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City Council Services, Safety & Parks Committee Auto captions

Wednesday, June 22, 2022

6:30 PM · 2h 49m · Council Chambers, 135 E. Sunset Way, Issaquah WA
Topic tracked across meetings:
Sunset of Cable TV Commission AB 8417 1/2
3. AGENDA ITEMS
3a
Board & Commission Consolidation ID 1088
30 min · Monica Negrila, Human Services Manager Hannah Roberts, Human Services Coordinator · packet pp.5–29
Staff report:
Proceed to dissolve the Cable TV Commission in 2022 and recommend the Cemetery Board consider a potential sunset or consolidation in 2022, returning with a
0:01 there we go
0:02 olin are we ready to start the meeting
0:06 well we are live all right
0:09 welcome everyone i council member tola
0:12 martz called the june 22
0:14 2022 city council services safety and
0:18 parks committee to order
0:20 the first services safety and parks
0:22 committee meeting
0:23 since we have reconstituted
0:24 subcommittees so it's very exciting
0:27 council member demichelle
0:28 will be participating remotely this is
0:30 council member ray to my right
0:33 a couple of uh
0:35 points about the meeting
0:37 uh public comment there are multiple
0:38 public comment opportunities at
0:40 tonight's meeting
0:42 there's going to be a general public
0:43 comment opportunity at the beginning of
0:45 the meeting or
0:46 you can make comments uh for each of the
0:49 three topics that we have this evening
0:50 you can make comments after the
0:52 presentation and council question and
0:54 answer period
0:55 but before we deliberate on those issues
0:58 in each of these situations i'm going to
1:00 offer
1:01 folks up to five minutes to make their
1:03 comments
1:04 both for the comments at the beginning
1:06 and during individual issues
1:08 members of the public may address
1:10 council
1:11 at this time in person or virtually
1:13 those who signed up in advance to make
1:15 comments will be called on first if you
1:17 are joining us virtually and would like
1:19 to make comments please raise your
1:20 virtual hand the way you do that is if
1:23 you're on the phone press star 3 if
1:25 you've joined by computer or smartphone
1:27 look for a hand icon this varies by
1:30 device one option may be to go to the
1:33 participant panel and choose the raise
1:35 hand icon in the lower right hand corner
1:38 if you're in the room and did not sign
1:40 up i will ask for other speakers before
1:43 closing this portion of the meeting
1:45 i will wait for a moment to see if
1:47 anyone wishes to raise their hand
1:50 clerk has anyone signed up to speak or
1:52 indicated a desire to speak this evening
1:57 yes council member
1:59 thank you citizen comments are an
2:00 important part of the public process we
2:02 take them seriously and factor them into
2:04 the decisions we make
2:05 please direct comments to the whole
2:07 council and not individuals while this
2:09 is not a question and answer session we
2:11 will contact you to follow up if needed
2:14 when recognized uh unmute your
2:16 microphone
2:18 if you're remote or step up to the left
2:19 turn if you're
2:21 physically here state your name address
2:23 in relationship to the city speak
2:25 clearly and pause frequently limit
2:27 comments to five minutes
2:29 if you're attending virtually and do not
2:31 respond after your name or phone number
2:32 is called or if your connection is lost
2:34 unexpectedly the meeting will need to
2:36 proceed you are encouraged to rejoin the
2:38 meeting if able personal attacks obscene
2:41 language derogatory remarks and
2:43 disruptive behavior will not be
2:44 permitted
2:45 clerks can you identify the first person
2:47 who has signed up to speak
2:49 yes council member marks the first
2:50 person signed up to speak is kfunt
2:58 and that's uh virtual
3:00 no that's in the room oh
3:02 okay if you want to come up to the
3:04 lectern
3:08 or not
3:09 huh
3:11 i believe k font is not in the room
3:14 alright has anyone else signed up
3:18 yes
3:20 doug schlepp
3:27 doug is referring to the next person on
3:29 the list who's
3:30 who's next
3:34 we have no more people signed up on the
3:36 sign-in sheet
3:38 and we have a couple of virtual
3:40 attendees
3:42 uh before we go virtual doug did you
3:44 want to speak to us or not are you going
3:45 to speak at the
3:47 individual
3:50 you're going to wait till we get to the
3:51 third topic okay thank you
3:54 uh so virtually
3:58 among our virtual attendees uh
4:00 councilmember martz i do not see any
4:01 virtual hands raised at this time
4:04 we'll ask again
4:06 now would be the time to indicate
4:08 uh both here in the room
4:10 uh and uh
4:12 virtually if you wish to speak now and
4:14 again this doesn't preclude you from
4:16 speaking on the individual issues that
4:18 we have three topics this evening
4:22 closing it out still no no indication no
4:24 virtual hands all right
4:27 then we will move on to our advice
4:30 first up this evening on our agenda is
4:33 id 1088 boarding commission
4:36 consolidation this is going to be
4:38 presented by uh city clerk keyser
4:44 hi chairmartz and committee members it's
4:47 a pleasure to be here let me just share
4:49 my screen
4:55 give me just a minute here tim smith our
4:57 media production specialist will also be
4:59 presenting with me tonight in just a few
5:01 moments
5:05 thank you
5:16 okay so i am here to talk to you about
5:18 one of the city's 2022 work plan items
5:21 which is to evaluate the effectiveness
5:24 and portfolio of the city's boards and
5:26 commissions
5:28 tonight we have three questions to ask
5:31 for the committee's recommendation on
5:33 the first is regarding some action we
5:36 are ready to take to sunset the cable tv
5:38 commission
5:40 the second is whether to
5:43 pursue sort of an evaluation by the
5:45 cemetery board of some possible
5:47 opportunities for consolidation or a
5:50 sunset or a change of scope to the
5:52 cemetery board and our third question is
5:55 just whether there are any other
5:57 advisory boards that the committee
5:58 thinks are worth looking into more
6:00 closely in the year ahead
6:04 so the city currently has 14 advisory
6:07 boards covering a very wide range of
6:09 topics they provide very valuable input
6:13 and expertise to the city council and to
6:15 the mayor
6:17 when all of the boards and commission
6:19 seats are filled
6:20 it constitutes 130 volunteers in our
6:23 community which i think is
6:25 pretty amazing
6:27 also
6:28 staff we have a dedicated staff person
6:31 for each of these 14 advisory boards one
6:33 of their key responsibilities is to
6:36 caretake support train
6:39 and provide work plan items to these
6:41 advisory boards
6:45 so over the years
6:46 there have been changes to the city's
6:48 advisory boards that really reflect i
6:50 think the
6:51 sort of the development of the community
6:54 and the issues in the community
6:56 so this slide shows you some of the
6:59 changes that have been made in the last
7:01 six years so we've let go of some boards
7:03 that have served their primary purpose
7:06 and we've also created some new boards
7:08 that cover some issues that are very
7:10 important to our community like
7:12 transportation equity and the
7:13 environment
7:16 so as part of of part of this change
7:18 that's why we're here tonight just we've
7:20 sort of looked at the portfolio of the
7:22 city's current boards and commissions
7:24 and identified one board that we think
7:26 has served its primary purpose and
7:29 another board that we think is worth
7:31 revisiting in 2022
7:35 with that i'm going to ask tim smith to
7:37 come up and cover the next few slides
7:44 evening council members tim smith media
7:46 production specialist for the city of
7:47 israel also the staff liaison for the
7:49 cable tv commission
7:51 so i'm going to start off with a little
7:52 background for the cable tv commission
7:55 starting in 1980 the city of israel
7:57 formed the cable tv commission to
7:59 negotiate and regulate cable tv
8:00 franchises within with cable providers
8:03 in issaquah
8:05 this authority included cable tv
8:07 franchise negotiations implementation
8:09 technical review of cable systems the
8:12 resolution of resident complaints by
8:14 working with the cable tv companies
8:16 through negotiation and imposing fines
8:19 in 1991 the cable tv commission started
8:22 the government access tv station we all
8:24 know as ictv channel 21.
8:27 they ran and operated that from 1991
8:30 until 1999 when they hired a um
8:34 an independent contractor to come in
8:37 take over running it and upgrade the
8:39 systems at that point
8:41 in 1996 the telecommunication act
8:45 was passed by the federal government
8:47 this changed local regulatory authority
8:49 to a certain extent um
8:51 with it with the telecommunication act
8:54 of 1996 the fcc federalized much of the
8:57 local regulatory authority that
8:58 municipalities once held over cable
9:01 providers
9:02 in 2001 the city hired a full-time cable
9:05 operator to run its government access
9:07 channel and that reported directly to
9:09 the cable tv commission concerning
9:11 channel operations content and franchise
9:14 issues
9:17 so to kind of review what the what their
9:19 initial purview was so negotiating camp
9:21 negotiating cable franchises and
9:24 overseeing it on a day-to-day basis
9:27 also technical reviews so they would
9:28 meet with cable uh and they still do
9:30 they would meet annually with all cable
9:32 providers
9:33 they would view they would get cable
9:35 plants they would review the cable
9:37 systems they could do a technical audit
9:39 if it was required and then they would
9:42 resolve residence complaints
9:45 so over the years the role has changed
9:48 for the cable tv commission
9:50 and starting as i said previously the
9:53 fcc regulations changed and it really
9:55 reduced it down to mostly concerning
9:57 with right-of-way issues and customer
9:59 service levels
10:01 secondly uh technology advances um have
10:04 changed the need for cable over the
10:05 years in 1980 if you lived in issaquah
10:08 and you lived on squawk mountain you
10:10 really needed cable
10:12 and you really needed it on the co on
10:14 the on the floor the top pocket if you
10:16 made it really really important to have
10:18 a strong regulatory board
10:20 but as technology has advanced
10:22 and people have cable cut
10:25 and you can get media in different ways
10:27 as where you were just stuck with your
10:29 cable company back in the day now you
10:31 have other options
10:32 also increased staff support so
10:35 city staff now operates ictv and handles
10:38 all programming and media production
10:40 decisions
10:41 also the city staff handles all
10:43 day-to-day cable
10:44 customer complaints so previously a
10:47 cable complaint would come in it would
10:49 come to the staff liaison the liaison
10:51 would con
10:51 contact the cable tv commission and the
10:54 commission would would uh decide a path
10:57 of resolution now it comes into the
11:00 staff and staff deals with it directly
11:02 has a relationship with all cable
11:04 providers has contacts there and gets
11:07 resolution and then those resolutions
11:08 are reported back to the cable tv
11:10 commission unless it's a systemic issue
11:12 that rises to a major level
11:15 then it would go to the cable tv
11:16 commission
11:18 directly we haven't had a situation like
11:20 that in over a decade
11:22 and then
11:24 last but certainly not least there's a
11:26 decree pub decreased public interest in
11:28 serving on the ctc
11:30 so right now we have two members on the
11:33 ctc
11:34 we don't we can't even do a quorum the
11:36 ctc cannot meet at the beginning of the
11:38 ctc there was nine members seven regular
11:41 two alternates
11:42 as interest waned in 2015 we lowered
11:45 that number to five and two and lowered
11:48 the meanings from monthly to as needed
11:53 so that brings me to the recommendation
11:57 the final two ctc members
11:59 after discussing this agree with agree
12:02 with this is to adopt an ordinance
12:04 sunsetting the ctc and delegating
12:06 existing duties and responsibilities to
12:08 staff the mayor and city council
12:10 and i'm open to any questions
12:14 council member ray
12:16 you you have a quizzical look on your
12:17 face
12:19 i do and i have some questions uh thanks
12:21 tim that was really interesting
12:26 i think you touched on this but what is
12:27 the view view of the two members that we
12:30 have on the
12:31 commission today of the future the
12:33 commission do they see a role do they
12:35 want to evolve the role is there
12:36 somewhere to grow it something to do
12:38 with it what's their take on it
12:40 currently their their uh opinion is that
12:43 it's time to sunset the commission there
12:45 was a time uh back in 2014 2015 the
12:49 commission created a white paper of and
12:51 one of the options was to expand the
12:53 board into a technology board and lower
12:56 their role
12:57 uh lower the cable role and um and then
13:01 the other option was to decrease and
13:03 that or or eliminate this was back in
13:05 2015 and so it landed on the decrease so
13:08 i think that time has passed
13:10 um especially because of the lack of the
13:12 interest in the board currently
13:16 um just uh two follow-up questions um
13:18 when's the last time the board met
13:20 august 6th of 2020
13:23 okay and um
13:25 have there been any
13:26 need for
13:28 the board to deal with customer service
13:30 or complaint issues um in the last
13:32 couple years no i mean the main issue
13:35 that we had during kovid was internet
13:37 and the cable tv commission just does
13:40 not regulate the internet we cannot
13:42 regulate the internet now we reached out
13:44 directly to comcast during that time and
13:47 um we worked with them city staff worked
13:50 with them and they were as responsive
13:51 they were fairly responsive it was a
13:53 long haul i don't know if you remember
13:55 but it was it was tough we had some
13:57 areas in squawk and montro that had a
13:59 really hard time
14:00 but we worked with comcast and and uh
14:03 the cable providers and got and got it
14:05 fixed but the cable tv commission was
14:07 not involved in that process at all
14:09 right so you just said something
14:11 interesting um so it's not cable per se
14:13 it's cable television it's cable
14:15 television okay great yeah thank you
14:19 councilmember michelle did you have any
14:21 questions before we move to the next
14:23 facet of this presentation
14:25 i i do have a question if that's okay
14:28 can you hear me all right yep
14:31 okay uh tim last night uh at last
14:34 night's council meeting we we did have
14:36 uh some testimony
14:38 and uh which i appreciated very much but
14:41 um the
14:44 commentator uh
14:46 said that there are places around the
14:47 country that are losing their cable tv
14:50 stations
14:51 um and that we needed to keep an eye on
14:53 that so my question for you is has there
14:56 been any indication at all that
14:58 in the area or
15:00 you know in your in your knowledge
15:03 communities losing their cable tv
15:05 stations
15:08 not that i know of all the local
15:10 cities all still have their cable
15:12 channels
15:14 they haven't removed them and um and and
15:17 to be honest we are the only city in our
15:20 area that has a cable tv commission that
15:22 i have knowledge of
15:24 but yes but there is no threat of losing
15:27 channels that i've noticed locally at
15:28 all
15:30 uh thank you very much
15:33 did you have a follow-on question
15:36 uh no i did not thank you and i think
15:38 city administrator would like to add a
15:40 comment
15:41 uh yes thank you committee chair members
15:43 of the committee a little bit more
15:44 information from my experience
15:47 what some communities are finding is
15:49 that their local government access
15:50 channels currently are on good channels
15:53 they are low in the spectrum um and what
15:56 some cable providers are doing is you
15:58 move from 21 to 2021 um and so there
16:02 have been communities that have been
16:04 concerned that yes the channel continues
16:06 to exist but it's extraordinarily hard
16:08 to find
16:09 i would think that
16:12 again as tim has said the technology has
16:14 kind of changed i think it's less of an
16:15 issue but certainly a few years ago
16:18 communities were losing their position
16:20 and again many communities also uh use
16:23 the cable company at one point for
16:25 studio
16:26 facilities for technical support all
16:28 that has gone away throughout the
16:30 country so again as tim has mentioned
16:32 we're in i think a very good spot to
16:34 continue video programming and i think
16:36 the administration's feeling is that
16:39 with with dedicated staff good equipment
16:42 part-time staff as needed uh for the
16:44 production of video because certainly
16:46 not only do we do the meetings we do
16:48 things with social media i think that's
16:49 all very right and appropriate but when
16:51 there are customer complaints uh staff
16:54 has those uh
16:55 connections that really are separate and
16:57 apart from the commission so that's why
16:59 we're here this evening recommending
17:01 that we sunset the commission
17:03 thank you state administrator bob quits
17:05 uh so there are three parts to this id
17:08 and we're going to continue on with the
17:09 presentation and questions and again we
17:11 will take public comment uh when we
17:13 transition from presentations and q a
17:16 into
17:18 deliberation thank you for your time
17:26 and i just have a few more quick slides
17:28 here that i'll move through
17:31 um so as i mentioned the other board
17:33 that uh we would like to take a look at
17:35 in the coming months is the cemetery
17:37 board
17:38 we have not done the the thorough
17:41 background and research that tim just
17:43 shared with you on the cable tv
17:45 commission but we do feel that because
17:47 of our robust park board and our robust
17:50 parks department that it's worth
17:52 evaluating whether the cemetery board
17:56 could somehow be consolidated
17:58 i think at a minimum it's a healthy
18:00 thing to look at the scope of any board
18:03 it looks as if the cemetery board scope
18:06 was last revised in
18:08 1983
18:10 so what we are proposing is that the
18:13 cemetery board be tasked with looking
18:16 into
18:17 their role more specifically
18:19 sort of reviewing their current scope to
18:22 see if it's actually what they are doing
18:24 in practice and whether having a
18:26 dedicated cemetery board is indeed still
18:30 critical
18:31 this board is also having some
18:33 recruitment challenges that it has over
18:36 time and is currently
18:38 so again that is our recommendation we
18:41 would be returning
18:42 let me
18:44 move to the next slide here we're
18:46 proposing that the cemetery board take
18:47 the rest of 2022 to
18:50 sort of
18:52 carry out some some research and
18:54 evaluation provide a recommendation to
18:57 the mayor and we would be bringing that
18:59 recommendation to this committee in
19:01 early 2023 prior to the annual
19:04 recruitment
19:05 of the boards and commissions
19:08 and then the third part of our question
19:10 to you tonight was just whether there
19:12 were other areas that the committee felt
19:14 uh the administration should be taking a
19:17 closer look at this is just um just a
19:19 visual display of our other boards and
19:22 commissions
19:23 that are currently serving
19:27 thank you and i'll ask if any of my
19:28 fellow council members have questions at
19:31 this point
19:32 you council member ray
19:34 thanks um
19:36 chair martz um
19:39 what does the cemetery board do
19:42 so the the cemetery board i probably
19:45 won't hit every point here but the
19:47 cemetery board is tasked with looking at
19:49 potential expansion of the cemetery
19:51 which could include acquiring land
19:55 it is also tasked with looking at use of
19:57 the existing land that the cemetery
20:00 occupies so sort of maximizing or
20:03 enhancing
20:05 what's there currently they
20:08 review use of the cemetery fund dollars
20:12 they provide
20:15 management
20:16 guidelines
20:18 of the cemetery so uh certain
20:21 requirements for the location uh or not
20:24 the location but
20:26 the uh
20:29 what's the word i want to use it's not
20:30 the landscaping the maintenance and care
20:33 of the area around the grave so they
20:35 have a document that they review and
20:38 approve i mean is filed with the city
20:40 clerk's office so those are some of
20:42 their key responsibilities jeff is also
20:44 here if i've wildly missed something but
20:46 i think that's a decent summation
20:50 super thank you
20:54 councilmember g michelle do you have any
20:55 questions
20:57 no questions chairman
20:59 i have a question
21:01 in listing off the roles and
21:03 responsibilities of the cemetery board
21:07 the public may not know but we have
21:10 we have a partnership program with a
21:12 local funeral home
21:14 around low-cost uh access to the
21:17 cemetery and this was something that i
21:19 personally
21:21 experienced in minnesota when my mother
21:23 passed away
21:24 oh gosh wow uh
21:26 14 years ago now
21:28 and it can be extraordinarily expensive
21:30 and so we have we have this partnership
21:33 does the cemetery is the cemetery board
21:35 involved in managing that partnership
21:39 well i will mention to you as you just
21:41 touched on that they are responsible to
21:42 review the fees and i am familiar with
21:45 the burial assistance program i believe
21:47 that action involved tasking the city to
21:49 work with flintoffs directly um to
21:52 to develop and manage that program so it
21:55 doesn't sound like they are directly
21:57 involved
21:58 it's being run through the parks
22:00 department
22:04 hey good evening chair and other members
22:06 jeff watling parks and community
22:08 services director tish is correct the
22:10 the burial assistance program is
22:12 overseeing directly from the parks
22:14 department and flintoffs through our
22:15 management agreement that council
22:17 adopted a couple years ago
22:19 thank you that's very helpful
22:23 uh there not being any other questions
22:26 before we move to deliberation on this
22:28 id and what we want to recommend back to
22:30 the full council
22:31 i would like to offer an opportunity if
22:33 any members of the public either
22:35 physically present with us right now or
22:37 online would like to speak to this issue
22:39 before we deliberate now would be the
22:41 time to come to the lectern or indicate
22:43 so online
22:45 clerk do we have any indication of
22:47 anyone wishing to speak to this issue
22:51 chair marks we don't have anybody online
22:52 that has indicated a desire to speak on
22:54 this topic
22:56 all right well uh let's start with
22:59 question one
23:01 should we
23:02 recommend that the council dissolve the
23:04 cable tv
23:06 commission council member right no all
23:09 alpine first um i think that um the
23:12 cable commission played a vital role in
23:15 the early days of cable television and
23:17 we all remember those days when you had
23:19 no reception in the valley
23:22 i think that
23:24 it's been overtaken by events um it
23:26 seems like all of the functions and
23:28 features that it was intended to perform
23:31 are performed quite admirably by city
23:32 staff
23:34 and i think the biggest thing um
23:36 is would we lose our channel and i don't
23:38 see how having a commission has any
23:40 bearing on whether or not we would uh
23:41 have a channel we still have an
23:43 opportunity to influence our cable
23:45 companies
23:46 even without a citizen commission so um
23:49 i i see no reason to
23:52 retain it
23:54 at this time
23:55 councilmember jim michelle
23:59 uh i concur with uh councilmember ray
24:01 and
24:02 he said that very very well i think
24:05 the telling point for me
24:07 is the fact that we can't recruit anyone
24:10 to be on it and
24:13 that always says to me that
24:16 a commission or board's work is done
24:19 and the two members of the current
24:22 commission uh apparently agree with that
24:24 i also want to thank staff i thought it
24:26 was uh
24:28 the
24:30 conversation points were laid out very
24:32 very clearly and it was a good a good
24:34 piece of work uh to explain what was
24:37 going on so
24:38 i absolutely concur that we should
24:40 sunset that
24:42 commission
24:44 thank you and all plus one the the uh q
24:47 a the attached q a on the functions of
24:51 the cable commission and how those
24:53 functions would be managed by the city
24:55 was extremely helpful
24:56 um i i support this as well it's a
24:58 little frustrating for me because
25:01 the cable commission did a great job on
25:03 the on the task that they were assigned
25:05 40 years ago
25:06 in the meantime we have a different
25:08 problem that they can't really help us
25:09 on which is data equity and the fact
25:12 that some parts of our city have
25:15 you know low cost extremely high
25:17 throughput data and other parts of our
25:19 city struggle
25:20 to get good data either
25:23 either terrestrially or
25:25 wireless but unfortunately that's beyond
25:27 the purview of this body uh i mean of
25:30 the cable commission but you know i for
25:33 one would like to
25:34 just mention
25:36 to the administration that i would like
25:37 it i would love at some point if we
25:38 could
25:40 have a conversation around data equity
25:42 and how to make sure that the whole city
25:44 enjoys the kind of uh
25:47 data access that the highlands have and
25:49 i i think talos says
25:51 i'm getting a i'm getting a maybe but
25:54 like like many things i i covet the
25:56 highlands and one of the ways that i
25:57 covet the highlands living over on
25:58 squawk is their data access so just as a
26:01 thought for the future
26:04 uh city administrator bob putz yes thank
26:07 you chair uh march just to remind the
26:09 committee that the council did fund uh a
26:13 some additional work on that very
26:15 subject in this your current year budget
26:17 and so we are thank you for that we have
26:19 gone out for an rfp uh there are firms
26:22 that help cities evaluate their uh
26:25 connectivity uh internet connectivity in
26:27 various neighborhoods and so i uh autumn
26:30 i don't know if you know the latest on
26:31 that
26:32 but i believe the rfp's out i don't
26:34 believe we have awarded it yet
26:36 so that will include a survey of all
26:38 residents a technical survey of the
26:40 infrastructure available and then
26:42 recommendations back to the city so that
26:43 was funded in the current year budget
26:45 and we hoped i think to come back to the
26:47 council probably in the fall
26:48 with additional information fall
26:51 late late in the year
26:53 but we're moving forward with that at
26:54 the council's direction thank you so
26:56 much and i apologize for having
26:57 forgotten that we
26:58 had done that
26:59 uh okay so it sounds like three thumbs
27:02 up uh for supporting the
27:03 administration's recommendation
27:05 uh question two i can't read it it's so
27:08 small on the screen
27:11 cemetery yes cemetery board right
27:15 let's start with council member g
27:16 michelle to mix it up
27:19 oh i'm sorry wait
27:20 uh did we oh no we already took sorry i
27:23 already took public comment i'm just i
27:24 just want to make sure yeah nobody had
27:26 commented on any of these three sorry uh
27:29 council member to michelle
27:31 thank you chairman um
27:33 so with regard to the cemetery board i
27:37 support the idea of asking the board to
27:39 review and offer a suggested path
27:42 forward
27:43 which might include sunsetting i i need
27:46 to say that when i was first elected to
27:47 the council i had a goal of visiting
27:50 every board in commission during my
27:52 first year in office and it turned out i
27:54 didn't meet that goal because of covid
27:56 but one of the boards i did get to visit
27:58 was the cemetery board
28:00 i was really impressed by the amount of
28:03 knowledge and caring expressed by the
28:05 members at that time
28:08 we we remember that the hillside
28:10 cemetery contains a lot of our
28:12 community's history
28:14 everybody on the board at that
28:15 particular time had a family or a
28:18 historic connection to the cemetery
28:21 uh i just felt like there was
28:23 you know a very very caring uh presence
28:26 in that in that board
28:28 and also it's uh it's
28:30 sad to think that it started in 1915
28:34 and here we are in 2021 thinking about
28:37 uh sun setting it but
28:40 i think it would be a really good
28:42 discussion for the cemetery board
28:43 members to have i'm wondering if we
28:45 could possibly do something that's a
28:47 little less than a commission but
28:49 possibly
28:51 a little bit more involved with
28:54 volunteer involvement or
28:56 just recognizing the historic importance
29:00 of that cemetery but i think that's a
29:02 discussion that the cemetery board
29:04 members could have
29:05 and uh come back to us with a productive
29:08 suggestion
29:10 and uh yeah this one this one was a
29:13 little bit more of a heart tug
29:15 uh in terms of discussing ending it so i
29:18 look forward to hearing the results of
29:20 that discussion thank you
29:22 thank you councilmember ray
29:26 thanks um i think the cemetery um is one
29:30 of the really
29:31 um unique things about issaquah that we
29:33 as a city have this
29:35 wonderful cemetery and i think it is
29:37 what it is because the cemetery board
29:39 over the years has nurtured it and
29:40 guided it and i remember a couple years
29:42 ago when we were looking at rate
29:43 increases and the thoughtful
29:45 thoughtful thinking
29:47 that the cemetery board did to
29:49 put together a strategy for moving
29:51 forward with
29:53 rates was was very helpful
29:55 i think there's a role to be played i
29:57 don't know that maybe we need a cemetery
29:59 board
30:01 but we definitely need
30:03 citizen direction and involvement
30:06 in guiding that and so my thinking is
30:08 the parks board would probably
30:10 um if we were to um dissolve the
30:13 cemetery board the parks board
30:16 could pick up
30:17 that role because i think it's vital i
30:19 think it's important and we're very
30:21 lucky to have a municipal cemetery here
30:22 in in in this town and i um it's it's
30:25 weird um but i really love cemeteries i
30:28 think they're amazing places and my only
30:30 disappointment is i after i was off
30:32 council i was kind of hoping for an
30:33 appointment to the cemetery board so i'm
30:36 a little bit
30:37 clumped if it goes away between then and
30:39 now but um i think asking them how to
30:41 move it forward and then asking them if
30:44 there's a way to integrate it with the
30:46 park sport would be very helpful
30:49 yeah i mean i think this is what you're
30:51 hearing from all three of us is the
30:54 uh recognition of the importance of our
30:56 cemetery and
30:57 the request that as the as the cemetery
31:00 board looks at its options that we see
31:03 about how to make sure that that
31:05 unique special character of our cemetery
31:08 is continuing to be maintained i love
31:10 our cemetery i have a good friend who's
31:12 buried there um i sort of think i hope
31:15 to be buried there myself at some point
31:17 um it's just it's it's wonderful and
31:20 that i love that we have our ongoing
31:22 program for uh
31:24 folks who need help
31:25 so that you know at the end of life
31:27 families aren't horribly burdened um
31:30 and so uh i'm confident that the
31:33 cemetery board will take that into
31:35 account as they look at their options
31:37 going forward so it sounds like three
31:39 thumbs up on that recommendation
31:42 uh and then evaluating potential sunset
31:45 or consolidation of any other existing
31:47 boards or commissions councilmember ray
31:50 i i looked at the list i didn't see
31:52 anything else that like leaped off the
31:53 page when i did look at the website it
31:55 still has the recovery task force as a
31:58 thing um i don't know if that's a border
32:00 commission it wasn't on your list so i
32:02 don't know if it still has a mission and
32:03 a role but i you know think that's time
32:06 to start looking at that and i think
32:07 maybe we're through recovery um but
32:09 beyond that um i i think the 12 that you
32:11 presented still perform a vital role
32:15 council member g michelle
32:18 um thank you
32:20 chair martz um
32:22 i did have some
32:24 when i looked at the list
32:26 i'm looking thinking about the future of
32:28 the sister cities commission
32:30 and i noticed that that was mentioned as
32:32 a possible
32:34 commission that might we might want to
32:36 review
32:38 i was a delegate to sunderl norway back
32:42 in 1992 when we established the sister
32:45 city relationship and the commission at
32:48 that time uh was very active and
32:51 um and of course then we
32:54 had the uh addition of a moroccan
32:58 relationship and that was very active
33:00 but it seems like it's been a long time
33:03 since we've had any official activities
33:06 between either of our two sister cities
33:09 and any outreach to other possible
33:14 relationships now
33:16 last night's council meeting was kind of
33:18 eye-opening i thought it was wonderful
33:20 that we had an international exchange
33:22 with representatives from japan
33:25 and so
33:26 possibly there is a future there but
33:28 again i think it's worth a discussion
33:31 as to whether the current configuration
33:35 is really
33:36 what we want to go forward with and
33:39 i'm not even clear about whether uh the
33:42 sister cities that we have if we still
33:44 have relationships with with anyone in
33:46 those cities so
33:48 um i think this is absolutely overdue
33:51 for a discussion thank you
33:56 yeah i mean i
33:57 i would i would rather see the sister
33:59 city commission re-energized rather than
34:02 you know dismantled but i mean i think
34:04 there's probably a question on how they
34:07 i mean i'd be interested to know how
34:08 they feel about how things are
34:10 proceeding i think there's been more
34:12 with chef xiao in morocco in the last 10
34:15 15 years than there have been with the
34:16 other sister cities
34:19 but but even that has there hasn't been
34:21 much in in the last decade i think there
34:23 may have been some private uh groups
34:25 that did some work with chefchaouen but
34:28 anyhow um so i guess i'm i'm with that
34:31 as well i i would be entrusted to ask
34:34 the sister city commission
34:36 if they felt that there was a potential
34:38 for a different direction for them to
34:40 take i guess would be mine and i see
34:43 heads
34:44 acknowledging from the other council
34:46 members on the committee so clerk geezer
34:49 do you have the information you wanted
34:51 from us on this item
34:53 yes i certainly do and we will be
34:55 planning to bring the cable tv ordinance
34:58 to the full city council at the july
35:00 18th council meeting thank you so much
35:03 thank you for for the presentation and
35:05 and all the information with that we're
35:07 going to move to id 1169 human services
35:10 strategic plan grants program and
35:12 emergency housing options monica
35:14 negrilla with human services is going to
35:16 be speaking with us
35:19 as well as
35:20 others
35:21 mr chair before we move on to the next
35:23 item
35:25 tim smith is in the audience and
35:28 tim doesn't come to council meetings at
35:29 least doesn't come as a participant very
35:31 often uh and i really want to just take
35:34 a moment to thank him for his leadership
35:36 uh certainly through everything we've
35:38 done with the pandemic and then the move
35:40 back into this room um
35:42 you know we as we all know had a sort of
35:45 a turn on a very quick dime to continue
35:48 to produce council meetings uh through
35:51 his leadership and the work with our it
35:53 staff we made that a transition pretty
35:55 seamlessly uh when we moved back into
35:58 this room
35:59 over the last few months you know he
36:01 helped us be very strategic
36:03 really understanding that this is a
36:04 television studio as much as it is a
36:07 community meeting room and i think
36:09 you've noticed although i don't know
36:10 that we've ever talked about it
36:12 the lights
36:14 in the room have been upgraded a little
36:16 bit we've cleaned things up so that
36:19 the whole general appearance looks
36:20 better he's also worked very closely
36:22 with the court because of course the day
36:24 job for this room is of the court
36:28 and they have been a hybrid throughout
36:30 and are one of the few
36:32 municipal courts in the state of
36:33 washington to have done that all really
36:35 with tim's leadership so before we move
36:37 on to the next item mr chair members of
36:39 the committee i just wanted to take an
36:40 opportunity since he's here uh not
36:42 running around connecting cables and
36:45 making sure everything's working
36:46 properly here on the more of the policy
36:47 side of what he does and certainly uh
36:50 thanks go to him for the work with
36:52 comcast over the pandemic and the issues
36:55 there
36:56 he's cultivated the relationships we
36:57 need as a community um you know that all
37:00 was done uh based on this kind of pokken
37:04 uh they had no contractual obligation
37:07 nothing we could hold over them other
37:08 than saying we had residents who needed
37:10 better service and tim help makes that
37:12 all happen so thank you for letting me
37:14 just spend a moment to recognize him
37:16 before he runs off with the rest of his
37:18 evening
37:19 [Applause]
37:25 thank you he's also one of the genuinely
37:27 nicest people that i know i don't recall
37:29 ever seeing tim in a bad mood and i've
37:31 been working with him for many many many
37:33 years
37:37 ms nigrila
37:38 thank you good evening council members
37:40 and um i have an internal joke with him
37:43 i always ask him before meetings to make
37:45 us look smart and pretty so i always
37:47 appreciate that
37:50 good evening thank you so much for
37:52 having us i'm monica negrilla human
37:54 services manager here at the city
37:56 we bring a few human services items for
37:59 you tonight for discussion
38:02 and we have a few guests with us
38:04 from the king county regional
38:06 homelessness authority kcrha
38:09 we have online alexis mercedes rink
38:12 she's a sub regional planning manager
38:15 and then we also have mallory evan
38:17 she's the east king county sub-regional
38:19 planning manager
38:21 in addition we have human services staff
38:23 here in the room and online
38:26 we have a couple of human services
38:27 commissioners and as always our fearless
38:30 leader jeff watling parks and community
38:32 services director so we have a nice big
38:35 crowd tonight we appreciate that
38:38 so um beginning with the
38:40 two of the items that we would like your
38:42 feedback on tonight
38:44 one is um
38:46 a returning item to you tonight i
38:49 apologize that i'm trying to move with
38:51 my uh slides
38:53 so one is a returning item to you um
38:56 following your recommendation from the
38:58 council study session in april
39:00 discussing the human services grants
39:02 funding allocations and then second we
39:05 are introducing a new item for you
39:07 tonight and we are proposing a pilot for
39:10 an emergency housing program
39:12 and we would love to explore that with
39:14 you
39:16 and so you might ask why are we bringing
39:18 these two items together um we really
39:20 believe that um they both fall under the
39:23 broader framework of human services
39:25 initiatives and so really it seemed
39:27 disingenuous for us not to bring them
39:29 together um so um with that we would
39:32 like to start with the human services
39:34 grants funding allocations with your
39:37 permission we can stop at any point for
39:39 questions then we'll move to the second
39:41 one and hopefully deliberations at the
39:43 end if that's okay with you chair mart
39:45 sounds great okay thank you so much
39:48 so while there are multiple variables
39:50 and options um we have a few more
39:53 specific questions for you tonight
39:56 regarding the human services grants our
39:58 main question is are you supportive of
40:00 having a formula for the human services
40:02 grants funding allocations
40:05 for the pilot emergency housing program
40:08 again just simply is this committee
40:10 supportive of piloting this program
40:12 where we can go and further explore come
40:14 back to you with additional information
40:17 or would you like to propose something
40:19 different would you like to us to do
40:21 some more research do something
40:22 different
40:23 or lastly
40:25 what type of information should we bring
40:27 back to you
40:28 especially when discussing these two
40:30 items
40:33 next just to provide a little bit of a
40:35 context and placing these two items
40:37 within the human services strategic plan
40:40 you may recall from a few months ago
40:42 when we were discussing the
40:44 strategic plan
40:46 we categorized the initiatives based on
40:48 the funding needs into three buckets
40:51 one we had initiatives that we believe
40:53 that we can implement with existing
40:55 human services staffing these would be
40:57 connections that we provide to residents
40:59 supporting non-profits providing
41:01 technical assistance
41:03 perhaps conducting trainings and
41:05 educational sessions and then we had a
41:08 second bucket with initiatives that
41:10 could be funded through the human
41:11 services grants and then third we
41:14 identified a few initiatives
41:16 that would require additional
41:19 funds one-time or ongoing funds so
41:21 that's why tonight we would like to
41:23 address those last two
41:26 buckets
41:27 in particular the human services grants
41:29 and then
41:30 a new program project that requires
41:32 additional funds
41:35 and so on to the human services program
41:39 what we hope to do as as we are
41:40 returning to you
41:42 from the study session in april
41:45 we would love to review and address the
41:46 feedback that we received at that study
41:49 session
41:50 we would like them to discuss the
41:52 formula that we were proposing for you
41:54 tonight and then also discuss the
41:56 alignment with the other
41:57 investments
41:59 so on your screen here you have a
42:01 summary of
42:03 what our understanding is of the
42:04 feedback that we received back in april
42:07 um so from identifying funding gaps and
42:10 needs and opportunities to make a
42:12 difference
42:14 to really
42:15 prioritizing local services in the
42:17 community
42:18 considering increasing funding and
42:20 average grant levels
42:24 focusing on the goals what we did again
42:26 we just
42:27 tried our best to understand and
42:29 summarize all the feedback that we
42:31 received from you
42:32 and
42:33 we try to organize them in two buckets
42:37 items that we can work on and address
42:40 with the human services commission and
42:42 these would be again just ensuring that
42:44 gaps from the strategic plan are
42:45 considered prioritize local services
42:49 identify programs that yield more
42:51 strategic results
42:53 and a bucket of items that we would love
42:54 to discuss with you tonight
42:57 and those include
42:58 in particular presenting information on
43:01 other jurisdictions
43:03 proposing a formula for consideration
43:06 discussing funding needs
43:09 and then again including
43:12 other human services items for
43:14 consideration
43:16 so i'm going to go down the list
43:18 starting with information on neighboring
43:20 jurisdiction
43:22 we certainly reached how to
43:25 our neighboring
43:26 cities but we also reached out to all 16
43:29 cities that we are in the collaborative
43:30 with the human services grants
43:33 what you have on the screen is just an
43:34 example of
43:36 what processes and some of the cities
43:38 have and
43:39 for example the city of kirkland and
43:41 sammamish they don't have a specific set
43:44 process they usually re-evaluate every
43:46 two years
43:48 their funding what the needs are
43:51 they look at
43:53 what resources exist and they might
43:55 allocate one-time finding need funding
43:58 funding
44:00 the city of belvin redmond they have a
44:03 more
44:03 [Music]
44:04 organized process
44:06 that includes typically a
44:09 cpi increase
44:11 and the population growth percentage
44:14 and then the city of snoqualmie and
44:17 actually shoreline as well
44:19 they assign a portion of their general
44:22 funds to human services
44:24 this last process we learned that
44:26 actually
44:29 some other cities
44:30 are trying and recently
44:34 have moved away from assigning um a
44:37 percentage of their general funds to
44:38 human services
44:40 because the
44:41 what they learned was that in times of
44:43 crisis when general fund dollars um
44:46 decrease that's typically when human
44:48 services needs are higher and so then
44:51 then what that would impact human
44:53 services
44:54 allocations
44:56 so that's just a summary of examples of
44:58 what other jurisdictions are doing
45:01 similar to that we also looked at the
45:04 per capita locations for the cities in
45:06 the region and there's quite a large
45:09 range and variety
45:10 we have cities that that have a five
45:13 dollar per capita allocation and then we
45:15 have cities that go up in the mid 20s
45:17 upper 20s so our city it's really kind
45:20 of like in the middle um
45:23 and then also comparing our city size
45:25 with other cities again we are we are
45:27 kind of in that mixture of um
45:29 in the middle
45:30 um certainly i can pause for more
45:34 questions as as you might have them but
45:36 i'm going to move forward to
45:39 share with you
45:41 the really the the
45:44 one formula that we would like to
45:46 propose to you tonight which includes um
45:50 adding a cpi consumer price index um
45:56 to to our existing baseline
45:58 especially
46:01 now when the inflation
46:03 rate is is so high
46:05 this may be important to look at we also
46:08 understand that the cpi
46:10 may fluctuate from year to year
46:13 as you can see
46:14 on the screen and in your report right
46:16 now it's an at all time
46:18 high
46:20 certainly we looked at other formulas we
46:23 would like to present this really as a
46:25 mid-step or as an intermediate step
46:29 until we
46:31 gather more information from
46:33 the human services strategic planning
46:35 implementation as our city has been
46:37 moving more and more to gather data and
46:39 the metrics
46:41 we would love to
46:44 perhaps
46:46 start with with this and then consider
46:48 and look into once we have more data
46:51 to to consider other options
46:54 some of the other options that we looked
46:56 into include um adding a population
47:00 growth as well um that for for issaquah
47:03 for now it's a 0.7
47:05 percent for example but we also looked
47:08 at something maybe unique that no other
47:10 cities are doing and that would be
47:12 let's say if we maintain the same per
47:14 capita level uh we could consider adding
47:17 an increase
47:18 um just for a certain population like
47:21 for example if our poverty lady rate
47:23 it's 7.7
47:25 we can consider a higher per capita rate
47:29 for that population but we don't have
47:30 enough data and it would be nice for us
47:32 to continue um with the human services
47:34 strategic planning implementation gather
47:36 more data before we go in depth on those
47:40 options certainly those are options
47:43 and then last but not least of course we
47:45 cannot talk about a formula without
47:47 talking about the needs and rightfully
47:49 so you brought them up at the last
47:51 meeting as well
47:52 and and here i would like to make the
47:54 distinction between the community needs
47:56 and the funding needs right we identify
47:58 the community needs in the human
48:00 services strategic plan but that's quite
48:02 different from from the funding needs
48:05 and
48:07 certainly
48:08 there are multiple ways to go about
48:10 identifying what is the funding needs
48:12 and i think the more we look deeper the
48:15 more we realize uh just as you
48:17 rightfully also mentioned
48:19 in april is that as a local government
48:22 it would be very very difficult for us
48:23 to make a real impact if you look at the
48:26 real needs and funding needs even just
48:28 for example if we look at the wage gap
48:30 we would start probably at minimum 30
48:32 million dollar investment
48:34 to really make an impact so it would be
48:37 difficult for us as a small jurisdiction
48:39 unless again we leverage other resources
48:42 we look at what else is in the region
48:44 and so forth and so um
48:47 that's why
48:48 we would love as i mentioned let's
48:50 continue implementing the strategic plan
48:52 let's look for opportunities for us to
48:54 find
48:56 targeted funding and opportunities to
48:58 make impact
49:00 and go from there so that actually takes
49:03 me to i'm ready to continue with the
49:05 next uh item
49:07 it's a good segue but i will pause in
49:09 case there are questions here before
49:13 councilmember d michelle do you have any
49:15 questions at this point
49:17 i do not thank you
49:20 please please continue okay thank you so
49:22 much
49:25 so as mentioning we would love to look
49:27 for opportunities for targeted
49:29 investments and and opportunities to to
49:31 leverage resources and make an impact
49:34 this takes me to our second item and
49:36 that is piloting an emergency housing
49:39 program that we would like to propose to
49:41 you tonight
49:43 this is just a visual again on kind of
49:45 like where it falls within the human
49:47 services strategic plan
49:50 and so i think the first question you
49:52 might might be asking us is why this
49:54 project and why not uh why now right and
49:58 so i would love to start with the fact
50:00 that
50:01 we now have enough data to really
50:04 confidently say that this is an
50:06 identified need in our local community
50:09 as you may recall last year we
50:13 started a homeless outreach program
50:15 we hadn't we took the year and the
50:17 opportunity to really
50:19 dive deeper and learn
50:21 what's the face of homelessness in
50:22 issaquah
50:24 what are the real needs what are the
50:26 challenges so we have quite a few
50:28 information there
50:30 but in addition to that we also
50:33 identified a few opportunities
50:35 during the emergency
50:38 weather sheltering events we build a
50:40 really strong connection with our
50:41 partners at motel 6
50:44 they really understand the work that we
50:46 are doing
50:47 they understand this model they are very
50:49 supportive of us
50:50 in addition to that
50:52 we also identified timely opportunities
50:55 for certain funds and funding
50:57 options that i'm going to discuss in
50:59 just a minute
51:00 and then as the regional the regional
51:02 level we are always looking on how are
51:05 we aligned with other regional entities
51:08 and so in our collaboration with uh the
51:11 king county regional homelessness
51:12 authority um then we identified some
51:16 opportunities to collaborate there as
51:17 well so
51:19 um these are a few of the reasons why we
51:22 would love to bring this to you
51:25 tonight
51:26 and
51:27 with that
51:28 i'm going to pause a little bit to
51:30 invite
51:32 our
51:34 guests from kcrha
51:37 they would like to provide an update on
51:39 where they are
51:40 as a regional jurisdiction and um a
51:43 little bit about our collaboration with
51:45 them so
51:47 alexis mercedes rink and mallory welcome
51:53 hello
51:54 um so thankful to be with you all
51:56 tonight our apologies for not being
51:58 there in person i know we want to get
52:00 out there soon again to see you all um
52:02 but thank you so much for having us
52:03 tonight
52:04 my name is alexis mercedes rink i'm the
52:06 sub regional planning manager valerie do
52:08 you want to introduce yourself
52:10 absolutely good evening my name is
52:12 mallory van alma i am the east king
52:14 county sub-regional planning specialist
52:15 with kcrha thank you so much for
52:17 allowing us some space this evening
52:22 welcome thank you so much for being here
52:23 this evening
52:27 so i know that you've had an opportunity
52:29 to hear from kcra j in the past but this
52:32 is my first opportunity to interface
52:33 with you all so i just wanted to provide
52:36 a very high level overview of who we are
52:38 our foundational guiding principles
52:41 and and our governing mechanisms before
52:44 we shift into some pieces that are kind
52:46 of neatly woven into this proposed pilot
52:48 program that we're extremely excited
52:50 about the city of issaquah potentially
52:52 taking leadership on so
52:54 kcra jay's mission is to significantly
52:56 decrease the instant incidences of
52:59 homelessness throughout the entirety of
53:01 king county we do that by evoking equity
53:04 and social justice principles our work
53:06 is guided by our theory of change and
53:09 the theory of change is if we create a
53:11 homelessness response system that
53:13 centers customer voice or the voices of
53:15 the people with lived experience of
53:16 homelessness
53:17 then we will be able to focus on
53:19 responding to needs eliminating
53:21 inequities in order to end homelessness
53:23 or all
53:29 thank you
53:30 so our founding inner local agreement uh
53:34 from the city of seattle and king county
53:36 describes the role and scope and purpose
53:38 of kcrha is intent on unifying planning
53:42 and coordination of funding and services
53:43 for folks experiencing homelessness
53:46 oversight on policy and contract
53:48 management and performance management
53:49 and then we are also our regional
53:51 continuum of care we've assumed the
53:53 responsibility as the continuum of care
53:55 agency
53:56 receiving funding directly from the
53:58 department of housing and urban
53:59 development
54:01 to directly invest back into the
54:03 homelessness response system and get
54:04 folks the services and resources that
54:07 they need
54:08 we are also tasked with creating an
54:09 umbuds office which is a resource for
54:12 folks accessing the homelessness
54:14 response system for providers for people
54:16 in the community
54:18 a broad resource to ensure that we are
54:20 remaining accountable on our work and
54:23 that folks have a very clear pathway
54:25 to elevate concerns as they are either
54:27 personally navigating or working
54:29 alongside someone who is navigating the
54:31 system or observing
54:33 some hang-up or bottleneck or concern
54:35 within the homeless response system
54:37 we're also tasked with establishing
54:40 clear metrics and milestones for
54:42 measuring the success of a
54:44 transformation of a region-wide
54:46 homelessness response system ensuring
54:48 that all of that is uh
54:50 maintaining accountability and
54:51 transparency and then finally we have
54:53 three different governing entities so we
54:56 have our governing committee uh this is
54:58 11 members
55:01 we have eastside representation um but
55:03 they are essentially in charge of our
55:05 high level guidance so approving our
55:07 budgets holding our ceo accountable
55:11 and then we also have an implementation
55:13 board which functions quite similarly to
55:15 a board of directors
55:17 and then finally we have our coc our
55:19 continuum of care advisory board which
55:21 is comprised of providers
55:23 folks with lived experience and they are
55:25 really helping us
55:27 ensure that as the coc agency for the
55:29 region that we are doing the best work
55:31 that we can and holding us accountable
55:33 in that space as well
55:38 i think
55:39 next is
55:41 just a quick visual on what we do and
55:44 don't do
55:45 as a new agency recently launched
55:49 i think there's been
55:50 the need to just ensure clarity around
55:52 what kcra is and isn't involved in we're
55:56 closely partnered with the city of
55:57 seattle and with king county
55:59 but kcra j is not in the business of
56:02 housing capital and development on the
56:04 infrastructure side but we do manage all
56:06 of the continuum of care funded programs
56:09 including shelters and then all of the
56:11 programs you see here diversion rapid
56:13 rehousing the coordinated entry system
56:15 which is where folks
56:17 actually enter and are able to access
56:19 resources that meet their needs that the
56:21 best resources available that can
56:23 adequately meet their needs
56:25 we also manage the homelessness
56:26 management information system
56:28 which is a region-wide database of folks
56:31 that are accessing services
56:34 that are that are funded by us and also
56:36 participating in hmis
56:38 and we also manage outreach efforts uh
56:41 through certain providers across the
56:43 region so just a quick visual on what we
56:46 do and don't do
56:47 and if that i think that
56:49 i'm going to hand it over to alexis to
56:51 talk a bit about kind of our longer term
56:52 designing work
56:54 well thank you mallory and so we wanted
56:56 to talk about two uh longer-term
56:58 planning pieces and just uh starting
57:00 with the five-year plan and then going
57:02 into our proposed budget so we wanted to
57:04 preview a little bit of the work around
57:05 the five-year plan because it's likely
57:07 you'll be hearing some things
57:08 potentially in community especially
57:10 since this is a big focus area right now
57:13 within our founding legislation we have
57:15 a requirement to deliver upon a
57:20 there we go which really delivers upon
57:22 uh the high level vision for the agency
57:26 and so just to ground you into what
57:27 needs to be included in the five-year
57:29 plan we need to account for a theory of
57:31 change um which we uh luckily have one
57:34 already and that is centering the voices
57:36 of those with live experience so we can
57:38 check that box off
57:40 the second piece is around specific
57:42 measurable outcomes and goals so really
57:44 getting clear on what are our goals for
57:46 the next couple of years as a system
57:49 and also how are we going what are the
57:50 outcomes we're going to be looking for
57:52 the next pieces around some regional
57:54 planning activities we would love the
57:56 opportunity to come back and talk to you
57:57 all about how that work is shaping up
57:59 specifically um for the east side and so
58:01 we'd love to come in person and be able
58:03 to talk a little bit more about that
58:05 beyond tonight
58:07 and following the sub regional
58:09 activities piece
58:11 we have requirements to share
58:13 procurement processes we've had a team
58:15 working around equitable procurement
58:17 working in partnership with small
58:19 providers by and for community based
58:21 agencies um around
58:23 putting together an equitable
58:25 procurement process that would be
58:26 included in the five-year plan
58:28 um the next area is around consistent
58:31 consistent terms and conditions for
58:34 contracts um so getting really clear
58:36 around what um what is required by hud
58:39 that we need to report on what's
58:40 required by the state and the various
58:41 fund sources that we kind of manage and
58:43 also where's the room for flexibility
58:45 and how can we um create contracts that
58:48 are
58:49 able to uh be reasonably implemented
58:52 upon and have folks reporting um at a
58:55 reasonable level of information and
58:57 valuable information that helps us make
59:00 system level uh decisions
59:02 the next piece is tied to that and
59:03 that's really around consistent
59:04 standards for data collection monitoring
59:06 and evaluating our systems and program
59:08 performance um so really getting clear
59:11 on what kind of performance metrics and
59:13 things are we going to be looking at as
59:14 we know performance metrics drives uh
59:17 the activities and so this is a real
59:19 chance to reimagine and rebuild what um
59:21 how we evaluate success
59:23 um and the last piece um is kind of a
59:26 catch-all category you could tell um
59:29 that when there was
59:30 a uh
59:31 the deliberation in setting up the
59:33 authority this is kind of the catch-all
59:34 area which really is focused on
59:36 internally how will the kcra work on
59:39 continuous improvement evaluating our
59:42 community engagement especially with
59:43 folks with lived experience how we
59:45 remain compliant with the continuum of
59:47 care guidelines set by hud
59:50 how do we work upon improving
59:51 accountability through our ombuds office
59:53 and data collection
59:55 so that's a bit about the five-year plan
59:57 i'm gonna go a little bit into about our
59:58 proposed budget um in just the year of
1:00:01 operations that we've been going going
1:00:04 through um really with only six months
1:00:06 fully operational and having taken over
1:00:09 the contracts from state of seattle and
1:00:10 king county we've already identified
1:00:13 just through practice a variety of needs
1:00:15 in our current system
1:00:16 we have gaps in our current services
1:00:18 around high acuity shelter high acuity
1:00:20 referring to folks who have a variety of
1:00:22 complex health and behavioral needs and
1:00:24 experiencing homelessness
1:00:26 we've highlighted that there's a need
1:00:28 for emergency housing so looking at more
1:00:30 indoor spaces that are non-congregate
1:00:32 for folks to be as we know uh the
1:00:34 waitlist currently for a sectioning
1:00:36 housing voucher is about five years we
1:00:39 have many folks who are outdoors who
1:00:42 have been
1:00:43 essentially determined eligible for
1:00:45 a housing voucher but know where to be
1:00:47 um and so looking at what do inter
1:00:50 interim solutions look like through
1:00:52 developing a program like emergency
1:00:53 housing
1:00:55 we are also looking at the fact that we
1:00:57 have a gap in state parking programs
1:00:58 around the the region um we have needs
1:01:01 around us addressing severe weather as
1:01:04 both for heat and smoke and colds
1:01:08 we're looking at addressing the ongoing
1:01:09 effects of covid um from uh looking at
1:01:12 provider wages which we'll get into
1:01:14 momentarily and then further looking at
1:01:16 our own operations and trying to make
1:01:18 sure we have the staffing support to
1:01:19 fully support all the work
1:01:22 um with that that translates into our
1:01:25 budget request um and so we are looking
1:01:27 at um a budget additions to account for
1:01:30 exactly these things and so when we're
1:01:32 looking at um
1:01:34 really looking at
1:01:36 safe parking uh this budget house would
1:01:38 allow for us to serve 194 folks living
1:01:41 out of vehicles annually um for daytime
1:01:43 community spaces we could be serving
1:01:45 additional uh an additional 1400 people
1:01:48 every year um our emergency housing ask
1:01:51 of 20 million would allow to create
1:01:53 345 additional beds
1:01:56 and our ask around high acuity shelter
1:01:58 would allow for 55 high acuity shelter
1:02:02 and so we also recognize that our system
1:02:05 as i know has i've heard council members
1:02:07 do michelle talk about i think the last
1:02:09 time i was um in a meeting with you all
1:02:11 we have a tremendous need uh to be
1:02:13 accounting for the amazing service
1:02:14 providers that do these services and we
1:02:16 have accounted that into our budget
1:02:18 request so being able to provide for
1:02:20 increases for front-line staff um to
1:02:23 hold steady the sys our system um and
1:02:26 and be able to maintain so folks can
1:02:28 continue to do the good work and also be
1:02:30 able to live good lives when they go
1:02:32 home from work
1:02:33 and live in this community
1:02:35 um we're
1:02:36 in in summary we're also looking at
1:02:38 being able to provide additional
1:02:40 compensation for folks that lived
1:02:41 experience and smaller bypark agencies
1:02:43 to participate in regional planning and
1:02:45 then always seeking out technical
1:02:47 assistance for smaller providers as well
1:02:51 and so what we're trying to move from
1:02:53 this is our kind of current system we
1:02:54 have folks who are experiencing
1:02:56 unsheltered homelessness they get
1:02:57 connected either through a rapid free
1:02:59 housing program which provides for a
1:03:01 temporary like rental assistance and
1:03:03 support um for a period of time i know
1:03:06 mallory's own experience she was a rapid
1:03:08 rehousing case manager for a period of
1:03:10 time and could probably speak better to
1:03:12 even that program um and
1:03:15 but we also have another pathway where
1:03:16 folks are in um congregate shelter
1:03:19 spaces and they get entered into the
1:03:21 coordinated entry for all system and go
1:03:24 um a housing placement cea will match
1:03:26 them with um a permanent housing
1:03:28 solution that best would meet their
1:03:30 needs but we have very limited options
1:03:32 in permanent housing
1:03:34 what we want to move to and what our
1:03:35 budget is actually seeking to do is to
1:03:38 acknowledge that the journey from
1:03:39 unsheltered homelessness and into
1:03:42 permanent housing needs to be nuanced
1:03:43 and needs to actually account for the
1:03:46 folks the fact that many folks have a
1:03:48 variety of different needs
1:03:50 and we want to create additional
1:03:52 options for those folks so we still have
1:03:54 rapid rehousing included at the top
1:03:56 there and shelter included in the middle
1:03:58 there but we've created two additional
1:04:00 options one emergency housing again
1:04:02 looking at spaces that are
1:04:04 non-congregate
1:04:06 non-time limited
1:04:08 and so single room setting spaces and
1:04:10 investing in that type of model um and
1:04:13 then we're also looking at high acuity
1:04:14 shelter to account for the fact that we
1:04:16 do have a a
1:04:17 portion of our unhoused community that
1:04:19 is in need of a higher level of service
1:04:22 and um looking at how we can create
1:04:25 models that
1:04:26 are fully support the needs of those
1:04:28 folks and so once in that inter interim
1:04:32 space
1:04:34 through cea being able to adjust cea so
1:04:36 we can account for the appropriate
1:04:38 housing for that person's stage of life
1:04:40 and create a better spectrum of
1:04:42 supportive housing models whether that's
1:04:44 that's light touch or something that's
1:04:45 along the term along the lines of longer
1:04:48 term assisted living wanting to
1:04:50 invest in these types of housing models
1:04:53 we can better stabilize folks in their
1:04:56 path for stability my apologies
1:05:03 sorry about that
1:05:04 the choice of working from home and with
1:05:06 that that takes us to the end she was
1:05:08 ready for me to be done
1:05:11 and we're happy to take any questions
1:05:13 you have
1:05:19 monica can you explain for our benefit
1:05:21 and for the benefit and why we're
1:05:23 getting an overview on kcrha
1:05:26 yes thank you so much
1:05:28 councilmember mart and thank you so much
1:05:32 our guests for their presentation
1:05:35 i think we wanted to to show and discuss
1:05:38 with you um
1:05:41 the idea that we are trying to propose a
1:05:43 local
1:05:45 service here a local option
1:05:48 however
1:05:50 we don't want to just be in a silo and
1:05:52 isolate it we want to integrate it and
1:05:54 make sure that we align with other
1:05:56 regional plans um so we thought that
1:05:58 this is a good opportunity to
1:06:00 invite
1:06:01 king county regional homelessness
1:06:03 authority to provide an overview of the
1:06:05 work that they are doing and for us to
1:06:07 discuss on how our work may or may not
1:06:09 align with their priorities um so that
1:06:12 was the intent
1:06:14 all right so with that in mind do we
1:06:16 have any questions before we move on to
1:06:18 discussing the actual proposed emergency
1:06:20 housing program
1:06:22 council member di michelle
1:06:25 i do not that was a very comprehensive
1:06:28 presentation thank you
1:06:30 all right
1:06:31 thank you so much and so i'm gonna
1:06:33 continue and and uh move i have a few
1:06:36 more slides here to go in diving a
1:06:38 little bit deeper into our proposal
1:06:41 my next two slides are borrowed from
1:06:43 kcrha
1:06:45 this is a slide that you just saw in
1:06:47 their presentation and i just added
1:06:48 there a yellow star that this is where
1:06:52 proposed emergency housing model would
1:06:54 fit in in their continuum in the larger
1:06:56 continuum in the region
1:06:59 and then next i liked this video because
1:07:01 i really believe that our um you know
1:07:04 project
1:07:05 what we are proposing really um um i
1:07:09 think this is a nice visual that
1:07:10 explains on how what we are proposing
1:07:13 really is meant to bridge the gap
1:07:14 between
1:07:16 the shelter system and
1:07:18 folks who are unsheltered in the streets
1:07:21 and really permanent housing
1:07:23 here i would like to add that
1:07:25 as you you know and you're familiar with
1:07:27 our homeless outreach program since last
1:07:30 year when we started the program this
1:07:32 was a really big surprise for us um our
1:07:34 team engaged with 112 unduplicated
1:07:37 homeless folks in issaquah and i think
1:07:40 what's different and what we notice that
1:07:41 is different in in here our locally in
1:07:43 issaquah is that about 50 of those
1:07:46 really live unsheltered either in camps
1:07:49 or on the street and this is quite
1:07:52 different from the rest of east king
1:07:54 county when we looked at the 2020
1:07:57 point in time count we just didn't have
1:07:59 the most recent one
1:08:01 only 11 percent of the folks who are
1:08:03 homeless on east king county live in
1:08:06 camps or in the street the other ones
1:08:08 the vast majority are in some sort of
1:08:10 shelter and so i think that is that is
1:08:13 something concerning for us because we
1:08:14 really just do not have enough services
1:08:16 to um to connect these folks to
1:08:20 uh so now on to um what are we actually
1:08:23 proposing so what we were thinking is to
1:08:26 start
1:08:27 with a pilot in our partnership with
1:08:30 motel 6 we were thinking about
1:08:33 renting for one year a dozen rooms
1:08:37 to turn them into an emergency housing
1:08:39 program
1:08:40 we would also love to work with a
1:08:43 service provider who would monitor
1:08:46 services and would provide the on-site
1:08:49 services for folks who are there from
1:08:51 making sure that people have meals and
1:08:54 they have their basic needs covered that
1:08:56 stability that that is so much needed
1:08:58 but really into providing that case
1:09:00 management if there are like employment
1:09:02 services educational services life
1:09:05 skills that long-term connection
1:09:08 we would hope to to provide that with
1:09:10 with a service provider
1:09:13 and then we would also love to continue
1:09:15 to work with mont hall 6
1:09:18 you know where they would provide all
1:09:19 the other supports from utilities uh to
1:09:22 parking to nighttime security services
1:09:26 um um so it would be like a three-way
1:09:29 collaboration um between us multisex and
1:09:33 the shelter provider
1:09:37 there are certainly other variables here
1:09:39 we can discuss as you might have and we
1:09:41 can certainly bring back additional
1:09:43 information but since this is just a
1:09:44 very initial first time when this is in
1:09:47 front of you just wanted to provide that
1:09:49 high level
1:09:50 information
1:09:52 as we started thinking about budget
1:09:54 needs and funding needs
1:09:56 some of the areas that we identified as
1:09:59 possible funding sources
1:10:01 one of them and i think the the main one
1:10:04 for us would be possibilities through
1:10:07 tax dollars that our city uh chose to
1:10:09 receive through house bill 1590
1:10:12 if you remember
1:10:14 i believe last year our city decided to
1:10:18 add those sale taxes to our budget and
1:10:21 those are allocated especially for
1:10:23 affordable housing that includes also
1:10:25 mental health services so this program
1:10:27 would fall
1:10:28 under
1:10:29 those eligible
1:10:31 categories
1:10:32 of course we would love to and that's
1:10:34 actually the second reason why we wanted
1:10:36 to have kcrha here as well because we
1:10:39 would love to explore
1:10:40 funding opportunities for services
1:10:43 should those become available
1:10:45 and so we would love to consider
1:10:47 applying for a grant from the king
1:10:49 county regional homelessness authority
1:10:51 so we would love to continue exploring
1:10:53 those options
1:10:55 not sure how much we would love to dive
1:10:57 deeper and how realistic it is but we
1:11:00 could at some point we discussed
1:11:01 possible arpa allocation american rescue
1:11:04 plan act allocations this may or may not
1:11:06 be realistic at this time but also we
1:11:09 would love to explore um other sources
1:11:12 as well we would love to look to see if
1:11:14 there are any state dollars or private
1:11:16 donations as well that we could access
1:11:19 and next i would like to just provide a
1:11:21 brief high-level initial
1:11:24 preliminary budget details
1:11:28 we broke down
1:11:30 the budget into two categories
1:11:33 facility and operation cost we are
1:11:35 looking at around three hundred thousand
1:11:37 dollars and the program and service
1:11:40 costs we would look at another depending
1:11:46 the program
1:11:47 gets identified we can go as low as 250
1:11:50 000 to
1:11:52 400 dollars here it depends on the
1:11:54 number of staff support that we would
1:11:58 so the total cost of the project would
1:12:00 be anywhere between five hundred
1:12:02 thousand and seven hundred thousand uh
1:12:04 under those um
1:12:07 details that i just mentioned
1:12:11 in terms of
1:12:12 what are the options next or a proposed
1:12:15 timeline
1:12:18 this committee considers that
1:12:21 we can further explore this
1:12:23 program and project we would love after
1:12:25 this committee meeting to begin some
1:12:27 community conversations
1:12:29 get feedback from the community we would
1:12:31 love to gather information based on your
1:12:33 feedback perhaps come back to a
1:12:35 committee a meeting in july
1:12:38 continue community conversations
1:12:40 we could with your permission then
1:12:42 consider coming back in august
1:12:44 to a committee of the whole
1:12:47 perhaps come to a full council meeting
1:12:49 in september and again if
1:12:52 all the details work out then perhaps to
1:12:54 include all the details into the budget
1:12:57 process that you're going to go through
1:12:59 in the fall
1:13:00 with an estimated
1:13:03 requests for proposals for a service
1:13:06 provider in late fall and perhaps again
1:13:09 if everything works out starting the
1:13:11 pilot in january
1:13:13 again just high level we are very open
1:13:15 to feedback
1:13:17 and discussion questions from you
1:13:20 and before i'm just going to pause i
1:13:22 just have a couple of more details to
1:13:24 add this is just a visual on how it fits
1:13:26 within again the strategic planning you
1:13:28 have on the screen again the questions
1:13:30 that we are proposing for you tonight
1:13:35 you know as far as options
1:13:37 we can come back with a proposed formula
1:13:39 for human services grants we can
1:13:42 continue exploring the emergency housing
1:13:44 options
1:13:45 we can take a totally different approach
1:13:47 based on your feedback or
1:13:49 take no further action
1:13:51 if if that is
1:13:55 input our recommendation certainly would
1:13:58 be to on one end implement a formula for
1:14:00 the human services grants but also we
1:14:02 would love to pilot
1:14:04 the emergency housing
1:14:06 model as a targeted investment in human
1:14:08 services funds
1:14:12 and so that concludes my presentation
1:14:14 and on the screen again you have the
1:14:16 questions are you supportive of
1:14:18 establishing a formula for human
1:14:19 services grants are you supportive of
1:14:21 piloting the emergency housing model
1:14:24 would you like to
1:14:27 recommend something else or what type of
1:14:29 information
1:14:30 would be helpful for us to bring back to
1:14:33 thank you
1:14:36 and i will see
1:14:38 first off if there are any questions
1:14:39 from my fellow council members and i see
1:14:41 councilmember reyes ready with at least
1:14:43 one question at least one question thank
1:14:45 you chair marge monica thank you for
1:14:47 that um and
1:14:49 alexis and mallory thank you for the
1:14:51 presentation on
1:14:54 rha because that was great context but
1:14:57 it really leads me to my first question
1:14:58 which is
1:14:59 how is what we're talking about here
1:15:02 different than the mission and scope of
1:15:08 i don't believe it's necessarily
1:15:10 different i think it's just a local
1:15:13 response um
1:15:21 i'm trying to go back and look at them i
1:15:22 think city administrator bob quits would
1:15:24 like to
1:15:25 uh thank you uh chair marks
1:15:28 we've spent a lot of time thinking about
1:15:31 next steps
1:15:32 certainly uh
1:15:34 council member ray other members of the
1:15:36 council really challenged us over the
1:15:37 last many months
1:15:39 to look at what our role in all this is
1:15:43 i think the council has said we want to
1:15:45 make sure that those individuals in this
1:15:47 community are served but we also want to
1:15:49 make sure that the services we're
1:15:51 providing
1:15:53 are complementary to other services do
1:15:55 not duplicate other services
1:15:58 because there is certainly
1:16:00 need everywhere
1:16:01 there's lots of resources but there's
1:16:03 probably not enough resources and i
1:16:04 think as you've heard this evening
1:16:07 from the kc rha staff
1:16:10 you know they are still looking for
1:16:12 resources significant resources
1:16:14 from our
1:16:15 larger brother and sister jurisdictions
1:16:18 king county the city of seattle
1:16:20 so with that we've said what can we do
1:16:22 to help people and i think as monica has
1:16:24 indicated
1:16:26 we have now in place
1:16:28 with our behavioral health specialists i
1:16:29 think a very good program to identify
1:16:32 issaquah residents in need to provide
1:16:35 help for them but we're discovering that
1:16:37 the one piece that we cannot provide and
1:16:39 there are no others that can provide is
1:16:41 the shelter that temporary shelter
1:16:44 as additional services are provided to
1:16:46 help people get to the point where they
1:16:49 shelter hopefully shelter themselves so
1:16:51 that's where this proposal comes from as
1:16:53 we've worked with the regional homeless
1:16:55 authority
1:16:56 this is their goal too however
1:17:00 it's a big county with lots of people in
1:17:02 need um and there are limited outside
1:17:05 resources i think as was referred to
1:17:07 by alexis there's a 20 million dollar
1:17:09 ask to the city of seattle just for
1:17:12 their piece of of this puzzle let alone
1:17:15 the rest of the county so we think this
1:17:16 is very complementary quite honestly the
1:17:18 administration is
1:17:20 as proud of the work that our staff has
1:17:23 to say we have a need here we cannot
1:17:25 wait any longer
1:17:27 let's come up with something that we
1:17:28 think makes sense uh we have a funding
1:17:31 source uh through the sales tax the
1:17:34 one-tenth the one percent sales tax
1:17:35 which has been in place now for what a
1:17:37 year and a half
1:17:38 um and that those dollars in the bank
1:17:43 1.5 million dollars we expect it to be
1:17:46 close to 2 million
1:17:47 by the end of the year and no designated
1:17:50 um purpose for that with an asterisk
1:17:53 that the trans the transit oriented
1:17:55 development
1:17:56 project will likely need some additional
1:17:58 funding and so i think we all recognize
1:17:59 that that serves as a potential pot too
1:18:03 i think we're excited about what we have
1:18:05 here we think it's very complementary to
1:18:07 what the regional homeless authority is
1:18:09 doing
1:18:10 they have a very very tough assignment
1:18:12 and that is the rest of the county we
1:18:14 think we have a plan that will be
1:18:16 complementary to the work that we're
1:18:18 already doing with our behavioral health
1:18:19 specialists that will continue to help
1:18:22 issaquah residents and as we understand
1:18:24 the policy direction from the council
1:18:26 that is your desire for the focus that
1:18:28 we continue to help issaquah residents
1:18:31 hopefully that at least begins to answer
1:18:33 your questions i think that i think that
1:18:34 um answered my question um but i won
1:18:36 follow-up because there was one thing
1:18:38 that i really really resonated with me
1:18:40 in the kc rha when i really have a hard
1:18:43 time getting that acronym out but kcrha
1:18:46 presentation that was specific and
1:18:48 measurable outcomes and goals
1:18:50 and how do you measure success so have
1:18:51 you given a thought to
1:18:52 how we'd do that if we were to create
1:18:54 our own you know mini-me
1:18:57 program how would we
1:18:59 go about measuring success
1:19:02 thank you so much for that question
1:19:04 we always start with that and
1:19:06 for homelessness it's very very
1:19:07 difficult but one of the items that we
1:19:09 are looking at or one of the ways in
1:19:11 which we want to measure success is is
1:19:13 really to be able to see less
1:19:16 individuals who are homeless on our
1:19:17 streets in our parks um
1:19:20 [Music]
1:19:21 so then we can see them successfully
1:19:23 connected with the services they need to
1:19:25 begin their journey out of homelessness
1:19:28 um and back into society so that's our
1:19:31 biggest
1:19:32 way to measure success in this case
1:19:36 and also our biggest challenge right now
1:19:38 when we engage with them and we just
1:19:40 don't have a place to connect them to
1:19:44 and if i could just amplify the very
1:19:46 last point
1:19:47 we are measuring it and we are measuring
1:19:49 failure
1:19:50 on that last point that we have the
1:19:53 service we have the resources to
1:19:54 identify people in need we have the
1:19:56 resources to triage what those needs are
1:19:59 we have partnerships with other
1:20:01 providers
1:20:02 to help those individuals but it comes
1:20:05 to the point where if they do not have a
1:20:07 roof over their head it makes all the
1:20:09 other services that we're providing it
1:20:11 does not allow that continuum to move
1:20:13 forward so
1:20:15 i don't want to say we're failing but i
1:20:17 think as we are measuring the work that
1:20:19 we're doing we have clearly identified
1:20:22 this as the number one piece of a puzzle
1:20:24 that we're not able to to to provide
1:20:27 nor is anyone else we go currently to
1:20:30 other providers it's nokwami north bend
1:20:32 for housing bellevue for housing
1:20:35 many times our
1:20:36 very real specialists know exactly who
1:20:38 to call and they call and they find out
1:20:40 there is no room
1:20:42 and so then we're left in some cases i
1:20:44 know from talking to the staff
1:20:46 that we have to tell the individual yes
1:20:48 you have appointments with appropriate
1:20:50 mental
1:20:51 health professionals but you need to
1:20:53 remain on the street because there's no
1:20:55 place else for you to go so i think that
1:20:57 is a measure
1:20:59 certainly of a need for improvement and
1:21:01 i think really one of the drivers that
1:21:02 brings us here this evening is that we
1:21:04 have that data we know the people we we
1:21:07 know that we have other resources it's
1:21:09 that piece of providing a roof over
1:21:11 their head while they're getting on
1:21:12 their feet that we just don't have
1:21:16 councilmember ray do you have other
1:21:17 questions at this point not at this
1:21:19 moment thank you councilmember di
1:21:20 michelle
1:21:25 no questions at this time thank you
1:21:27 chair mart
1:21:29 i have a couple
1:21:30 that the one tenth of one percent uh
1:21:32 sales tax that we enacted a while back
1:21:36 what's the annual revenue on that
1:21:40 it's been estimated in this year's
1:21:42 budget is estimated eight hundred
1:21:43 thousand dollars okay so it would cover
1:21:46 the anticipated cost that anticipated i
1:21:48 think was 550 to 750. is that the total
1:21:52 anticipated cost of this program that is
1:21:54 the total anticipated cost with um
1:21:57 what we were proposing with having a
1:21:59 daytime service provider and support
1:22:02 from motel 6 for nighttime services and
1:22:04 for the dozen rooms yes
1:22:07 and i have a third question have we
1:22:10 talked
1:22:11 um at all to so this is
1:22:15 you're all in the parks department
1:22:18 have we talked to ipd or any other
1:22:19 departments about the practical side of
1:22:23 running this program
1:22:25 yes we did touch base early on with
1:22:28 our partners in ipd
1:22:30 i know that one of the challenges that
1:22:32 they brought on early on was
1:22:34 on weekends and evenings when they need
1:22:37 to sometimes they they really have a
1:22:39 high need to
1:22:41 provide a shelter to someone and
1:22:44 nobody's available and nothing's
1:22:45 available so i think this could be a
1:22:47 good resource for them as well
1:22:49 sometimes they interact with people in
1:22:51 the middle of the night that are fleeing
1:22:52 domestic violence situations and they
1:22:54 need to find a place for them right away
1:22:56 and they don't have it so that is one
1:22:58 area for in which i know ipd is is very
1:23:04 open and excited to have some resources
1:23:06 available
1:23:07 so they're generally supportive of this
1:23:09 particular proposal
1:23:11 yes from initial conversations with them
1:23:13 yes okay thank you thank you
1:23:16 well i don't think there's any other
1:23:18 questions right now this is a point
1:23:19 where
1:23:21 i would ask if any members of the public
1:23:22 either present or and i see at least one
1:23:25 hand going up but i will also mention
1:23:27 if you're remote and
1:23:29 you want to participate in this
1:23:31 conversation please indicate
1:23:33 as we as we said earlier raise your hand
1:23:35 or other mechanisms but we do have one
1:23:37 individual here so i'll ask you to come
1:23:39 forward and give your name and
1:23:40 address in relationship to the city and
1:23:42 you've got five minutes
1:23:45 uh my name is
1:23:57 there we go so we can record your
1:23:58 comments for possible
1:24:00 my name is doug schlepp and
1:24:03 work here in the city i live in smamish
1:24:06 i work at work lofts off gilman and have
1:24:09 been a long time consultant to the city
1:24:11 but i'm not acting in that capacity at
1:24:14 this moment
1:24:15 and i just want to
1:24:17 thank the
1:24:19 city for the work that they're doing
1:24:24 my wife and i have been
1:24:26 doing street outreach
1:24:28 for the past year working with the
1:24:31 isquad food bank the city we've been
1:24:33 attending uh regular meetings with the
1:24:36 city regarding this issue
1:24:38 and i i second the
1:24:42 comments made by the city administrator
1:24:45 and monica and staff
1:24:47 and the efforts um
1:24:50 this is
1:24:52 uh to put a face on it
1:24:55 we probably met over 100 people over
1:24:57 this last year
1:24:59 know them by name
1:25:01 got to know their history
1:25:05 some of them are third generation
1:25:07 residents of issaquah
1:25:10 this is
1:25:13 i i used to think that this was a you
1:25:15 know seattle's problem
1:25:18 but reality um and i don't know if
1:25:21 problem is a good word for it but this
1:25:23 is a concern i think of the city and i
1:25:25 think the city is recognizing that
1:25:28 in addition to
1:25:30 residents we also have seen
1:25:33 people who work
1:25:35 here in the city
1:25:37 and then are living on the streets
1:25:39 and i think some of the issues that
1:25:43 they face are
1:25:45 [Music]
1:25:48 security
1:25:50 if you're
1:25:51 living
1:25:52 on the street or in a tent
1:25:55 and you want to get a meal that's being
1:25:57 provided across town
1:26:00 you either take all your possessions
1:26:02 with you or leave them behind and
1:26:04 they're subject to being looted and so
1:26:08 security and finding a safe place
1:26:11 that's secure
1:26:12 excuse me secure
1:26:14 reliable
1:26:16 and you can lock the door behind you
1:26:18 things that we take for granted
1:26:20 are really critical to
1:26:23 the next step and i think the the
1:26:25 successes that
1:26:27 what we
1:26:28 saw over this past year
1:26:30 were things like
1:26:32 getting a an id
1:26:34 and getting an id could take months
1:26:37 and it's just that that um
1:26:40 the challenge of uh having a safe place
1:26:45 lay your head at night
1:26:47 and then
1:26:48 being able to
1:26:50 then take that next step towards uh
1:26:53 normalcy and i think the one thing that
1:26:57 that i
1:26:59 learned over this last year is i used to
1:27:01 approach
1:27:04 from my perspective
1:27:06 and my perspective is one where i have a
1:27:11 i have a stable environment i have a job
1:27:14 and i would impose that on the people i
1:27:16 would see on the streets you know why
1:27:18 doesn't that person just get a job
1:27:20 and it's really unfair because they are
1:27:22 coming from a place that i can't even um
1:27:26 fathom
1:27:27 and i just i really want to
1:27:30 encourage the
1:27:31 council
1:27:33 the city to move forward with this
1:27:34 program i think it's important
1:27:38 i heard the
1:27:40 representatives from the king county
1:27:43 agency talk about ending homelessness
1:27:46 and that would be incredible if we could
1:27:48 do that and i think that's the ultimate
1:27:53 steps forward are going to be
1:27:54 incremental and i really applaud the
1:27:57 city in making that effort to make that
1:27:59 a reality
1:28:01 thank you
1:28:03 thank you for your comment uh is there
1:28:05 anyone else either in the room or remote
1:28:07 who wishes to speak to this issue before
1:28:09 we deliberate it
1:28:12 yes chair martz we have next up wishing
1:28:15 to speak erin longchari
1:28:18 aaron i am now making you a panelist you
1:28:20 should see the option to unmute and you
1:28:22 may also turn on your video
1:28:31 yes thank you so much i'm having issues
1:28:33 with my video um
1:28:35 well we can hear you we can hear you
1:28:37 just fine so
1:28:38 great
1:28:40 thank you thank you um city
1:28:41 administrator and and the council and
1:28:44 alexis monica thank you guys all so much
1:28:47 for for your wonderful presentation um
1:28:49 i'm erin longchari i am the director of
1:28:52 operations and programs at the issaquah
1:28:54 food and clothing bank
1:28:56 i would like to
1:28:59 extend our full support of the city's
1:29:02 emergency shelter proposal plan
1:29:06 local available supportive shelter
1:29:09 services are an enormous gap in our
1:29:12 community for our residents
1:29:14 it is an absolutely critical area of
1:29:18 we at the food bank are a very close
1:29:20 partner of the city's human services
1:29:22 team and we're often the first point of
1:29:25 contact for people in crisis who who
1:29:28 need this service
1:29:31 we need a place where the residents that
1:29:34 our partner agencies work with on a
1:29:36 daily weekly yearly basis sometimes
1:29:40 and thank you to doug we work so closely
1:29:42 together he's he and susan have been
1:29:45 such amazing amazing partners in this
1:29:49 we need a place where these residents
1:29:51 can have some safe respite
1:29:54 whether to stay
1:29:55 safe from some weather extremes
1:29:58 have medical recovery after after
1:30:01 surgery
1:30:02 [Music]
1:30:04 to find mental health or substance abuse
1:30:07 treatment and and vital case management
1:30:10 services
1:30:12 among many other reasons but those ones
1:30:14 in particular that i've highlighted are
1:30:16 instances where the food bank has spent
1:30:19 our vital and and scarce financial
1:30:23 donation resources around providing
1:30:26 emergency hotel shelter for individuals
1:30:29 that we work with
1:30:31 on a daily basis who need this kind of
1:30:34 service and help
1:30:37 we couldn't
1:30:38 we couldn't express more the gap that
1:30:42 exists around this type of program
1:30:45 and i think the city administrator just
1:30:48 highlighted
1:30:49 exactly
1:30:51 what's different about a program like
1:30:54 and how it it can be the link between
1:30:57 somebody coming to the food bank at 6 59
1:31:01 p.m before we close in crisis
1:31:04 which
1:31:05 um happens often
1:31:07 um and we can provide tarps tents food
1:31:12 all sorts of emergency supplies and they
1:31:15 may have an appointment or or a case
1:31:18 management provider meeting in in a day
1:31:20 or two
1:31:22 to get into treatment
1:31:24 or to get a medical issue resolved
1:31:26 but rather than being able to have a
1:31:28 safe temporary respite spot for these
1:31:32 individuals these residents whom we know
1:31:34 and care so deeply for
1:31:37 we have to send them back out to the
1:31:38 street sometimes they return to us and
1:31:41 sometimes they don't
1:31:43 and that
1:31:44 that is where we as a city and as a
1:31:48 community can do so much better and and
1:31:51 i thank you for for the opportunity to
1:31:53 to speak in support of this partnership
1:31:56 thank you thank you for your comments
1:31:59 clerk has anyone else uh indicated
1:32:02 an interest in speaking
1:32:05 yes chair martz next up is brad poston
1:32:10 brad i am making you a panelist you
1:32:12 should now uh
1:32:14 be able to unmute and also turn on your
1:32:16 video
1:32:19 perfect can you hear me
1:32:21 yes we can
1:32:23 thank you very much um it's a pleasure
1:32:25 to be here um this evening with all of
1:32:27 you i want to say well first of all i'm
1:32:29 brad poston i'm the director of
1:32:30 operations for the moto 6 operated by
1:32:33 icon hospitality they're in is a isoqua
1:32:37 we're new to the community but this
1:32:39 initiative is not new to me
1:32:41 they say that things happen for a reason
1:32:43 and i believe that wholly
1:32:45 um in my own past i've
1:32:47 sat on the board of directors for
1:32:49 non-profits that have addressed this
1:32:51 issue across the country from colorado
1:32:54 and it really does come down to
1:32:56 resources and a culture of care
1:33:00 and i think that's where our partnership
1:33:02 and our side is coming from
1:33:05 our our values in
1:33:07 icon cares one of our corporate values
1:33:10 and heart for a service one of our
1:33:11 franchise values for the brand itself
1:33:14 during crisis just like the one we went
1:33:16 through together as partners
1:33:17 successfully
1:33:18 recently
1:33:20 we're just coming back to the table to
1:33:21 you all and just saying how much we
1:33:24 admire the community how much we support
1:33:26 you and your efforts and how wonderful
1:33:29 this opportunity to become partners is
1:33:31 so thank you all very much for the hard
1:33:32 work monica amir all of you you guys are
1:33:35 wonderful thank you so much and i'll
1:33:38 give back my time
1:33:40 thank you so much for your comments and
1:33:42 thank you for joining us this evening
1:33:44 clerk do we have anyone else who is
1:33:46 indicated
1:33:47 yes we do chair marts paul lawali
1:33:51 is wishing to speak on this topic
1:33:54 paul i am now making you a panelist you
1:33:57 should see the option to unmute and you
1:33:59 may turn on your video
1:34:02 yeah good evening council members uh my
1:34:04 name is paul wally i am i work with
1:34:07 friends of youth and we are a local
1:34:10 eastside
1:34:11 service provider
1:34:14 homeless youth and we're unsheltered you
1:34:17 and i just wanted to uh to join the
1:34:20 folks who have gone before me and
1:34:22 just echoed some of the things that
1:34:24 aaron has said
1:34:25 related to
1:34:27 the need for safe respite the need to
1:34:30 provide folks with places where they can
1:34:32 find not only just clothing food but
1:34:36 also a place to whatever services they
1:34:38 need especially mental health behavioral
1:34:40 health substance use
1:34:42 so i highly encourage the city to uh to
1:34:46 go along with this pilot program uh
1:34:48 we've been in the in the local area for
1:34:51 seven years
1:34:52 and we've worked with the the city of
1:34:55 issaquah and with
1:34:57 monica for for a while
1:34:59 uh but we just think that you know if i
1:35:01 had to just give my professional opinion
1:35:04 right now the need is so great and how
1:35:06 many people from issaquah have to go all
1:35:09 the way to
1:35:11 bellevue or seattle on any given night
1:35:14 especially
1:35:15 when it's severe weather
1:35:17 it's uh it's just one of these very dire
1:35:19 needs so fully support this as a service
1:35:22 provider and i hope that uh you can
1:35:24 pilot this and i love that the
1:35:27 that the city of issaquah has taken a
1:35:28 proactive stance of saying well let's go
1:35:31 ahead and recommend a pilot and let's
1:35:33 see what's what's out there and let's
1:35:35 see how we can work on this so thank you
1:35:37 very much for your time
1:35:39 and i hope you you you move forward with
1:35:41 this pilot
1:35:43 thank you for your comments
1:35:45 clerk
1:35:47 i see no other members of the public uh
1:35:50 indicating a desire to speak on this
1:35:52 topic chair martz although i would like
1:35:53 to remind those that did speak if you
1:35:55 could lower your virtual hands please
1:36:00 do we have anyone else present who
1:36:02 wishes to speak to this issue
1:36:04 seeing none and seeing no no further
1:36:08 activity remotely we will move to
1:36:10 uh discussion of the four issues that
1:36:12 are in front of us then uh mr nagrilla
1:36:14 if you could please put those four
1:36:15 questions back up just as a reminder for
1:36:18 first question is is the committee
1:36:20 supportive of establishing a formula for
1:36:22 human services grants funding
1:36:24 allocations with that let's start with
1:36:27 council member to michelle
1:36:33 thank you i i have to stop and say i was
1:36:36 really moved by
1:36:38 the comments tonight and
1:36:40 so thanks to everybody that took the
1:36:42 time to come in and talk to us
1:36:47 on the human services grants
1:36:50 i of course support the idea of a
1:36:53 formula
1:36:56 and i think you may have seen seen the
1:36:58 email that i sent earlier i do have
1:37:01 concerns
1:37:03 about
1:37:04 how that will play out given the timing
1:37:07 that's being proposed and the amount of
1:37:09 money that's being proposed
1:37:11 and um
1:37:14 manager
1:37:16 uh negrilla can correct me if i'm wrong
1:37:19 but and i realize it's a projection but
1:37:22 the projection is
1:37:24 uh 500 000
1:37:27 for human services grants in
1:37:30 23 and 24
1:37:32 and then using the formula we would
1:37:34 increase that in um
1:37:37 25 26
1:37:40 543 000 and and i realized that's a
1:37:44 projection
1:37:45 and that there are discussions we could
1:37:47 have about the formula but
1:37:49 my concern is the one that alexis rick
1:37:53 alluded to
1:37:56 first of all we're facing monumental
1:37:58 inflation during this time
1:38:03 the east side human services forum has
1:38:05 identified
1:38:06 pay inequity in the human services field
1:38:09 as one of the driving issues
1:38:11 currently
1:38:14 the pandemic uh exacerbated the the
1:38:17 issue but we have relied on people in
1:38:20 the human services field to take minimum
1:38:23 wage salaries for a very long time
1:38:26 and that has caught up with us and it
1:38:28 caught up with us during the pandemic in
1:38:31 big time
1:38:32 and so human services organizations
1:38:35 social service organizations are
1:38:37 grappling with how they can begin to
1:38:40 give people living wages
1:38:43 and so all of that is
1:38:45 increasing
1:38:46 the need for additional funding
1:38:49 and on top of that
1:38:52 we have the high cost of living on the
1:38:54 east side
1:38:55 we have
1:38:56 all of the expenses that for-profit
1:38:58 companies
1:38:59 face um
1:39:01 and so i look at the formula i look at
1:39:03 what's being proposed and i think this
1:39:05 this is not meeting the need and i
1:39:08 understand that we will never as a city
1:39:11 be able to meet all of the need
1:39:13 but i i would urge us to make a more
1:39:16 substantial investment
1:39:19 in those human services grants
1:39:21 just because our human services
1:39:25 are facing some major major challenges
1:39:27 right now
1:39:28 the need is very great we are still in
1:39:30 recovery from the pandemic
1:39:33 um and all of this of that says to me
1:39:36 uh that we need to do more we need to
1:39:38 make a real
1:39:40 increase a real investment
1:39:43 in those human services grants so i'm
1:39:46 going to put it out there again
1:39:48 [Music]
1:39:49 i would like to see us increase for 23
1:39:52 23.24
1:39:54 i mean immediately
1:39:56 i'd like to see us put a hundred
1:39:57 thousand dollars more
1:39:59 per year in each of those
1:40:02 uh budgets
1:40:03 and use six hundred thousand dollars a
1:40:05 year as our baseline
1:40:07 for calculating the formula
1:40:10 for 25 26 and going forward that's my
1:40:14 proposal
1:40:16 i'm certainly willing and eager to hear
1:40:19 what my fellow council members have to
1:40:21 say but i think if we just rely
1:40:24 on the formula that's been presented
1:40:27 that our investment in those human
1:40:30 services grants is going to be eaten up
1:40:32 completely by inflation by wage
1:40:35 increases
1:40:37 and by the business expenses that are
1:40:39 facing
1:40:41 our human services organizations in
1:40:43 issaquah so that's my concern and that's
1:40:46 my proposal thank you chairman
1:40:49 thank you council member d michelle
1:40:50 council member ray
1:40:53 i have a couple thoughts on this one is
1:40:55 i'm 100 supportive of
1:40:57 being formula driven it just makes it
1:40:58 easier makes it more predictable for for
1:41:01 everybody i think there's a couple
1:41:02 questions one is what's the baseline
1:41:05 where do you start and i think that goes
1:41:06 to council member d michelle's question
1:41:08 and then the second is what's the
1:41:10 formula going forward and i think those
1:41:11 are two separate issues
1:41:13 so i think we can work on a formula that
1:41:16 says whatever we set the baseline at
1:41:19 this is the formula we use going forward
1:41:21 it can have an inflation component it
1:41:22 can have a population component
1:41:25 if we want to get really interesting we
1:41:26 can talk about communities of need and
1:41:28 how we weight that but i'd like to see
1:41:30 something come back and say here's the
1:41:32 formula and here's why we think it's the
1:41:33 right formula and here's how it how it
1:41:35 fits in um
1:41:38 in terms of the baseline um i don't
1:41:40 think we'll ever
1:41:41 have enough i mean that's the that's the
1:41:43 beauty of this
1:41:44 line of work we all know that if you
1:41:46 spend any time in it you know you're
1:41:47 never going to have enough
1:41:49 what's interesting is when um i think it
1:41:52 was ava who
1:41:54 proposed i think in 15 or something that
1:41:57 it be
1:41:59 established based on a per capita basis
1:42:01 and it was ten dollars per capita and
1:42:02 now we're 12 and a half so um that's a
1:42:05 25 percent increase in in the per capita
1:42:08 thing so we have escalated it so i i
1:42:11 don't know what that number is but i'd
1:42:13 like to have some basis for that number
1:42:15 other than
1:42:16 we don't have enough so to council
1:42:18 member d michelle's point if we could
1:42:21 you know we expect a 10 increase in
1:42:23 wages in the human services field and we
1:42:25 think rent's going to be going like this
1:42:27 but something that we can tie our star
1:42:30 to and say
1:42:31 it's based on something other than it's
1:42:33 just a number so give me a baseline and
1:42:36 make that baseline based on something
1:42:38 it's a baseline and then
1:42:41 propose some um factors that we can use
1:42:43 going forward so cost of living
1:42:46 you know
1:42:47 needs of the community whatever those
1:42:49 factors are that we think should
1:42:50 escalate over time and i think that
1:42:52 would be
1:42:53 uh really helpful and give us something
1:42:55 we can just hang on to
1:42:58 so i have a question
1:43:00 what's the human services budget in 2022
1:43:05 for human services grants yeah it's 500
1:43:08 000 so it's five hundred thousand today
1:43:12 today we have five hundred thousand but
1:43:14 this proposal would hold it at five
1:43:16 hundred thousand through 2024
1:43:19 and then start a cpi
1:43:21 not necessary that's up to you and your
1:43:24 feedback um it's it
1:43:26 with city
1:43:28 um administrator bob kowitz's permission
1:43:30 depending on your discussion during the
1:43:32 budget process if you decide you have
1:43:35 funds for that that could be added to
1:43:37 2023 2024.
1:43:42 student administrator yes thank you
1:43:44 chairmart the the administration has no
1:43:46 objection of applying it right now i
1:43:48 think we wanted as mr guerilla said that
1:43:50 let the council have a discussion with
1:43:52 that but
1:43:54 you know we we feel very comfortable
1:43:56 with the formula i think council member
1:43:59 ray's comments are very well taken and
1:44:00 we have discussed them
1:44:02 in his absence uh internally um and
1:44:06 that's why you do not see a different
1:44:07 kind of a more aggressive factor because
1:44:10 we still believe we need more data um we
1:44:13 think that there's there's certainly the
1:44:15 justification for the 500 000 uh right
1:44:18 now we think that the cost of living
1:44:20 escalation makes sense our our sense is
1:44:23 that it needs to go up even higher but
1:44:25 we do not have the data to present to
1:44:27 you so rather than say give us another
1:44:29 year we're here tonight with a with a
1:44:32 more action related proposal with the
1:44:34 understanding that this is work will
1:44:36 continue
1:44:37 and i would imagine a year from now
1:44:38 we'll be able to come perhaps even a
1:44:40 different formula
1:44:42 based on more data
1:44:44 so i see your hand up bar but let me
1:44:45 finish my my thought and then i'll come
1:44:47 back to you um
1:44:50 i guess what my thinking is that um if
1:44:53 we said yeah it's 500 000 this year it's
1:44:57 500 000 plus
1:44:59 i would just do the cpi accelerator
1:45:02 i think that would square the circle
1:45:04 between both of the things that i'm
1:45:05 hearing because it would address council
1:45:07 member d michelle's concern that we need
1:45:10 to get ahead of inflation or at least
1:45:12 keep up with inflation right now
1:45:15 and it would also
1:45:16 um start with a with a number
1:45:19 and uh and then i've i'm very
1:45:23 comfortable with
1:45:24 uh cpi plus uh as and then per capita as
1:45:28 well that's long been my standard for
1:45:31 uh expenditures and and we have seen
1:45:35 just this week in seattle when
1:45:37 expenditures over the long haul greatly
1:45:39 exceed that that relationship you start
1:45:42 to see drastic concerns around general
1:45:45 fund shortages like they're facing 120
1:45:47 million dollars this year right but i
1:45:49 mean we avoid that by having smart
1:45:51 accelerators um like this
1:45:55 now i will call in council member g
1:45:57 michelle
1:45:59 uh thank you chairman
1:46:02 i think i think the thrust of what i was
1:46:04 trying to say is exactly what both you
1:46:06 and councilmember ray uh are discussing
1:46:09 and and uh city administrator bob kowitz
1:46:12 and that is i would really like to see
1:46:15 us accelerate this
1:46:17 and make sure that the baseline starting
1:46:21 uh 2324
1:46:24 reflective of the
1:46:26 pressures that are on our social service
1:46:28 agencies
1:46:29 and so
1:46:31 the councilmember ray's remarks are well
1:46:33 taken
1:46:34 i also like your proposal so i think we
1:46:37 can go forward and
1:46:39 come up with a proposal to bring back to
1:46:42 the committee or back to the council for
1:46:45 consideration
1:46:46 i mean i'd like the three of us if we
1:46:48 can to agree this evening to what
1:46:50 proposal we'd like to bring back to the
1:46:52 full council
1:46:54 i mean
1:46:55 how how do you feel about saying this
1:46:58 year is what it is and and for next year
1:47:00 we go with the cpi accelerator oh i'm
1:47:02 all over that i actually was surprised
1:47:04 that it wasn't that way
1:47:06 when i was looking at the numbers i
1:47:07 thought that's what we were going to
1:47:08 have was the 543 or whatever that number
1:47:11 is so i think that that makes perfect
1:47:12 sense to me
1:47:15 but i would like to do i mean continue
1:47:16 doing some digging in the future but i
1:47:18 think for a going forward plan that
1:47:20 works
1:47:21 and and and i know concert council
1:47:23 member d michelle you you'd really like
1:47:24 to see a transformative uh view on how
1:47:27 we do uh uh
1:47:29 grant funding and i i think starting
1:47:32 with this today um and then
1:47:34 understanding that there's a sense of
1:47:36 the body that we would love to see
1:47:39 more data that would allow for a
1:47:41 conversation about a transformational
1:47:43 model
1:47:44 i think would reflect the will of the
1:47:46 three of us
1:47:48 i agree and i appreciate the
1:47:50 conversation um and um
1:47:53 as city administrator bob woods
1:47:56 indicated we may come across more data
1:47:58 that gives us a better look at it
1:48:01 but i think if we're in agreement that
1:48:03 we need to do something much more
1:48:05 immediately then i'm i'm fine with the
1:48:08 discussion right now yeah
1:48:10 so it sounds like the three of us agree
1:48:12 um next year would be 500 000 plus uh
1:48:16 with the implementation
1:48:17 immediately
1:48:20 for 2023 of the cpi accelerator and per
1:48:24 capita
1:48:26 right
1:48:27 all right
1:48:28 you have you have
1:48:31 uh i'm sorry city administrator you have
1:48:33 a quizzical look i do the per capita
1:48:35 piece so
1:48:36 is that then changing the base
1:48:39 well if we get 10 more people
1:48:42 next between now and next year
1:48:44 500 000 plus cpi isn't enough
1:48:47 right and
1:48:49 you know if you get more people
1:48:51 historically we've had uh
1:48:54 you know we went with a per dollar we
1:48:56 went with a dollar per resident with the
1:48:58 idea being that as our city gets bigger
1:49:00 we need more services i think taking
1:49:02 this year as the starting bogey but
1:49:04 saying that next year it's both cpi and
1:49:06 population
1:49:07 is what you're hearing from this body so
1:49:10 i think was mentioned that we're 12
1:49:12 dollars per head
1:49:14 we are 12 dollars per head and if i
1:49:16 unders understand correctly chair marks
1:49:18 and what you're proposing is that we
1:49:20 would add a population growth percentage
1:49:23 so for example for us would be that
1:49:25 would be a 0.7
1:49:27 yes okay
1:49:29 so there's there's two factors versus
1:49:31 just one cpu cpi plus population
1:49:33 observation growth yes
1:49:35 sudden such that the per capita
1:49:37 uh investiture in real dollars stays at
1:49:40 least the at least constant to keep up
1:49:42 with inflation
1:49:43 susie umancel is watching at home and
1:49:46 already texting me so i want to be sure
1:49:48 that we are clear and why i mentioned
1:49:50 sushi she corrected me uh the annual
1:49:53 monies that we're collecting or not
1:49:55 hundred thousand but one million eight
1:49:57 hundred thousand so my one half of one
1:49:59 percent yeah
1:50:01 the one tenth of one percent sorry one
1:50:02 tenth of one is one million eight
1:50:04 hundred thousand per year so my i knew
1:50:05 the 800 000 was stuck in my head but
1:50:07 it's one million eight hundred thousand
1:50:08 so thank you susie there's other things
1:50:10 to watch on television tonight
1:50:14 all right uh the next question is is the
1:50:17 committee supportive of piloting the
1:50:18 emergency housing model proposed as a
1:50:21 targeted investment council member ray
1:50:27 i am of multiple minds on this one um
1:50:32 i have this belief when you when you
1:50:34 have a
1:50:35 disconnect with somebody it's generally
1:50:37 because you're talking about different
1:50:38 things and so
1:50:41 i don't dispute the need i don't dispute
1:50:43 that we're a caring community i don't
1:50:45 dispute that
1:50:48 we want to do better and that people
1:50:50 need services and shelter what i'm
1:50:53 really struggling with is what's the
1:50:54 best and most effective way to do that
1:50:56 and and i'm
1:50:59 i'm i haven't been convinced tonight
1:51:01 that the city of issaquah is more
1:51:03 capable of providing shelter than is
1:51:06 the king county seattle cooperative
1:51:10 organization
1:51:12 um we're talking 700 000
1:51:15 um i did some quick numbers it looks
1:51:16 like 100 million dollars that
1:51:19 that the county is the kcrha is spending
1:51:22 so um i'm not opposed to doing a pilot
1:51:25 but i need to have some some confidence
1:51:27 at the end of a pilot that you can prove
1:51:29 to me that this is better than what kc
1:51:33 rha could do and and and in very
1:51:36 tangible terms and
1:51:38 and then i wrestle with if we
1:51:40 can serve this population are we just
1:51:43 moving um the problem around and so
1:51:47 i'll i will support the pilot because i
1:51:49 think you know i like trying things and
1:51:51 seeing how they work but um when the
1:51:53 pilot's done i i have a really high bar
1:51:56 that i want you to get over to convince
1:51:57 me that this was the best use of that
1:52:00 seven hundred thousand dollars seven
1:52:01 hundred thousand dollars because there's
1:52:03 a lot of stuff we could do with a lot of
1:52:05 people in need um that we could address
1:52:08 with seven hundred thousand dollars so
1:52:09 you gotta convince me that this is the
1:52:11 absolute best way to do it compared to
1:52:13 what um
1:52:14 other um providers could do
1:52:17 so that's that's kind of where i'm at on
1:52:19 this it was it's it's it's a compelling
1:52:21 argument for sure
1:52:23 but it's uh
1:52:25 i'm from missouri show me
1:52:27 thank you councilmember d michelle
1:52:32 um thank you so much chair of arts
1:52:37 so let me start by saying that when the
1:52:40 council voted to
1:52:42 capture that one-tenth one percent uh
1:52:45 sales tax
1:52:47 this was
1:52:48 the proposal that's in front of us
1:52:50 tonight was
1:52:51 pretty much the dream that i had
1:52:54 at that point
1:52:57 and the proposal that's brought been
1:52:59 brought forward is actually more elegant
1:53:01 than even the one i envisioned
1:53:05 i think that what the reason that um
1:53:08 this was my dream
1:53:10 might answer council member ray's
1:53:14 thoughts
1:53:15 about how can we do it better or why
1:53:17 will this be better and the why it will
1:53:20 be better is because it is here in
1:53:23 issaquah
1:53:25 and there is a mountain of research that
1:53:28 shows that when people are homeless
1:53:31 if you can keep them in their community
1:53:33 and keep them with their connections and
1:53:36 keep them
1:53:38 close to where where they uh are
1:53:41 currently operating and as one of our
1:53:44 commentators
1:53:46 pointed out some of them actually have
1:53:48 jobs here in issaquah and they're still
1:53:51 homeless
1:53:54 ability to continue that those contexts
1:53:58 and that sense of community
1:54:00 and uh so you could ask the question i
1:54:03 think uh well you know do homeless
1:54:05 people have connections in the community
1:54:08 and the one illustration that i can give
1:54:10 you is the night that i did my ride
1:54:12 along with the instaquad police
1:54:14 department
1:54:15 officer
1:54:16 and part of that we walked around
1:54:18 downtown
1:54:20 and she made contact with
1:54:22 homeless person after homeless person
1:54:24 after homeless person
1:54:27 even that small amount of contact makes
1:54:30 a huge difference and then we have the
1:54:33 issaquah food and clothing bank and
1:54:35 aaron and the wonderful people that are
1:54:37 there that provide community for people
1:54:40 and homelessness
1:54:42 and then we have friends of youth that
1:54:43 provides
1:54:45 contacts
1:54:47 so to force people to go to bellevue or
1:54:50 to go to seattle or to go to kirkland
1:54:54 take them out of whatever community
1:54:57 context they have
1:54:58 it's just adding another level of trauma
1:55:01 to what is already a traumatic situation
1:55:05 in that sense just by providing a place
1:55:10 we are doing better than the king county
1:55:13 regional homelessness authority and
1:55:15 alexis and mallory i have huge
1:55:19 i i am not at all dissing that program
1:55:22 because alexis and mallory have been
1:55:24 wonderful partners for a lot of our
1:55:26 discussions
1:55:28 there is just nothing that takes the
1:55:30 place of providing
1:55:34 a residence
1:55:35 as doug said a place to lay your head
1:55:39 that is in your own community and so
1:55:41 just by doing that we are doing it
1:55:44 better
1:55:45 than the regional network can do
1:55:49 i really commend
1:55:51 monica and alexis and
1:55:54 the city administration for coming up
1:55:56 with what again i would call a very
1:55:58 elegant elegant proposal for us to
1:56:01 consider and i fully fully support it so
1:56:05 thank you
1:56:06 thank you councilmember jimmy michelle
1:56:09 i absolutely agree with council member
1:56:12 ray that at the end of this pilot we'll
1:56:14 want to take a really
1:56:17 should the full council support it um
1:56:19 we'll want to take a really good look at
1:56:21 um the effects of it i mean we are one
1:56:23 city not a particularly big city um in
1:56:26 in a big county and seeing how
1:56:30 this service impacts our own community
1:56:32 and adjacent communities i think would
1:56:34 be will be part of that conversation
1:56:36 additionally how other cities address
1:56:38 this how bellevue addresses it and and
1:56:40 and snoqualmie and so forth
1:56:42 um however i i have cause to be
1:56:44 optimistic and there's a couple of
1:56:46 things one is that um the unit cost is
1:56:51 proportional to the number that i've
1:56:53 heard for a long time which it's
1:56:55 staggering but fifty thousand
1:56:57 dollars per person per year is is the
1:56:59 number that has been talked about in
1:57:01 king county for several years now this
1:57:03 is more or less right around that number
1:57:06 so that tells me that at least it as a
1:57:09 proposal that it that it projects out as
1:57:13 something comparable to king county and
1:57:15 there's another argument to me which is
1:57:17 and it kind of relates to something that
1:57:18 councilmember g michelle said you know
1:57:20 with public safety we have identified
1:57:22 for quite some time that having um the
1:57:26 the interlocking pieces of dispatch ipd
1:57:28 jail court
1:57:30 is extremely valuable in responding to
1:57:32 public safety i think commensurately on
1:57:35 the housing side um when dealing with un
1:57:39 with unsheltered folks and and trying to
1:57:41 help them
1:57:43 bridge their situation ipd behavioral
1:57:46 health coordinator emergency housing and
1:57:49 then the private services like issaquah
1:57:51 food and clothing bank i have a hope
1:57:53 that that will have a similar those
1:57:56 interlocking pieces will have a similar
1:57:58 ability for us to respond
1:58:00 more comprehensively but i'm completely
1:58:02 with you council member ray i you know
1:58:05 there will be a natural feeling if we if
1:58:07 if if this one tenth of one percent is
1:58:09 bringing in eight one million eight
1:58:10 hundred thousand dollars there will be
1:58:12 and if this program is is even
1:58:14 moderately successful there will be
1:58:16 people wanting to consider using a
1:58:18 larger fraction of that and that's where
1:58:20 saying hey how has this worked will be
1:58:22 really really important
1:58:25 so i think we have three thumbs up on
1:58:28 that one
1:58:29 yep all right
1:58:32 then we have would the committee like to
1:58:34 recommend the administration consider
1:58:35 something different what types of
1:58:37 information would be helpful for the
1:58:38 administration to bring back to the
1:58:39 committee regarding the items proposed
1:58:41 any additional um comments or objection
1:58:44 a direction we want to consider not for
1:58:49 reggie michelle
1:58:51 no i think we've talked about the type
1:58:52 of information that would be helpful
1:58:55 i don't know if city administrator bob
1:58:57 kowitz would like us to define that a
1:58:59 little bit better
1:59:02 i don't have anything
1:59:04 different to for us to consider
1:59:08 i would like to know if we need to
1:59:10 define the type of information we're
1:59:12 looking for a little bit better
1:59:15 how about it to the administrator any
1:59:17 further clarity you're looking for from
1:59:19 us this this evening
1:59:20 uh council members members of the
1:59:22 committee i think we're good for tonight
1:59:24 um what we would like now i think with
1:59:26 the committee's concurrence is to
1:59:28 continue to work on this project um
1:59:31 i think we need also to decide if this
1:59:34 is something that you'll report out to
1:59:36 the council as part of just a
1:59:38 good of the order or council member
1:59:40 reports because i if that's sufficient
1:59:42 what we'll do is we'll move forward this
1:59:44 will be included in the administration's
1:59:46 proposed budget for next year
1:59:48 and i think we can come back to the
1:59:50 committee
1:59:51 either late in the year
1:59:53 or at the very beginning of next year as
1:59:54 we're hopefully about to implement
1:59:56 and say this is how our the framework
1:59:59 we're looking to track the data we
2:00:00 already collect a lot of data and i
2:00:02 think
2:00:03 it's not going to be
2:00:04 uh too hard to add additional data
2:00:07 points to complement the data we're
2:00:08 already collecting we already have a
2:00:10 dashboard that we share with the
2:00:12 community we can add some of those
2:00:13 points so i think at this point we're
2:00:15 good uh with the commitment that we'll
2:00:17 come back either at the end of the year
2:00:19 or the first of twenty three well i will
2:00:21 certainly look forward to when you and
2:00:22 the mayor and council president walsh
2:00:24 and deputy council president hall figure
2:00:26 out the budget process for the
2:00:28 subgrouping year
2:00:29 uh with that we have one item left this
2:00:32 evening id 1162 tenant and landlord
2:00:35 protection options this will also be
2:00:37 presented um by ms nigrilla as well as
2:00:40 hannah roberts uh human services
2:00:43 coordinator
2:00:46 hello thank you so much so much chairman
2:00:50 oh i am
2:00:56 do you have your audio on your laptop
2:01:00 [Music]
2:01:26 i know it was working so long
2:01:38 i think we should be good now
2:01:40 yes yes i apologize for that
2:01:44 give me just a moment to open my other
2:01:48 presentation and share it
2:01:50 well i do that
2:01:53 oh i'm
2:01:54 good thank you
2:01:57 yes i'm okay thank you so much that's
2:01:59 very very nice
2:02:00 so for this item i have the pleasure to
2:02:04 have with me hannah roberts our human
2:02:06 services coordinator
2:02:08 who's gonna
2:02:09 [Music]
2:02:10 present with me tonight
2:02:13 and so for this item uh council members
2:02:17 we are going to talk a little bit about
2:02:20 some tenant and landlord protection
2:02:21 options really in particular we are
2:02:24 bringing for your consideration and
2:02:26 seeking your direction on the tenant
2:02:29 protection recommendations provided by
2:02:32 art a regional
2:02:34 coalition for housing
2:02:36 back in april
2:02:38 we received a letter from arch
2:02:42 asking mayors and councils
2:02:45 to consider some of the recommendations
2:02:49 set forth
2:02:51 consider some protections
2:02:54 tenants
2:02:56 and so for you tonight
2:02:58 our questions that we are proposing to
2:03:00 you are
2:03:02 specifically one
2:03:04 as a committee are you supportive of our
2:03:07 recommendations the administration's
2:03:09 recommendations
2:03:12 would you like to recommend that the
2:03:14 city take action and adopt the
2:03:16 recommendations for tenant protections
2:03:18 provided by arch
2:03:20 alternatively would you like to propose
2:03:22 something different or take no action at
2:03:24 this time
2:03:25 and i'm gonna dive deeper just a little
2:03:27 bit to explain a high level um overview
2:03:31 of what the recommendations were uh by
2:03:34 arch and then i would like to
2:03:37 um hand it over to hannah to tell you
2:03:40 and talk to you a little bit deeper
2:03:41 about the outreach that we conducted and
2:03:44 [Music]
2:03:46 [Music]
2:03:48 information that we tried to gather in
2:03:50 making our recommendations
2:03:52 so um
2:03:54 arch in in in their recommendations
2:03:57 proposed uh that we as a city consider
2:04:01 three actions
2:04:03 one to require landlords to provide a
2:04:06 minimum of 120 days or 180 days notice
2:04:10 when for rent increases
2:04:13 a second one regarding late fees
2:04:17 and that was the recommendation was to
2:04:19 establish a cap on late fees
2:04:22 for a late rental payments and that cap
2:04:25 should be maintained at 1.5 of the
2:04:28 tenant's monthly rent
2:04:31 and then the third recommendation was to
2:04:33 really um
2:04:34 establish a cap on moving costs such as
2:04:38 security deposits and whatnot
2:04:41 and those should not be
2:04:43 more than the equivalent of one month's
2:04:48 and also to allow tenants to pay these
2:04:51 in installments
2:04:54 and so once we received that letter on
2:04:56 our end uh we
2:04:59 started conducting uh outreach to
2:05:02 landlords and tenants in issaquah to
2:05:05 really get their feedback and
2:05:08 recommendations and we also did some
2:05:10 research to see what other
2:05:13 cities in the region especially on the
2:05:14 east side are doing
2:05:16 and so with that i would like to invite
2:05:18 hannah she did an outstanding job with
2:05:20 talking with several landlords and
2:05:22 tenants and i would like to invite her
2:05:24 to tell us her findings hannah welcome
2:05:29 hi monica thank you so much and good
2:05:30 evening council members hannah roberts
2:05:32 here human services coordinator
2:05:35 like monica said i will be presenting
2:05:37 this evening on what we found through
2:05:40 our engagement and outreach with
2:05:41 issaquah landlords and tenants
2:05:44 um so to note uh we started off with
2:05:48 talking to our landlords in issaquah i
2:05:51 reached out to 26 uh issaquah landlords
2:05:54 and received feedback and responses from
2:05:56 22 of those
2:05:58 uh apartment complexes
2:06:01 of those 22 units i think it's worth
2:06:04 noting that all 22 properties had
2:06:07 properties outside of issaquah in
2:06:08 addition to their isoqua properties
2:06:12 also worth noting uh that these
2:06:14 properties that we interviewed 64 of
2:06:17 them did not have any available units
2:06:19 and the ones that did have available
2:06:21 units
2:06:22 had about one or two that they expected
2:06:25 to fill in shortly i think that really
2:06:27 speaks to the
2:06:28 just the high demand and low supply that
2:06:30 we are also hearing and seeing in
2:06:32 issaquah
2:06:33 and really what we wanted to do in
2:06:35 talking to our landlords we wanted to
2:06:37 understand what's their process which of
2:06:39 their financial situations that they
2:06:42 provide for tenants so in looking at the
2:06:45 average moving cost what we commonly
2:06:48 heard from landlords uh was that they
2:06:51 were 45 application fees non-refundable
2:06:55 there was a 25 or sorry a 250
2:06:58 non-refundable admin fee and then 250
2:07:02 refundable deposit
2:07:04 and again that was a very common average
2:07:06 that we did here
2:07:08 in regards to late fees
2:07:10 the range that we heard was uh between
2:07:13 twenty five dollars and a hundred and
2:07:15 twenty five dollars uh for a one-time
2:07:18 late fee uh but really commonly an
2:07:20 average we heard was seventy five
2:07:22 dollars fee and per state washington
2:07:25 law that the landlords all did report
2:07:28 providing a 14-day notice with a payment
2:07:31 plan option and i think it's also worth
2:07:33 noting that a lot of the landlords
2:07:35 discuss this in detail of how they do
2:07:37 want to be trying to be accommodating to
2:07:40 tenants and their certain circumstances
2:07:43 um and in in addition we found that the
2:07:46 average rent increase it really did
2:07:49 range between um three percent and 15
2:07:54 we even had one complex report that
2:07:56 their increase was up to 20
2:07:58 but on average we did see the 10 mark uh
2:08:02 was pretty common and they um landlords
2:08:06 indicated that that was determined by
2:08:08 market rate which essentially is what
2:08:10 are other apartment complexes going for
2:08:12 what is the availability and what is the
2:08:14 demand
2:08:16 it's also worth noting here that the
2:08:19 rent increases did occur of those 22
2:08:23 apartment complexes 77 have implemented
2:08:28 increases
2:08:29 and that they uh the ones that have not
2:08:31 yet do intend to by the end of the year
2:08:34 so it is a common theme that we are
2:08:36 seeing
2:08:39 issaquah landlords concerns a few things
2:08:42 that we noted here uh was the increase
2:08:45 of operation cost so
2:08:47 just like tenants uh landlords have been
2:08:51 have been affected by inflation so
2:08:53 operation cost for example a landlord
2:08:57 reported a 60
2:08:59 increase in insurance costs 30 percent
2:09:02 increase in real estate taxes in the
2:09:05 last two years
2:09:06 and so that was a
2:09:08 a common theme in addition to any
2:09:10 general operation cost of maintenance
2:09:13 those costs have seen as a significant
2:09:16 increase
2:09:17 so that's a major concern of the
2:09:18 landlords as well as landlords reported
2:09:21 i've seen an increase in tenant social
2:09:23 service needs um so they're seeing more
2:09:26 crisis that their tenants were
2:09:28 experiencing not just with financial aid
2:09:30 needs but with behavioral health or
2:09:32 medical issues employment issues and so
2:09:36 recognizing they needed to provide
2:09:38 additional information of resources that
2:09:40 their tenants could use outside of just
2:09:43 financial aid
2:09:45 and then also they recognize that
2:09:47 tenants
2:09:48 really need to have been struggling
2:09:50 resetting their payment patterns and
2:09:53 understanding um
2:09:55 that they have not seen late fees or
2:09:57 rent increases in two years and so that
2:09:59 really is taking some time for land
2:10:02 tenants to readjust to these patterns
2:10:05 and then the biggest and last part of
2:10:07 the recommendation um that we received
2:10:10 from landlords and the needs was just
2:10:12 consistency across
2:10:14 the king county and so any
2:10:17 amendments any changes or two policies
2:10:20 should be across
2:10:21 the same across the board
2:10:23 now speaking to tenants we really wanted
2:10:26 to engage with our residents who are
2:10:28 renting in issaquah and so what we did
2:10:31 was we conducted an online survey and we
2:10:34 received 49 responses in addition to
2:10:36 additional conversations and email
2:10:38 correspondence
2:10:39 and it's worth noting that uh of those
2:10:42 49 responses 71
2:10:45 um were behind in their rent in the last
2:10:48 two years and utilize rental assistance
2:10:51 up to 5 000
2:10:53 was a common amount that was assisted
2:10:57 the main issue and concerns that tenants
2:10:58 were experiencing were
2:11:01 essentially costs so rent increases late
2:11:04 fees anything that would increase
2:11:06 the cost and the majority saw an up to
2:11:10 150 in rent increase and i think it's
2:11:13 worth noting that um we had a couple of
2:11:17 residents report over 800 in rent
2:11:20 increase
2:11:23 and then ultimately the trends that we
2:11:24 saw within our tenant and tenant
2:11:26 engagement was this ongoing need for
2:11:29 financial assistance so what this means
2:11:32 is that we saw a tenant's needing on a
2:11:34 month-to-month basis additional
2:11:36 financial assistance now our community
2:11:39 partners are typically looking
2:11:42 and provide once or twice a year
2:11:45 for emergency needs but really the need
2:11:49 increased significantly
2:11:51 and then also we heard um that a lot of
2:11:53 tenants are either because of the height
2:11:56 rental prices uh are being forced to
2:11:58 move out of the area uh so if they
2:12:01 received a rent increase that they
2:12:03 cannot afford they start looking okay
2:12:05 where else can i afford an isoqua and
2:12:07 they're finding
2:12:09 that those prices are more expensive
2:12:11 therefore they're having to leave the
2:12:12 area entirely
2:12:14 and the last thing here is that the rent
2:12:16 to income ratio is unrealistic they are
2:12:19 finding that a lot of landlords are
2:12:21 requiring the
2:12:22 gross income to be
2:12:24 three
2:12:25 times the rent so the average
2:12:28 rental is
2:12:29 about 2500
2:12:32 having a gross income of 90 000
2:12:35 is what's expected and that can be very
2:12:38 challenging for a single income
2:12:39 household
2:12:42 so also in addition to talking to our
2:12:45 landlords and our tenants at isoqua we
2:12:47 wanted to see what other jurisdictions
2:12:49 are doing
2:12:50 you can see here auburn kenmore seattle
2:12:53 unincorporated king county
2:12:55 those cities have implemented similar
2:12:58 arch tenant protection policies and as
2:13:00 far as east side cities uh there are no
2:13:03 immediate plans or acts for actions uh
2:13:06 we do have kirkland and redmond who will
2:13:08 be meeting in july uh for further
2:13:10 discussion
2:13:11 so that concludes my portion and i'll
2:13:13 pass it back to monica for a summary and
2:13:15 our recommendations thank you
2:13:18 thank you very much hannah well done
2:13:21 council members as you heard from hannah
2:13:23 i think the needs are
2:13:26 dire on both ends so
2:13:29 on one end landlords have their own huge
2:13:32 challenges
2:13:35 they have their own increases in costs
2:13:37 for operations
2:13:39 they've been impacted by by the pandemic
2:13:42 over the last couple of years as well
2:13:45 and also it's worth to notice that
2:13:48 many of them i believe
2:13:50 about 80 percent of the landlords that
2:13:51 we talked with they have also properties
2:13:54 in other cities which makes it really
2:13:56 really challenging when we consider just
2:13:59 city-wide
2:14:01 policies
2:14:02 because if you have properties in four
2:14:04 cities and you need to keep track of
2:14:06 those four cities it makes it
2:14:07 challenging right on the tenant side of
2:14:10 course it's it's heartbreaking i think
2:14:12 the biggest uh finding is that really
2:14:14 tenants need financial assistance now on
2:14:17 a regular basis so our rental assistance
2:14:20 programs are really set up for emergency
2:14:22 situations maybe somebody you know they
2:14:25 have a medical need or something unusual
2:14:27 happens and they need financial
2:14:29 assistance worse once or twice a year
2:14:31 but what we hear is that people need
2:14:34 now consistent emergency financial
2:14:36 assistance uh in order just
2:14:39 just just to make rent right now that is
2:14:42 concerning and then when we start
2:14:44 discussing about just um
2:14:47 uh providing uh more time when rent
2:14:50 increase comes it just doesn't come
2:14:52 across as genuine in really making a
2:14:55 difference in in really supporting them
2:14:57 or helping them right
2:14:59 and so that's that's why tenants really
2:15:02 need um
2:15:04 more support that's more impactful now
2:15:09 than than than what we we see in the
2:15:11 recommendations
2:15:13 um and so because of that
2:15:15 uh really um in in us trying to put our
2:15:19 thinking hat on
2:15:22 we would like to recommend that
2:15:24 perhaps council
2:15:26 at the arch
2:15:29 organization level
2:15:31 considers and continues to brainstorm
2:15:33 with other cities to see if there's
2:15:35 something that can be done
2:15:37 jointly with other cities but more so
2:15:40 it may be worth considering
2:15:42 looking at
2:15:43 state and federal advocacy and trying to
2:15:46 look for options that really
2:15:49 are more impactful one example that
2:15:51 comes to mind and that's just um
2:15:54 from from my experience in the past with
2:15:56 with tenants who
2:15:58 are on ssi or ssdi right they are on
2:16:02 fixed incomes for multiple years
2:16:05 and they can't keep up with the rent
2:16:07 increases and so that's at federal level
2:16:10 something that's decided and those
2:16:11 increases are really happening every 10
2:16:14 years or so
2:16:16 could we do something to where we join
2:16:18 other cities other regional efforts and
2:16:20 really try to advocate for more systemic
2:16:22 changes that tend to be more impactful
2:16:25 um other than um just providing
2:16:28 um tenants with more time when right now
2:16:32 more time does not help them as you
2:16:34 heard hannah
2:16:35 if if they want to look for other places
2:16:38 to rent there's nothing more affordable
2:16:40 that they could find in issaquah so are
2:16:42 we really helping them by implementing
2:16:44 the measure so that's where we are
2:16:46 coming from when when we make our
2:16:48 recommendations
2:16:50 and so with that i think
2:16:52 council members the options
2:16:56 tonight
2:16:58 you can if you would like to support our
2:17:01 recommendations or if you would like to
2:17:03 consider recommending that the city
2:17:05 takes action to adopt the
2:17:07 recommendations um
2:17:09 proposed by arch
2:17:11 or you can perhaps um
2:17:14 guide us to consider something else or
2:17:17 take no action
2:17:19 i would love to hear from you thank you
2:17:20 so much
2:17:23 first up i'll ask if there's any
2:17:24 questions not from council member ray
2:17:27 councilmember d michelle
2:17:31 uh thank you
2:17:32 chair martz
2:17:34 when you surveyed the landlords were
2:17:37 there were any of the
2:17:39 landlords that you surveyed
2:17:41 what we call mom and pop
2:17:44 you know one house or maybe um a couple
2:17:47 of units or were those all larger
2:17:52 landlords you mentioned that they have
2:17:54 multiple properties so that's
2:17:56 i'm just wondering
2:17:58 what the demographic of that of those
2:18:01 that you surveyed was
2:18:03 yeah thank you for your question
2:18:04 councilmember d michelle
2:18:07 they were not mom paw type of shops or
2:18:10 single residents they were larger
2:18:13 units uh they were all arch apartments
2:18:16 um were included in that i could also
2:18:19 provide a list if you needed to
2:18:22 then the um there was 15 that offered
2:18:26 affordable housing options and then a
2:18:28 few who did not offer affordable housing
2:18:32 so to follow up
2:18:35 i guess it was my understanding that
2:18:36 what arch is proposing is that these
2:18:39 proposed ordinances or regulations would
2:18:43 across the board and maybe i'm
2:18:45 misunderstanding are they
2:18:47 actually asking us to
2:18:50 adopt these just for arch properties
2:18:53 um no
2:18:54 it it really would be across the board
2:18:56 from my understanding um
2:18:59 correct me if i'm wrong but yes i i
2:19:02 believe it's for
2:19:03 um across the board so it would affect
2:19:06 not just low income housing but um
2:19:10 yeah everyone and for market
2:19:12 okay thank you
2:19:15 thank you
2:19:16 uh no other questions at this time um i
2:19:19 am going to take public comment but
2:19:21 before i do that i want to share the
2:19:23 public comment that
2:19:25 we've received on this issue
2:19:27 um there really wasn't there was some
2:19:30 from the earlier uh but but there wasn't
2:19:33 uh it wasn't contentious uh this is this
2:19:35 was quite contentious public input uh
2:19:38 one in one public feedback was arch
2:19:40 proposal doesn't address low and
2:19:42 moderate income housing it asserts the
2:19:44 legislative process more regulations are
2:19:46 an increasing burden on landlords would
2:19:48 be better to provide more transit
2:19:50 on-street parking micro-unit development
2:19:54 another feedback was hard to predict
2:19:55 rent six months out another was reject
2:19:58 the administrative recommendation
2:19:59 instead provide more safeguards
2:20:01 including eviction protection and
2:20:03 guaranteed legal counsel another was
2:20:05 don't follow in seattle's footsteps it's
2:20:06 a supply and demand problem not a policy
2:20:08 problem another was don't enact rent
2:20:10 control don't be seattle another was
2:20:13 provide more renter safeguards in other
2:20:14 words more renter protections another
2:20:17 was past the arch recommendations so
2:20:19 uh quite quite a bit of different
2:20:21 feedback including from some uh
2:20:24 organizations that represent uh you know
2:20:26 federations of landlords and others were
2:20:30 you know major landlords in the valley
2:20:33 so that was the feedback now i will ask
2:20:36 if there's any uh public comment uh if
2:20:38 anybody's interested in providing public
2:20:40 comment on this issue
2:20:42 this evening either here with us or
2:20:44 online
2:20:47 i see at least one person here um so
2:20:49 let's start with the here in the room
2:20:52 so if you'll come up and give your name
2:20:54 address and your relationship to the
2:20:55 city please and then you have five
2:20:57 minutes
2:20:58 uh julian midlil i live on squawk
2:21:01 mountain um
2:21:03 been here for quite some time um
2:21:05 i sent in a written comment uh
2:21:08 proposing that the city council would
2:21:11 reject the administration's
2:21:13 request to send this up to a regional
2:21:15 basis i just don't think we have time
2:21:18 for that now
2:21:20 we have a lot of you know cost living
2:21:22 escalations i hear that in my position
2:21:24 all the time people are struggling with
2:21:26 the cost of living increases especially
2:21:28 when it comes to gasoline and you know a
2:21:31 variety of other things in their lives
2:21:33 that are really escalating
2:21:35 and so i think we need to you know make
2:21:37 sure that we put these steps into place
2:21:41 even though it doesn't have
2:21:44 as much protection as i would like it to
2:21:46 have i think we do need to consider
2:21:48 you know
2:21:49 legal representation and
2:21:52 just cause eviction ordinance as well
2:21:57 because those are just really important
2:21:58 things in my opinion and we should go
2:22:00 beyond that but at least we should put
2:22:02 this stuff first
2:22:04 on the table and just give the barest of
2:22:06 no notice for people
2:22:10 and just
2:22:11 putting it to a regional basis is just
2:22:14 another delay in my opinion um let's
2:22:16 consider putting you know king county or
2:22:19 something like that
2:22:21 for legal representation and have king
2:22:23 county or a federation of the cities
2:22:26 fund that but
2:22:27 like i said let's just
2:22:29 pass this now thank you
2:22:31 thank you
2:22:33 anyone else here in the room want to
2:22:35 give comment this evening before we see
2:22:37 if there's anybody online
2:22:40 clerk do we have anyone online wishing
2:22:41 to speak to this issue before we
2:22:43 deliberate
2:22:44 yes chair mart's
2:22:46 guillermo
2:22:47 guillermo rivera would like to speak to
2:22:49 this topic
2:22:51 guillermo i have made you a panelist you
2:22:53 should see the option to unmute and you
2:22:55 can turn on your video
2:22:57 i think already on mute myself can you
2:22:59 hear me yes we can hear you
2:23:02 great
2:23:03 thank you seated administrator and
2:23:05 members of the council
2:23:07 my name is guillermo rivera and i'm with
2:23:09 his side for all
2:23:11 inside for all is a racial equity and
2:23:13 social justice organization
2:23:16 based in east king county
2:23:18 bike top communities in the east side
2:23:20 have been invisible for many years in
2:23:22 the decision making process
2:23:24 even as bike top communities have been
2:23:26 increasing exponentially on the east
2:23:29 it's time to hear from everyone that is
2:23:32 part of our communities
2:23:35 i'm here to talk in favor of the arts
2:23:37 recommendation regarding tenants
2:23:40 protections
2:23:41 communities in the east side and
2:23:43 especially in issaquah and other cities
2:23:46 will be benefit with this
2:23:48 we have been hearing from communities
2:23:51 how hard is to buy houses and how hard
2:23:54 is to rent houses you hear it from
2:23:56 hannah
2:23:58 just just a minute ago
2:24:00 uh so
2:24:02 people will continue renting houses for
2:24:04 many years to go
2:24:06 and right now we know that people have
2:24:09 to move out of the city like uh
2:24:14 and monica were saying right because the
2:24:17 rent increases
2:24:19 and because probably they receive a very
2:24:21 short notice
2:24:23 of rent increase
2:24:24 if you get 120 days to the people that
2:24:28 will benefit because they can plan
2:24:31 for what they have to do
2:24:33 uh to in order to pay
2:24:35 their rent
2:24:37 families they want to live where they
2:24:41 they when they go to worship
2:24:44 where they get their kids to school and
2:24:46 measure like these ones
2:24:48 recommended in the arch letter will
2:24:50 allow people to continue living in
2:24:52 isabella
2:24:54 keep in mind that also these measures
2:24:57 don't benefit everyone not only
2:25:01 people of low income
2:25:03 every single family regardless their
2:25:05 income wants to have more time when rent
2:25:08 increases happen and prepare for their
2:25:11 future with dignity and respect
2:25:14 these recommendations are common sense
2:25:17 and will allow renters on insula to have
2:25:20 a play field
2:25:23 i mean
2:25:24 this this will not increase
2:25:27 operation costs for anyone and will help
2:25:29 landlords to have policy consistent
2:25:32 you mentioned like it's better to have
2:25:34 like a landlords that
2:25:36 have buildings in different cities
2:25:40 let's make isa for the first city to
2:25:42 take this i know that in kirkland and in
2:25:45 redmond they're having discussions
2:25:47 monica mentioned it in july so let's
2:25:50 make issaquah the first city
2:25:52 to change this
2:25:54 so i ask you to consider and approve the
2:25:56 arts recommendations
2:26:00 i know also that more protections are
2:26:02 needed
2:26:03 along
2:26:04 with actions to make rents more
2:26:06 affordable
2:26:08 but this is like the person that was
2:26:10 before me say i think it's a very good
2:26:13 first step
2:26:15 i appreciate your time i want to thank
2:26:17 you for the work that you are doing
2:26:19 with equity lens in issaquah thank you
2:26:21 so much
2:26:24 thank you for your comment
2:26:26 clerk do we have anyone else wishing to
2:26:28 speak
2:26:29 virtually
2:26:32 chair marks there are no other virtual
2:26:34 hands raised at this time
2:26:36 i'll ask one more time in the room
2:26:38 not seeing anybody let's move to uh
2:26:42 deliberation and i'll start with uh
2:26:44 actually council member ray
2:26:49 thank you councilmember martz
2:26:52 this is a tough one this is uh you know
2:26:54 we have we've got the tough ones lined
2:26:56 up today because there's no easy answers
2:26:58 and um
2:27:00 i am struck by a couple of things one is
2:27:03 regardless of whether or not we adopt
2:27:05 the arch proposal um the rent's going to
2:27:07 be driven by market forces and
2:27:10 right now we have a huge demand for
2:27:12 rental spaces and we have low supply if
2:27:16 i remember my economics class very well
2:27:18 when that happens you see
2:27:20 prices escalate and that's exactly what
2:27:21 we're seeing
2:27:22 my concern is if we go
2:27:26 and make changes
2:27:30 how we
2:27:33 manage
2:27:34 our rental properties
2:27:36 in issaquah it will create an um an
2:27:39 imbalance and cities that are near us
2:27:43 that don't have that imbalance will
2:27:44 attract more rental properties and the
2:27:46 price of rental properties in issaquah
2:27:49 will probably escalate not reduce so
2:27:52 we're not talking about rent controls
2:27:54 here we're not even talking you know
2:27:56 we're not talking about locking down
2:27:57 rents because that's not proposed
2:28:00 i i believe that the best course of
2:28:03 action here is actually a regional
2:28:05 approach or a state approach where we
2:28:07 have a consistent set of policies
2:28:10 implemented across the region so we
2:28:12 don't see the migration of
2:28:15 new rental properties new rental stock
2:28:18 moving to
2:28:19 other parts of the region so um i'm i'm
2:28:24 i am supportive of the administration's
2:28:26 approach our proposal to pursue regional
2:28:29 state and federal um
2:28:32 policies to help
2:28:33 address this
2:28:35 absolutely significant problem
2:28:39 councilmember d michelle
2:28:44 uh thank you um
2:28:45 [Music]
2:28:49 arch proposed
2:28:51 three different items and i'm wondering
2:28:52 if we could take those one at a time
2:28:54 because i have
2:28:56 different uh takes on each one of those
2:28:59 um i don't know if we have a summary of
2:29:02 those somewhere there it is
2:29:06 one thing i did want to note uh i am
2:29:08 here at the association of washington
2:29:10 cities in uh
2:29:12 in beautiful downtown vancouver and i
2:29:14 did have a conversation with
2:29:16 a newcastle city council member
2:29:19 uh this afternoon and he indicated that
2:29:22 newcastle did take up this issue
2:29:25 last night at their council meeting so
2:29:27 we might want to check in
2:29:29 with them
2:29:30 so it is being
2:29:32 discussed at a regional
2:29:35 level
2:29:36 by several cities but as he pointed out
2:29:39 no action has been taken by anyone yet
2:29:42 i really
2:29:44 uh want to talk about the first one the
2:29:47 longer notices of rent increases and
2:29:50 guillermo
2:29:51 really articulated well
2:29:53 my concerns there
2:29:57 of all of the recommendations this is
2:29:59 the one that i feel
2:30:02 and i know that uh
2:30:04 uh the people that you surveyed said
2:30:06 that it wouldn't help all that much
2:30:09 uh you may not know this but uh for the
2:30:11 first 25 years that i was in issaquah i
2:30:15 i was a renter and
2:30:18 i was in a situation where um
2:30:21 and i won't go into detail it's too long
2:30:23 of a story
2:30:24 but where um
2:30:27 everybody in our complex was asked to
2:30:29 move and we were given two weeks
2:30:31 notice
2:30:33 to leave
2:30:35 i looked it up and the state of
2:30:36 washington
2:30:38 has on the books a requirement of a
2:30:40 30-day notice at this point
2:30:43 and just having been in that situation
2:30:46 uh here are some of the things that
2:30:47 happen when um
2:30:49 you're told that
2:30:51 you know there's going to be a rent
2:30:52 increase and you realize
2:30:54 uh that you're not going to be able to
2:30:55 afford that uh or for whatever other
2:30:58 reason you're
2:31:00 you're
2:31:02 are going to have to move
2:31:03 uh first of all you have to start
2:31:04 looking for another place and as was
2:31:07 noted in the remarks
2:31:09 it's probably going to be very difficult
2:31:10 to find a place in issaquah that you can
2:31:13 rent at the same rent that you've been
2:31:15 paying up until the increased notice
2:31:18 occurs
2:31:19 but you have to start that search
2:31:22 if you have children in the family
2:31:24 and you're in school
2:31:26 and you have only 30 days
2:31:30 and you can't find a place in issaquah
2:31:32 you may not only have to move your
2:31:34 children out of that school you may have
2:31:36 to move them to a whole new district
2:31:38 wherever it is that you find a living
2:31:40 space
2:31:41 it could affect your employment
2:31:43 especially if you're a worker who works
2:31:46 right here in issaquah and now you have
2:31:48 to move away
2:31:49 are you going to have to give up your
2:31:50 job are you going to have to find
2:31:52 another job
2:31:54 there's the moving costs and if you are
2:31:56 struggling with rent
2:31:59 how are you going to pay for an
2:32:00 expensive move
2:32:02 with notification of only 30 days
2:32:07 and there are a host of other things
2:32:09 that you have to face
2:32:11 i look at the first item
2:32:15 and i think
2:32:16 we are not asking landlords to forego
2:32:18 rent increases
2:32:21 we are not trying to control rents we
2:32:23 are simply asking landlords
2:32:26 to consider
2:32:28 and have some consideration and to plan
2:32:31 ahead
2:32:33 to give people ample notice that there
2:32:35 will be a rent increase and then those
2:32:38 renters can decide whether they could
2:32:40 live with that rent increase or not some
2:32:42 of them will decide that they can live
2:32:44 with it
2:32:45 and then those who cannot who look at
2:32:47 their income and realize that they're
2:32:49 not going to be able to afford that rent
2:32:51 anymore
2:32:52 all we're asking is that they have ample
2:32:54 time to do all the things that it takes
2:32:57 to make a major move into another
2:33:00 location which may be miles and miles
2:33:03 and miles away depending on where they
2:33:05 can find affordable
2:33:07 housing so
2:33:09 i i think that it's a reasonable thing
2:33:12 to ask
2:33:13 the six-month time the 180 days may be
2:33:16 something that
2:33:17 is too onerous for most landlords but
2:33:21 120 days
2:33:23 excuse me 120 um yeah 120 days
2:33:28 i think would be very reasonable in some
2:33:30 people if they have to move we're not
2:33:31 even going to take that whole four
2:33:33 months so
2:33:35 i i honestly don't understand why that
2:33:37 would be a burdensome
2:33:40 request of landlords they would simply
2:33:42 have to plan ahead when they're going to
2:33:45 make a rent increase and give the people
2:33:47 who are
2:33:48 uh renting their their households
2:33:51 um an opportunity to do all the things
2:33:53 that it takes to to make a major move
2:33:56 especially if there are children in the
2:33:57 family so
2:33:59 i would really like to see us move
2:34:00 forward with the first proposal thank
2:34:06 the f uh
2:34:08 the first element of the arch proposal
2:34:11 yes okay
2:34:15 this is a this this this is a this is a
2:34:18 tough one i'm gonna
2:34:19 echo chris um you know workforce housing
2:34:23 has been one has been one of my two
2:34:25 highest priorities um since the day i
2:34:27 joined council uh a while ago and we've
2:34:30 had some successes and and some lack of
2:34:33 successes in getting more workforce
2:34:35 housing um
2:34:37 you know i actually think hearing 2 500
2:34:41 for an 1100 square foot apartment um
2:34:44 requiring 90k qualifying 90k qualifying
2:34:47 is 80 of ami for a three to four
2:34:50 person family so that actually tells me
2:34:53 that the average apartment in in
2:34:55 issaquah is actually targeting 80 to 90
2:34:58 of ami which is not terrible and i would
2:35:01 argue a lot better than where we were 10
2:35:03 years ago which is not to say issaquah
2:35:05 is more affordable in general it's less
2:35:07 affordable
2:35:10 you know the picture on workforce
2:35:12 housing here in our community is
2:35:14 complicated we've built a lot of market
2:35:17 rate in the valley um but you know i i
2:35:21 grew up in a 750 square foot two-bedroom
2:35:24 apartment and a 750 square foot
2:35:27 apartment in issaquah is a lot more
2:35:28 affordable
2:35:30 than um
2:35:31 you know then a
2:35:33 1500 square foot or 1300 square foot
2:35:36 brand new you know three bedroom two
2:35:38 bath apartment in issaquah so it's all
2:35:39 it's all complicated and none of it has
2:35:42 to do with this arch proposal i'm i'm i
2:35:44 really struggle you know arch's mission
2:35:46 is to preserve and increase the supply
2:35:48 of housing for low and moderate income
2:35:50 households
2:35:51 none of these three things have anything
2:35:53 to do with that
2:35:57 i think both i guess where i'm coming
2:35:59 from is i think both the pros and cons
2:36:01 generally speaking of the arch proposal
2:36:03 are overstated the pros and the benefits
2:36:06 the community are overstated and the
2:36:08 cons and the fears of a you know
2:36:10 disparate housing environment by
2:36:13 landlords
2:36:14 i just i don't see a lot to this um i do
2:36:17 think if you want to say as general
2:36:19 pieces of policy i like councilmember g
2:36:21 michelle's looking at these three planks
2:36:24 i think there's probably something there
2:36:26 in an environment where housing prices
2:36:28 are escalating there's probably a public
2:36:31 policy
2:36:33 role for having something more than 30
2:36:36 days notice
2:36:38 so i sort of want to ask my two fellow
2:36:40 council members
2:36:42 whether we might recommend the
2:36:44 administration come back at a future
2:36:46 date with a proposal around 90 or 120
2:36:50 days specific something that they could
2:36:52 talk to the local landlord community
2:36:55 about and folks in the community it's
2:36:57 it's a much more modest proposal
2:37:00 than what some folks would hope for but
2:37:03 i i think it's probably something
2:37:05 separate from
2:37:06 uh affordable housing it's probably
2:37:09 something we could consider or should
2:37:11 consider doing as a as a council
2:37:13 so council member ray
2:37:17 i don't i'm not opposed to
2:37:19 longer notifications i'm not opposed to
2:37:22 120 days or 90 days um what i am opposed
2:37:25 is this qual going alone i don't want us
2:37:27 to be
2:37:28 the ones
2:37:29 um on an island and where we have
2:37:31 neighbors who have different sets of
2:37:33 rules because as we talked about we have
2:37:36 landlords who have properties in
2:37:37 multiple cities and we have landlords
2:37:40 our developers who are going to be
2:37:42 contemplating where to build their next
2:37:44 apartment complex and they're going to
2:37:46 say well i can put it in
2:37:48 snoqualmie and
2:37:51 they have um they don't have these
2:37:53 requirements or i can put in issaquah
2:37:55 and they do have these requirements i'm
2:37:57 going to put it in snoqualmie because
2:37:58 i'm a market driven business person and
2:38:01 i'm trying to make the best business
2:38:02 decision it's a market-driven thing and
2:38:04 what that does is it reduces the stock
2:38:07 of rental properties in issaquah
2:38:10 at a time when we already stated we have
2:38:12 lots of demand and not enough supply so
2:38:15 going back to economics 101 201
2:38:18 we got a supply and we're going to see
2:38:20 prices increase and we're trying to not
2:38:22 get prices to increase right we're
2:38:24 trying to drive prices down so it's
2:38:26 counter it's counterproductive to what
2:38:28 we want to accomplish
2:38:30 that being said
2:38:31 if we take this on regionally and we get
2:38:34 regional concurrence that these are the
2:38:36 regional things we want to do then we
2:38:38 have a balanced playing field and then
2:38:40 it's not a difference and so we now
2:38:42 compete for that same housing stock so
2:38:46 yeah great idea love it a lot i'm all
2:38:48 for the concept i'm just not for the
2:38:51 concept
2:38:52 in issaquah alone
2:38:55 council member michelle do you wish to
2:38:57 add anything
2:39:02 remarks are well taken i guess my
2:39:04 question would be if we're going to do
2:39:05 it regionally how are we going to do it
2:39:08 regionally
2:39:11 i you know if we spend a year trying to
2:39:13 come up with a
2:39:14 venue or a mechanism for doing that
2:39:18 um are we are we going to go through the
2:39:20 king county council are we going to
2:39:22 go through east eastside human services
2:39:24 forum
2:39:25 what's what's going to be the mechanism
2:39:26 for having that regional conversation
2:39:34 you know well i have some other
2:39:36 questions but they have they were paid
2:39:38 they pertained to number two and number
2:39:39 three so
2:39:41 so just staying on the topic
2:39:43 um do we have any ideas of how we would
2:39:46 have that regional conversation i guess
2:39:48 would be my question well to put it in a
2:39:50 form that the administration could do
2:39:52 something with maybe the three of us can
2:39:55 agree that we would like to
2:39:58 have the administration come back
2:40:00 and understand uh after speaking you
2:40:04 know after speaking with their our
2:40:06 county council representatives or
2:40:08 whatever what the best way to address
2:40:10 this concern would be
2:40:11 that we're all saying at this time we
2:40:14 think that this element of the arch
2:40:15 proposal while not related to affordable
2:40:18 housing is something that we'd like to
2:40:21 find out more about and and you know
2:40:25 ask our county council right we have a
2:40:27 relatively new council and you know they
2:40:29 may have uh
2:40:31 this may be something that's already on
2:40:32 their plate
2:40:34 um oops the city administrator would
2:40:36 like to i think councilman
2:40:39 councilmember jim michelle
2:40:41 i just i just want to say i agree in
2:40:43 some ways i think there's uh
2:40:45 this has been mislabeled as a renter
2:40:48 protection
2:40:49 and uh when you look i i totally agree
2:40:52 with you that if you look at the
2:40:54 proposals
2:40:55 there really isn't uh a renter
2:40:58 protection here
2:41:00 uh it does not uh you know doesn't stop
2:41:03 rent increases it doesn't
2:41:05 mandate that no uh late rental penalties
2:41:08 are applied uh it doesn't do any of that
2:41:11 that would uh make a difference and so i
2:41:14 i want to acknowledge that the staff
2:41:17 is also saying in a probably a more
2:41:19 diplomatic way than what we're saying it
2:41:22 but um this is really not a renter
2:41:25 protection
2:41:26 uh proposal uh in the in that it doesn't
2:41:29 really do much
2:41:31 uh in the way of protecting renters so i
2:41:34 just want to
2:41:36 i just wanted to follow up on that
2:41:37 comment that you made so
2:41:40 thank you
2:41:41 thanks the city administrator uh thank
2:41:44 you chair martz
2:41:46 all of our neighbors are having similar
2:41:47 conversations
2:41:48 all of our neighbors are trying to
2:41:50 grapple with this i think
2:41:52 you know all thoughtful people council
2:41:54 members and other communities all facing
2:41:56 similar concerns i think everyone is is
2:41:59 trying to sort this out um
2:42:03 i think my suggestion to the committee
2:42:05 would be if you are interested in this
2:42:07 topic
2:42:08 you know perhaps ask the administration
2:42:10 to come back at your next meeting we
2:42:12 will know more i think has been
2:42:13 mentioned a few communities are meeting
2:42:16 over the next couple weeks some have met
2:42:19 i guess
2:42:20 one as recently as last night
2:42:22 people have been calling us in this
2:42:23 squad when they saw this was on the
2:42:25 agenda what are you doing what are you
2:42:26 recommending
2:42:28 there's just a lot of interest
2:42:30 so perhaps
2:42:31 we could come back
2:42:32 report what other communities are
2:42:34 thinking about we can share with other
2:42:36 communities
2:42:37 that of these particular components the
2:42:40 uh the longer notices is one that sort
2:42:42 of resonates at least with a city
2:42:43 council committee here in issaquah
2:42:46 and then perhaps talks more
2:42:48 next month
2:42:51 i i think it's going to be difficult to
2:42:53 a regional coalition going
2:42:56 uh in any kind of substantive way
2:42:58 anytime soon i think councilmember d
2:42:59 michelle is right that it's just
2:43:01 just very difficult to do that the
2:43:03 realities of the calendar the summer
2:43:06 most of the regional bodies take time
2:43:09 but i think we could come back at your
2:43:10 july meeting and at least provide an
2:43:12 update and if that makes sense to talk
2:43:14 more we could talk more and i will point
2:43:16 out that when the county wants to do
2:43:18 something like for instance running a
2:43:20 bond or a levy they can ram it through
2:43:23 in about two weeks
2:43:24 so if they decided they wanted if they
2:43:26 decided they had some
2:43:28 some uh gumption on this issue uh they
2:43:31 could they they could move pretty
2:43:33 quickly they've showed
2:43:35 and i don't know that we have seen
2:43:36 gumption
2:43:37 well they have well they they've just
2:43:38 been accounted
2:43:39 for right they just rammed the levy
2:43:41 through uh so and and and
2:43:44 absolutely but
2:43:46 our our sister cities i think are all
2:43:48 trying to be thoughtful on this topic
2:43:50 with all the various issues that have
2:43:51 been raised tonight um i think we'll
2:43:53 have more information a month from now
2:43:56 uh we can share that and we can also do
2:43:58 you know my concern on the legal notices
2:44:01 is enforcement
2:44:03 that we will i'm sure have landlords
2:44:05 that say
2:44:06 i don't care what
2:44:07 issaquah says i have rights i'm going to
2:44:10 do what i want to do
2:44:11 the tenant comes to us and says well
2:44:13 this is why you passed an ordinance i
2:44:15 have a landlord who's forcing me to pay
2:44:17 more rent what are you going to do with
2:44:19 so i would also want the city attorney's
2:44:21 office to be able to come back and opine
2:44:23 what their thoughts are
2:44:25 as far as litigation against the city on
2:44:28 whatever point land landlord or
2:44:30 landlords may wish and then what
2:44:32 obligations do we have then to support
2:44:34 issaquah tenants if those landlords are
2:44:36 saying we don't care
2:44:39 this is what it's going to be so i we
2:44:41 could certainly do
2:44:42 those things to a certain degree between
2:44:44 now and the committee's july meeting
2:44:46 council member michelle how do you feel
2:44:47 about that
2:44:51 yeah i
2:44:53 appreciate
2:44:54 [Music]
2:44:58 city administrator bob kwitz's comments
2:45:02 i think we need more information and we
2:45:04 need we probably need more dialogue
2:45:07 um and maybe we can
2:45:10 contact some of our council colleagues
2:45:12 in other cities and and see where
2:45:15 they're at and and i think maybe coming
2:45:17 back to the committee
2:45:19 next month would be a very excellent
2:45:22 idea so
2:45:25 thank you council member right
2:45:26 absolutely
2:45:35 make one comment though um just because
2:45:37 the city administrator brought up
2:45:40 kind of the legal aspects of this and
2:45:42 what where our guard rails are and what
2:45:44 we can and can't do under state law
2:45:46 would be also extremely important to
2:45:48 have some insights into so if we could
2:45:50 get the city attorney to opine on that
2:45:52 that would be very helpful at the next
2:45:53 meeting
2:45:56 all right uh are we through our
2:45:58 questions ms negrilla do you have
2:45:59 everything you need from us
2:46:03 i believe so thank you so much um
2:46:05 i think the only if i remember correctly
2:46:07 council member michelle said that she
2:46:10 had additional questions i'm not sure if
2:46:13 yes i'm sorry councilmember jim michelle
2:46:16 yeah thank you for the reminder because
2:46:18 i forgot that i had additional questions
2:46:20 um hannah
2:46:22 when you were surveying you know we
2:46:24 always hear that
2:46:25 uh thing about uh first and last month
2:46:28 rent and i didn't see
2:46:31 on there so in addition to the move-in
2:46:34 costs that you were talking about do
2:46:35 they also have to pay first and last
2:46:37 month's rent um as they're coming in
2:46:40 when they're renting an apartment
2:46:42 yeah thank you for clarifying that so
2:46:44 um commonly we did not hear first and
2:46:47 last wrench was required uh what we did
2:46:50 here was that uh the pro-rated amount
2:46:53 was required so if they moved in
2:46:56 mid-month and they would owe
2:46:58 um half of the rent for example um so so
2:47:02 actually that was not a common theme of
2:47:04 first and last if there was a need for
2:47:07 first since last it may be resulted to a
2:47:10 low credit score or low income but
2:47:13 commonly
2:47:14 in speaking to the landlords that was
2:47:16 not the requirement for moving costs
2:47:19 thank you
2:47:20 yeah thank you for that and yeah just a
2:47:22 piece of information that i would like
2:47:24 to have right now so thank you so much i
2:47:26 appreciate that
2:47:28 and that was all my questions uh chair
2:47:31 mark thank you council member
2:47:34 it's two and a half
2:47:36 you know your estimate was exceedingly
2:47:38 accurate the estimate was two and a half
2:47:40 hours and those and those estimates have
2:47:42 historically been quite optimistic but
2:47:44 we're at two hours 45 minutes or two
2:47:47 hours 48 minutes uh so so good estimate
2:47:50 on it um i just um
2:47:53 i just want to say um this has been
2:47:55 extraordinarily uh
2:47:58 rich conversation with the public and
2:48:00 with the administration and with each
2:48:01 other and i'm i'm looking forward to
2:48:04 this committee's continued work any
2:48:06 closing comments or thoughts
2:48:07 councilmember wright
2:48:09 this is completely unrelated to the
2:48:11 topic but very much related to the
2:48:13 committee structure it's a great
2:48:14 committee really happy to have
2:48:15 committees back
2:48:17 this was uh i thought a really rich
2:48:19 conversation i'm just excited to be part
2:48:21 of this
2:48:23 council council member d michelle
2:48:27 plus one i think this was a great
2:48:28 conversation we had a chance to really
2:48:31 explore with each other
2:48:32 and uh i'm looking forward to our future
2:48:36 i'm calling it the zippy committee but
2:48:38 i will call it ship
2:48:41 so i'm looking forward to future zip
2:48:44 meetings there we go
2:48:46 um any uh any further
2:48:49 business from the administration before
2:48:51 we uh
2:48:52 adjourn i see none uh thank you members
2:48:55 of the public and we are adjourned at 9