting on an annual
basis, reallocate police budget for social services, Listen
to the community voices that are here. Consider removing officers from schools. Reimagine
safety in our town. Every city in this country has to participate in this movement
to change racial bias and injustice in policing. Many, many comments about
how we have asked our police department and our police officers to do everything due
to a lack of investment in social services. we should be having community conversations about
recognizing and addressing biases in our community and in ourselves. That the community
values can be embedded in the budget and the way you allocate your resources. I
want to thank you all for sharing your thoughts, your ideas, your personal stories.
Very, very compelling information and probably one of our best attended council meeting in an
awfully long time. So thank you all. Please stay with us for the rest of
the meeting. I wanted to also say one more time that as you are listening
to the additional information presented tonight, you can still email the City Council at
citycouncil.isqalawa.gov with any other thoughts that you have or questions. Please
do that at any time this evening or tomorrow. And comments received by
email this week on tonight's agenda topics will be acknowledged by our council president under
the relevant agenda items. So the next item of business is committee and regional reports.
Let's start with Councilmember Hall. Thank you, Mayor Pauly. This is Zach
Hall. I have just a short report. Last Thursday,
June 11th, I attended the cascade water alliance resource management committee meeting of which I'm
a member. We met to discuss several topics for future board meetings,
including the treatment and control of aquatic vegetation. So largely milfoil in like tops
reservoir, a feasibility study to explore the use of solar energy at the lake taps
reservoir for the purpose of either offsetting our own loads or selling into the grid.
ongoing efforts to foster good relationships with Pierce County in the surrounding communities on stormwater
management policy and point non point source pollution prevention. Our ongoing
efforts to foster good relationships with the residents and property owners that also live on
lake taps. And then the temporary sale of surplus water to our member cities, which
we may be considering soon here in Issaquah. So I'm happy to debrief further or
answer anyone's questions here on council or for you, Mayor Polly, as the voting member
on the board in the next regularly scheduled meeting of the board will be later
this month on Wednesday, June 24th at 3.30 p.m. And that concludes my report.
Thank you, Council Member Hall. Council Member DeMichelle. Thank you, Mayor Pauly.
This is Council Member DeMichelle. I attended the Healthier Here Governing Board meeting, which was
held virtually on June the 4th. We heard status reports on several Healthier Here
initiatives, but the primary business centered around small group discussions as members debriefed
on lessons learned to date from COVID-19. And just a reminder that
most of the members of the Healthier Here Governing Board represent major health care providers
in our region. So some of the highlights of that debriefing were that
There was a general agreement that the major project that
Healthier Here is pursuing is a central information exchange for medical and behavioral health
patient records and general agreement that the COVID-19 has just
highlighted an urgent need for that exchange and that they need to go forward
with that as quickly as they can. General consensus that a large and
increasing number of homeless people is putting the entire region at risk and high
hopes that this realization will accelerate government and private responses to get more people housed.
Another issue that was surfaced by COVID-19 is a digital divide. And questions were
asked about should access to broadband and internet become a right as it is in
Europe? because the access to broadband
and internet is becoming a public health issue. And
because another thing that's surfaced from COVID-19 is the introduction of telehealth conferences.
Those have been deemed very, very successful and will most likely continue and expand in
the future. But there was a lot of discussion about how we increase broadband
access in rural areas to make that really Again, there was a
discussion about how COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact in communities of color.
And of course, Healthier Here has had a major focus on equity since its beginning
four years ago. So those are some of the highlights from that discussion. It was
an excellent opportunity to hear from some of the major healthcare providers
in our region. My other report is that I'll be attending the Eastside Transportation
Partnership Meeting tomorrow morning at 9 o'clock, and that concludes my report. Thank you,
Councilmember DeMichelle. Councilmember Walsh? Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is Councilmember Walsh.
I have been trying to stay very connected with the Economic Development and Business Community,
though it has not been regular meetings. It's been one-offs and as much as possible
there. I did attend the Puget
Sound Regional Center, or excuse me, the Sound Cities Association webinar this morning on how
cities can help businesses in phase one and phase two recovery. That was an
amazing webinar that really focused on a lot of things, particularly that Redmond is doing.
I am going to share that with all of you when the recording comes through.
There were some very specific examples of things that we can do, and I can't
wait to talk to Jen Davis-Hayes all about it so that we can find ways
to do the same. And then the next meeting of the Puget Sound Regional Council's
Economic Development District Board is on July 1st. We have not had a meeting since
the pandemic and quarantine has happened. I'm hopeful that this one will occur, but I'm
crossing fingers at this point. I don't know. And that concludes my report. Thank you,
Council Member Walsh. Council Member Goodman. Thank you, Madam Mayor. Council Member Goodman here. Eastside
Fire and Rescue Board of Directors met last Thursday, and two items of note.
One was the budget was in the packet for referral to the Finance and Administration
Committee, which we did, the Board did refer to that committee. So that review will
begin soon. Second, at the board's request, the
chief put out a statement, which is on the front page of Eastside Fire and
Rescue's website in response to
the George Floyd death and the events since then. And the
statement talks about Eastside Fire being committed to protecting the dignity and well people
well-being of all people and doing their part to make sure people of all backgrounds
feel valued, safeguarded, and respected. Those are just two phrases. And
again, it's on the front page of Eastside Fire and Rescue's website. The Finance and
Administration Committee meets this Wednesday, a different time. It's from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m.
And we will be taking up, continuing our conversation on some...
revenues, some fees, and a collection of those fees, and may even
start reviewing the budget. And that concludes my report. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member
Goodman. Council Member Martz. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is Council Member Martz. The Sound
Cities Association Public Issues Committee met at 7 p.m. on Wednesday, June 10th. And
we had three issues that would be of interest to Council. One is that on
the proposed King County rates and fees, action. A strong majority
of cities chose to move forward with that resolution for sending it
forward to the Sound City's Board of Directors for proposed
action. Having heard our council and having not gotten strong unanimity
on the issue, and in fact having seen our council as somewhat split on the
issue, I wound up voting no. I listened to the arguments and didn't hear A
compelling reason to go with yes, because we didn't have a majority, I didn't really
feel strong about it, but it passed anyhow. On COVID-19
legislative priorities action item that passed, I think unanimously, there might have been one or
two cities that had to abstain from the vote, but there
was essentially universal support. And then there was also a discussion on King County Emergency
Management Coordination. And I mentioned that our city had wrote a letter in support of
extending the current contract and having more meaningful conversations with the county about
positions that the county had been considering doing away with. They've
extended those through the end of the year. And I mentioned that we thought it'd
be nice to know what the dialogue may look like. And there was general support
from cities, both large and small, cities that had emergency directors that
nonetheless said these folks were performing an important task and they were supporting the
small cities that didn't have their own emergency directors. And so these positions were
absolutely critical. So that concludes my report. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member
Martz. Deputy Council President Wray. Hi, this is Chris Wray. Thank you, Mayor Pauly.
The King County Growth Management Planning Council will meet on June 24th at 4 p.m.
The agenda has not been set and the meeting format is still unclear. Updates later,
and that concludes my report. Thank you, Deputy Council President. Council President Hunt.
Thank you, Madam Mayor. The Management Committee of the YRA 8 Salmon Recovery Council will
be meeting likely this week, although the date and time has not yet been set.
And this is a subcommittee of the Salmon Recovery Council. We are tasked with
oversight of the cost share service provider team and of the budget. And so I
will report back on that meeting once we have it. That concludes my report. Thank
you, Council President. Just for those that have not been observing our council
meetings through COVID, it does sound like the council members are getting back into some
of their regular meeting modes. I'm hearing a lot more report outs, which is great.
For the mayor's report, I just have one item today, and it's a Juneteenth Day
proclamation. Cities around the country are talking about racial equity and social justice as
community members take to the streets to demonstrate for changes to policing and societal systems
that are biased towards people of color. Highlands Council has requested our city recognize the
significance of Juneteenth as part of our ongoing dialogues this year. With most other cities
around the region, I am pleased to provide the following proclamation this evening. Whereas we
acknowledge the notice of freedom given to the slaves of the state of Texas on
June 19th, 1865, and whereas we give honor and respect on this day to the
suffering of our ancestors and we acknowledge the evils of slavery and its aftermath, and
whereas we think about the moment in 1888 when 300 black men from Virginia, North
Carolina, and Kentucky were determined to escape the terrorism of the post-Civil War South
as they boarded trains for the Washington Territory and settled in King County mining camps.
And whereas the story and outspokenness of James Shepperson, an educated Black man who
settled in Roslyn, Washington in 1888, inspired many other Blacks to flee the South at
great risk and pursue new opportunities in Washington State as miners. And whereas we
acknowledge African-American freedom contributions and achievements within this community, past and present,
and whereas during this Juneteenth event we appreciate the African American experience and celebrate the
inclusion of all races, ethnicities, and nationalities, and whereas we commit to working
together toward equity for all in expanding economic, educational, and career
opportunities for all those in our community, Now therefore I, Mary Lou Polly, Mayor of
the City of Issaquah, do hereby proclaim June 19th to be the Juneteenth Day in
the City of Issaquah, and I encourage all citizens to eliminate prejudice everywhere and join
me in this celebration. In witness thereof, I here unto set my hand in steel
of the City of Issaquah this fifteenth day of June 2020. We also want to
let the Council know that I have issued a second version of the City Proclamation
for the Issaquah Highlands Council so that they can display it in Blakely Hall and
highlight the values of their Issaquah community in support of the recognition of Juneteenth in
the Highlands. I really wanted to thank Christy Gerard for working on this last week
with the Mayor's Office. The next item of business on our agenda this evening is
the consent calendar, which was distributed to Council in advance. And if authorized, the items
on this consent calendar will be considered together and approved by one motion. Have the
payables and payroll been reviewed? This is Council Member DeMichelle. Yes.
This is Council Member Walsh. They have. Thank you. Does any Council Member desire to
remove any item from the consent calendar and consider it under regular business?
Before we move to the motion on the consent calendar, I want to check in
with Council President Hunt and find out if you had any email contents that you
wanted to share on the consent calendar this evening. Thank you. This is Council President
Hunt. We did receive one email on consent items, which I will summarize.
The email, the Residents disagreed with the
funding of the turf project, which refers to a irrigation project that complement park and
felt that this was not a pressing need. And also that was concerned about additional
water that would be needed for the irrigation. And this resident also recommended
approval of the King County, COVID 19 funding for housing stability, which is also on
consent. That concludes the summary of our correspondence on consent items. Thank you very much.
And for those that are watching, this has been a practice that Council President has
been using during COVID when access to our meetings and to your council has been
more restricted. Is there a motion to approve the consent calendar?
This is Council President Hunt. I move to adopt the consent agenda as presented in
this evening's agenda. Hi, this is Chris Ray. I'll second the motion.
It's been moved and seconded. City Clerk, can you please call the roll?
Yes, Council Member DeMichel? Aye. Council Member Goodman? Aye.
Council Member Hall? Aye. Council President Hunt? Aye.
Council Member Martz? Aye. Deputy Council President Wray?
Aye. Council Member Walsh? Aye. That's seven ayes, zero nays.
Thank you very much. That passes unanimously. We're now going to move on to our
regular business. And the item we have this evening is AB 7987, Racial Equity,
City Initiatives and Procedures. This evening, council is going to be hearing the
presentation and after questions and answers, providing some direction to the administration.
There are multiple staff contributing to tonight's presentation. And I'd like to ask City Administrator
Wally Bobkiewicz to start us off tonight.
Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor, members of the Council. Good evening. As the Mayor has
mentioned, we do have a variety of things that we would like to discuss. The
Mayor's comments at the beginning of the meeting plus the comments of the members of
the public really are sobering. And our intent this evening is to try to provide
some background, not to provide solutions, not to provide end results, but really to provide
some background as the Council and the community continue discussions over the
next period of time. Next slide, please.
We have several component parts to the presentation. First, I'm going to be
asking Police Chief Scott Bierbaum to give an overview of some of the pertinent policies
and procedures that we currently are using at the police department. We think that this
is a good base. for the issues that we're facing and we wanted to give
the City Council this evening and members of the community an opportunity to hear from
the Chief on the work that we have been doing. Next, we're going to have
Judge Scott Stewart, the judge of the Issaquah Municipal Court, speak about
some of the work that the Issaquah Municipal Court has been doing. Next, we'll be
talking about initiatives that we have been doing within the City of Issaquah Municipal Government
Organization on equity. as well as discuss some of the community
initiatives that we have been involved in. Again, it's our hope that these discussions this
evening will provide some context and some basis for further discussion and direction. And then
we'll talk about what the administration sees are some proposed next steps as we move
forward. So Madam Mayor, members of the council, unless there's any initial questions, I'd like
to ask Police Chief Scott Beerbaum to move forward with his portion of the presentation.
Thank you, City Administrator Bobquitz, and thank you, Council Members and Mayor Pawley. Good evening.
I am Chief Scott Beerbaum. Over the past two weeks, we've been working to answer
our community members' questions. As part of our racial equity conversation, some community members have
expressed a desire to learn more about the Issaquah Police Department's policies, procedures, and training.
Tonight's presentation, again, to echo City Administrator Bobquitz, information is
about providing information to the council and our community on how our department approaches law
enforcement in Issaquah and on where to learn more about those approaches.
Tonight I will begin by outlining two national frameworks that guide how we approach policing
in our community. Then I'll discuss several state factors that have influences on our current
law enforcement environment, followed by our local factors such as our policy manual. And finally,
I will discuss our ongoing training that our department members go through. Next slide, please.
I'll start with more of the national policing initiatives that we use to guide how
we approach law enforcement. In 2015, the president established the 21st Century Policing Task Force.
It basically created a national guiding document establishing best practices and recommendations on how policing
practices can address effective crime reduction while building public trust. One of our state,
our executive director of the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Commission, Sue Rahr, was a
member of that task force and helped in the development of that final report. Essentially,
the task force identified six areas or pillars that law enforcement agencies could act on.
Seeing on our slide, they focus on trust, which is the building of relationships within
the community. Policy and oversight, ensuring that policies reflect community values, establish
clear and comprehensive policies on how the police department interacts with the community to include
use of force. Third pillar is technology and social media. Basically
claiming that law enforcement agencies should adopt model policies and best practices for technology-based community
engagement that increases community trust and access. This would include the possibility of
utilization of body cameras or in-car video. The next pillar is community
policing. This really means working with neighborhoods and residents and communities to collaborate on public
safety, working alongside with, coming up with solutions that best fit what the community needs
to address public safety. Training and education. This
is really focusing on the scope issue that scope of policing in the United States
is widening and the agency should focus on quality training and education to ensure that
police officers are able to effectively respond to the community needs. And then finally is
safety and wellness. This is not just about equipment to save lives. This is also
expanded in recent time to help support the emotional well-being of officers to ensure that
they are able to serve the community.
The other national policing initiative is the Police Executive Research Forum, or PERF. PERF is
an independent research organization that focuses on critical issues in policing. In 2016,
they released the 30 guiding principles on use of force. In this, one of the
first principles that was identified was the sanctity of human life. You can see it.
The sanctity of human life should be at the heart of everything an agency does.
It is ensuring that that is the first and foremost focus of what a police
department is, how they respond to their community needs. Additional
principles that are covered in this perf are minimum requirements related to use of force,
recommendation for de-escalation, crisis intervention, training your officers on decision making,
the duty to intervene if an officer is seen to be using excessive force, the
duty to render first aid, prohibition of shooting at moving vehicles and the documentation of
use of force. Next slide, please.
Law enforcement is not equal across our country. Although there are national initiatives, policing is
different in each state as there are differences in state constitutions, government structures, training standards,
etc. Additionally, policing is different city to city due to community expectations and funding. I'd
like now to highlight a few steps the state of Washington has taken to address
expectations of law enforcement. They've established the certification of peace officers in 2001
and just recently the certifications for corrections officers in this year 2020.
Prior to even getting into law enforcement, there's an expectation in per Washington administrative
code that background investigations into candidates for policing conducted that would include a
full background a psychological testing and polygraph examinations
officers are required to attend the basic law enforcement academy which is 720 hours of
training or corrections officers are also required to attend at least 160 hour
training course through the Washington State Criminal Justice Training Center
as part of in part of additional training mandates mandatory annual
crisis intervention or de-escalation or and implicit bias.
The Douglas Ostling Act requires eight hours of crisis intervention training for officers
and recently I-940 in 2018 now currently known as the Law Enforcement Training and Community
Safety Act requires de-escalation and implicit bias training to be included for
police agencies. Next slide please.
Also as part of the Law Enforcement Training Community Safety Act was the update to
officers' responsibility for rendering first aid if use of force is used on someone. It
also requires independent investigations by an outside police agency to investigate the
actions of the police officers who use deadly force or significant force. Our agency has
utilized the King County Sheriff's Office for any of our significant force investigations.
The act also repealed the requirement that an officer act with malice to be subject
to criminal charges for the unlawful use of deadly force and replace it with an
objective good faith standard. Essentially, the officer must have been found to have acted within
good faith. And it would be clear, this is not 20-20 hindsight, but was known
to the officer at the time. Additionally, The
state has established process for revocation of peace officers or corrections officer certifications who have
either violated the law or have committed criminal acts or have violated certain policies
within the profession. Next slide,
please. I'm going to now focus more on
our police department policies and standards. Our agency uses Lexapol policy manual It is a
risk management based best practices policy manual. It's essentially an active living, breathing, guiding
document that is updated regular due to case law or best practices. In
addition to the policy manual, it is associated with, I'll cover later in our training
aspect with daily training bulletins where our officers are required to review a policy,
compare it to a scenario based training and then answer a quiz. This is daily.
Our officer Our police department also subscribes to state
accreditation through the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs. This is the outside
audit of our policies, our practices and procedures to confirm that we are adhering to
the industry best practices and standards. This includes our use of force reporting, our training,
hiring processes, our standards and our supervision responsibilities as well.
Next slide, please.
A lot of questions have come from our community specifically about the
eightcantwait.org. And those are focused on the eight
initiatives or eight concerns that have been identified. Our policy manual in Lexapol does
identify all of these that are identified in the eightcantwait.
Our policy manual currently does not allow for the use of choke holds or strangle
holds. We do require de-escalation. We do require warnings before shooting if
possible. We do require that our officers do use only the necessary force
and attempt to exhaust alternatives before using deadly force. Our use of force
policy does contain a section that states it's a duty of an officer to intervene
if they observe what they believe is excessive force. We do ban shooting at moving
vehicles. Our use of force policy does require a use of force continuum
or elevated force only necessary to that to achieve the lawful
purpose intended. And our policy manual also includes the requirements to have
documented use of force for when our officers use force or potentially could use force
as well. Next slide, please. I just want to check in with
Council Member Goodman. She did indicate she had a question. I'm just not sure if
it's a quick one and she wants to ask it now or she wants to
wait till the end of your presentation. Council Member Goodman, what's your preference? I think
maybe before we get too far down, the Chief was talking about Lexi Paul
and the policies that we have
in response to some of the questions that the community has raised, those policies all
at the bottom say draft. And so I wondered, Chief, I think you
maybe had addressed this earlier, maybe in an implied way. And I wondered if you
could speak to why the policies that we have are at the bottom stamped draft.
Thank you. The policies that we had sent out to
Council prior to the meeting were plucked from the
document in total. So the actual separate policies that were sent to
Council ahead of time were only the individual policies. We currently have our
entire policy manual posted on our website that has everything. When we
the policy out of LexPol directly as opposed to the entire in its entirety it
will pull it out as a draft PDF. Thank you. Thank you
Councilmember Goodman. Chief continue. So
I want to talk a little bit about our department training. So as part of
the state requirements additionally the state requires 24 hours of minimum hours of in-service training.
agency is committed to that ongoing training in all aspects of the profession and we
average well above that as an organization. In addition to the crisis intervention
requirements, it does state that an officer is required to attend a basic
eight-hour and annual two-hour refresher. Not only do we require our officers to attend, but
we require all of our police department employees, so our corrections officers, our dispatchers, our
records employees, and our administrative assistants as well. We feel that it's important that all
members of our agency are engaged in the crisis intervention. Additionally, the state
recommends 25% of your department attend a 40-hour course, and we are well above
that on how many of our officers have attended the 40-hour course with a goal
of 100% of our employees to have that
40-hour course as well. That is a priority for us as an organization. In regards
to diversity and equity training, throughout the last several
years, we required our officers to attend trainings, not only sponsored by
the state criminal justice training center, but also we've brought in community members to help
provide additional training. 2015, we actually brought in Captain john Hayes from
Seattle Police Department as part of who was part of their community outreach team and
he brought in community members from different communities within the region to have conversations
with our officers to talk about equity to talk about bias and to talk about.
It will implicit bias and how to communicate and how to partner with our communities
2016 we brought in Reverend Wayne Perryman from Mercer Island, who has been
active in the region regarding diversity as well. We've had additional anti-harassment
training. We've been a part of the city equity training as well that you hear
more about tonight. And then in the past year, we've been focusing on another course
put on by Dr. Bryant Martz from Morehouse College called Acknowledging and Managing Hidden Bias
in Good People. This is again talking about implicit bias,
recognizing that, and then being able to understand that everyone has is
impacted by bias or implicit bias, and they have to recognize it and then be
able to use tips and tools to be able to overcome that to make sure
that you're providing effective services for our community. I already did mention about our Lexapol
daily training bulletins as well. So each one of our employees daily reviews a policy,
applies it to a scenario-based training, and then takes a test on it as well.
Next slide, please. So next steps
for the police department. We've been having continuous conversations with a lot of our community
members and our community groups, and we're looking forward to having more of those. We're
in this learning period of trying to understand some of our community's concerns and trying
to make sure that as many voices are heard as well. We're going to continue
to review our policies and procedures. Again, they're updated on a regular basis based on
case law and recent activities in the police profession.
Our policy manual is available on the website, so please, we encourage our community members
to review it and provide any feedback that they have as well.
And then I want to talk about state-level conversations. We're already having a lot of
conversations at the state level with other police chiefs, with legislatures as well. Some of
the conversations that are going on currently are talking about maybe a statewide use of
force standard. They want to look at arbitration reform. What they mean by that is
being able to look at how agencies are able to hold officers accountable and to
make sure that maybe sometimes officers that have demonstrated certain
aspects are held accountable for their actions. And there's also discussion about having a state
level outside investigation into officer use of force. Currently, it just requires another
police agency to, but we are having conversations at a statewide level to have investigations
into officer of force. Additionally, they are looking into
implementing peer intervention training to again have at the officer level intervene
if there's issues that they're seeing on how officers are acting within their own agencies.
And they want to increase the transparency into investigations and ensure that the proper investigations
occur. So again, having another oversight group to look into those outside agency investigations. Our
goal again, going back to the whole reason for the 21st century policing is to
enhance public trust. So as we move forward, we're going to continue to listen to
our agency to our community members. We want to hear more from them. I appreciate
the public comments tonight. I'm looking forward to our next steps and I'm opening the
floor for any questions. Thank you, Chief. I am keeping my eye on the chat
box to see if there are any council members who would like to ask any
questions now. And we have a couple of comments and questions showing up. So I'll
go first to Council Member Goodman for a comment.
And a question. It's actually a question. I'm sorry, but I've already spoken. So I
can let Council President Hunt and Council Member Walsh go before me. Thank you very
much. Council President Hunt for a question followed by Council Member Walsh. Thank you. This
is Council President Hunt. In the information that you provided, Chief Beerbohm, about
the policies that relate to the 8 Can't Wait initiative,
there seems like, and also when you were speaking to it, it seems like there
are some potential, there's more information there in the policies than
For instance, one is require warnings before shooting, and I think our policy is when
possible. And so I wondered if there can be a review of
other code that does comply completely with 8 Can't Waits and then see if we
can clarify those components where ours
is different than 8 Can't Wait. Thank you. Chief?
I just want to make sure I have clarity on that question. Thank you. You
want to make sure that our policies are
matching the 8 Can't Wait concerns through either ensuring the
language is matching or identifies and
addresses those concerns directly.
Yes, I think So the example I gave is that in the eight can't wait
policies, it has require warning before shooting. And then
in the example that we gave as our policy, it has when possible. And so
I wonder if there are other situations like that where we
could do a review to make sure that it's exactly aligned and as closely aligned
as possible. Yes, absolutely. We
can take a look at and have a further review of those. Thank you.
Looks like City Administrator Bobquist would like to add something. Yes, Madam Mayor, Council President
Hunt, as we're going through the various questions with speakers, what I'm going to
do is keep a good list of these. And so at the end of the
discussion, we can come back to that. We have as far as this question regarding
the policies for the 8 Can't Wait, one of the things we would like to
do and come back to the Council is review all of the policies that we
currently have with the 8 Can't Wait, and if there are revisions, evaluate those revisions
and report back to the City Council. Thank you, City Administrator. Council President Hunt, does
that answer your question? Yes, thank you. Council Member Walsh. Thank
you. I have a bunch of questions, but I save some of them but
one of the things I wanted to ask the chief was whether or not we
record measure and publish any statistics on race related
to interactions or arrests or acts of violence or use
of force or weapons pulled whether or not there are any measurements of that
that we could help both and you making decisions about future use
but then also community transparency. Chief? Yes, that's a
great question. We've been looking at our use of force reports and we want to
try and figure out a way to make those public and increase that transparency as
well. We do a bias-based policing review each year
to take a look at our arrests and take a look at all complaints, everything
that we have to evaluate what sort of changes need to occur or if there
are any trends or if there are any concerns related to that. So we are
currently working at saying how can we provide those to the public?
Thank you. Councilmember Walsh, some additional questions, I assume. Yeah, and just pushing a little
bit on that, Chief. It sounds like that's data that some of which you may
have, some of which you are looking at how you can have, but which is
reviewed internally. I'm wondering if there is a way that we can look at that
either from a semi-external source, such as council or other parts of the administration,
or with the public or with an outside agency. What are options are there for
oversight so that it's not a situation where police are policing themselves, which doesn't
necessarily lead to transparency and community trust.
Chief? Yeah, we're looking at all aspects, and we recognize that that is a
concern of policing, policing the police, and we want to make sure that we have
those availabilities. Some of the concerns or some of the options that we're looking at
is, again, having an outside entity review our policies and take a look at some
of our data just to have that outside source make that review and again
making it available to the public on our website as well so people can see
for themselves. Council member Walsh another question? Yeah I'm going to
kind of give a list of my questions because I think some of these are
going to be things that need research and come back to us. That's great. I'd
like to get metrics on our use of force number of times weapons are pulled
and the number of times weapons are used. I would like information about
the kind of militarized equipment that we might have and what
budget has been spent on that. I'd like to know what our approach is to
asset seizure and whether or not we do any asset seizure when there isn't an
arrest or crime that is involved. I'd like to know if we have
information about discipline and firing stats, whether how we're
approaching those things, whether or not we have a percentage of, you know, a number
of discipline acts before someone is fired, what our opportunities are there. I'd like to
know if we've ever considered having some portion of our police service be done without
firearms, whether or not there is a possibility of looking at something where we do
not have lethal force weapons on hand or only have them on hand when there
is a violent encounter involved and whether or not that's something we've ever
considered. I know we have a community dashboard that shows the number
of police calls by subject area and that the
large majority of our calls are either for theft or non-injury
car collisions. And I'm wondering if there are other opportunities for things like
that that are really just making reports for
someone else to do that type of response, because I'm sure there is no police
officer who loves writing reports. And I'd like the information included
in the next time that we touch this on that community dashboard so that we
can give the community a sense of what those police calls are usually about.
And then for any of the disciplinary firing or
hiring, I'm wondering if there are opportunities for civilian oversight or review
outside of what we do in the case of lethal force
where King County sheriffs currently does the review whether or not there's an opportunity for
that to be something that's civilian related. And that is my list of questions,
which Wally, I will also email so that you have them down on hand. Thank
you. Thank you, Council Member Walsh. I'm going to go to Council Member DeMiselle next.
Thank you. Chief Beerbohm and And I have
talked earlier about, in fact, when I came on board,
we talked about how the Redmond City Police do have a full-time mental health
counselor. And of course, that has been a real interest of mine to
integrate mental health counseling or having that available for the police.
I did a little research into how that operates.
It is a woman that is their mental health counselor. It is a full-time position.
She does wear a police uniform and she has been trained in some aspects of
the police procedures, but she is there specifically to go on
call for, as it was pointed out by one of our members,
People who commented, the police usually know or often have a good idea that there's
a mental health issue on particular calls and she is available to go on those
calls. So that's one model. That's one model that city of Redmond has been
employing and I think has had success at. And so
I'm wondering if there is any discussion either regionally or at the state level
about what would be best practices in terms of integrating mental health counselors
with our police department, making sure that on those calls where that would be
really appropriate, how that might work in practice
with policing. And Chief Beerbaum, would you have any comments on that or is that
something need to know more work on? There
actually has been an increased focus on having embedded mental health
counselors in policing in police departments. There's been support at the state level for
certain grant opportunities for embedding a mental health social worker as well
and some agencies you know have been working towards that It is definitely
important that those services would be available 24 hours a day
to be able to have that intended purpose or that intended outcome. So,
but there is more information out there, but there has been a move and support
at the state level for that program. Thank you.
And just to follow up, I will say that I like a lot of the
ideas in the Redmond City model. I like the idea of integrating
the two services together so that they're working cooperatively rather than setting up a system
where those are siloed and not talking to each other. So just a
follow-up comment. Thank you very much. Thank you, Council Member DeMichelle.
Going to Council Member Goodman. Thank you, Council Member
Goodman here. Following up
on Council Member DeMichelle's comment, it's a question
just to write down as we're looking at potential other models for the police department
and embedded social workers, mental health workers, et cetera, et cetera. I would like
to put on there not so much a question as a comment, but looking at
integrating our resources so that, to use the word that was used
already and we've used before and tried to get away from, I'm working in silos.
So including resources from Eastside Fire and Rescue and their newer integrated
mobile services. I can't remember what it's called specifically, but Monica and the Gorilla up
to speed on that, looking at those. So it's embedding folks, but then what?
And also helping use all of our resources so we can spread this
workload around and help respond the best way we can.
Questions I have. Policy 302 talks about the use of
force and the review boards, and I'm not exactly sure that this is what Council
Member Walsh would talking about, but the policy 302
specifically has a composition of a review board that is internal members only, internal to
the police department. And so I would like us to look at
broadening that to include folks that are not solely within that department.
The Lexapol, I realize it's a risk
management service. I'm not sure how that dovetails with
insurance. We already had one question tonight about whether or
not we can have different language. And I know that's not exactly what Council
President Hutton said, but that's one interpretation of that question that I had. And so
one question I have is, if we subscribe to LexiPol, can we
from the standard language that Lexapol provides and what's the effect of
that? Chief Birbam, you talked about,
let's see, in an email we received, it had about the
policies requiring de-escalation, policy 209.4,
that identifies that officers are required to complete a minimum of 40 hours of continuing
de-escalation and mental health training every three years per WAC 139-11-020.
In that WAC section, it also refers to
a new There's a piece of paper I had. It refers to requirements of
training for law enforcement that became effective February, I
believe, February 2019. So if you
subtract out the months of COVID, that's really about a year. So I wanted some
more information on, and maybe Chief Behrbaum knows this off the top of his head,
but when we're talking about whether or not that officers are required to go through
de-escalation and mental health training every three years per that section of the WAC, has
that been ongoing? Because that WAC is new and the law is new.
And I'm just wanting to be clear on whether that's a new requirement, because if
it is, I think we should be clear about that. Or if it's ongoing and
it's just changed a little bit, I think that's different. That may be something that
Chief Baerbaum knows the answer to right now. If not, I can wait. Yes. Yeah,
thank you for that question. We have been working already on training for de-escalation in
the department prior to the enactment of the result of
I 940. I 940 is what established that new WAC and that actually 40 hours
I believe needs to be accomplished by 2021. We've already been engaging in the de-escalation
training for the police department as it was so that was already part of our
normal training plan the state now as part of I 940 has then
increased it to de-escalation mandated for all
the Law Enforcement Training and Community Safety Act, that is part of the new requirements.
So that is the official state requirement. Our department has already been working on the
training for de-escalation. Great, wonderful, thank you. Are we gonna have a
separate time for comments? Or should we, not that we'd
be cut off if we have additional comments later, should we also make comments now,
Mayor, or should we wait? Yeah, I think it's okay if it's a quick comment,
although I do see that at least one council member has another question. So I
think what I prefer to do is go to council member Hall for his question.
And then if there are no more questions, I know that I have you and
council member Hall and council member Martz lined up for comments. So council member Hall
question. Thank you, council member Goodman. Thank you. And I have, oh, this is Zach
Hall. Thank you, Mayor Pauly. And I have, one question and two comments, so feel
free to tell me to save my comments for later, and I'm happy to do
that. I was interested in, so we compared ourselves to the 8
Can't Wait campaign, and I think that's very helpful. But I would be interested too
if staff or Chief Garibald, if you've looked into any other campaigns that are out
there, I've seen kind of a lot floating in our emails and social media. We
heard about the grassroots law project during the comment
tonight. I know I just saw another one, the use of forest
project.org. I was just curious if we had looked into any other campaigns to kind
of compare ourselves in different ways because some of them have different metrics that they're
looking at, different policies that they're looking at. Chief Beerbunk?
We've been keeping an eye on a lot of the different initiatives that have been
coming forward and comparing our policies to. At the time of production of this
presentation, it can't wait was kind of one of the ones that was getting more
of our attention from some of our citizen comments. And so we focused on that
one in tonight's presentation. But yes, the grassroots law project, I exchanged emails with
one of our citizen commenters earlier. about two weeks ago about some of these
issues and a request to pledge to that as well. So
yes, we've been comparing our policies and procedures to those other initiatives and we do
believe that our policy menu does align to a lot of those. A lot of
these initiatives do align with the PERF
principles for use of force. That's part of the reason why I wanted to point
those out earlier is we've been discussing these across the nation as addressing
these and ways to reduce potential excessive use of force or improper use of
force. So yes, we've been monitoring those as well and we can come back with
a little bit more information. Thank you. Council Member Hall, I'm going to ask you
to hold on to your comments just because Council Member Martz has been so patient.
Looks like there are no more questions. I'm going to start on comments with Councilmember
Marz. Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is Councilmember Marz. So
I have always said that public safety is the cornerstone of
our community. And I've been proud of the IPD in things like, of course,
the active shooter incident that we had a few years ago. But it's become abundantly
clear that even in our community, people don't view themselves
as particularly safe. And particularly people of color have
very understandably used the tragic death in Minneapolis to
highlight why they don't feel safe and why they feel we need to do something.
And I have a little bit of a unique perspective because I've gotten to spend
time in Senegal, where it's a very safe place. I've walked around late at
night in the dark in cities and felt very, very safe going back from restaurants.
And even though there's a huge wealth disparity between Americans and Senegalese,
some of it is that there's not as many drugs. Some of it is that
there's not the economic inequity. But I think most of all, people view police differently.
There isn't... inherent antagonism. There is an inherent defensiveness in encounters.
And I think a lot of that comes from the fact that African police officers
look a lot like my African friend. And you could, somebody take the uniform off,
you can't tell the difference. And it just, it leads to a different situation. And
so, you know, what can we do to reinvent public safety so that
everyone in our community feels like public safety makes them safe?
I think we need to think about doing concrete actions immediately, as soon as possible.
And then I think we need to think about medium term and I think we
need to think about long term. So in the near term, I think we should
look at something like 8 Can't Wait and find out what it would take to
fully implement it as a starting point, as a difference between saying that
these issues matter to us and then actually moving the needle. In the medium term,
several council members, including Council Member Walsh, started off talking about HR policies,
hiring, discipline, and firing. I think that while, of course,
people are innocent until proven guilty, I think we've all seen, for as long as
I've been alive, situations where police officers in other communities did things
that looked by any reasonable standard wrong. And whatever the policies were, they walked away.
So I'd like to see in the medium term what we can do to make
clear rules. And rule breakers shouldn't be cops. If they know the rules and they
break the rules, they shouldn't be police officers. And we should put policies in
place that allow for a clear vetting of things that have happened. And then if
somebody's determined that they shouldn't be a police officer, then we should move them along
to a different career. Long-term, I think we have an opportunity to reinvent public
safety. The comment about police officers shouldn't be social workers and social workers shouldn't be
police officers is great. Situations like school engagements and
nonviolent infractions. I'm interested on this sort of long-term
track. I'm interested in seeing what we can do that maintains or improves public safety.
that reinvents how we deliver public safety as a community. I know that
the leaders, yourself and City Administrator Bobkowitz and
Chief Bierbaum are all committed to the same goals of making our community more
safe, and I believe we'll lead a thorough and comprehensive conversation
about how we can do this in a way that everybody feels more safe. and
moves us further into the 21st century. So those are the three tracks. Short term,
let's see about getting It Can't Wait fully implemented. Medium term, what can we do
with our HR policies. Long term, as a city reinventing public safety. And I'll just
mention one last thing. I'm extremely proud that our city led the way on both,
and it's gonna seem like a weird segue, both recreational marijuana and sorry, medical marijuana
and recreational marijuana. And we did so because we addressed public safety concerns. There were
people in the community that said we were horrible for not allowing marijuana. And there
were people in the community who said we were horrible for considering allowing marijuana. But
by focusing on what policies actually affected public safety, what moved the needle on public
safety, in the end, we implemented policies that weren't really very controversial and that everybody
was okay with. And so I think we can do the same thing with fundamental
public safety. We led the way in the state on both medical and recreational
marijuana. We can leave the state on public safety. Thank you very much. Thank you,
Council Member Martz. I'm gonna go to Council Member Goodman for comment. Thank you,
Madam Mayor. Council Member Goodman here. Just a couple of things. I
agree with the comments about looking to not defund,
but reform police department in delivering services, including
maybe the social workers, mental health workers, however we want to term it. I don't
think we have any idea what that looks like yet, but certainly want to make
sure that it makes sense and is consistent with
what our community needs and what our community values are. I think one of the
comments that I heard tonight from our public comments time was somebody who said
our budget reflects our community values. I have heard in the
news media that the call for, there was the call to defund the Seattle Police
Department by 50%, and I thought I heard that the public safety budget in the
Seattle Police Department was 50% of the general fund. So when I calculate,
what our entire public safety budget is
compared to our general fund, which it includes the jail and it includes all the
services that are provided under the topic of the police department. It's 23% of our
budget. So, $11 million is only part of that story. And then, of course, we
have to break it down even further. But at most importance, determine what makes the
most sense and is consistent with what our community needs are.
The police chief mentioned Sue Rohr early on in his comments, and I was glad
that he did. She, of course, is former King County Sheriff from many years ago.
She currently is the executive director of the Washington Criminal Justice Training Commission. And she's
been in the news lately. She's been interviewed by some of the radio stations, and
I've heard some of those interviews. And I've been struck by her comments and her
personal revelations during those interviews. I want to read just one
passage, and these are her words from her
perspective looking back at decades of when she was an officer on the street.
So I quote from her. She said, so what I, Sue Rohr, learned through experience
is when I see a car that looks like it's pretty old and beat up
and it's driven by a bunch of young men who look like they might be
criminals. If I pull that car over, there's a pretty good chance one of them
is going to have a warrant. If I pull that car over and arrest that
person for a warrant, I'm rewarded for making that arrest. never thought about
was the reason that that person has a warrant fair and equitable. And she continues
to say, the research on this topic is very, very clear. People who are black
and white tend to abuse drugs at the same rate, but the people who have
darker skin are arrested at a higher level because my generation of law enforcement,
that's who we paid attention to. That fed the system and reinforced the biased thinking
that we have about who commits more crimes and who doesn't. Sue Rohr said
that she's embarrassed. These are all her words. She's embarrassed to admit that it took
her decades to see that simply pulling someone over can destroy the rest of their
life. I was horrified at my lack of knowledge about what really happened in this
country historically. It completely changed my perspective on things. And then I started looking at
what happened in prosecution. And so she doesn't, she says
more, and I have several articles that were written based on her interviews. And Chief
Beerbom talked about the 2015 police initiative that she worked on.
Locally, she, before COVID, she had ready to roll, already roll
out at the state level, at the commission, an anti-bias policy. And what will be,
required is what will be
required of Washington police recruits will be training on black history, civil
rights, and to prevent bias. So that's just one thing that she's working on. So
I hope we can work very closely with that commission. And I'm not suggesting we
do, that we don't already, Chief Beerbohm. I'm just hoping that we do, because it
sounds like this is really something that she feels very passionately about. And I have
been by everything that I have heard her say.
The other thing that I wanted to mention that I found even more striking and
I found it shocking actually is that on the Criminal Justice Training Commission's website
there is a statement and I'm going to read part of it. For the past
four years, leaders of the Criminal Justice Training Commission have worked closely with community stakeholders
to reduce the use of deadly force in this state and to continue to build
public trust and the video images of the death of Mr. George Floyd are devastating
in many ways. We want the people we serve to know that we do not
train officers to place their knee on a person's neck either in the process of
gaining control or while they are being restrained awaiting transport.
This is the more significant portion that I want people to hear. But in discussions
with our lead trainers for control and defensive tactics, after watching the video from Minneapolis,
we asked, quote, do we explicitly tell our student not to place their knee on
the back of the subject's neck? The incredulous response from our trainers was, no,
because it's obviously inappropriate and dangerous. So effective immediately, our trainers will
explicitly state in training that placing the knee on a subject's neck and applying pressure
is deadly. should never be done unless the situation clearly warrants the use
of deadly force. And I guess the reason
I find that so shocking is because I just assumed that either it was taught
or it was not taught. And what this sort of taught me is that
I guess we shouldn't be making any assumptions as we go these exercises. It's more
important than ever to listen, to investigate where we want to be,
what do we want to look like, and then dig into the details and find
out just exactly what we are teaching, just exactly what people are learning,
and how that is transforming who we are as people, who we are as government,
who we are as police departments. But Anyway, those are the things
that have struck me the past week or so. And Chief Birbama, I thank you
for the presentation tonight and all of the materials. I appreciate all the transparency
and I appreciate your interest, passion, and willingness to help us move to a
place that has our community completely comfortable and I believe that we will get there.
Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Goodman. Council Member Hall.
Thanks, Mayor Pauli. This is Zach Hall. Councilmember Goodman, that was very well said. Thank
you very much. And I also want to say, Councilmember Marz, I agreed with
everything you said, too. So I've been crossing off all of my comments. I have
very few left to give. The first ask that I would
make is just, you know, we've been talking a lot about some of this relates
to state work that's going on. So just to make an ask to make sure
we're connecting with our legislative delegation in Olympia as they're talking about the use of
force, arbitration reform, which came up and training frequencies and all that.
Secondly, I really liked what I really, really like some of these community comments,
re-imagining the police department,
an organization's budget reflects their values. The only time better than today to take action
was yesterday. Redistribute
some of the police budget into community services. I
just think that community really came out today and gave us a
lot of good stuff to think about. So in honoring that, I want to make
sure we're also talking about, you know, the roles and responsibilities
and funding within the police department and everything that they're being asked to do,
making sure when we are having that conversation about what some of us are interested
in having, which is, you know, social services and crisis intervention and substance abuse counselors.
people experienced in that training having that conversation outside
and having it exist outside the police department i think that's important that we honor
what our community is saying about that um but still have it remain an emergency
service response and um one of the reasons why i think that conversation
is so worth having is um whether or not we have the best
officers in the world you know some situations when people call 9-1-1
having a law enforcement officer there is just simply going to escalate the situation thinking
of people with suicidal ideations maybe that's not the right person to be responding to
that situation so um anyways just to offer a little bit of feedback there um
ditto again what councilmember goodman and mark said thank you Thank you, Councilmember Hall.
Next up is Deputy Council President Wray followed by Councilmember G. Michelle. Hi, this is
Chris Wray. Thank you, Mayor Pawley. I'm struck when you call 911, we get a
choice of a police car, an ambulance, or a fire truck, and people in crisis
need help, and sometimes those are not the helps that they need. What we need
is a new way to view responses to people in need. And I think that's
what we heard a lot from the public today is sometimes you need a police
car, sometimes you need an ambulance, sometimes you need a fire truck, and sometimes you
need a mental health counselor, and sometimes you need other services. And so it's how
do we start to look at and reimagine policing? How do we reimagine
crisis response for the people who live in the city so that we better align
our response to their needs That was my first kind of comment. My second one
is, if anybody in the city is afraid, then we have work to do.
And the response to being afraid is often, well, we'll give you more security
by giving you additional law enforcement. But when people are afraid of law enforcement, then
we've got a really difficult situation that we're trying to work through. It's
concerning when people view the police as somebody to fear, not someone to help them
overcome their fear. Because I believe everyone should live in a society where they are
feeling safe and comfortable and can thrive.
Moving forward, I agree completely with Council Member Marks. We have much work to do.
We can do today. Some that's going to take a little longer and some that's
going to be on a long-term track. As we put this together, we've got a
balancing act about how do we create an environment where everybody feels safe and secure.
So I'm gonna steal a little bit from Council Member Hall, but we are really
at an inflection point right now and we heard that from the community and we
need to take advantage of this. And it's an opportunity to reimagine police, it's
an opportunity to reimagine policing. And I guess most importantly, it's time to us to
take a step back and reimagine how do we help people who are at a
crisis in their life, regardless of what the nature of that crisis is. So it's,
police is a big part, but it's way bigger than just policing. Thank
you, Deputy Council President. Council Member
DeMichelle. Thank you, Mayor Pauly.
I too appreciate all of the comments that we received tonight, and so many of
them have given us so much to think about. I did just want to
talk about some of the community members talked about the greater picture,
where we are in terms of our neighboring communities and King County.
Generally, people feel or think or sense that Issaquah
is generally a safe place. But we live in a
situation here where In King County, about half the people who are in jail, and
I know we're gonna hear from Judge Stewart next, but half the people who are
in jail have been identified as having mental health problems. In my campaign
for city council, I talked to representatives from EFR and the police who said that
about 30% of the time that they spent is with people who are experiencing homelessness,
people experiencing mental illness, with substance abuse disorders,
people having what I call crimes of poverty, such as evictions.
And so it is time, and this has been building for decades,
where we have to address a very broken healthcare system, a very broken mental healthcare
system, where the problems of those systems have been dumped on our
police and into our jails. And it's well past time for us to
reimagine what we can do. I'm going to go back to what I said earlier.
We have a relatively safe community. And that, I think, gives us opportunities
to try, to experiment, to envision what a
better way of going about things could be. I really wanted to especially thank Rachel
Benick and Dr. Brackell for their visions of alternative
forms of community safety and safety programs. So
I'm gonna take those visions with me into the future. I do feel like there's
an urgency here. This has been building the racism, the racism,
and policing, the mental health issues have been building for decades. And so
it is time for us to really think about how can we take action now
and in the future and do that thoughtfully, but make sure that it is a
forward motion that our community can see. Thank you.
Thank you, Councilmember D. Michelle. Next, we have Councilmember Walsh who has a question and
a comment. Councilmember Walsh Thank you. This is Councilmember Walsh. I really
appreciate our Council and our community in the conversations that we are willing to have
and all of the great questions and comments and suggestions that
have come up from this. love the idea of
reimagining and coming up with a plan for how
public safety can be handled in our community toward that idea
chief one of the questions I have when I'm trying to think and maybe I'll
use councilmember Martz's idea of short mid and long term time frame this is
more on the mid to long term but the idea of potentially right sizing a
police department and understanding what percentage of
our response calls are required for kind of a public
safety and protect portion, but also understanding that many in the
community probably don't know how many officers we have on hand at any one time.
And So what I would like to understand
at a future point is kind of the budget we have now, how many
officers it provides for both at a given time and overall. And then also kind
of if we're looking at this idea, if we had
a situation where maybe we were saying we need other types of
professionals involved what would be the budget requirement for a minimal staff?
Because I know it's not nothing. And I know it's, so I guess I just
want to be realistic when we come to this so that we aren't
imagining that there is a huge pot of money out there and that so many
things can be solved with this. So I guess I want to be respectful to
that idea and hope that you can come with that I don't think that's an
answer for tonight but I'm just bringing it up thank you thank you for that
councilmember Walsh I think that is what we were hoping to get tonight is to
understand the kind of information you would need as a baseline in order to change
and move forward and so that's a very great question that's a really good question
I am seeing that councilmember Hall has a comment Thank you, Mayor
Pauly. This is Zach Hall. It's actually kind of churned into a question in my
head, so it might be both. But I guess for the actually, OK, it is
it's a question and then a comment. So the first part is a question for
Chief Beerbohm. Can you explain to me how S.R. how school resource officers is
that funded by the school district? Is that through the city, through our police department?
How does that work? actually a
agreement with the school district and they pay a certain percentage of the officer's salary
to perform policing in the schools during the school year.
Do you know approximately what that percentage is chief? Is it half or? It's approximately
60 percent. They pay 60 percent. Okay thank you. Okay good to know. Comments Councilmember
Hall? Thank you, Mayor Paula. Yeah, Zach Hall again. A couple times during audience comment
tonight, people brought up either SROs or ongoing work within the school district. So I
thought it might be prudent for us to reach out to the school district and
try to get a comment to inform our discussion about SROs and
all that moving forward. Thank you. Thank you for that. I'm not seeing anything
else in the chat box, so it looks like it might be time to move
to the next presenter, and I believe the next one up is Judge Stewart.
Judge Stewart Sorry about that. I had to turn down my volume to avoid feedback.
Welcome, Judge Stewart. We have some new council members that have yet to meet you,
and we have not had an annual presentation this year, but here you are tonight.
So you have a couple of folks on the council who have not gotten to
hear the good work that you're doing over there. Well, it's nice to meet you.
I would love to have you come by the court. I know Mayor Pauly has.
It's kind of hard to come by the court now, but we are in virtual
court just about every day. You can log in and watch us in action. Mayor
Pawley, City Council members, thank you for inviting me to speak on the issue of
bias in the courts. Essentially what I'm going to do today is spend a couple
of minutes talking about my obligations as a judge when it comes to issues of
racial bias and prejudice, and then talk about some of the things that the court's
doing, which is kind of interesting because it's going to address some of the
issues that a number of the community members spoke about that they'd like to see
being done and I think we're moving in that direction. 11 days ago, a unanimous
Washington State Supreme Court signed an open letter to the legal community where they noted
that as judges we have an obligation to acknowledge the role that the judicial branch
has played in devaluing black lives. That we cannot undo this wrong, but that we
can recognize our ability to do better in the future. And next slide. And actually
skip ahead two because I forgot to say it. One more. As a judge, I'm
charged by the code of judicial conduct with performing my duties without either bias or
prejudice. I also have an obligation to ensure that my staff and others subject to
my direction, including every attorney who appears in my courtroom, do not by their words
or conduct manifest any bias or prejudice. But more than that, I have an obligation
to avoid any conduct that might be, despite my best intentions, in any way perceived
as being biased or prejudiced. this procedural fairness, and it requires that I recognize that
everyone bring a different life experience into the courtroom. This is especially true for our
marginalized communities. The percentage of the people who appear as defendants in this municipal court
who are African American is small, we actually ran the numbers over the last four
years, and it's .053 percent. But still, it's important that I, as a judge, recognize
that many, if not all of them, have different experiences expectations and concerns with regard
to the judicial branch and what might be possessed by their white neighbors. The same
is true for our larger populations of color, Hispanic clients, Native American clients, and numerous
other individuals from the many different cultures and backgrounds served by the court, as well
as the homeless, LGBTQ community, people with mental illness, and different levels of addiction.
Because of these different levels of expectations and concerns for justice to occur, it's important
to ensure that everyone appearing in the court walk out of the courtroom with the
sense that each individual participant has been treated fairly, with respect and empathy, and
that they have been heard. Treating people fairly and without bias achieves a second important
goal. A number of years ago, the City of Issaquah, in conjunction with the Washington
Administrative Office of the Courts, was kind enough to send me to a national training
out of state addressing procedural fairness as it relates to bias and
prejudice. I've actually become the speaker at the Washington State Bar Association's training
for pro tem judges on the issues of procedural bias and prejudice. What
I learned at that training and from numerous studies is that when people who appear
in court feel that they have been treated fairly and without bias, they're more likely
to comply with what it is the court and society expects of them. more likely
to maintain law-abiding behavior. They're more likely to abstain from alcohol and illegal drugs if
that's what's causing their problems and to follow through with treatment programs. Next
slide. In addition to recognizing the importance of
addressing issues and bias and prejudice and procedural fairness, our court also recognizes that it's
often our marginalized communities who lack the resources necessary to comply with court requirements, things
like treatment, basic things like driver's license. A driver's license is huge for
a poor member of the community. You need it to get a job, obviously you
need to get it to drive. Many of them lack ID. Also, housing.
And the inability to have these things can sometimes result in severe consequences. Incarceration, for
instance. As a municipal court, one of our primary goals is rehabilitation, helping people help
themselves. To that end, in the Issaquah Municipal Court, Some offenders, including many whose legal
issues grow out of substance abuse or mental health issues, our prosecutors and defense attorneys
work on diversion programs that allow defendants to ultimately earn a dismissal of their charges
in exchange for compliance with court requirements, often including treatment and restitution. This keeps our
citizens out of jail. Our court's probation officer works to allow probationers to remain in
the community and obtain treatment services and other resources with a goal of rehabilitation and
a reduction of recidivism. also provides information on resources for supervised defendants,
court monitor defendants, attorneys in the community, and other members of the community. These include
but are not limited to alcohol drug treatment, resources, sober support resources, mental health resources,
community service options, referral for domestic violence treatment both for perpetrators and victims, food resources,
clothing resources, and housing resources. Most recently, and this is real exciting for the court
because it leads to our next stage, began training with the Department of Social and
Health Services to become an assisting agent community partner. And this will allow the court
through our probation to use the Washington Connection database to assist members of the court
community in obtaining DSHS services, something that our poor clientele desperately need.
Once it seems safe to do so, she'll begin hosting open office hours to all
court clients, not just those who are on probation, to assist in providing resources and
setting them up with DSHS services. Court's also part of a group of courts who
participate in the UP program, which allows people whose license has been suspended as a
result of tickets out of multiple jurisdictions to consolidate all their tickets to a home
court, begin making payments, and then have their license reinstated as soon as payment is
made as compared to wait until all the tickets are paid off. We get licensed
and insured drivers on the road rather than unlicensed. Folks, it also helps us get
a job. also been allowing people to request a hearing to readdress older fines, especially
on moving violations in another attempt to get them licensed and insured. If you look
at the slide that's on the board, on the bottom screen you see me in
the middle, and to the left is Whitney Gardner.
Whitney Gardner is a long-term resident of Esquire. She's also our primary
public defender. Now our court, because of Christy Shorn who's on the line, is on
the forefront in Washington courts right now with regard to running virtual courtrooms.
If you've been paying any attention to what happens with the courts is while if
you shut down a park, people don't go to the park, when we shut down
our courts as a result of the COVID-19, cases kept piling up. The King County
District Court isn't open yet and there are thousands of cases behind. And we recognize
the difficulties associated with that. So we met with our public defenders and we met
with our prosecutors. decided that we were going to start running a virtual courtroom Whitney
had similar concerns to mine and that's had to do with our poor population but
Whitney was concerned about is that our clients being poor would not be able to
access the virtual courtroom they wouldn't be able to call in they wouldn't be able
to sign in and it didn't up with warrants or or the like we agreed
we wouldn't be issuing warrants then we started the process and what we found was
that The poor clientele, the poor population
that relied upon the public defender services found it easier to access the virtual courtroom
than to actually come to court. People that are at the very, very poor end,
the homeless population, might have to walk to court. We have people that walk miles
to get to court or take two or three buses to get to court and
then two or three buses home, but they could always find a phone. Somebody had
an iPhone they could use to call into the court and make it without giving
up their entire day just to get there for what might be a five-minute court
appearance. And probably even more significant than that, the working poor, the folks that are
making $12, $15 an hour, maybe working part or full-time, were having to take half
days or full days off of work in order to come to court. And what
we've been able to see is literally they call in from their work, they stay
on hold until their case gets called, they take their 15-minute break, they step off
the line, handle their court and they go right back to work. So what Ms.
Gardner pointed out to me is rather than people losing their job, rather than losing
a significant amount of their income, they're able to make their court appearance and keep
their job. We actually had a young man about two weeks ago online, and we
have a similar screen to what you have and we have them all spread out,
and we could see him throughout our entire court hearing as he was taping walls.
We called his case, he stopped taping, he turned, presented what we call a review
hearing. We finished his review hearing. We thanked him for his appearance in our virtual
court and he immediately went back to taping. Whitney and I have both decided, as
is the prosecutor, that it's an effective use of the justice system and we will
be continuing virtual courts, at least as an option, even after the pandemic has been
beaten. Next slide, please. And the one other thing that
I think the community may be excited about Back in 2018, my court
administrator, Lynn Campo, and I decided that 2019 would be the year that we started
in Nissaquamie Municipal Court Community Court. That got put on hold with Lynn's untimely death
in January 2019. When we hired Kristi Shorn as our new court administrator, she and
I decided to make Community Court our project for 2020. That got delayed by COVID-19.
Having a probation officer trained by DSHS is the first step in the process of
creating a community court. We anticipate having it up and running by the end of
the year. A community court will allow us to take the needs of the community,
and we're going to look to the community, we're going to look to the council,
we're going to look to the other departments and say, what do you see as
the needs, and address them in a court environment. We literally have the most needy
members of our community coming to court, and we will address that right at court.
We anticipate having mental health experts that will come into court, substance abuse experts, experts
on housing, experts on relicensing. All the recognized needs would meet if they're on a
court date. The community would come in that needed those needs. They'd meet with those
individuals right there at court. They would sign up for their driver's license. They would
sign up for Apple Healthcare. They would sign up for housing programs. They would then
come in front of the judge for their review hearing, and rather than me send
them out there for a month hoping this stuff could be accomplished, be accomplished even
before they were able to see me.
Many and not many, almost all of these folks are from marginalized communities. Many of
them are foreign speaking, people that have more difficulty working the system on their own,
and it will be tremendously helpful to those marginalized communities. So anyway, that's our plan.
We're hoping to start a community court for the end of the year. We may
have part of it virtually. That will be an easy and inexpensive way to get
some of these experts to appear in our courtroom. I hope that other departments in
the community are willing to work with us. And that's the end of my presentation.
If anyone has any questions. Judge Stewart, thank you so much. I am not seeing
any questions that up. Here we go. A question from Council Member Walsh followed by
Council President Hunt. Council Member Walsh. Fantastic. And once again, I have a list of
questions. But My questions for
the court really involve around kind of two things, which is we've
seen many times that people end up in jail
because they've got... got fees that are unpaid
or because they can't make it to a hearing, like you said, because they had
to be at work and so they have a warrant out for them. I'm wondering
how we approach those situations. You've talked about doing
video court, which I think is a fantastic to
address one part of that, but I'm wondering if there are other ways that we've
thought of, particularly around the cost portion of
that. Well, I can tell you that our Supreme Court has made it, declared it
unethical to jail anyone for not paying a fee. We have cost
fees, assessments, fines. We have all kinds of different things that a court imposes. The
only time you will see any court at least ethically incarcerate someone for not
paying a financial obligation is if the court deems it a willful
failure to pay restitution. So not a court fine or a fee, but where they
owe another member of the community restitution and you find that they have the money
and are just refusing to pay it, there's cases of decisions that say a court
can incarcerate somebody for that, but you have to find it to be a willful
violation. As an attorney, I've been in circumstances where judges have told the defendant,
I'm going to close your case out with 90 days. If after you serve 10
days, you pay the $200 restitution you owe to this person for breaking their window,
I'll let you out after 10 days. And the $200 always gets paid, even though
it hasn't been paid for 18 months. If they don't pay it, and they're two
or three days into that jail sentence, I think the judge has an obligation to
let them out, because then that's evidence that it's not a willful failure to pay.
But we've never locked anybody up for not paying a fine. We have a relatively
liberal…the problem is we have a…we exist under court rules, and one of the court
rules that we exist under is…requires us to try a case within a
certain timeframe. So, if somebody fails to appear, we have to issue an FTA, and
then the warrant issues to try to get them back. We have very liberal policy
that allows anyone…it's Some courts charge a fee to get on a warrant calendar. They
get a warrant walking calendar there every once in the afternoon. They can come in
and ask that their warrant be quashed, and the warrant is quashed. In the COVID
era, where we're at now, obviously, we quash every warrant by phone. I shouldn't say
that out loud, but we have a policy that says anyone that calls in and
asks to quash a warrant can quash the warrant, largely out of a recognition that
Right now, nobody's being booked into most any jail in the state because the jail
is trying to keep the population down to the truly scary individuals, and we'd rather
get the case moving along. So if they call in, we quash their warrant. In
the non-COVID era, we have a policy that, and there's an agreement between
all of the courts in King County that if anybody appears in my court that
has a warrant out of Kent, for instance, as long as the warrant's less than
$5,000, can quash that. We have an agreement. I can quash their warrant in Issaquah.
We contact Kent. We say we have Tom here. Tom failed to appear. You got
a $2,000 warrant. They'll quash the warrant. We literally hand them their court date for
Kent. Kent does the same for us. If it's over $5,000, the agreement is that
we don't do that, that we take them in custody. That's because the judge in
the other jurisdictions made a determination that that person poses a community threat.
Multiple offender DWIs, someone that has an assault IV DV that's picked up two new
violations of the no contact order, which involve violence. Any time you get them in
front of you, you need to get them in front of the judge, it's addressing
the underlying charge. But for nonviolent offenses or non DUIs, warrants are
set very low and they're quashed if you request them. The problem is we have
to FTA and warrant in order to preserve the jurisdiction of the court. Otherwise, the
jurisdiction runs and the case gets dismissed. So I don't think The folks that you
see booked in Issaquah on warrants are going to be obviously we're dealing with misdemeanors,
but they're going to be domestic violence charges and multiple offender DUIs. Does that answer
your question? Yes, very well. The only
other area I had a real question about was our use of cash bail and
whether or not we provide any flexibility in that area or how you
basically approach that as an idea? My interpretation of case authority is that cash bail
is not legal pretrial. So it's cash or bond.
And that it is legal
post-conviction where you've got somebody that is being monitored for either law-abiding behavior or
alcohol drug issues or things like that. Cash, the purpose of bail
is to obtain appearance in court. So bail has to be set in an amount
that is enough to get their appearance, right? The, so bail is never
set pretrial. The higher bails are set for folks, you know, I think the worst
I've seen is a seventh offense DWI, seventh offense DWI where we get evidence that
they up a new DWI out of a jurisdiction. I'm not going to name jurisdictions,
but there's a couple of jurisdictions. In Issaquah, for instance, if one of our officers
arrested somebody in a seventh offense DWI, they're holding that person in jail. I'm faxed
a PC statement. I review the PC statement, and I'm holding that person until I
can see them face to face. There are other jurisdictions that release them, and sometimes
it's six to eight months before their case gets filed. Under those circumstances, if I
find out about one of those people and I will set a review hearing if
they fail to appear, very high bail is going to get set because I think
they pose a danger to the community. But that's the type of case where you
get extremely high bail. I mean, the other ones,
last week we probably had four or five failures to appear in driving with license
suspended. My court is now open, although 99 percent of the people are appearing virtually.
If someone fails to appear on a drive-in license suspended, they'll set at $100 cash
or bond. And they're gonna post the cash, but they can also call in and
quash it just by making the request. So this is the short
answer is cash or bond. If it's pretrial, you can go cash, but still generally
cash or bond if it's post-conviction, depending on how dangerous they are. Thank you. Thank
you very much. Council Member Walsh, did you have any additional questions? like you're done.
I'm good. Thank you. I'm going to go to Council President Hunt followed by Council
Member Hall. Thank you. This is Council President Hunt. Thank you for the presentation. I
thought it was particularly interesting about the accessibility that's available using the virtual
court format. That was good to know. I received a question.
We received a question from a community member about the possibility of community service
in lieu of paying a fine for a traffic citation or a parking violation. And
I wondered if there is anything like that and if there could be an option
for something like that. It was proposed as a way to overcome some of the
financial inequity. Sure.
And Mayor Pauly forwarded that email on to me. I'm coming up with an answer
because I obviously I don't draft law, but I have policies within my court. So
if someone appears, we have two ways that traffic infractions are handled by the court.
I mean, some people just pay them, but people that request a hearing from the
court can do it in writing so that they don't have to take time off
work or they can show up at court and they can show up either of
them, either mitigation where they ask to reduce the fine or they can challenge it,
which is a contested hearing. Under either circumstance, they can ask for community service and
we offer community service higher than the statute, our public defender made an argument, as
most public defenders have, that it should be at $15 an hour, and that's essentially
what it's at. So a traffic ticket, let's say that's a $90 traffic ticket, it's
$90 or six hours of community service within a certain timeframe. They're told it has
to be a nonprofit, it doesn't have to be in the city of Issaquah. They
have 60 days to either pay the ticket or do the community service, or 90
days or whatever amount's appropriate, but every single ticket that requests it But as
long as the request is made, I can't, I don't see the tickets that are
just paid. I mean, I know they come to the court. I only see the
ones where hearings are made and requests, but that's an option that they have. Thank
you, Judge Stewart. Council President. I think I'm going to tell her that in a
letter. I'm going to write her back. I teach at Issaquah High School on what
I did until the COVID. And so I know a lot of the students that
are there, but I'm going to write her back and I'll probably run it by
Mayor Pollard first to make sure I don't over speak my authority. Thank you. Council
President Hunt, did you have additional questions? No, thank you. Thank you very much. I
believe we're going to Council Member Hall.
Thank you, Mayor Pauly. This is Zach Hall. Just really quick clarifying
question. When I saw the slide on community court, I had no idea what was
going on. Just to clarify, Community court, it's simply an opportunity for folks
to have access to a lot of different kinds of services on their court date,
maybe even before their own court appearance. In a perfect environment, the two lead
courts in the state on community court are Olympia and Spokane. In a perfect environment,
Olympia holds their community, I mean, excuse me, Spokane holds their community court at the
local library to try to get it out of the courtroom setting. judge doesn't wear
a robe, the judge comes down, sits at a table, the folks are on the
other side of the judge. They found a couple of things. They found that if
judges spend three to five minutes talking to a defendant, someone with a substance abuse
problem, someone with a mental health issue, and it literally is three to five minutes,
anything over five is considered too much, but literally staring them in the face and
talking about their issue, they're more inclined to comply. The way that community court works
is it can happen in the courtroom. We've looked at other residential
city resources, but you, a significant percentage of our population, and I think
this was mentioned by Councilmember DeMichelle, have mental health issues. A significant percentage of
our population have, and by our population I mean my population across the courtroom, a
significant percentage of have heroin issues, alcohol is a big problem, and
obviously people can drink, They can break up until the point that they break the
law, and then we address it. And also a significant percentage of all those people
have a lack of resources. And the community court concept was caught up because what
happened in a traditional setting is a defendant appears in front of me. He or
she is sentenced on assault domestic violence to an alcohol drug evaluation and follow-up
because they were under the influence and domestic violence and moral recognition therapy. And then
we're told to come back in 60 days with proof of their treatment. What a
community court would do, and a bad example because community court would not typically be
used for domestic violence, so let's make it someone accused of theft with an alcohol
treatment. Rather than sending that person that may be homeless or any number of other
issues going on in their life out to find an alcohol drug evaluation, community court
would move them into the community court. Typically it involves a diversion. They're continued to
a Thursday court date. They show up at 8 o'clock in the morning. They show
up at eight o'clock in the morning, the judge isn't on the bench yet, but
sitting around the room, we're alcohol, drug treatment, housing treatment, and all these folks, and
they go to all the things that the judge expects of them. They meet with
those folks, they sign up for the programs, and then when they come back in
front of the judge, they've got a plan. They've already signed up. They've started getting
their license. They've found potential housing. And the idea is to bring these professionals in
from the community and meet with them before they come to court. And then it's
a less formal court environment. And there's graduations and there's hugs and there's all that
kind of thing. Because the idea is we started out about four years ago as
a court. We recognized that we had a significant number of young people with heroin
issues. They were continually being arrested for, and it was the same four or five
people. And they were continually being arrested in the city of Issaquah for criminal trespass.
They were always on heroin. And we had the same four or five people over
and over again. And rather than doing the traditional model where we, um,
with them, told them to come back in a month for treatment. We literally brought
them back every single week until they were in treatment. The idea was that
they got more face time and eventually those four or five people moved on. One
of the folks still comes by the court. He's a car salesman, made over 100
grand this year. The idea is you just change things up
as you need to. Some people need more time with the court. Somebody needs the
services handed to them. That's what a community court does. Frankly, we'd be coming to
you and asking what are other issues you see in the community. Thank you, Judge
Scott. Does that answer your question, Councilmember Hall? Yeah, that's fascinating. I would love to
learn more as it develops into the future. Well, if you went to Isquah High
School, if you had taken Mr. Richards' class, I think I was even teaching that.
Thank you, Judge. I think the program you're describing and the direction you want to
head really marries up well with a lot of what we're hearing tonight from our
community. It was kind of fun to hear the community members talking about it. It
was. We've been talking about it for a couple of years. That's really, really good.
Okay, I'll hang out if anybody decides to have questions. We have another one. Council
Member DeMichelle. Oh, hi, and thank you for the presentation, Judge Stewart.
And I actually did get a chance to meet you about six years ago. You
came to our... Influence of Choice Community Conversations on... I remember
it. Yes, and you provided us with very good insights. My question has to
do with the access to treatment once a person is
incarcerated or put in the jail. I attended a seminar about
six months ago. A young man with schizophrenia, he had been threatening people. He
up in jail. That turned out to be a nine-month incarceration without...
He said that he was not able to access drugs or counseling during that
nine months. And so I'm wondering if that was an individual situation or do
people, once they're incarcerated, if they've got mental health or substance abuse disorders, do they
get treatment? What kind of services are available to people? Well, it's a multi...
I'll tell you that, and you said it earlier, I mean, the jails are the
number one provider of mental health services in the United States. We deal with two
mental health issues in our court system. We deal with
competency and then we deal with mental health. Competency is a concept that the city
can't, through your prosecutor's office, cannot prosecute someone who is not competent. which means they
either don't understand the nature of the proceedings against them or they're unable to help
assist in their defense. And so if we get someone with a mental health issue
who is not competent or who the public
defender or their attorney thinks is not competent, then we have to schedule an evaluation
with Western State for competence. We can't do anything in this case so far because
we're not allowed to touch a case if they're not competent until competency is determined.
There's a True Blood decision, which is a federal decision that sued the state of
Washington, and we're still not caught up with True Blood. True Blood set forth years
ago, two or three years ago, a number of guidelines that the state had to
meet in order to provide competency restoration in a relatively
speedy manner. We're a municipal court, which means we're dealing with misdemeanors and gross misdemeanors.
Our clients are not priorities. I mean, when they're dealing with competency restoration, they're worried
about rapists and murderers. And so, a lot of our folks, what ends up happening
is they can't get competency addressed within the timeline prescribed by
law. So, from a criminal defense attorney perspective, the good news is the case goes
away. It gets dismissed. We can't address them because it's incompetent. For a community perspective,
their mental health issue is not addressed. We have them meet with the county mental
health professionals. to determine whether or not they pose an immediate threat to themselves or
others, but if they don't, they're just released. With regard to folks that are in
custody in either a substance abuse, they're competent, so we can address the case, but
there's either substance abuse or a mental health issue. My public defender, your public
defender, you are very fortunate to have one of the hardest working, most empathetic public
defenders in the state. And she is, anybody that she identifies with that, that's
in custody for some reason, she immediately files a motion to be interviewed by
folks with the state that provide services through Apple Healthcare and the like. They come
into the jail and they interview them for services. If they're eligible for services, she
files a motion to release and we release them to treatment. Does that answer your
question? Yes, thank you. It's a rehabilitative court and the jail just for a purpose.
There are people even at a misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor level the community wants in
jail. You know, a fourth offense DWI within the last three years, I
think the community wants to know that person's in jail, unless we can get some
assurances that they're not drinking and driving. But for most of the folks providing
appropriate treatment so they can become happy, productive members of the community makes more sense.
Thank you, Judge Stewart. I am not seeing any additional questions, but I did have
a request for Christy. I'm not sure if Christy is- Are you going to make
her talk? I was going to make her turn her video on because I wanted
to introduce her to the council so that when they see her, they would know
her. Christy, are you comfortable with that? Yeah. Say hi. Okay, there you go. Hi.
Good to see everyone. You've been with our city for a year now? Yep, just
over a year. A lot of stuff has happened in the court in that time.
And I thank you very much. And thank both you and Judge Stewart for coming
tonight and talking about what you're doing, but also being able to hear from our
community about where our community wants to go and where our council wants to go.
So thank you very much, Christy. Thank you. We're very excited to move forward with
the community court. The council should know we are very lucky to have Christy. She,
especially with all the technology that's taken over right now, she's the rock star for
the state. Christy's the one that goes into every other court. teaches them how to
use all of the technology, teaches me how to use the technology. And we've got
her here in Issaquah and that's pretty cool. So it's a great reputation. Especially with
the COVID thing, she's become a hero throughout the area. So yeah. Thank you very
much, Christy. Thank you. I'm going to move us to the next presentation, which is
going to be from our human resources group and Lauren Knox is up next. Good
evening City Council members and members of the community. My name
is Lauren Knox. I'm a senior human resources analyst with the city and also a
member of the city's equity team. So I'm here to talk a little bit about
our organizational equity initiatives and some next steps as well.
So next slide please. Okay, so first I wanted to talk about some
past training that we engaged in. We hired a facilitator in 2018 to do
a citywide equity training. And there were some successes in that training, but
there were also some significant lessons learned as well. And you'll see a couple of
those just on the slide. You know, one of the things I think we realized
through that process is the importance of shared language and concepts in this work. if
we're going to talk about racism in a meaningful way, we need to all be
talking about the same thing and start from a good foundation. Next
slide, please. I mainly mentioned that past
training because those lessons learned have really informed some of the steps that we've taken
forward since then. One of the things that we engaged in 2019 is
cultural conversations. So we invited some members of the community and members of some
community organizations to come speak with city staff and invited our city staff, of course,
to speak with those members of the community as well. We had one panel that
was focused on, it was a diverse group of our community members, focused around
cultural perceptions of government and how those differ across different cultures.
The next panel was with a group of community-based organizations and centered
around providing services to a diverse resident population. And you know, what
kinds of lessons can we learn from our partner organizations and how can we partner
better with them as well? A next step that we took,
the city engaged with the Governing Alliance on Race and Equity.
to send a staff cohort to some training. And I'll say as well that we
actually organized a city, we as a city proactively sought
out a group of partner organizations, other cities to be able to participate in this
training because it was important to us. So the Governing Alliance on Race and
Equity, they do a nine month training on advancing racial equity.
We reached out to our organization for interest in that training and compiled a team
of six staff members across five different departments to complete that nine month training.
A lot of that work is just centered around building staff capacity around racial equity
and having good robust conversations around those topics. A lot of it
was also building our networks. It was a great, as somebody who participated in the
training, it was a great opportunity to talk to a lot of neighboring jurisdictions. Linwood,
Tacoma, Bellevue, Port of Seattle, and some jurisdictions in Oregon as well,
were all involved in sharing a lot about equity work that they had done in
their organizations and successes, challenges, all great
stuff for us to take back to Issaquah. Part of the GARE
training really, you know, there's homework and there's a lot of work that's done throughout
the process and it centers around creating racial equity action plans. So actually being able
to come back to your organization with some ideas and next steps and things that
you might move forward on. That, you know, It's naturally evolved into this
the next item that you'll see, which is our equity team. The cohort of staff
who went through the GARE training together sort of naturally became a part of that
equity team, but it's also engaged with a larger cross section of our organization as
well. You know, we've had police chief Scott Baerbaum participating on our leadership equity team.
The city administrator, of course, provides us some guidance, but you know other staff members
as well. Next slide
please. So next steps
I would be remiss if I did not mention that equity is embedded in our
strategic plan in our city leadership and services goal. We have an objective that
states the city is actively sustaining and equitable and welcoming city government.
diversity and fostering meaningful, inclusive and varied civic engagement. A piece of
that, a potential action item there, is to create an equity and cultural competency initiative
for city staff. I will be the first to say that we are at the
beginning of what that looks like. You know, we're really beginning this work in a
meaningful way. And a couple of the next steps that we'd like to engage in
and really just a platform, first and foremost to call out to the organization
for additional volunteers for the equity team. I have heard a lot of interest in
the organization recently in participating in that and I'm very excited
about you know being able to engage across our departments on that issue and certainly
engage our staff of color as well in those conversations to the extent that they'd
like to be a part of it. The equity team, you know,
once we've kind of reconvened and created our wider group, which I expect will
involve quite a few staff members is committed to develop to developing some
action plans around certain items. You know, we had started that work at the beginning
of this year and had some suggested topics. And then, you know, pandemic happened and
a lot of these community conversations have started happening as well. And we've needed to
sort of rethink, are we still aligned with what we're hearing from the community through
our city council members and the mayor? And, you know, I would expect
that staff training will certainly be a part of one of our action plans. I
would expect that recruiting will be a focus as well. there are other certainly a
lot of other areas in the city and just depending on you know ideas from
our staff and from the community I hope that we'll be able to you know
use that team in a robust way in creating some change in the city
the last thing that I'd like to say is just you know we
recognize that part of being a good community partner on racial equity issues
is owning our organizational culture and making steps towards, you know, having
city staff who are well educated on these issues and engaged in this work. So,
you know, certainly we recognize the importance and I'm very excited by the amount of
engagement that we've seen in staff recently. And I'm hoping that that provides a lot
of good momentum going forward. Thank you very much for that presentation. We
do have a couple of questions lined up. I also appreciate that we have a
lot of staff here tonight that was also able to listen live to the community
comments. So thank you all for staying. We will start with Council Member Hall, followed
by Council Member Walsh. Council Member Hall. Thanks, Mayor Pauli. This is Zach Hall. Yes,
did note of that. Thanks for staying late. Really appreciate it. I have a couple
of questions. first is about this oh the
views changed um the first is about this gear um you said it's
really mostly about helping develop action plans and next steps and one of those was
the creation of this equity team um and you had a and you kind of
laid out nicely what the next step are for that equity team but i was
wondering if anything else came out of that training or was was it mostly focused
on okay let's equity team and then come up with our own action plan that
fits the city? There's a lot. I mean, I probably undersold them a
little bit to be honest, but yeah, you know, down to things like
the idea, you know, Gara is very big on the idea that, you know, we
don't see what we don't measure. And so, you know, we don't always know what
impact we're having on communities of color if we don't start measuring certain data and
disaggregating it by race. So, you know, I think there's a lot
there and there's a lot that we could measure and we'll have to kind of
see where our action plans take us to some extent. But, you know, being
aware that, you know, we have a... performance measurement piece of this.
GARE also, you know, does. They focus as well,
you know, in addition to action plans on the idea of a racial equity toolkit
and we've talked about that as an equity team. I don't know that that's maybe
the first item that we'd want to turn our attention to, but the idea of
it is that you have Something that you can give to city staff that kind
of explains how to embed equity in different sorts of work in different ways. So,
you know, we're honestly brainstorming and just trying to come up with some
good ideas to make meaningful change in the short term, but also, you know, in
the long term as well. Member hall, did you have another question? I did. Thank
you. find it yes
I was wondering if you could speak a little bit more to how we promote
diversity within hiring practices within the city but also within our Commission boards and
commissions not that we're hiring right now but just
curious kind of how that plays out Yeah, and again, sort of
owning where we are as an organization, I think that's an area where we have
a lot of work that we can do. And I think we do
a lot of work around having fair hiring processes and around
trying to do what we can to make sure that we're screening resumes in a
way that's not gonna be tainted by implicit bias, that kind of thing. But do
we have a formalized kind of recruiting objectives or anything like that? We don't really.
And I think we have heard from our organization and I think now
tonight we're hearing from the community as well that that's something that we should focus
on. So I expect that that's something we'll put a little bit more
concerted attention to. Lauren.
Just for some clarification, Councilmember Hall, the recruitment for boards and commissions is done
through the clerk's department, and the interviews for those are done with the staff
that works in that subject area. So, it feels a little bit different.
Maybe what we can do is come back at a future session and talk about
that, give some more information on that process, which is different than our internal hiring
process. I have a question from Councilmember Walsh,
followed by—actually, if it's okay, I'd like to get Stephanie Johnson, our
Human Resources Director, a chance to make a comment, and then we'll go to Councilmember
Walsh. Stephanie? Hi, good evening, Council. I just wanted to add to the comment of
diversity in our recruitment, and I know it became a topic of discussion earlier tonight.
Certainly around police recruitment and efforts that we're doing there. I think, as Lauren
said, and I'll just double down on, I think there's areas for improvement that we
have there. One thing I do want to bring to the attention of the council
and the public is our civil service commission. We have a three-member commission
in the city. And one of the charters of that said commission is fairness in
hiring. And so certainly the work that we do at the Civil Service Commission level
for police recruitment, there's a lot of conversations amongst public safety testing who we
use for entry level testing processes and police work. They do a lot
around diversity, equity and inclusion and advertising and reaching networks
of diverse populations. And so, you know, that is one area that we contract with
public safety testing for our entry level officers and invite that diversity into those
processes. But certainly, as Lauren stated, and I definitely support and agree with,
I think we can do a better job, you know, all throughout any positions that
we're recruiting for. But I just wanted to bring to council's attention that we do
have a board and commission around civil service and equity in police hiring.
Stephanie, it looks like you have a power outage at your house because you are
all black on our screen. But let's see, I have another question now from
Councilmember Walsh. Thank you. This is Councilmember Walsh. There
we go. I'm going to echo Councilmember Hull's
questions about hiring for diversity and particularly around making sure that
we're recruiting in areas where we might see a more diverse population
and being intentional about that. I think I'm very interested in that. I very much
appreciate you talking about the community engagement around cultural
diversity and our approach to that. The other question I would have is, are we
do we have a requirement of staff to do unconscious bias training, particularly the
staff that has community interaction? Yeah, we do not currently
have any sort of requirement around implicit bias training besides
what Police Chief Barabalm already mentioned about the police department. So that's
certainly, as we've started to have conversations about training,
We've thought about what an equity curriculum might look like, you know, and maybe a
piece of that is implicit bias training. Totally brainstorming and it's
not something that we have like a finished product yet to show counsel, but I
absolutely take that comment and that's something we'll bring back to the equity team and
talk about further, I think. Thank you, Lauren. I am not
Oh, sorry. Council President Hunt has a question. Thank you, Mr. Council President Hunt.
On the Civil Service Commission, my understanding is it's a three-person commission,
volunteer commission, like our other commissions. But unlike our other commissions, there are certain requirements
that are set by the state. So the requirements for the time having lived in
the city, for example, is different for that commission than for our other commissions. And
I guess my question is, we look at that
commission, the work that they do, get a better understanding of the work that they
do currently in the scope, and then for a future meeting, and then also
review what task forces or commissions, volunteer commissions, community
commissions, other cities or other entities have that overlook similar or adjacent topics.
We can prepare something for a future meeting. Okay, thank
you.
Okay, I was on mute. Thank you, Council President Hunt. We have a question from
Council Member Hall. Mayor Pauli yeah sorry for another question I was
trying to find the answer myself but I'm having trouble so I'm hoping City Administrator
Bob quotes remembers when we were going through underspend
feel like there was a training a citywide training that we that was on the
woods in the budget that we had to cut does that ring a bell at
something to do with equity maybe or maybe there's something else it was council member
all members of the council it was citywide within our human resources budget. Stephanie's still
on the line. I'll ask her to perhaps elaborate. So
one of the budget reductions that we proposed in HR is cutting some citywide training,
but it wasn't specific to anything around diversity, equity, inclusion. We still have a portion
of our citywide training budget that lives in the HR department. And one of the
things, you know, as the equity team met earlier this last week was those dollars
that we do have in the 2020 budget, purposing those to some diversity,
equity, inclusion training, possibly in in the 2020 calendar year. So it was a cut
of some dollars, but not specific to this topic and something we certainly still have
some funding to try to achieve some level of training in 2020.
Thank you, Council Member Hall. I'm not seeing any additional questions right now. So we'll
move to our next presenter, Monica Nagurla, and
she's getting her PowerPoint up. Monica. Hello, good evening,
Mayor Pauly and council members. So tonight I am
here to talk about a few community equity initiatives and we can move
to the next slide. So for the community facing initiatives,
the city promotes sponsors and participates in community efforts that focus on
advancing racial equity cultural diversity, both locally and regionally.
I humbly recognize that these initiatives that we promote, sponsor or participate in,
that they represent only the beginning of the work we must engage in, just like
Lauren said earlier, and by all means, they are not intended to be viewed as
comprehensive end results. So for example, locally we support cultural diversity and
inclusion events. Noting a couple of examples, the city in collaboration with the
Issaquah Library and the Issaquah Schools Foundation organizes and co-sponsors the
Welcoming Week, which is an annual event to help build unity between immigrants,
refugees and long-term residents. Similarly, the city also helps promote and
co-sponsors, for example, with the Latino club, the Day of the Dead, which is an
annual family-friendly event celebrating Mexican traditions that focus on remembering family
members who died. Other cultural or ethnic-specific events are promoted or
co-sponsored throughout the year. So in addition to
promoting or sponsoring events, we also participate in the Greater Isoqua
Equity and Inclusion Community Forum, which is a grassroots effort on
activating community members into advancing equity, diversity and belonging.
It includes Isoqua parents, nonprofit partners, city staff and
school district representatives. This group actually is organizing currently a
virtual listening session for this Friday for the community and an invitation
will be forthcoming in the next day. Another
initiative, the Human Services Commission, recognizing disparities in our communities created a
separate grant and granting process this year culture-based and community-based organizations that are
underrepresented in our community. We can move to the next slide. Thank you.
And on this next slide, I can note a couple of initiatives that are happening
regionally and we are part of. For example, in our collaboration
with the Issaquah School District, we participate in the school district's equity and advisory committee.
This is a school districts led initiative that gives us city staff the opportunity to
learn about equity related initiatives planned by the district. And we also have an opportunity
to engage in conversations with school district parents and diversity inclusion staff.
Regionally on the East Side, we are also part of a working group that includes
the East Side school districts and also East Side cities that focuses mainly on sharing
resources and updates on equity related programs and initiatives.
And finally, governing for regional equity and inclusion. This is a
countywide initiative that includes local city and county government jurisdictions,
including the Port of Seattle and the King County Library System, and works on
advancing racial equity and social justice within governments through its training and advocacy.
And also for this group, a virtual training and listening session that is
focused on elected officials and city leadership scheduled for July 17th and
invitations will be forthcoming in the next few days. So that being
said, as next steps, I believe that we must continue our work internally
and in the community so we can be effective as a community. I also believe
that the next steps in our community equity initiatives should be defined by further
community conversations and listening sessions. That concludes my
presentation and I'm open for questions or otherwise I can
hand it back to perhaps City Administrator Bob Kowitz for next steps for coming back
to Council. Thank you so much. Monica, thank you for that. I'm not seeing any
questions right now, but there may be some at the end for you. I also
wanted to thank you for making sure that you're doing invitations to Council.
that they can also participate in these events that are going on. So thank you
very much for doing that. We will go to City Administrator Bobkowitz for our last
presentation. City Administrator. Yes, thank you, Madam Mayor. Thank you, Mayor and Council,
for the time that you've taken this evening to hear and listen from the city
staff and the work that we've been doing. The last slide is the City Council's
role. What role you would like to take as a body as we move forward
and certainly providing additional direction. They're taking lots of notes this evening and our
plan would be to come back soon and talk more about that. But would also
ask the council what role you would like to play as body. I've put three
particular items here on the screen. First is training. Many governing bodies of cities
do racial equity training, implicit bias training together as a group.
and there are trainers that work with bodies of elected officials. So I would encourage
the city council to consider an opportunity to do training as a group. The next
is connections with the police department. I've spent a little time over the last few
days talking with our police officers, letting them know about the presentation this evening. And
some of the feedback I got is their desire for members of the council spend
more time understanding some of the specific roles that the police department plays. In my
discussions with the officers talking about what opportunities there may be going
forward as far as social services, as far as case management, things like that, there's
a lot of interest on the council. There's a lot of interest among the council
to share, on the police department, to share those interests directly to the city council.
So I would hope that the council would think about that. The third is community
outreach. I think certainly a component of all the work that we'll be doing moving
forward will have a community outreach component. You may choose as individuals to want to
do community outreach. Obviously, face-to-face is difficult at this point, but as we look at
using video technology, I would want to get your feedback with that. So, next
slide, please. So, next steps.
a lot this evening. I'd like to maybe go through the slide, Madam Mayor, and
then get any final comments from the council and then perhaps review one last time,
at least generally speaking, what we've heard for things to come back. The first two
items that the administration would like to propose is to come back to the council
and with a review of the Obama task force on 21st century policing, which you've
heard a little bit about this evening, see if there are any other issues or
initiatives in that report that might be useful for Issaquah. The United States Conference of
Mayors has a report on strengthening police community relations. We'd like to review that report
and bring back any pertinent initiatives or approaches that might be appropriate in Issaquah.
Lots has been discussed about the police department's budget and how do we reallocate
portions of that budget to other community serving initiatives. So we would like to
move forward with that, again, come back to the council in the short term with
probably a broader outline of what that approach would be in a timeframe before addressing
that. You've heard from our staff this evening about the work that we're doing with
the community organizations and internally we'd like to hold ourselves accountable to a work plan
moving forward. We'd like to bring that back to you. Additional forms for public input,
as Mayor Polly said at the beginning of her presentation, she's looking at the Obama
Foundation Mayor's Pledge as a good outline for some of these next steps, and that
involves heavy involvement with the public to make sure that we've heard everything we
need to hear from the outset, then to come back to the public again with
our thoughts and approaches before actually beginning the implement. getting feedback from the council
on what you see is with all that said the
administration agrees we need to come back soon we're proposing that the City Council needed
special meeting on Monday June 29th that'd be two weeks from tonight to give an
update on all the works provide some questions answers to questions that have been raised
this evening so mayor Pauli members the council we're recommending that we come back on
to continue this discussion. So Mayor and members of the council, again, thank you for
the time that you've devoted to this. Thank you for letting the staff kind of
present a baseline to the work that we've been doing. Certainly the listening
piece is a critical element of this and that does not end tonight. We wanna
continue to listen to the community and members of the council as we move forward.
But we wanted to put some framework to go forward recommend again that we come
back with a special media. We're all still here available to answer questions.
Thank you very much, City Administrator Bobco. It looks like we have a question from
Council Member Walsh. Okay, Council Member Walsh here.
On the previous slide, you talked about engagement with the police,
and I have to say I'm totally open to that idea. I'm just not sure
quite how to approach that or how to handle that in the time of COVID
and social distancing. So are there any suggestions there? Any
ways that we can go about doing that? Because certainly that is
getting that perspective and that understanding helps us do our job better.
Commissioner Bob Karev, we
cannot hear you. We'd be happy, I'd be happy to work with Chief Irvine, with
each member of the council to identify ways for you to chat with
staff. I did a 7 a.m. meeting in a parking lot last week
with folks still wearing masks, but still at social distance. I did a 930 meeting
indoors, but people with masks and social distance. So there are ways to do this.
Again, I think we just need to talk individually with members of the council to
see what your particular interests are, and we can arrange that.
Council member Walsh, you also had some comments, potentially.
Yeah, on the larger kind of closing comments idea on this, I am absolutely interested
in training for us as a council. I think that is a fantastic idea. Much
like I said, I'm interested in it for the staff. And
as far as our approach to this idea, I love that we are
listening and trying to get a sense of what our community thinks. I've
concerns with the idea of you know that first step of that last slide
sorry it's 10 p.m. need to think and speak at the same time
being the 21st century policing as a model I haven't looked into
that at all and so it seems a little bit early for me to provide
feedback to say yes you should research that or you shouldn't. I just I don't
know enough there. So that's the only area that I see of our approach that
I'm uncertain about. Otherwise I think kudos that we are approaching this
listening and coming back to this. I would also like to
say I very much appreciate and sign on to the idea of a short, mid
and long term approach to all of these ideas. And I would like to see
that in our next set of response on June 29th is kind of how we're
thinking in that short, mid and long term scope. Thank you. Thank you, Council Member
Walsh. Next up is Council Member Hall. Thanks,
Mayor Pauly. This is Zach Hall. Just some closing comments. ditto i
think the training idea is a great idea you know we all have our own
privilege sitting up here on council so i think that's always great um i wanted
to in particular touch on community outreach it's the outreach part that's that i'm
interested in seems like right now um you know we're listening we're saying we're listening
it's the people emailing in and and people calling us but um
you know everyone has their own lived experience that paint their experience of life.
So we wanna make sure we are actively listening to people with different lived experiences
as well to ensure that when we're creating policy here in Issaquah that it's
benefiting everyone in the community and not just some parts of people in community. So
I would look for ideas. I mean, COVID-19 obviously makes that difficult.
what I'd normally do is just go knock on some doors, especially because I just
moved to the Highlands from South Coke. So I'm eager to meet my neighbors, but
that's not possible. So maybe it might be possible to set up some kind of,
I was going to say coffee with a council member. That's not going to work
either. So anyways, maybe we can have offline conversations about, hey, how can we be
actively engaged in the outreach part of community outreach? Just a suggestion.
Thanks. Thank you, Councilmember Hall. Councilmember DeMichelle.
Thank you, Mayor Pauli. It is late, so I'm going to kind of toggle back
and forth here between some comments I had that really didn't fit into anywhere in
the discussion, but I thought were important to bring forward. The first one is I
do agree that I would love to participate in training for the council.
I think that we have to acknowledge that we are all white people sitting at
the council table and that we need to learn and hear from people of color
what their experiences are and face if we have implicit biases, faces and
learn and go forward. So I would love to participate in the training. The second
comment I had was I listened to
Congresswoman Schreier make a presentation and her statement on
George Floyd's death. And she talked about a through line
of equity and So
communities have to really look at the big picture. And so thinking about that, and
also hearing the comments tonight and emails that we've received, there's a lot of
concern about how the schools are doing, how does that fit in with what we're
doing? And so I would really urge us as a council and as a city
to reach out to the school district and the school board members. that before COVID
arrived, we were thinking about things that we could do in that regard. And then
of course, both of our worlds just got blown apart. So,
but I'm just thinking, how can we be sure that our policies are aligned with
the school district, that we are talking the same language, that we're looking at people
in our community from the time they're born, as they go through school, as they
become adults, as they become senior citizens, does equity play out across that whole
range? And I think that would be a really productive conversation for us to have
with the school district. Similarly,
I know that we have people in our community who are very concerned about the
preschool to what's called the preschool to prison pipeline. And that group,
and I've had those discussions with a group that really isn't in our city, but
I think that We should adopt them sort of, and that's the people at Passage
Point. They have lived experience that we really need to listen to.
Their children are in our district schools. And I think
that it would be, again, a productive conversation to try and bring them into
the outreach that we do and make sure that they're involved with us because If
people aren't familiar with Passage Point, of course, it is a transitional housing residence
where previously incarcerated individuals are reunited with their children and
reintegrated into the community. And it's been a very successful program.
But I think that that would be a productive conversation to get started as well.
So those are some thoughts that I had overall. where we could go in terms
of community outreach and how we also make this community conversation
really meaningful in terms of, again, I'll say it again, sorry, but breaking down those
silos, making sure that we're all talking to each other and on the same page
and that the conversation we're having, we're all using the same language and understanding
each other completely. are my overall comments. Thank you. And thank you, Mayor Pauly,
for getting this going. Thank you, Council Member DeMichelle. Comments. I
think Council Member, Deputy Council President Wray has had his question answered.
I'm going to move to Council Member Goodman for a comment.
Thank you, Council Member Goodman here. Yes to training. Absolutely.
I don't know why we would include ourselves and
for some very reason that Councilmember DeMichelle said in addition to the fact that we
are part of the city and I think we should obligate ourselves to
what we are seemingly interested in having everybody else participate in just by virtue of,
I mean, look at us, just by virtue of what we all look like. We
need all the help we can get, not only with training, but in understanding and
engaging with the community, especially having people of color help
us understand what we can do
to help with issues of racism. So, I'm hoping that the community helps us help
them. And for
the police department and the interest in engaging with the council, absolutely interested in engaging
with the police department. I would ask, however, that
the police department at least try to
figure out what they want us to know, because I would be a little challenged
going into that conversation with merely asking questions. So if they're
interested, then they've got to be interested in sending messages to us. And I
would like to know what that would be. I just don't want to go off
on a seven o'clock meeting in the parking lot. Hi, how are you? I want
it to be meaningful and I don't know specifically what to ask. So
I thought this was a really fantastic meeting and I am really
anxious for our next meeting. because I think there are just so many things that
we can do. Anyway, thank you. It's late. I'm trailing off.
Thank you, Council Member Goodman. Council President Hunt followed by Council Member Mars.
Thank you. This is Council President Hunt. We have had a number of
residents call in, and I think they gave very insightful and thoughtful comments this evening
and a lot for us to continue thinking on and um i also think that
that's the start of a conversation and we'll continue to have that kind of conversation
um and i think we're all committed to continuing listening um i did want to
very briefly summarize the other emails that we received that weren't touched on during
the um weren't touched on directly during public comment and again thank you to the
members who wrote in and provided their thoughts there are many personal stories and many
personal experiences and those are very valuable for us council members to um to
understand the experiences of our residents and to better serve our residents so to summarize
some of the other things that we heard from community members this week in email
other than what was summarized directly by those residents in public comments we
had questions posed to to Issaquah about, has Issaquah found laws and policies that
contribute to structural racism and what do we as a city plan to do about
that if we have? And what do we plan to do about generally ending social
inequity? We also heard from residents about
simplifying the mission of police and funding more social programs, less policing in schools, which
also came up during public comment. And from one resident, we heard about
being not supportive of public sector employee unions, supportive of more community
policing and advocating for housing policy to support diversity.
We also heard from residents about advocating for police reform and
more relationship building, including more discussions between police officers, more conversations between police and
youth in the community. the need for workshops and
concern about homeless people being profiled by police regardless of
race or nationality. And then we also heard a call to listen,
engage more with the community. And we did also receive correspondence in support of the
police and in support of the importance of the police role as well. So many
diverse, many that came in and I wanted to take a moment to
summarize those. And again, to say thank you to all the community members who wrote
to us because we have received a lot of engagement on that topic. That brings
me to my next point, which is now my comments. I
think that the amount of community engagement on our budget in particular is
quite astonishing and I very much very much I'm interested to hear
from community members their input on budget priorities because I think that as we work
on our budget, having that kind of direct feedback will be very valuable.
And we will be going through a difficult budget this year because of the financial
impacts of COVID-19. And I think that makes it very important that our budget does
reflect the priorities of the community and we will be working with less resources because
of those financial impacts. as we go through that budgeting process
it is a long process there are many there will be many discussions and i
hope that community members know that their input on those topics is valuable and will
continue to be valuable as we go through that long process of developing a budget
i i really like the framing that councilmember march put forward of as we go
forward looking at near term midterm and long term steps that we can take as
a city my estimation, some of the near-term things that we can do to
demonstrate that we are taking action and taking meaningful steps is
the training, council training. I agree with everything that's been said on that point. Also,
I think we should consider what our commissions currently do for equity and if we
could expand or have a task force a more formal way
for community members to be engaged with the city. We have seen this interest and
I think a more formal connection would be potentially valuable if there's interest from the
community in doing something like that. Then also looking at the eight can't wait policies
and implementing those fully, those would all be near term and also working with the
school district too, because the school district is a separate entity from the city, we
need to align with them on the issue of policing in schools. And so I
think those could all be our near-term items. And then in the medium to
long-term budget, and then also looking at our social services and
how we address the needs of community members overall. We have had studies done that
I think we should revisit in terms of our community needs our budget lines with
those needs so that can be a medium to starting soon but continuing
into the future and medium long term so I think we have a lot of
work to do but again I really appreciate the conversation and appreciate that this is
our starting point Thank You Council President Hunt Councilmember Marks with a comment followed by
Councilmember Hall Thank you, Madam Mayor. This is Council Member Martz. The hour is late
and I'm not feeling particularly clever. So I'll just say I want to thank you,
so many folks in the community that shared such deeply personal feelings about this issue
and experiences on this issue. There will be more of this, I hope. You know,
talking to some of the folks that were protesting out front of City Hall, I
said, you know, hold us accountable. on this. Don't let this
die down as the initial passion, as people get over the initial passion. Follow through
on this. And I'm sure we will, but I will want to keep hearing from
the community. I want to thank you and the administration. I know that I think
tonight was originally planned to talk about COVID-19 related responses, and we moved it out
of the way so that we could about this tonight, which was great.
Everybody's talked about near, mid, and long term. I'm confident the administration will listen. I
think the council, as is often the case, is pretty close on what we think
is important on these time horizons. And so I think the administration will be able
to craft a good response to what they've heard tonight from us and from the
community. I'm all for the implicit bias training.
It is a tough pill to swallow sometimes because I went into
politics and leadership partially over human rights issues. And
it's fueled me since being in high school. But that just means that
a little bit more humility on these issues are even more important. And so
we all can benefit and support. So I'm all for it.
And then finally, one thing about IPD, you know, it's hard because, you know,
you don't want to just hear the best of things. But I will say that
I don't know when and how one does this during the COVID era, but doing
a ride along, it's been 10 or 11 years for me, but it was really
eye-opening. I mean, most of us only have interactions with police officers in, you know,
slightly stressful situations. I've heard of people who get speeding tickets, you know, as an
example. But to be inside the cruiser, looking out as the officer
is having a conversation with somebody allows you to see a very different set of
eyes. And this is not to trivialize things, but to at least a little
bit of an understanding of what that interaction looks like when it goes well. Because
we see, of course, we see people on their finance behavior because we've got a
city council member sitting in the car with them. But to the extent that if
you have not, to my fellow council members, if you have not been able to
experience something like that, if you can arrange for something like that, again, I don't
see it as propaganda, but at least understanding how that interaction looks from the other
side of the notepad or whatever, electronic when they use nowadays. So I rambled a
bit, but those are my thoughts. Thank you so much. And thank you again for
putting this session together. Thank you, Council Member Martz. The administration is very grateful for
the nimbleness of council as well. Most folks don't know our meetings are planned months
out ahead of time. COVID has kind of shook that up. And now again, we
were able to pivot. So it's due to everybody's flexibility. And I appreciate that. So
I thank you for your comments about ride along with the police. Eastside Fire and
Rescue also provides a program. And I think whenever you can get out there with
the crew and see what's going on, it's just super insightful and helpful. So it's
very possible for us to set that up. We'll work around the COVID thing and
figure out how to do that. I have a few more people that would like
to make comments. Council Member Hall followed by Council Member Goodman. Mayor Pauli,
this is Zach Hall. Sorry to double dip. I just had another thought. And Councilmember
or Council President Hunt just brought this up and I think actually I think I
might be stealing Councilmember DeMichelle's idea. So kudos to you, Barb. But I think it
would also be a really good idea to to what the Human Services Commission
and also the Youth Advisory Board have to say about these issues. In particular, I
would like to hear from our communities of youth here in Issaquah and perhaps
they could meet amongst themselves to consider expanding what their scope is, whether or not
studying the intersection of equity and the policies that we're considering would fit within their
current scope or similar to what we did with River doing with River and Streams
board and having a kind of come up from them, or perhaps this needs to
be an aspect of all boards and commissions and not just one. Just a thought.
You're right. It is late. Thank you, Council Member Hall. I think it's clear. We
get what you're saying. Council Member Goodman, you are the last one signed up for
comment today. Thank you. Council Member Goodman here. You'll recall at our last meeting when
we the latest proclamation and I
suggested requested that we get a web page that that is one place where we
house all of our proclamations that we've done over the last 20 years and related
information and voila we have one it is called inclusive issaquah
and Audemona hand put that together and she was nice enough to
seek some input from me this is not for me but I
We talked briefly. Anyway, it is under the Human Services
tab and it's called Inclusive Issaquah and it contains the proclamations and it has a
little bit of a history there about those proclamations and what we have done in
terms of, we heard some about it tonight, the welcoming week and cultural bridges and
things like that. And one thing that is on this page that is interesting is
Human Services Sorry, volunteer opportunities. Issaquah needs you to represent our
inclusive community. If you're looking for a fun and interesting way to make a difference,
we encourage you to apply to serve on a city board or commission. So for
my final comment, if we're looking at near-term things that we can do to make
a difference or try to...
that we can do than the near term like right now when i was at
on city hall steps talking to um some of the folks um uh
respectfully carrying signs and protesting um one of the um one gentleman
um black member of our community the question i asked him we were talking about
diversity and that we don't have a lot of it on our volunteer boards and
commissions and i said well how what do we do to get people of color
to be better represented on our boards and commissions. And he said, well, you have
to tell the community you're looking for that. And I thought, well, wow, that's really
simple. We just usually send out a call for volunteers, please apply. But I thought
about it more and I thought, well, that's just kind of an aha moment because
if somebody, someone out there was looking for somebody who was four foot 11
with short brown hair who's 60 years old, how would I know
that they are looking for somebody like me unless they say, I am looking for
somebody like you? I don't think we've ever done that before. I don't think we've
ever put out a call for people, diverse
people that doesn't necessarily have to be people of color. So I think that's something
that we could do immediately, that when we have a call for volunteers, we specifically
say, what we're looking for.
Anyway, that's it. Thank you. That is a fabulous suggestion and I think we took
a baby step last year by putting in the first ever
term limits, which is not necessarily popular, but term limits on our commissioners so that
we can begin to diversify the voices that we're hearing. and
someone gets a seat on a board or commission, like myself, they like to stay
for 20 years and our community looks very different now than it did 20 years
ago. So I love that suggestion. Thank you very much, Council Member Goodman. I am
not seeing any additional comments. So I will just remind everyone that there was no
formal action required, just feedback this evening. And we will be returning for a special
city council meeting June 29th which is an additional council meeting so thank you very
much for adding that into the calendar the next item I'm not sure I'm going
to get very much because I'm seeing a lot of tired faces but good of
the order if anybody would like to stay in the chat if we have anything
for good of the order not seeing much so I will start to announce some
of our upcoming council meetings we're having a special city council meeting on Monday June
22nd I've 30 p.m. executive session and a 7 p.m.
COVID-19 recovery and coronavirus aid relief and economic security act funding.
Yes, we are still dealing with COVID and we have a lot more work to
do this year on that. So that's going to be a really interesting meeting. There
is a city council study session on Tuesday, June 23rd and a city council special
meeting now on the 29th of June, followed by a Council regular meeting on Monday,
July 6th. We are really getting back into the meeting mode, quite obviously. There is
no executive session this evening, so there being no further business, we are adjourned at
11.01, and thank you for all your great work tonight. Have a great night.