Public safety committee meeting will come to order.

It's 9 32 a.m.

June 9th, 2026.

I'm Robert Kettle, Chair of the Public Safety Committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember.

Here, uh Councilmember Lynn is running late.

Councilmember Rivera.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair Kettle.

Here.

Okay, there are four members present.

Great, thank you.

And Councilmember Lynn is excused until he arrives.

Learn that lesson.

Okay, for today's chair comments, just wanted to briefly uh say and pass a word of thanks to my colleague, Councilmember Rivera, for putting on a great gun violence intervention symposium yesterday where she brought in different pieces of government, county, local, federal.

We had a great mix of you know people who are in the in the work of gun violence prevention, but also from the community.

We had different community organizations represented, and uh, you know, fire.

We we had the whole host, um, it's hard to get everybody in there, and I'm sure we could get more, but we had a great representation across the board, and so I wanted to thank her, also thank um uh deputy mayor surrat, but also people like um King County prosecutor uh Lisa Manion, City Attorney Evans, um Chief Barnes, uh, you know, uh for spending the entire day there uh because it was shows the you know how important it is by their participation, and I just wanted to say that we we will look to build on this uh work that uh that was done yesterday in symposium.

Uh I already talked to Chief Barnes about having Dr.

Hunt's presentation, a version of it uh presented to committee at some point over the course of this committee season.

Uh so I think it's that important, and you know, and in going through the um the present, you know, the day at the end, I I noted a few things, and I just wanted to like relay these again.

Um is in order to move forward, you need leadership.

And you know, I've mentioned this before recently in chair comments leadership with follow-through and follow-up.

We have to do that, and it must be dedicated and it cannot be ad hoc.

We really need to be focused in terms of what we're doing.

Um we also need to, in terms of the committee and the council, do our piece too.

We have the strategic framework plan where we added you know the you know, a pillar of this being gun violence reduction, prevention, and community safety.

Community safety is important.

That's part of what we're doing here.

That's kind of alternative response in a way at the community level, as opposed to the more formal level with care and the organization service providers, but working together with community because at the end of the day, community is the key for this for us.

I mentioned that we have to have a regional approach.

It's interesting.

You know, we talk about uh Seattle public safety issues, but they're not Seattle public safety issues.

Uh these individuals like with uh gun violence, and by the way, there's different types of gun violence.

There's Rainier Beach, but that's different from the CID, and both of them are different from North Aurora.

So our gun violence, by the way, is not uniform.

But what's uniform is the regional aspect of it with individuals and organizations, groups that come in and out, and that's something that we have to be mindful of and also underscores the fact that we have to work with the county and the state.

I've mentioned recently how the state needs to pass laws that they could have done in the last session that could help us.

But we also need to work directly with other jurisdictions, you know, the cities of Kent, Renton, Burian, whatever, uhquila, um, and not just with the county, because I think that partnership was is key.

And then the two last things I wanted that I noted yesterday is acts of hurt, as somebody mentioned, uh comes from hurt people, and this really goes to you know this idea of you know addressing the scene between public safety, uh, public health housing and human services.

You know, the the human services piece, the housing and the public health piece, the behavioral health, mental health, um that's where hurt people are, and we need to be working the connection between that area and public safety.

Otherwise, we'll continue to run the standstill.

And uh, and just to close, I said this yesterday because it was uh striking to me.

There was a uh it was made, we had individuals from Philadelphia, um, people coming in from South Bend and Baltimore.

So it was really a great thing, and as a veteran, it caught my my attention that they said about young people that there's they have more exposure to violence and trauma than active duty U.S.

military personnel.

We should think about that and reflect upon it and say, hey, as I said to the group, as I said in North Um Seattle over the weekend, it's not right and it's not acceptable.

So we need to move on.

So I just want to take two minutes uh to say thank you to Councilmember Rivera for her work with the symposium.

Um so thank you.

Yes.

Thank you, Chair.

Comment addendum.

Thank you.

Um I appreciate the chair bringing this up and and allowing me a few minutes to or a few seconds to address it.

Yeah, I was corrected myself seconds, but um, just so people are aware what this was, excuse me.

It was to talk about an approach that we're not doing in Seattle, but one that cities like um Philadelphia and um Baltimore and South uh Bend, Indiana, who participated in the symposium yesterday are doing, which is this um uh focused deterrence approach.

And what it is is really identifying in a city the folks that are causing the most harm in terms of gun violence, and then telling those folks, what do you need to stop doing what you're doing, and providing resources if that if they need that, um uh and then if they refuse to accept resources, then um they then they get a consequence.

I mean, in a nutshell, that's what the approach is, and we're not really doing that in Seattle right now.

Um, we do do a lot on the prevention and intervention side, so I want to appreciate the community-based organizations that were here yesterday, but we don't do this focused deterrence approach, and it was one that was developed by David Kennedy out of the um John Jay College in New York, and I thought it was important for us in Seattle to um learn about this approach and then hear from other cities.

And the reason why those other cities were here is because I felt really strongly that um we should he actually hear from the folks that have implemented this approach, and also so that we could have a dialogue um between all the partners, our partners to the city who are working as council member Kettle said um with these issues on the ground, like the prosecuting attorney, our city attorney um Erica Evans was there as well, and the U.S., the assistant U.S.

attorney was there, and many other folks who are actually working in this space and making sure that they were hearing the approach, but also that we were hearing from these cities who've had these gun violence issues for even longer than we had, and this approach has led to 40 um 50, 60 percent decrease in gun violence in those cities, and to me that was worth learning about and having a conversation about, and I do very much appreciate everyone who is there from the parties I mentioned to the community-based organizations and everybody stuck around for the entire day because we all care so deeply about this, and they all do too.

So thank you, Councilmember Kettle for joining.

Wanted to explain a little bit about what the approach is and why we were meeting and what we were learning about.

Um, and really appreciate the folks from John Jay College who came to speak with us and and uh talk to us about this approach that we can, and I think we should consider in Seattle.

So thank you, Chair.

More to come on that.

Thank you so much.

Okay.

If there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearings seeing none, uh, the agenda is adopted.

Okay, we'll move on to our hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of the community uh committee.

Uh clerk, how many speakers do we have today?

Currently, we have five in person and eight remote speakers.

Okay, under council rules, each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers.

Uh, clerk, can you please uh first read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call in the next speaker.

The public comment period is now is now open, and that we'll begin with the first speaker on the list.

The first speaker on the list is Becca, to be followed by Tammy.

Hi.

Good morning.

Should I begin?

My daughter made this sign.

It says 100th matters to 100th Street.

We've lived on 100th Street between Aurora and Linden since 2013.

And all of our immediate neighbors are feeling really disenfranchised right now.

And so I'm here to um speak on their behalf.

So all of my immediate neighbors are either low-income, disabled, black or brown, or in other ways, sort of excluded from the discussion that is happening right now.

When 98th Street and 102nd Street were blocked off, all of that traffic was rerouted to 100th.

And so I am here to ask for an equitable solution that takes into account um every street west of Aurora, not just the ones that have been the most vocal.

And last month they found um showcasings at their bus stop.

In recent months, the shootings and the trafficking have escalated, and we talk about this all the time.

Uh my neighbor Angel, she's the strongest person I know.

She has heart disease, and the youngest of her four children was born with a congenital heart defect.

Every time we have a drive-by, I wonder, are they gonna make it?

So we try to support each other as best we can.

We really need intervention from the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That's a reminder when you hear that chime, that means you have 10 seconds left.

Next go out, Tammy.

Be followed by Jeff Service.

I can use either mic is fine, and they and they bend to you as well.

Hello, my name is Tamara Schadel.

I was born and raised in Skagit Valley, and I have lived in Seattle for the last two years.

I feel that this issue is much larger than just Aurora Avenue.

It could be any one of our neighborhoods that this is happening in.

And I've heard everybody come up with a lot of talk regarding gun violence, but the gun violence is a byproduct of what's actually going on up there.

They are selling children in sex slavery.

There are children being bought and sold in those hotels right now as we sit here.

And I don't understand how as a community we have allowed this to get so far out of control that I don't see how you guys are gonna be able to fix it.

I think that this is so much bigger than what the Seattle police department is capable of handling.

They should they're already in danger, they should not be put in danger at trying to go after pimps that are not gonna go away quietly.

Bellevue handled theirs like that.

That guy was arrested within hours and is now facing a five million dollar bail.

Why are the pimps on Aurora and not being subjected to the same thing?

This is I'm so frustrated, and this is the first time I've ever been able to speak about something like this publicly.

I am a community social worker, and it is absolutely unacceptable that we have made this commonplace that the those people are not in those hotels by choice.

If they were in there by choice, they would not be jumping out of windows and running into the street butt naked.

Like that just happened last year, and that guy, it took forever to catch him.

So thank you for letting me speak.

Please stay focused on what this is really about.

And this is about child sex trafficking.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

Jeff Silverman.

Next up is Rick Fordyce.

My name is Jeff Silverman.

I live three blocks east of Aurora Avenue North.

I want to make a suggestion concerning sex and drugs and violence on Aurora.

I do not believe we can solve this problem.

I think what we can do instead is to move this problem someplace where nobody's going to care about it.

And I propose using Sixth Avenue South between Holgate and Spokane Street.

Am I happy with this proposal?

No, of course not.

It's callous and inhumane, and it's unjust because there are businesses there already that have a right to be left alone.

I do not like to think of myself as a callous and inhumane uh person.

I like to think of myself as an engineer, and I can see why people would be confused.

Um the advantage of having a red light district on 6th Avenue South between Holgate and Spokane is it's only 5,231 feet long, whereas Aurora Avenue North from 85th to 145th is 15,101 feet long.

So having it in that compressed area makes it easier to provide services for the people that are there, things like um warm drinks, clean socks, condoms, narcan, first aid kit, uh, maintained trash bag, uh cell phone charging cable, and maybe a portable toilet.

I don't think we can win this fight.

Winning, in my mind, means nobody goes to bed hungry.

Everybody has health care, everybody knows that somebody really cares about them, and deciding that gun violence, ending gun violence is more important than the second amendment.

I don't think we're here in Seattle in 2026.

Certainly King County isn't, the state isn't, and God help the United States country where we have a convicted felon of a sex offender as president.

It sets a bad example.

Um, thank you.

Thank you.

Rick Fordyce to be followed by Peter Orr.

Rick.

Hi, I'm Rick.

I was born up here in Swedish hospital.

I've lived on 102nd for 20 years, and I've walked to go from nothing to what it is now.

Uh two years ago, I was here.

They had recently released a video of a shootout on 101st, and in that video are four people shooting behind a car, other people coming out and shooting at them.

Now there's a new video, plus many in the queen of shooting across Aurora.

Where do you see this?

You see this on TV in war films.

You see it in Ukraine and you see it in Gaza.

You have a war zone on Aurora.

When that happens, and the the uh city does not aid it, people put up barriers because they are forced to do that.

The other point, uh, I've talked to many Seattle police officers.

Most recently, uh, last summer at the uh Fremont Festival, you know.

They walk around, I was there working, and I've asked many of them.

See, here's a hundred and third.

I have a photo of seven prostitutes standing in broad daylight right down there, or 10 seconds, excuse me.

And I asked them, why don't you just drive by?

You don't have to arrest anybody, you don't have to say anything.

Just drive by and let them know that you exist.

And this is what he said.

He was a 10-year veteran of the North Precinct.

He said, No, because I don't want to get arrested for harassment.

That is the enormity that you are up against.

And the last thing I want to say is, uh, I lived and taught school in Gonaf for two years, and uh I went to every slave castle on the coast.

I know my slavery.

And what you have up there is slavery.

Thank you.

I'm Peter Orr, a resident of North Aurora since 2010.

On behalf of neighbors along Aurora, North Aurora, I'll begin my remarks with gratitude to Councilmember Juarez for pursuing uh SPD authorization to close streets to pimp gunfire.

To Councilmember Hollingsworth for urging the mayor to close our streets this week and saying the quiet part, girls on Aurora are regularly raped out loud.

And the council member uh Kettle for all of the above and your dedicated in-person support for the safety of North Aurora at our march last Saturday.

When elected officials apply the precious commodity of their presence, it communicates their concern and affirmation.

The mayor's absence continues to speak volumes to my neighbors, but I showed up in your presence today to return your favor and to show you that I see the effort you're putting in.

Thank you.

Now, while blocking residential access to pimps is one component of protecting our neighborhood, it also raises concerns for streets like a hundredth that are designated arterial access points, where I've personally picked up 13 bullet casings in one day last month.

More must be done.

This brings me back to the theme of the significance of presence.

Neighbors have proposed expanding police presence by opening a satellite precinct at the corner of 97th and Aurora.

The building owner has offered flexible lease terms.

I would like assurance of funding for this and movement to secure it.

I'm also aware that today's presentation will include SPD staffing budget challenges.

Considering Aurora is a state highway, I would urge the council to encourage the mayor to call on the governor for support to ensure our police can be dedicated to this area, which is the second in the nation for sex trafficking crimes during the World Cup, especially.

I also advocate funding a prosecutor dedicated to Aurora Avenue for Erica Evans' office.

Thank you for continuing this nuanced and important conversation.

The presence of this bullet casing found by my 11-year-old in our alleyway on the way to school this morning suggests to me that we need to get moving.

The first remote speaker is Anders McConaughey.

Sorry, I don't quite know how to pronounce that.

Please press star six when you hear the prompt you have been unmuted.

Hello, hopefully everybody can hear me.

Yeah, go ahead.

Great.

I'm a homeowner in Greenwood, just off of Aurora, and despite sharing messages that the city has removed all of the neighborhoods, the neighbor-built plant barriers.

My street is still blocked by them.

And because of these barriers, sanitation workers are now no longer able to service our street.

I've reached out about 10 times for street garbage to be picked up over a week late.

And so far there's been no recycling service.

Uh, there has been this narrative that we're all scared and demanding that the streets be blocked, more police, more surveillance, soap zones to be enforced, and that now that there's this ridiculous call for the national guard to be called in.

This is not accurate.

I feel very safe in my neighborhood.

I've never found needles anywhere.

I regularly walk my dog around after midnight without incident.

Blocking public roadways 24-7 for an occasional issue that's only for an hour or two a night is not the answer.

I have no desire to live in a gated community, and despite living in my neighborhood for about six years, the news that the city had planned to block streets a few years ago was new information for me.

The city needs to be criminally sex where it can expand resources and exit options because diversion only works if they're somewhere to go.

Meet people where they are, fund low barrier emergency housing that allows people along with their children and pets to leave should they choose, fund trauma-informed exit and reentry services, healthcare and pure-led street outreach.

Sex work is important for confronting adults, but those that are being trafficked need real meaningful support from the city and from the community, and they are our neighbors and they are a part of our community.

With regards to surveillance and cameras, the city of Seattle does not have the power to stop the federal government from obtaining this data once it exists.

The only true safeguard is not having that infrastructure.

Cameras do not stop crying.

People have the right to accept in public without being surveilled or having data and profile stuff and being built or in full.

Please dismantle this man sold this axon back surveillance grid and use the funds to actually help people.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Kate Baldwin.

Hi, um, I also live in Greenwood, and I'm sorry, but I couldn't disagree more with the last statement.

I want to start out, though, by thanking the city council for putting your attention on public safety.

It is so important.

As you know, Greenwood, uh Greenwood and the neighborhood bordering North Aurora are forced to inter blatant sex trafficking, which is itself a crime, but the the her also the horrifically violent crimes that come along with it.

And the police estimate that 62% of violent crime in the neighborhood is directly related to this prostitution and sex trafficking.

This billion dollar industry has been allowed to flourish almost unchecked along Aurora, and women and girls, many of who are underage are forced to endure rape by strangers because their pimps beat them if they don't.

And we've watched it.

John circle our neighborhood, they pick up these girls and sometimes boys and bring them into our neighborhood and have sex in front of our homes.

And afterwards the pimps take their money.

It's estimated that pimps are earning $6,000 to $7,000 per prostitute per night.

And this business is lucrative.

The pimps are protecting their territories with the gun battles that then spill into the surrounding communities.

The neighbors find bullet casings in the streets next to their children's bus stops, as Peter said.

Bullets are hitting cars, fences, and homes, and as you've heard, narrowly missed a six-week-old infant.

These traffic individuals are also being forced to live a violent existence, forced by their pimps to battle one another and even attack nearby residents who are walking their dogs or just walking home from the bus stop.

One resident in the city was attacked by a group of traffic girls and beaten by her own stolen cane.

And just this last Saturday night, a couple with their disabled daughter in a wheelchair were attacked by a trafficked individual as they walked home from our March first safety.

The neighborhoods along Aurora Avenue are in crisis.

The police must be, the police must be at full capacity.

Please make this a priority in our city budget or the or the crime will continue to build.

Public safety at this moment is more important than other items in the budget.

We need the cameras on, we need public safety as FIFA comes to this area.

We need a mobile police precinct, and we must create and enforce the law that allow police to do their job, in addition to the emergency services and infrastructure that allow the trafficked individuals to exit the horrors of prostitution.

Next up, we have Melissa Howard.

All right.

My name is Morsa Howard, and I'm a resident of District 6.

I want to express my opposition to the city's expanding surveillance cameras and the real-time crime center.

Members of this committee have suggested that those of us who oppose these cameras are concerned about hypothetical threats that bad actors can access the data.

Let me be clear.

These threats are not hypothetical.

The City of Seattle does not have the power to stop ICE, the federal government, or anyone else from getting this data once it exists.

Furthermore, we have all witnessed the criminal activity of our federal government under the control of Donald Trump.

We need our city leaders to take this very real threat seriously and to stop downplaying it.

Members of this committee say that the cameras are necessary for neighborhoods experiencing high levels of crime.

I would love it if the cameras and the AI operating system for police that acts on is selling us for millions of dollars meant that the crime went away.

But study after study shows that surveillance does not create safety.

Like my neighbors have said, we have some real problems in the city.

Cameras and AI sound like a convenient solution to a difficult problem to solve.

One that requires real leadership in order to actually solve it.

So it's not surprising that council members would pretend that cameras and AI are the path forward here.

Seattle and the country are facing real threats and crises, most of which are a result of massive wealth inequality and a corporate oligarchy.

It is long past time that our city leaders acknowledge these very real threats.

Those of us organizing against the for-profit surveillance state in Seattle want to see real investment in communities, not in cameras, an expensive performative tact that only creates more vulnerabilities.

I call on you to end the real-time crime center and put the money into community-driven public safety programs that are proven to actually work.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Aaron Gardner.

Gardner.

Hi everyone, my name is Aaron, and I am among the neighbors who live near Aurora.

And I just wanted to thank you, Councilman Kettle, and the other city officials who came out on Saturday to the protest.

But I also want to thank the more than 300 other people who turned out, the vast majority of which were people who live in the neighborhoods.

I talked to dozens of them, and we are all, you know, mostly in alignment about what we want to happen.

But first, I do want to echo everything today that's been said, especially by uh, excuse me, by Peter Rick and Becca, um, especially Peter, uh, and the proposed options that he had.

Um, and also I want to echo with the woman, and I'm sorry, Mr.

Name, but who just talked extensively about the trafficking in Launa Laura.

Um, I just want to remember for people out there who may not know that you know, the average age for women getting into trafficking is 14.

These aren't independent women keeping their money, these are children.

A lot of them have touched the foster care system, a lot of them have been sexually abused before they got pulled into trafficking.

Um, so I know that there are a lot of systematic issues at play uh along Aurora, but our immediate concern is stopping the bullets, uh blocking two other neighborhood streets uh two years ago after the big shooting at 101st.

That has shown that it works.

It's a temporary measure, we hope, um, but we need to stop the bullets before we can really focus on trying to fix some of these larger issues.

Um, and I guess I also just want to reiterate that that we neighbors are eager to work with you.

Uh, Councilman Kettle, uh, President Hollingsworth, thank you for pressuring the mayor to close these streets.

We are your eyes on the ground.

Um, we see what's happening every day.

We we pick up bullet cases, we pick up these condoms.

Um this is what grassroots organizing is, so please reach out to us, keep us involved.

Um, we want to help.

We want to give voice to the girls and young women who are being uh so abused.

Thank you.

Thank you, Aaron.

Next up we have Howard Gale.

Good morning.

Today you will discuss the changes to the city ordinance concerning the operations of the care department.

The ordinance claims that the city, quote, reaffirms its belief in the importance of providing a diversified public safety response to effectively meet the needs of persons in crisis and others requiring assistance.

A vital part of the city's public safety response, unquote.

Yet, while you debate the theoretical language around care, through the union contract, you approved and the police themselves are rendering current staff seventy-two percent underutilized.

This is part of a consistent pattern of Seattle mayors and councils signifying one thing while delivering something completely different when it comes to public safety.

Signifying protection for our ignorant neighbors while refusing to have our police actively protect theirs and everyone's sportsman rights.

Signifying police accountability with an ordinance that over nine years later has partially failed to be implemented in law and fully failed to be implemented in intent and spirit.

We see this with the very recent failures of accountability for police abuse at Cal Anderson last year, and the refusal of this council to hear directly from those severely injured by police.

We see this with next week's ninth anniversary of the SVD murder of Charlena Lyles, a black pregnant woman in mental health crisis shot seven times by the SBD, killing her unborn child and leaving her four children motherless.

The legislation passed just days after her murder, ostensibly to prevent such murders, has left us with a horrifying and shameful legacy of the SPD killing at least fourteen folks experiencing a mental health crisis while they are holding a knife or nothing in their hands.

If there is one lesson we have learned from Donald Trump and the continuing genocide in the Middle East, it is this.

Signifying one thing while acting to the contrary does more than the obvious harm.

It also incentivizes our willful ignorance and innures us to the reality and the pain of others.

Today you will continue to place another brick in that wall that divides pretense for reality.

Next up, we have Hannah Fishman.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Hannah.

And I live at Linden and 98.

And I'm coming just to express that there is not broad support among our neighbors for the kinds of additional police presence, even extreme measures like National Guard troops that some have proposed and spoken to today.

Um would be demonstrated or would help um resolve any of those issues.

We actually need more investment in public goods, public infrastructure, health care, and support for the most vulnerable people in our area.

So I would just want to be clear that we don't support additional police uh presence here in the area.

Profit calming measures rather than barricades would be welcome.

One of the most dangerous trends that we see in our neighborhood is actually just beating.

Um no surveillance and no increased um police presence for soap zones that target the most vulnerable people rather than provide the kinds of health care, housing, and income supports that people actually need um in our community.

Uh thanks.

Thank you.

Next up, we have Michael McDaniel.

Hi.

Um it's hard to go left or close to last of it so many people.

Um, I think I'm going to be really short and just say that I'm very much in support of the Nordic model or something like it.

Um I would like to be able to continue funding um services like breath off the lower commons, etc.

Um, and also make sure that we are holding them accountable and make sure they're using those all as well.

Um I think there's more support than we need for the top-based solution.

Um I just want to divert people into services.

Separate from that.

Um, I also want to make it clear that for those people who are who are just learning about this now.

Um, there's a big push for things a couple years ago.

This is not a certainly not a new problem, but also it's not this administration versus the previous administration.

Um, issue.

Thank you.

Take the following.

Thank you.

And last up, we have David Haynes.

We need a new police chief.

We don't need a racist woke misinterpretation that Bruce Hale created when he shifted the paradigm away from improving the war on drugs and allowed certain council members to create spending priorities that essentially legalize sex crimes.

We have the leftover bad policies of the pedophile, Ed Murray, Bruce Harrell, and Jenny Durkin.

And we got people showing up at the trough of money with different council meetings that have the exact same effort to run interference for evil repeat offending criminals, like black and brown people of criminality and customs violations that you all have allowed lead, co-lead, just care, purpose, dignity, and action that used to be called Public Defenders Association.

First they showed up with the police chief acting like they're a legitimate entity, and now they're showing up with a business community.

Every time I hear Mike Stewart and other business people talk about how great lead is because they clear out their front entrance and sweep the tourist business district and further push it into our neighborhoods.

I think about boycotting those businesses because they don't support throwing people in jail and making them break their addiction.

They just want them out of their front doorstep.

So we have an entrapment that goes on to catch the Johns in the Aurora corridor because it's the way the police chief helps run interference for black and brown drug-pushing pimps.

It's like the police chief is purposely pulling his crime-fighting tools, showing up for shindigs and political events to false for a show the people.

But when it comes to shutting down the real pimps, he sets up an entrapment to give a heads up to the real pimps and the disease prostitute.

I think never thank you.

Uh thank you.

I wanted to acknowledge uh Councilmember Lynn has joined us and uh council member Rivera's briefly excused herself uh in order to escort a group of kindergartners from Ryan Elementary.

So you'll see soon uh a bunch of kindergartners coming in.

And before they come in, I do want to say, and I've said this before, uh, it's not right, it's not acceptable.

And I want to add having a father find a bullet casing from his daughter this morning is not right and it's not acceptable.

And people ask why are we here?

Washington Bill 1265.

Look at what happened to that bill and why it happened.

Then you have your answer.

We need Olympia to do its job.

We need the county to do its job, and we need to do ours as well.

Okay, 60 minute the 60-minute uh period, the comment period is expired.

Uh, we will now proceed to our items of business.

Members of the public are encouraged to either submit written public comment on the sign-up cards available on the podium or email the council at council at sialo.gov.

The public comment period is ended.

Um, okay.

Uh please check in with my clerk uh after the meeting.

Please check in with my clerk.

Um, Mr.

Lowe here.

All right.

Okay, we'll now move on to our first item of business.

With the clerk, please read item agenda one into the record.

Overview of the draft care department update ordinance.

Thank you.

And uh we have Mr.

Johnson from uh Central Staff.

And uh I was gonna say, please join us at the table if you already done so.

Um, but for the record, please introduce yourself and let's start the briefing.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Kettle, members of the committee for the record.

I am Tommaso Johnson from Council Central Staff.

I'm here to provide a summary of the draft ordinance uh outlining care department crisis responder duties because we are um discussing this as a draft.

There is not a uh bill number, so I won't be referring to it by the bill number, but rather um the ordinance.

Um, so in summary, uh this ordinance is designed to update the section of the Seattle Municipal Code that describes the function of the community assisted response and engagement or care department.

Uh, by way of background, um, care under that name was created by ordinance in 2023.

Uh that department had previously been uh known as the CSCC, and that was created in 2021 uh when the 911 communication Center, which is the city's public safety answering point for emergency calls was moved out of the Seattle to police department in 2021.

That civilian team of that from the 911 call center.

As I said before, care was formally established in 2023.

The municipal code generally describes the function and purpose of various city departments at a level of detail that is sufficient to convey the duties and the overall function of the department, but generally speaking, those code sections don't get into granular operational details, which are handled through either further administrative rules or policies issued by the department itself.

Supplements the Seattle public safety response in two ways.

As I already described, it operates in 911 Communications Center, and second, the care department fields, the community crisis responder team or CCR team.

In the intervening years since the establishment of the Care Department in 2023, the role, scope, and deployment of that community crisis responder or CCR team has expanded quite significantly, primarily through both executive actions as well as the adoptions of successive budgets by the council, including last year.

As an example of that growth, the community crisis responder team grew from 24 members, 24 staff uh CCR responders in 2025 to 48, so it doubled between last year and the current year budget.

The current SMC sections describing the work of the care department do not name the community crisis responder team.

Um they set out in the 2023 ordinance some sort of kernels and seeds of the description of the work to authorize that uh that work to care go forward and to be expanded.

But as it stands now, uh the municipal code does not accurately or completely describe the work that care is doing on the ground today and that has been authorized uh through various budget actions.

So that's the that's the background summary.

This legislation with that background is relatively straightforward.

It would amend those sections to the Seattle Municipal Code that describe the work of the care department to firstly acknowledge that the CCR team exists as a core function of the care department, second to define at a high level the role and purpose of the CCR team, including the qualifications of CCR responders, uh methods through which they may be deployed and to delineate the work that they do and don't do, for example, to describe in code that they are not members of the public safety response of the city that that are enforcing crimes or issuing citations, for example, to just clearly differentiate the work that they are doing from the Seattle Police Department, for example.

Um and finally uh the ordinance would clarify some of the administrative uh functions of the department, uh, notably the council during the 2026 budget process in the fall uh formalized the transfer of contract administration of contracts related to lead, co-lead and WDC that had been carried out previously by the human services department as of January 1 this year.

Those contracts are being facilitated and administered uh by the care department, and um this update to the code would acknowledge that.

I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Mr.

Johnson.

And before uh going to my vice chair, I just wanted to extend a warm welcome to I think Ryan Elementary.

Brian to Elementary.

Bryant Elementary.

Uh in District 4.

Welcome.

Uh to all the kids and uh teachers and uh parents that are maybe escorting, and welcome to City Hall more broadly.

As you can tell, this this city hall is designed to be open.

It's basically one building to the north, and this cylinder uh chamber here and everything else is open with lots of glass, and that's uh that's on purpose uh for transparency pieces.

So even with the fifth graders and uh I mean the the five-year-olds, uh sorry, I have a fifth grader, but for the five-year-old, six-year-olds that we have.

And I'll give a special shout out to a five-year-old at heart, uh, Councilmember Warz is chief of staff, Wendy, who's uh helping out in this process, so thank you for that.

So okay.

Uh thank you, Mr.

Johnson, uh, for this overview of the uh the draft legislation.

Uh Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Mr.

Johnson for this presentation, this overview.

I too want to start off by welcoming our kindergarten class and their educators from Bryant Elementary.

Uh was delighted to see Councilmember Rivera leading uh everyone into council chambers today.

Uh kids, welcome.

Remember this is your body, your institution, your uh city hall building.

We work for you.

Whenever I go into schools, I tell I that's the first thing that I remind students is like you're one of my 120,000 bosses.

So uh so it's uh it's it's an important job.

Uh honor to we're all honored to serve you.

And that young kiddo right there with the black and the stripe, you are an incredibly photogenic young man.

I appreciate when the this gentleman was taking pictures, yeah.

The the biggest smile and and uh looking great, looking great.

Um, in any event, well, welcome again.

Uh my question about the ordinance, the proposed ordinance.

So I I note that on section the newly modified or newly added section one point four of the bill kind of speaks to the interrelation between uh various King County programs and initiatives.

Um, but does the proposed ordinance address the role of the care department vis-a-vis, other alternative response capabilities within the city of Seattle uh itself, and including like how they collaborate, for example, with Health One, Health 99 of FIRE.

Thank you for the question, Councilmember.

Um I would defer to the chair if you would like to hear more about um the section describing the relationship with um community uh King County uh clinical crisis and behavioral health challenges.

I um I understand that is intended to refer to the uh intended relationship between the care department and um uh liaising with the county on the work related to uh the crisis connections center and um other such work.

Um but once again I'll defer to the chair um on the intent there.

Um to your other question, um this doesn't go into the work that uh the other pieces of the um non police response that the city uh fields uh vis a vis the fire department.

Um as I stated earlier, I think the intent of this ordinance is is merely to enshrine in code the current state of what care department does and and not to attempt to um dictate or describe the the linkages between care and fire or care and spd, for example.

So this is um strictly just describing um codifying the CCR team and what its role within the ecosystem is.

Yes, Vice Chair.

This is really to um to codify what actually is and broaden because most people think the the narrative is always you know spog and and care, and we have to move beyond that, and because and and the ordinances need to reflect that.

And so it's about King County Public Health, the 988 system, the crisis care centers, and so forth, and having a point that is key with this, and to the point about the side uh um Seattle Fire Department, uh obviously they have the medical medical piece, um, but there's times when they can't um work these issues, um, behavioral health, for example.

And so that's an example where we should have potentially an MOU between care and fire.

So this is this is a function of really identifying the mental and behavior health pieces that we have.

If I if I could just say one more thing in response to that, I would um on that on that point of um acknowledging the the collaborations that can uh and do exist uh with other parts of the public safety ecosystem.

I would point your attention to the new section two where there's the new uh section of municipal code uh three.15.064 is created.

Um sub B of that section uh does describe in general the methods through which the care care CCR team can be dispatched to include 911 call center as well as requests initiated by directly by SPD um fire or other mechanisms authorized by the chief of the care department.

So um that acknowledges the current state, which is that there are many ways uh which uh care CCR responders can be activated, sometimes through the 911 call center, but sometimes through um direct lateral, if you will, requests from other departments, including uh the various uh work that FIRE is doing.

Thank you.

No further questions or comments.

Thank you, Chair.

Okay.

Uh Councilmember Lynn, uh, any questions?

Um yeah, thank you, Chair.

By the way, before you say, uh, thank you to the Bryant Elementary Kindergartners uh for coming.

Absolutely.

Um thank you so much.

Um I'm um just curious as to um the care department and you know, even looking back at some of the existing language, so not new new language that would be proposed.

It talks about um create a new initiative to integrate the city's violence intervention programs uh using research and evidence-based strategies to reduce violence, including identifying specific and metro outcomes.

Um, this initiative will focus initially on a number of things, including gun violence prevention programs, youth focused programs.

Um so I guess part of my big picture question is um the role of the care department, um, and as a new department, you know, they are you know busy standing up sort of the you know, taking over the the 911 call center, um, having you know a greatly expanded team out in the community, the the care responders, and um, you know, my question is is part of this um are we trying to get some more contracts underneath care shifted from so for example HSD, I believe currently um contracts for some of our gun violence prevention programs um and also uh I think contracts uh with LEAD and so it's part of the idea to shift some of that body of work from HSD to uh the care department and um just I'm just a little bit concerned about um you know, again, as a as a new department, already sort of have a have a lot of uh significant body of work to grow into and just the the administrative difficulties of shifting personnel or or contracts to a different department.

Yeah.

Thank you for that question, council member.

Um I'll speak first to the last part of your statement.

Um so the contracts with PDA, um, the contracts for LEED, co-lead, and um the we deliver care contracts um are being administered by the care department currently.

That was uh change that was made um during the budget process in in the fall and effective January of this year, those are contracts that are being administered by care, and there was um a staffing um move uh FTE move that was uh accompanied the the financial transaction to move those dollars out of HSD and into care.

So that is um current state that that current state um is described in the language that's on the top of um page four that reads this alignment shall include the provision of oversight monitoring and accountability for city contracts related to the diversion and reentry services for those involved or at risk of involvement with the criminal justice system.

So that language is describing the oversight um responsibility for the uh lead co-lead and WDC contracts that currently rests with CARE.

Uh in terms of I guess what I would call the um the legacy language, the existing language, uh, which is current SMC 315060 um a six in current code.

Um I don't I don't know what um the intentions are um going forward to to move or not move any other contracts aside from the lead contracts that I've that I've mentioned.

I think there have um this is an idea that has been raised in various forms over uh the past many years.

Um the best way I I suppose to characterize that current code language would be that it is um it was language that was added which has never been fully um implemented or carried out um so potentially aspirational when it was added, but it hasn't been um realized in the same way that other language in the in the city code describing uh what the care department does um has been realized.

So as you stated, I mean the two primary functions uh that the care department currently carries out are the operation of the 911 call center first and secondly uh the fielding and maintenance of the community crisis responder teams.

Um uh a not insignificant additional body of work that relates to that work um was added in the the fall budget, which is the oversight of the the contracts that I mentioned for um lead co-lead and we deliver care um but but beyond that um the existing there is some existing code language now that uh this bill would not change, which um talks anticipates a potential future state around um an increased level of coordination, gun violence, community-based interventions, as you as you mentioned that are that are in code, but um uh that has largely not been implemented.

Thank you, uh Councilmember Lynn for that question, uh, because it's an important one, and um it should be noted that you know with the PDA contract moving from HSD to care, that was quite simple and uh it was done.

And this is an example of an area that I mean we've been we just had a symposium yesterday.

We're not getting the job done.

And there is a dedicated lead who's not been dedicated to lead that program, and it's our job to ensure that they do the job, and I think they can.

I know they're relatively new, but you know, if we don't demand better, if we don't demand the result, then we don't get it.

And I think so.

Thank you for bringing it up because it's really important to do this.

And as we saw yesterday, this mission area belongs within public safety, and to be frank, it will get more attention and more oversight here than it would otherwise.

This is the natural uh home for it.

So we just have to demand that care and the executive take it on and carry it out, because just to wish it away, the next thing you know, three years from now we'll have a similar conversation about gun violence prevention.

Uh so that's so thank you very much for bringing the issue.

Any other questions?

Um, just if I could respond uh to that point.

I mean, I I do think um, you know, on our gun violence intervention work, uh it lives in many different departments currently, and I do think that we need a more coordinated approach.

It lives with HSD, there's Department of Neighborhoods, um, you know, there's a a touch point with the Department of Education, early learning with the deal funding, and um obviously with the the police department, care now, and so having a comprehensive strategy absolutely uh needed.

I I don't have strong opinions about where it should live.

I do think there's a little bit of a difference between sort of the the emergency responder part of uh this work that that care does, um, and versus sort of the more deeply engaged long-term kind of community safety work that some of our CVI folks do.

Um, just want to distinguish that.

I I think that there could be a difference between sort of the longer-term strategies versus the more um 911 type of uh emergency responder work.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And community safety in a lot of ways is alternative response, but at the community level, and so we it does need to be nested with the more formal government response, and then with the leadership of the executive to help carry it out.

So thank you, Councilmember Lynn.

Councilmember Warez.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Um so I was looking at the legislation, and thank you, uh Mr.

Johnson for going through it, and maybe you can't answer some of this.

We're gonna have to actually go to the care folks.

So two things on the 3.15060, which is page two and page four, um, in the section about uh accountability as well.

Um we have I see that you say struck compassionate and put in effective accountable, and then on page four, we talk about this alignment shall include the provision of oversight monitoring and accountability for our city contracts related to diversion and re-entry services for those involved at risk, etc.

So I think there's two things, and I'll I have a second question if I can on that, Mr.

Chair.

What does accountability look like?

I mean, that seems like a big lift in light of what we're dealing with with the King County Regional Homeless Um authority in contracts.

So if um we're talking about accountability and we're talking about care and care is going to observe uh absorb um lead, co-lead and a bunch of the other um organization contracts, if that's where they're going to be settled, housed and accountability.

I'm I'm concerned, and I don't know, Mr.

Chair, you may have an answer for me as well.

What if we have what does that accountability look like in in the sense of what like I shared now that we're in the shadow of what we're dealing with with the accountability issues with the King County Regional Housing Authority?

I mean, that's a loaded word, accountability, and these are a lot of contracts, and this is a lot of money, and we doubled CARES employees.

We have a lot of a lot of moving contracts here and a lot of people, a lot of employees, a lot of actors.

How how are we gonna monitor that?

How does that gonna work?

I know we're codifying this.

If if this is all we're doing right now, uh is there any more thought to what that means?

Uh Councilmember Warz, first, I it's already in the law.

The this is about the violence prevention, violence interrupters piece.

Um, not the I'm looking at not the broader, you know, this is not a housing focused paragraph.

It is related to violence intervention programs solely.

And by the way, can I add there was a mistake earlier?

Uh the word compassionate was not supposed to be removed.

Um that was supposed to be moved over.

And so the compassionate will be added back in.

So I just want to make that quick point since you referenced it.

Okay, I well, I must have an old copy then.

Apologies.

No, no, no, no.

It just still hasn't been fixed.

It will be fixed before the next meeting.

Oh.

And uh, okay.

So it was struck by accident.

Okay.

Yes, right.

So so please please um enlighten me, Mr.

Chair, then in the accountability piece.

Well, this is uh what you were saying.

Yeah, this is the focus on violence intervention programs, and this has already been in law, and there's been no action on it, and and and as we're seeing in yesterday's symposium, um, we're not getting results either.

So continuing as is, also is not um issue.

And I have no issue with the word accountability.

In fact, that's what we need more of in these bills and in our work and in terms of overseeing and then within the executive.

So um you can we need more accountability than anything else.

Uh so uh and to help also to avoid what we've been seeing at the county level.

I don't either, but okay, that's I don't have a problem with more accountability either.

But okay, all right.

So the other issue I want to raise is um on page three.

So again, um on section four one, when we say maintain a community crisis responder team as first responders supporting the city's response to persons experiencing clinical crisis and or behavioral health challenges, and this just may be more of a wonky lawyer question, but um is this the first time that we've res that we have labeled the CCRT as um, and I don't want when I say legitimate, I'm not saying that they're illegitimate, but actual first responders like the Seattle Fire Department and SPD, because as you know, Chair, um SPD and SFD Seal Fire Department as codified as first responders in law are held to a higher standard for liability purposes.

So are we is this just a are we actually um um anointing them as first responders like we treat and keep Seattle Fire Department and Seattle Police Department employees who are first responders to a higher standard and higher protections, by the way, if you assault them.

So is this is this what we're saying here?

Yes, they're first responders.

We have Chief Bardon, we don't have director bargain, we have Chief Bardin.

And uh, I know I named your chief barden, I was there, so yeah.

But I'm I'm guessing what I'm getting at.

That goes back to the accountability piece.

If I if I could add um in a sense, this is because this is the first time in municipal code that we will be describing the work of the community crisis responder team.

Um, you know, as you all will be aware, this is work that has been uh underway and being executed by the department for um several years up to this point, uh, but it is not work that has been uh reflected uh accurately or descriptively in the code under uh the auspices of the function of the care department.

So in that sense, um yes, this is this is both the first time that the community crisis response team will be described in municipal code period, and it will be the first time that they're described as first responders.

Um the first responder um language and in fact um uh all of the descriptive language for the most part in this ordinance is is taken from the language that the city already uses and has used to describe the work of the community crisis response team in public statements and press releases on the care department website, for example.

So in that sense, um it's consistent or a continuation of uh the terminology that's being used.

Um, I'm not aware that this uh language will create any new legal liability or um legal duty in that sense.

I mean, this you know, as with with every ordinance, even though this is a draft, this has been reviewed by our uh colleagues in the law department, and um uh like I said, I don't I don't want to make a definitive statement, but there were no flags, and I'm not aware that this would make any changes uh to liability in the way that that you described, but um to reiterate yes, this this would be the first time they're described in municipal code as far as I'm aware as first responders, but um that is also by virtue of the fact that the code currently doesn't uh describe the CCR team um in any at all.

Okay, so I guess my point is this um a first responder is a term of art in law, and we provide protections, hold them to a higher standard because they are in the public and they are first responders, and it they can be.

I'm not arguing about that.

So I guess my point is maybe down the road we start looking at because it's just been recently in the last I think two or three years, where we gave the Seattle Fire Department uh people the same protections that we give SPD.

If somebody assaults a police officer, that's that's the higher crime because they're a first responder.

Then we extended that same courtesy to the Seattle Fire Department.

Folks that were first responders who are also being assaulted.

So if we are going to now talk about, and I'm not talking that the work isn't first responding, maybe that's something down the road that they have those protections as well.

Because if they are indeed first responding to people experiencing crisis and or behavioral health, that doesn't mean that it doesn't, it can start off that way, but that doesn't mean that that situation maintained that back pattern stays that way, that it's just clinical crisis, that it could actually the behavior could actually expand to endangering the now first responder CCRT employee.

That's my point.

I'm not trying to argue with you.

I'm just saying if that's indeed it it is a term of art, it is a legal term, and if you do attach or, you know, um, I want to say the word anoint a group as now first responders, and they should probably we should probably be exploring those protections for them as well.

That was the point I was making.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Wares.

And I agree.

Uh first, we should hold, we should set the standard and we should set the expectations for that standard.

That's the first point.

And two, as to your point, yeah, we shouldn't wait five years to give the same protections that the firefighters we gave, I think two years ago.

Um, so that's that's definitely a question worth following up and maybe adding that piece into this ordinance um now instead of waiting a number of years and having some um incident happen um and then respond to the incident.

That's a very good observation and point related to and using the firefighters as the example um to raise here.

And I think uh my team will work with your team and and uh central staff and law uh to work through that point.

I think it's really important that you raised it and that we address it.

So thank you, Councilmember Warren.

Um Mr.

Chair, the reason why, and that's why I kind of led with to kind of lay the groundwork.

If indeed we are anointing the CCRT as first responders, then let's let's give them the protections that we give our other first responders.

That was the point I was leading to.

I leading, kind of laying the groundwork to do the follow-up questions.

So thank you, Mr.

Chair.

Yes, understand.

Thank you, Councilmember Warz.

I see councilmember Rivera have a hand up.

Thank you.

I just I I agree with um my colleague council member Horace on this point.

I also an apologies, um, I was greeting the first greeters from my district.

Um, but in terms of the the CCRs, do we name in the Seattle Municipal Code other positions with what they do specifically?

So this so we're s we're trying to codify this set of employees in the SMC with including um uh what they do, like almost like their job description.

And I'm wondering if we do that for other employees at the city.

I'm trying to get to I'm trying to understand why we're we're trying to codify this set of employees in the the SMC with this level of specificity.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

That's a that's a good question.

Um, as we were drafting this, we were looking to other um sections, administrative uh sections of the municipal code.

Um there's a variety of ways that departments are described.

Um I think the the element of this that attempts to to make the code more consistent with other departments is that um there are not there are not currently other departments whose um core one of their core functions is completely absent from the municipal code.

So as a as a practical matter on on the ground, right?

That as I've said before, that the two primary things that the care department um is doing for the city and is is known for and that are that are highly visible are the 911 call center and the community crisis responder teams.

Um I think it's it's fair to say that when you you know invoke the name of the care department out uh in the in the city in the community, the first thing that people actually think of is the C CCR teams and not necessarily the 911 call center function so in that way care department has been become sort of synonymous with the CCR folks that are uh walking around that are co-dispatched with SPD et cetera so um the intent of this ordinance is to capture uh the the work that the that function of the department does at a um level of detail that is both sufficient to be descriptive of of what the work is and also high enough uh that it doesn't create uh challenges with the pieces of uh the work of the departments that are um typically and ordinarily you know operationally um contained in directives department policy and uh more regulatory uh forms outside of code um so the the attempt of this ordinance is is to um sort of thread that needle and not uh not to get into operational or personnel job description level but to describe what the work is um at a high level and capture uh that current state right now and the investments that have been made over the last several years thank you although I do think that this is a certain level of specificity more than just generally this is what the care department does as a department and I say that because the department is newer in nature and I know they're still trying to figure out I mean they do a whole their main one of their biggest bodies of work I'm trying to find the right word so I'm not misrepresenting um is the 911 call center we're not describing what the 911 call takers all the you know all the functions that they have um but yet we're we're seeing um singling out some of the employees to talk about more specifically what they do if the department should and then of course there are other functions of the department because some functions have been moved over like the diversion the lead um so if we're codifying this in the SMC we're saying this is this is the these folks are gonna function in this way forevermore but if the department should make changes into how it it sets itself up we now are codifying this which is why we don't normally do the level of specificity in the SMC unless we're intending to do so I guess I'm just trying to understand again we don't do this for other city departments that I'm aware of where we put the level of specificity of their employees in this way because usually departments have the flexibility to if the need should arise rearrange how they do things in the department to meet the services and the needs that they that they address.

So again I'm just trying to better understand why for this set of employees we're we're codifying this in the SMC in this specific way in a way that we don't do for other city departments and I guess I understand what you're saying Tommaso about well most people when they think of care they think as CCRs yes and no some people don't even know what you know that there are CCRs um in the care department but I do think there is a level of specificity here contained that we're saying we're gonna put into the SMC that we don't have for other employees at the city.

Yeah if if I might I mean I I think um one way in which the CCR function of the care department is different is because it is a relatively newer body of work it is part of the first response public safety ecosystem that the city um has made over multiple years commitments and investments and and so um in order to adequately describe that work and to differentiate it from the more established parts of that response that are uh contained in fire and SPD, for example, I there there's there's a way in which I think just um intellectually practically uh there needs to be a little bit higher level of description since it's it is not as established of a function uh of the city historically as say fire or um SBD.

So that's that's all I would say on that level.

And um also um, you know, we haven't we have had you know, I think I can say this, we've had conversations with the department and the executive at various stages of the process of uh crafting this legislation.

This is something that is council generated, it is not um executive-generated legislation, of course, but um the executive has had the opportunity to look at this language, and we haven't received specific um feedback uh or or objections along the along the lines that you're describing to this point.

Let me ask it a different way, Tomas.

So why do we need this in the SMC to this level of specificity?

Um I'm gonna, you know, I I can I can say a couple more things that I I think I if if I continue to talk, I'm gonna probably sound a little bit repetitive about it, but that I'll say a few more things and then I'll defer to the chair whose whose bill it is to um describe his intent here.

Um I think one way to think about it is that um it's a it's a significant body of work that the city uh has invested in, both the uh the mayor, several mayors now, and and the council um over the years have you know affirmed additional investments.

We've um stood up the care team uh citywide.

We've doubled the number of staff from 24 to 48.

Um from um, I guess you could say from a governance perspective, there's an argument that it makes sense to enshrine and describe that.

Um, and it's it's hard to, it's hard to do that in a way that's accurate without um getting into some level of detail about the specific function and role of uh that team.

So that's um that's my understanding of the intent here.

And I would add, um we could say departments, but departments don't mean anything.

There's only two departments that matter here, and that's police and fire.

And uh it's quite clear, sworn officers and firefighters are quite clear in terms of who they are and what their um duties are, and it's really and necessary to do the same uh for the CCRs and in order to uh be clear about what their role is in within the system, as Mr.

Johnson was noting, and to show that we're serious about alternative response.

Um we've been kind of treading water, we've been kind of you know not making much progress.

You know, we have to demand better, and we have to show that we're all in on alternative response, and one way to do that is to really uh to work this point as you notice.

Thank you for bringing it up, because it's important, you know.

We either have alternative response or we don't, and we we have community crisis responders or we don't, you know, and they do very different job than police.

Someone, you know, is for those who work in the labor relations committee world, uh, you know, you know, delineating these pieces and uh specifically related to mental and behavioral health is really important, and um, and it also applies to fire too.

Uh, you know, I've had a discussion with Chief Scoggins, you know, talking about you know, sometimes there's a health call that comes through fire uh dispatch, fire alarm dispatch, fire alarm center, and it is a health piece, but they go back to 911 when they could just easily you know connect with care.

And so codifying this and being you know serious about moving forward with alternative response means we have to kind of do these pieces given the circumstances from which it is born, and something that we've been dealing with over the last few years, and uh this is a another way to kind of solidify these pieces and solidify that Seattle is all in on alternative response.

Yeah, um.

Well, I just want to say for the record, I mean, it's already care and and the function of this response, first responder, it's already is in the SMC, so it looks like this is just adding a certain level of detail that wasn't there before.

And I think, in as far as I mean, we do often with the SMC provide things at a high enough level where our city departments have the flexibility to make um changes to the services and uh or to the functions in order to meet that that service.

And we can talk off record, but I'm not sure I'm understanding the need to change the SMC for care to add the level of specificity that's contained in this amendment.

Well, and so I just really wanted to state that for the record because we are making choices about with this amendment, putting that level of detail for this classification of employees into council member Juarez's part, it does I think then set up expectations for you know, how are we gonna protect this this um set of employees?

What kind of protections are we gonna afford them if we take this action?

So thank you.

If we don't do this, then we have to have another ordinance where we take firefighters and police officers out of the SMC.

Firefighters and police officers are in the SMC.

And again, if we're gonna be serious about alternative response, we're gonna be truly serious about it.

We have to set the standards, we have to set the expectations.

This is part of the problem that we've had thus far, in terms of not being where we should be with alternative response.

And so this bill, ordinance, not amendment, is functioning in that respect.

So just to reiterate, firefighters and police officers are in the municipal code.

Okay.

So any other questions?

All right, we're gonna continue to work this and we'll work it uh we various stakeholders and it obviously will come back to committee.

So thank you everyone for the different pieces and to highlight it to include the violence inter uh intervention on piece, also the piece regarding like with what we did for the firefighters in terms of protection for first responders and the like, and so we will uh work these pieces and work them into the bill as we move forward.

So thank you so much.

And now we'll move into our second item of business.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two into the record?

Seattle neighborhood impact framework.

Thank you for joining us today.

Will you please uh have a seat and Mr.

Wolf?

If you can start with you, and then we'll just work down the table in terms of introducing yourself uh by name and then also by um organization, and then uh and then jump right into the briefing, and we'll go straight through the uh briefing.

We'll hold any questions till the end.

So, starting with you.

Perfect.

Um, hiel, thanks for having us.

My name is Sam Wolf.

Uh, he him.

I work for Purpose Dignity Action.

My role is the Seattle King County Policy Director.

Pass it to my right.

Hi, I'm Alina Arakaki, she her, I'm the policy and planning manager with Friends of Little Saigon.

My name is Marcus Johnson.

I'm the director of clean and safe operations at the U.S.

Partnership.

Karen Salinas, she they pronouns.

I'm the director of outreach with the Evergreen Treatment Services Reach Division.

Hi, my name is Paige Killinger, and I am the lead program manager with REACH.

And my name's Mike Stewart, executive director at the Ballard Alliance.

Okay, we'll jump right into it.

So we're here to talk today about the Seattle Neighborhood Impact Framework, or as we have been affectionately affectionately calling it, SNF.

Um, before getting into the mechanics of it, um, I just wanted to say, so the basically the idea of SNF is that this is a framework and a set of partnerships designed to maximize the level of felt impact we're able to provide for Seattle's neighborhoods.

There's a couple of key features of this framework that enable this.

First, neighborhood leaders, some of whom are at our table today, ongoingly gather information from neighborhood stakeholders in order to identify and prioritize people and places of community concern.

SNF partners work together to create solutions and plans for those community concerns, which allows neighborhood leaders to then communicate progress back to the community, which creates a feedback loop conducive to ongoing information gathering, prioritization, and problem solving.

Second, on working together to address those community concerns.

Well, and within this neighborhood impact framework, these teams work uh in a structured collaboration, each working to their strengths, and having a place to make plans together in order to be more than the sum of their parts.

And I want to be clear that SNF is a framework distinct from long-term care strategies.

So things like shelter, housing, long-term behavioral health supports, but it is something that's very mutually beneficial with those long-term care strategies.

To their greatest community-felt impact.

And through that communication loop, we are able to make those impacts as intelligible as possible to the community members experiencing those concerns.

And coming together around how to use these limited resources in the most impactful way has been a key part of us doing the most with what we can for Seattle's neighborhoods.

So, as Sam said, SNF is not a program, but it is a system.

It's a coordination of different services, right?

So it's a platform in which multiple partners and entities can meet and provide care and accountability.

This timeline is a non-comprehensive graphic which highlights a number of individual efforts and programs that have come together to form a framework, whether that be through outreach, through case management, through community liaison, and roles of ambassadors.

So you'll see it started in 2017 and is continued now and has really kind of like morphed into something very beautiful that is working all around the city.

So over the years, these programs, these different programs have developed and grown in ways that complement each other.

It formalizes these mutually beneficial relationships by providing and by providing spaces to be innovative to community care while providing clarity and connection.

And I would add to that too that this model did come out of the neighborhoods that do currently have business improvement areas or BIAs, and was built around formalized coordination roles that tend to sit within organizations like ours.

So in Ballard, for example, our Clean and Safe Director leads the effort, and as executive director, I participate in many of the meetings.

Not all, but uh am aware and participate regularly.

But I think the important thing to mention here is that we think that the model is achievable in neighborhoods that don't have BIAs.

So we all did a lot of the kind of the groundbreaking work of uh trying to get this uh this process and this program uh working correctly and properly so that uh it can be in a way handed off to other uh organizations.

So many neighborhoods without BIAs, uh just as long as that they've got a good uh assembled leadership structure and a management structure that can support the work.

Uh, the key here really is to leverage neighborhood knowledge that really aligns with the knowledge of the group that's working on this effort.

Would you like to introduce yourself before we proceed?

Oh sure.

Thanks.

I'm gonna pull Mark Solomon today and sit at the committee table.

It's been an honor to get to work with everyone at this table and even more people to help set up the neighborhood impact framework over the course of well, as you see since even before I took office.

This has been a way that we've piloted in the university district.

We then piloted in the Ballard neighborhood.

We use those pilots to create the framework, the policies and the mechanisms, and from there expanding throughout the city.

Chinatown International District has been uh initial, it's been off and running, and I think it's also probably time that we uh increase that team to have the case manager is one of just in last year's budget conversation is by way of example.

We were having the the conversation of how quickly do we grow this program?

Because if we grow it too quickly, then it's not successful.

If we grow it too slowly, then it's not successful.

And so this last year we were having the conversation of is Chinatown International District in the expansion point that it should have its own reach outreach worker or not.

We said let's take the next couple months to figure it out.

And I my assessment is that it's ready to expand.

And in fact, all of these different parts create the unity that this whole model is able and ready to be replicated throughout the city.

And that's a great transition into sort of the nuts and bolts of the program, which we won't belabor as Paige said.

This is an amalgamation of several different programs.

So we could talk all day about how all of the individual parts work, but we wanted to make sure you had an overview of some critical key components that make this framework happen in neighborhoods.

So had it to you, Marcus, to start.

So our public safety model really has two connected parts coordination and direct neighborhood response.

So the public safety coordinator, like myself, serves as a central point of contact for businesses, residents, service providers, law enforcement, and other city partners.

That role involves listening to what people are experiencing, identifying recurring patterns, and determining which issues require the most immediate attention.

It also means following up with individual reports, gathering information from across the neighborhood, and organizing that input so we can identify broader patterns rather than identifying every our rather than viewing every incident in isolation.

Our ambassador team provides the day-to-day on the ground component of that work.

The ambassadors respond directly to call from businesses and residents.

They helped the SQLA situations, they provide referrals and assistance, and they maintain a consistent visible presence throughout the neighborhood.

A lot of their work is what we call milieu management, addressing smaller issues early, checking in with people, monitoring recurring locations, and helping prevent situations from escalating.

These two functions continually inform one another.

The ambassadors address immediate needs, whilst providing the public safety coordinator with a real-time understanding of what the community is experiencing.

The coordinator can then use that information to identify priorities, coordinate long-term responses, and advocate for resources from the appropriate partners.

And then I'll talk a little bit more about the neighborhood outreach coordinator, which is a street-based position.

So this position supports community efforts to reduce tensions due to unmet behavioral health needs for people living unhoused in a neighborhood.

This position supports this by having a deep understanding of the myriad of needs of the unhoused neighbors and collaborating with service provider partners to deliver coordinated short and long-term interventions to support healthcare and social access, social service access, which can then mitigate those behavioral health needs and resulting consequences.

The neighborhood outreach coordinator can assess the need for individual place-based or population-based public health interventions.

These interventions may be able to be through provided through coordinated human services, or the coordinator may identify the need for additional support from other system partners, such as housing and shelter partners, or public safety response.

By being based in a neighborhood and paired with the communication and information sharing structure of SNF, the neighborhood outreach coordinator is able to identify individual and group dynamics in the neighborhood to assess engagement and readiness for behavior change, conduct client needs assessment to develop comprehensive care plans, triage resource connections to term best fit or gaps in services, and support reconnection back to identified programming, supporting successful delivery and over time effective long-term behavior change.

Awesome.

So I'm going to speak a little bit about the intensive case management aspect.

So the role of case management in the SNF model is a vital aspect and almost serves as kind of like a quarterback for the framework.

So the intensive case manager is working with the coordinators with the ambassadors with neighborhood outreach, and they're bringing kind of all of those resources together to really meet the needs of the clients on a more complex level.

So some of the stuff that's kind of that's going on with the case managers, they're working on mental health, they're working on housing, they're working on the health, they're they're working with the neighbors, they're working with the businesses to really understand how not just the individual we are working with is being affected, but the neighbors, whether they be housed, whether they be businesses, whether they be students, any of those things are being effective so that we can immediately come in and work on behavior change with the individual.

So again, like it's the boots on the ground, kind of coming together, working together, speaking very frequently about this individual and coming up with a plan that's going to best serve the individual and the community at large.

And then I wanted to share a story about an individual that we've been working with in the UW area.

So this individual is was unhoused up until very recently.

Um we will call this person Zayn.

Um Zane was stood out very much in the corridor.

He was doing martial arts very publicly.

Um he had a lot of untreated mental health needs.

Um there just was not a combination that was working for this individual to get them the assistance they needed.

The neighbors were growing weary, they felt like this was a dangerous situation.

They didn't know how to approach this neighbor in a way that felt safe.

Businesses were being affected, people were not wanting to go in when they were seeing this individual, and it was kind of just at a standstill with this person.

So through the SNF model, what we were able to do is we were able to coordinate through outreach and through the ambassador to kind of build a relationship.

We were able to screen this person into an intensive case management program that was able to help them meet their needs around mental health, physical health, all of these different things, and then working with the businesses and the house neighbors to address these issues.

This went from an individual that people would avoid the corridor completely because they didn't want to interact with him, to being a person that people were asking how he was doing.

They were checking in with him, they were asking how they could help him, and we saw that it wasn't just this one person's life that was being affected, but it was the whole community that was coming around and they were seeing an individual that was struggling greatly and asking how we can come together and find the right combination to work for everyone.

I would like to update everyone that he has been recently housed, he's still in the community, and now his relationship with his neighbors is different.

He is a housed person and he can have different conversations with the businesses, with the people that live there, with the students, and he is still practicing martial arts, but he now gets to do that inside of his own home.

And I think through this framework, it's it really highlights that it's not a one size fits all for people that are living unhoused.

Everyone has to be taken into account when you're talking about this framework, and this really allows for that to happen, and for this individual, their suffering from living outdoors has changed, and we have a community that's stronger and closer together because of it.

As described, the model allows for communication so that everybody is in on the plan and can work in coordination together, whether it's to do a short quick-term response, whether in a crisis or just whatever happens that day, or the longer-term care planning to make sure that that person doesn't get shut off from housing opportunities, from social service access, from these other things that we know in the long term will benefit them.

And then, as you've heard, different versions of these roles are present in the different neighborhoods.

Some neighborhoods like Lake City and Capitol Hill are working to build core components and positions, others, like the CID, have some of each and are working on building on more, and some, like the U District and Ballard, have all components but require increased access to long-term care resources like shelter and specialized behavioral health supports to fully realize what the model is intending to do.

All right.

So now uh I'm going to take us very quickly through this slide because I know we're taking a fair amount of time here.

So neighborhood impact framework, that is the NIF in SNF, if you will.

So level one is really the on-the-ground coordination.

So all the teams that have designated points of contact with each other for different individuals or situations.

So this way the teams can communicate fluidly as issues and opportunities arise.

And so this really happens on a day-to-day basis.

In our office in Ballard, it's Jamie working with our ambassador team and working with Adam or Reach Outreach Workers.

So a lot of on-the-ground communication.

And then at level two, when an individual's situation or needs exceed the coordination possible to do solely on level one, we bring them into a neighborhood case conference.

So teams that deal directly with priority individuals, they adhere to specific information sharing agreements, come together to share notes about the individual and collaborate to make plans which inform that level one coordination.

So it's a lot of level one feeding to two and then back down into level one to make sure that coordination gets transferred.

At level three, neighborhood issues are not solely related to specific individuals.

So level three is uh available for discussions related to place or larger neighborhood efforts.

Uh this, of course, is very geographic-based, and within even a small geographic boundary like the downtown core of Ballard, there are smaller subpockets that uh are in tents at times.

It could be the Ballard Library, it could be uh other areas in the neighborhood.

So this is at level three an opportunity to discuss places of need uh that the outreach and ambassadors can coordinate around with with the neighborhood care coordinators.

Uh, and then we also discuss upcoming events or other on-the-ground dynamics that might be happening uh around the city that uh will have an impact on the ability for us to do this work.

And then finally at level four, I think um we've done a few of these uh levels, and uh I'll point back to earlier this year at the Birthday Night Landis room.

Uh, we did uh a SNF summit where we had folks from all across the city that were there to hear a briefing and a readout on the work that we and progress we had made uh at that point.

So all SNF neighborhoods they do meet periodically to share uh best practices, identify system gaps, and then discuss and discuss the lessons that we've learned collectively.

Thanks, Mike.

Um, yeah, as you can kind of tell from our overview of the different teams and the types of coordination involved, this whole framework is sort of based on a series of levels of where each one kind of acts as a pressure valve for the one below it, where if we get a team in front of the situation or the person and they can't address the needs of the situation or person, they'll call in the next team, and we do it until we figure out what's the right level of acuity of response needed.

Um, this type of prioritization is really important in neighborhoods like the CID where public safety and disorder concerns are associated with very large quantities of people.

Um, ambassador teams in the CID neighborhood in the last year have encountered over eleven hundred unique individuals, which is a huge number, more than the number of shelter units our city is hoping to bring online this year.

Um, however, um data from WDC, one of the ambassador teams in the CID neighborhood, is showing that not all individuals have in equal presence in the neighborhood.

About 5% of that total population comprises about 40% of the encounters.

Uh which means that there is a group of people that are there very frequently and a much larger group of people to varying degrees there less frequently.

Um in the summer of 2025, we had sort of a special project with Co-Lead, a high support shelter housed within PDA.

Um, the assignment was to use co-leads high support shelter capacity for the CID neighborhood.

So, in order to do that to the greatest effect, co-Lead collaborated with SNF partners, um, not only working off of this ambassador encounter data to see who's there the most often, but also working with business outreach and collaboration with friends of Little Saigon, working with other SNF partners to see who are we seeing and and who, if we worked with and we could make a difference in their life, could make a biggest the biggest difference for the neighborhood.

Uh so that summer, 41 individuals were connected to co-Leed.

All individuals identified as high priority individuals for this Chinatown International District.

Since placement last summer, we've seen really good outcomes.

95% of that 41-person cohort has been connected to recovery resources.

Over 90% have achieved housing-related outcomes.

And back in the CID, ambassadors are still on the ground every day, collecting data on who they're seeing and how often.

And the group that went into co-Lead has had a 50% decrease in encounters in this Chinatown international district.

You know, now obviously the goal is not just to have people not go to neighborhoods.

Like Paige said, you know, in our case study for intensive case management, the goal is that we're addressing folks as unmet needs, and that's something that can undergird behavior change.

So the other important piece here is what ambassadors are seeing when folks are in the neighborhood, and a lot of account, qualitative accounts of people appearing much healthier, engaged in different types of behavior and generally having a less of a negative impact on the neighborhood.

Of course, this is sort of a you know a drop in the bucket.

41 people is not a lot of folks given the hundreds and thousands of folks in need of support throughout SNF neighborhoods and other Seattle neighborhoods.

Um, but I think we wanted to lift this up because this is a good case study showing, you know, within this 41 person scope, that we can make a difference for both individuals and neighborhoods at the same time.

Um, what we're trying to do is build this prioritization framework so that what resources we have make the most impact, and then figure out what resources we can put through that prioritization framework to accelerate the work.

Um, this is an all hands on deck effort, so I want to pass it to Elena to talk a little bit about how we're doing so in collaboration with neighborhood leaders.

Yeah, thanks, Sam.

Um, so I'm gonna talk a bit about how the SNF model plays at the local level.

I represent Little Saigon, we're about a 10 square block neighborhood, very place-based.

And as you know, the CID, in particular Little Saigon recently, has taken on a disproportionate number of high-impact individuals over the recent years.

Uh, over the short time from my bus stopwalk to the office, I passed many people who are struggling, uh, people often relying on um resorting to illegal illegal things to uh just make it through the day.

And just walking through the neighborhood shows that everyone is impacted by the lack of city investment in humane services and housing.

Uh, we are still in the early stages of implementing SNF at the CID level, but we've already seen some really promising results.

The co-lead housing example is just one, where people get housing and then have uh fewer negative encounters in the CID, but also the impact on small businesses has been significant.

Uh, we work with a lot of small businesses, and they've spoken really highly of WDC and the ambassadors.

They can call them and get really timely responses from these outreach workers who are already in the neighborhood.

Um some of the businesses have also asked for more coverage in certain areas, and the ambassadors and WDC have been really receptive and incorporated those requests into their daily routes.

So while we wait for more city-funded housing and resources, WDC and the ambassadors help mitigate negative impacts on the neighborhood.

And this SNF model also ties in really well with our FODEP work, which is an uh initiative that Friends and Friends of Little Saigon has started in 2024.

It means beautiful neighborhood in Vietnamese, and it is working to address some of the neighborhood's biggest public safety challenges.

Back in the summer of 2024, we met with community stakeholders to learn about challenges and brainstorm some solutions for what the community is facing.

And one of the main things that came out of that, those meetings was a request for better coordination among all the groups working in Little Saigon, which have been pretty disjointed previously.

So since then, the service providers have been working hard to better organize themselves among the four coordination levels of SNF, and we've also been working with the mayor's office, DON, SPD to better coordinate across city departments.

But even as we improve coordination, the felt impact on the ground is very slow, and many people in Little Saigon will say they haven't noticed significant differences yet.

And we won't be able to make long-lasting change without more resources dedicated to long-term care.

So, as you saw in the timeline earlier, we've all had different pathways of getting here, and this diagram shows how we're thinking about where different neighborhoods are at uh with implementing SNF.

So, this first level building the front door is building the basic components for SNF functions.

Uh Lake City and Capitol Hill are interested in getting started in SNF implementation.

So they're identifying priorities, building partnerships with service providers, and coordinating among community stakeholders.

And as Mike mentioned earlier, uh all our three neighborhoods here have BIAs, but it's not necessary to have a BIA to start implementing SNF.

The second level, filling in the gaps.

Um, this is where the CID currently is.

We're operating SNF, but we don't have the full set of components necessary to reach the framework's potential.

So one thing we're still waiting on is the dedicated neighborhood outreach coordinator to provide holistic support to individuals, businesses, and the community as a whole.

And I'll pass it to Mike for the last section.

Yeah, for the last section for neighborhoods functioning at full fidelity, we're really thinking about the university district in Ballard at this point.

Um we have now had, and in university district really led the way with getting ambassadors on board and with uh Marcus's position, and then we were just a couple of years behind them, but now we have a staff member dedicated to clean and safe services.

We have an ambassador program that's working and viable, and then uh thanks to to council support last year, uh shout out to council member Rivera and also Councilmember Strauss for helping to fund neighborhood care coordinators.

We've just partnered with Reach to add that position.

So now in the university district and in Ballard as of May 1st, uh we have a dedicated person doing that.

So that what is what we believe kind of the final piece to bring to full fidelity, the program.

Uh, and we're pretty excited about it, and we're pretty actively working to just with the tools and the team and the people that we have to try and continue to make this program even uh more effective.

And I think I just want to go back to to the initial premise, too, of the it is just so common that there might be a handful of individuals in any one neighborhood that are absolutely having an outsized impact, and for whatever reasons these people are have fallen through the gaps, whether it's through uh the social services gap or it's through a criminal justice gap, we've all seen it, but what we know and believe is that if we can work together on a small number of individuals and be able to provide a solution that removes them from being directly on the streets, it lowers the tension in the neighborhood and increases the vibes, the good vibes.

Thanks, Mike.

Um, so I'll wrap it up here.

You've probably heard a couple themes throughout our presentation.

Um, SNF is a framework in progress, um, ranging from neighborhoods like Lake City who are asking for some of these key components to the CID, where some of these components are in place.

There are so few more that we need to fund and build.

Um, and then neighborhoods like U District and Ballard that have the components, but we're still working on this other critical piece of porting things like long-term care strategies.

You know, so many of the situations that were case conferencing are places where people are unsheltered.

Um, and like what we saw with the co-lead example, we do see uh when people are paired with appropriate long-term care resources, their care plans move faster.

Um, so what we're hoping to do is continue to build this framework across neighborhoods, um, and figure out how to align it with those long-term care strategies, especially things like high support shelter as the city brings it online.

Um, and the last thing I'll say too is that this is a framework that is not um this works hand in hand with other strategies.

Um, not a not a replacement for other city departments' works, rather, it's department of neighborhoods, SPD, care, and in fact, our level three SNF meetings are a place where our goal is to extend this level of collaboration of what are all the different, you know, right and left hands doing in the same neighborhood and have a coordinated response.

Um, again, uh the goal being to do more with what we have to benefit Seattle neighborhoods.

Um, um, could you actually, go back to the spectrum slide, the last one?

I just want to call this out.

You I didn't do a proper introduction of why I'm sitting down here.

It's because I have been working alongside this team for six years.

It took, and this is a great spectrum slide.

It took the Ballard Alliance in the Ballard neighborhood three years to build the front door.

And it's taken about two years of filling the gap to just now getting to full fidelity.

And because we took such a methodical approach, it is now for Lake City and Capitol Hill for CID.

I think it took you a year and a half, a year just to build the front door.

So we took a three-plus year process, shortened it to a year.

The filling the gaps was another two years for Ballard, but we might be able to do it in a year for CID, maybe a year and a half.

So I just I I share that that's why I'm sitting down here.

If you want to go back to the case study real quick, the question asked is how next one, which is how can you have such high results without having full fidelity?

And it's because we've been operating and working quietly for many years to develop this framework to be very effective.

And if you want to click back to the NIF slide, the framework, I'll just say the reason that there's success here is because coordination is free.

Well, not quite free, and that's part of the statement of legislative intent that we'll receive later this year.

But coordination on a real-time every week basis is how issues can be managed with collaboration.

This is a services-based approach at this table that does that means that criminal interventions are separate from what's going on with this group of people.

And what I have found is that one of the biggest assets of this team is actually creating the warm handoffs out of jail for the clients who need the support the most because they're having the highest impact.

So jail without a warm handoff can mean death for people coming out of jail in the worst case scenarios.

And with this, there's a really important warm handoff that actually can make somebody better.

I see people looking at the clock.

So I will just say this allows for the community to care for the community and as Karen said, create effective long-term behavior changes and is separate but can help with the criminal justice system.

Thank you.

Alright, Mr.

Wolf, thank you, as point with some uh assistance from a council member.

Although, you know, maybe the you know at least the tie should have come off the, you know, so you can be in sync with your your colleagues at the rest of the table.

Um by the way, colleagues, we're not doing item number three on the agenda, so um, Vice Chair, any questions?

Yeah, thank you, Chair.

Uh, first off, thank you to the panelists.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss, for your leadership uh and you know, helping to maybe not found, but uh grow and expand and scale this this model um over across the city uh with the heavy focus looks like on the north end.

Um and with would love to uh, I'm glad the CID is now represented, you know, in this.

Um, but there is certainly growing needs uh across the city, including in my own council district.

Um, but the CID case study shows uh I think encouraging initial outcomes.

So what do you see?

What do you all see as the sort of biggest factors behind that success, and and how might that inform potential expansion to other neighborhoods, including other parts of South Seattle, south of the ship canal?

I mean, I could speak in terms of like the uh the results that that 41-person cohort saw from the CID case study.

Um it looks different for every person, of course, but when people are paired with appropriate resources like high support shelter that meets their needs, it's a little bit different than what we're able to do when we're doing street-based case management.

It's a situation where if somebody has a safe place to live, you know, that is just a platform from which they can work on the care plan that they've made with their case manager.

It also means their case manager has a very reliable place to find them.

And you know, it's it's still a uh uh non-linear and uh a unique trajectory for every person, um, but we do see, of course, when people's needs are met, we can build that pyramid um more quickly.

Um the questions about like what do we see as the next steps for this?

Um, I think one being um 41, you know, spots in a high support shelter is is, of course, a very small number compared to the number of people out there.

Um, but you know, it's work that I think we can replicate, especially as more shelter comes online, um as more neighborhoods build sniff frameworks.

Um Pioneer Square, as an example, you may have read the recent Seattle Times piece about the sheltering effort that just occurred there.

We're at a stage with that effort where what we're trying to do right now is work with DSA ambassadors, uh Alliance for Pioneer Square to try to identify, you know, now who are like the sort of high priority individuals and do that sort of like customized planning around them.

So, you know, I think this is a framework that can be adaptable to the place in uh the place in each neighborhood's trajectory of building these components.

Um, but across the board, it's you know, building these prioritization components in order to be more efficient with how we deploy these resources, and then of course having more resources to deploy through this framework.

Thank you for that.

And yeah, definitely familiar with the uh Pioneer Square effort and and peace, um that that would be a good candidate neighborhood if if uh Pioneer Square Alliance and the residence council agreed for potential expansion.

So too would uh Georgetown in my district or South Park, the Duwamish Valley uh neighborhoods, or I know there was some initial work done in based off the timeline in 2018 in Soto.

It sounds like BIAs are preferred, though not required.

So, you know, like doubling down on that investment in Soto, to the extent BIAs are preferred, and um, you know, expanding to non-BIA areas, including the Duwamish Valley.

Uh it's no secret district one has the highest number of uh lived-in vehicles by far, not by a little by a lot, generally roughly three times more, depending on the reporting period.

So the need is is great.

Um, and uh thank you for uh addressing sort of the elephant in the room there about the the four percent um you know rate, I guess, for uh in the CID ambassadors, 1100 unique individuals encountered, 41 were connected with co-lead.

Uh so appreciate your you know, kind of putting some additional color around that data point because you're right, it is still very low uh overall.

Help me better understand the what constitutes an encounter.

So in the CID example, there were 1,100 unique individuals encountered.

What is like a typical encounter or engagement look like?

Um, well, just to clarify so encounters will look different between the different teams in SNF, right?

Like the work of outreach and the work of ambassadors looks different.

Um, that data is from the WDC ambassador team in the CID, and so what they do is they'll go out and basically provide like uh ongoing presence for their hours of operation, which in the CID I believe is uh eight hours a day, seven days a week.

Um and what they'll do in that time is you know, they have uh they're very well trained in de-escalation, and that de-escalation relies on having relationships with people.

So they'll come out with you know outreach supplies, things that sort of like undergird, like having a conversation with somebody.

Um, and whether it's responding to businesses calling to like help with a situation, provide a de-escalation, or just generally being out there, they'll talk to folks, you know, get to know them, and so that when they can need to do the de-escalation, it's uh John Smith, let's go get a cigarette because we have that relationship.

We know you know what types of things you'll be receptive to.

Um but basically when they talk to somebody in the neighborhood, um they'll log that encounter and they'll have notes about what happened during the encounter.

Sometimes it is just provided outreach supplies, talked about what was happening that day.

Um, and other times it is like a de-escalation.

So it's uh it's an amalgamation of a lot of different types of activities in an encounter, and what we're using it as here is really just like a very like broad, you know, um data point about who's there most often.

Um, and again, um intensive case management and outreach encounters look a little different because they have different goals as programs.

Yeah, I think just speak really quickly to that.

So for us, we'll just differentiate between a contact and an encounter, a contact is we saw you in this space, we saw you today.

Maybe it was just a really quick, like, hey, how are you going?

And an encounter is a more substantial like case management kind of working on your case, your individualized service plan is what we call them.

So your care plan and having a more in-depth behavioral health kind of human services discussion.

But the data that was showed in the slides that's specifically ambassador data, not the case management data.

And I think a value of having the different data sets is is to understand because frequency is a good measure of impact, it's a measure of presence, but for us on our side, we know this person is deeply system involved and very vulnerable and could also impact the community.

So it's different ways of weighing that impact to really understand where we're gonna prioritize very limited resources.

And I'll just add one more thing too.

So I think that's a great point, and that's the reason why that encounter data needs to be balanced with the other parts of the SNF framework, business outreach, doing that hand in hand with BIAs or you know, working with like Marcus, who directly talks to businesses and works with ambassadors who businesses are calling, because it's that qualitative piece mixed in that really helps us understand what's the community experiencing, how do we prioritize.

Thank you.

No further questions, Chair.

All right, thank you.

Councilmember Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, uh to the panel, and thank you for Councilmember Strauss for all your work on this over the many, many years.

Um excited to see uh the efforts um uh making progress in CID.

And one thing I just want to um sort of comment on and would love to hear any response is um, you know, I think what makes uh SNF successful is really that that deep collaboration.

And um I think we also need um you know collaboration amongst um our city departments and uh our uh our public safety providers, uh, you know, including um SPD, you know, I know lead and co-lead uh um, you know, work closely with the police department, um, you know, council uh chair Kettle, you know, I've heard you speak uh quite extensively about sort of the two mindsets, right?

And I do think we continue, you know, it's not just um, you know, casework.

I think uh obviously, uh casework is credit critically incredibly important, um, but it's you know, casework alone, um that there is still a role for law enforcement, and similarly, you know, we know that law enforcement alone can't solve this crisis, and I think we see the best results when we are all rowing the same direction when we're collaborating together.

Um, you know, earlier we're talking about gun violence, and uh, you know, I do think we were seeing better success um about a decade ago when we had really strong uh partnerships, and and I do believe that the targeted enforcement is um or targeted uh um referrals are also important.

And it's similarly on gun violence, it's a small number of folks who are really causing the most impact and that we really need to focus our resources um on them.

Um but similarly, I think with LEED, uh I think there was a strong partnership about a decade ago, and and that fell apart a little bit or just sort of uh after the COVID, after some of the George Floyd protests and a lot of turnover um in SBD.

Uh we weren't funding LEED at the levels uh that I think we needed to, and and I do think we need um there are is always a need for greater resources for our casework, uh, for our housing, for our social services.

That doesn't mean that we should not be collaborating um with law enforcement, and that brings its I think its own benefits.

Um it's it's you know, to Council Member Strauss, it's sort of free, but it's sort of not free.

It requires time, right?

That collaboration, it requires effort.

Um, but I do think we get better results um when we collaborate um and again are working in the same direction.

So any comments just on that aspect of this work.

Um I'll just say, I mean, totally agree.

Um, and we've been having a lot of conversations recently, especially with the CID because of SPD's downtown activation team, like focus in the area.

Um just uh went to West Precinct.

What was it, like a week or two ago with Captain Garth Green and Sergeant Beck to talk through what's SPD doing.

And I think the the idea of the SNF framework with the folks at this table is that we can do more preemptively, you know, whether it's like our BIA partners flagging somebody who is starting to generate 911 calls, and we can try to do something before we reach the point of crisis.

But also, of course, SPD can refer to lead if there is a point of arrest that's necessary.

I know that the neighborhood outreach team has a long history of working hand in hand um to have better outcomes.

So the collaboration is uh built into this at every level, and what you see here is certainly not a comprehensive notion of what we think is uh good for the neighborhoods.

Yeah, I'll just add that I think that that's really one of the protective factors of the levels is that information sharing agreement and dynamic.

As the former outreach worker on Aurora, that's how I started uh in this city working my outreach work.

My clients wanted justice, they wanted care just as much as anybody else, but they have to also be careful about how they share information and how that goes.

That was the original intent of the design is to allow people to information share but also offer them protection, the neighborhood coordinators.

It's not a secret that they're gonna be working with the police, but to what way and in what is that relationship look like?

So that was really the intent behind the levels of care because us as the human service providers have to protect people's privacy, their confidentiality confidentiality, and their rights to health care while also managing the violence that they live through every single day.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Um, I just really want to acknowledge and lift up um the BIAs because I know that a lot of this work actually comes from, and the reason council member Saka we were talking about the BIAs is because the ambassador program was born of BIAs.

Um uh DSA has had the ambassador program everyone knows downtown for a long time, and then of course I've been partnering since I got to the council with the U District, um, Dom Blakeney, um, in the U District partnership, which is our BIA and D4, um, and then Mike Stewart, I know you've been um we've worked together when I was in the mayor's office way back when.

But so um the BIAs have been so instrumental in all the neighborhoods because you know they're not just there, yes, they're there to help small businesses, but they're also have turned into um helpers of the whole neighborhoods um where they are located, and in that way I'm so appreciative of all the BIAs, and I know a lot of this work and this collaboration and partnership was led by the BIA's interest in making sure that the needs of the folks that wound up um in those neighborhoods um were being met.

And I know that the BIAs have have had a um hands-on approach to the collaborative effort, bringing in lead um and co-lead and the other and and the other uh partners, and as well as asking for um resources like outreach um uh uh uh positions, which I know last year I was supportive for the U district to put in that outreach position, which was really um really critical.

And I'll say that no, a lot of the neighborhoods where the BIAs are located are um experiencing a lot of the impacts of folks with high needs um that aren't getting needs met, and I very much appreciate all your collaboration.

I always say when we work together, we get better outcomes, and this is an example and one that we're seeing very much in the district in my district um in the U district because a lot of folks with the opening of the light rail station there.

There's been also a lot of more folk, a lot more folks that have wound up there that have a lot of needs, and I really appreciate everyone this framework I think is born of that that a need that arose, and then all of you working together uh uh with the BIAs, of course, to address that need.

And so I really appreciate that.

That that's um we need this in other neighborhoods as well.

Councilmember Saka.

And um I don't think that the only reason it was BIA led was because they took the initiative and and there are great partners there.

But yes, it doesn't have to be limited to the BIAs, but this idea that within the neighborhoods there's a team of folks working together to meet the needs of the folks that wind up in those neighborhoods that are many times unhoused and that have um uh uh need treatment of some kind, whether it's mental health services or drug addiction um or other um it's really important and it's really powerful and and I am very supportive and um it has grown over time as folks have gotten together to meet the need, and so I'll say last year um I also put into the budget this um orca pod, which was medication services for these folks that wind up um in these neighborhoods similar to the um uh orca uh pod that the medication ban that Orca um has downtown similar uh similar uh service for folks in the U district in Ballard and up on Capitol Hill because we're just seeing more of that need in those neighborhoods.

So, all that to say I've I've been partnering with the U District on this for a long time as well.

I'm very supportive.

Um last year on the budget, I I added some resources, and I'd love to see more happening in the other neighborhoods too, Councilmember Saka, uh that needed because it really is is a great model, everyone working together and really meeting the needs of folks.

And I do think Councilmember Lynn, you're right, the lead there were some challenges post the pandemic, and I would love to see LEED doing more of this and also working with SPD because there should be warm handoffs um when folks wind up uh having a police contact.

I know the idea was to make sure that lead do the diversion piece, and I think that can be much improved because I don't think the warm warm handoffs are happening like they should, and I want to continue the conversation about that as well, which is a little bit separate from here, but not too separate because those folks wind up in the neighborhood rather than directly to lead.

And I know Sam, you and I have talked about the importance of that, and I think we are aligned, and so how do we help make that happen?

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Council Member Rivera.

I just want to thank uh the entire team to include your late add-on.

Uh Councilmember Strauss uh for coming here, it's really important.

Um I always say, you know, um a challenge we have in the city that yes, we tend to look out for our neighbors in crisis, and you're doing that, but we don't necessarily look out for our neighborhoods in crisis, and um, and that's key, and so bringing these neighborhoods into the program the way you are is really important, and so thank you for this.

And um, you know, it hits the different pieces in terms of like what we're trying to do because this is obviously in the same as I like to say, and um, but it's also in some of these other areas in terms of you know bringing on uh these capabilities, and I'm really interested in you know, in public safety coordinator and safety ambassador um from my own experience working in the Queen Anne and Magnolia Interbay, uh Uptown Westlake kind of neighborhood.

Uh so but I won't belabor that because we're past our time, so I really do appreciate your coming uh today.

And so I will conclude by saying we have reached the end of today's meeting agenda.

If there's any further business come before the court uh before the court the committee before we adjourn, I think a lot of stuff going on legal lately.

Um hearing no further business to come before the committee.

We are adjourned.