Category: Equity

Addiction, City Council, Equity, homelessness, Police, Transportation

Afternoon Fizz: Encampment Removal Recommendations, Transportation Equity, and Police Testing

Council members say no to homelessness recommendations; equitable transportation advocates decry proposals to cut community-based programs; and police recruits won’t get a chance to take an easier hiring test any time soon.

1. Seattle City Councilmembers Joy Hollingsworth, Bob Kettle, and Sara Nelson declined to sign off on a set of recommendations for responding to encampments at a King County Board of Health meeting yesterday; the recommendations, created by the Board of Health’s homelessness and health work group, include limits on encampment removals, adopting harm-reduction policies such as a “housing first” approach to people with addiction, and increasing access to mental health and substance disorder treatment.

“If we do not remove [encampments], resolve, whatever it is, we are complicit in allowing a situation where more and more people fall into or [fall] deeper into addiction and chronic homelessness because their lives are further disrupted,” Nelson said. “I think that it’s also an issue of nomenclature— ‘forced removal’ versus ‘resolution’… so much depends on the words in the statement, and so therefore, for these reasons, I will not be signing on.”

Kettle, who represents downtown, Queen Anne, and Magnolia, said, “I’ve often said that we need to lead with compassion, we need to start with the empathy, but then we also have to have the wisdom to understand that we have the broader community to also look after.” Kettle praised the work of Mayor Bruce Harrell’s encampment removal team, the Unified Care Team, and said he liked the model at the Salmon Bay tiny house village and RV safe lot in Interbay, which “gives people the ability to basically graduate from the RV to a tiny home.”

King County Councilmembers Teresa Mosqueda and Jorge Baron, who are both on the Board of Health, signed on to the “call to action.”

2. In response to proposals to cut funding for community-initiated transportation safety projects from the 2024 transportation levy, the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Transportation Equity Workgroup wrote a letter to the council saying the proposed cuts “will exclude your marginalized constituents who rely on a safe and accessible transportation system for their everyday needs.”

PubliCola reported this week on amendments by Councilmembers Rob Saka, Cathy Moore, and Sara Nelson to scale back or (in the case of Moore’s amendment) eliminate a proposed new participatory budgeting program aimed at building 16 projects identified and “co-created” by historically marginalized communities. Moore and Saka proposed moving funds from the proposed new program, known as the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnership Program, into a separate fund for projects council members themselves would select.

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“After expressing our concerns at the previous two council meetings through public comments and letters, we are disappointed in your lack of commitments to the City of Seattle’s Race and Social Justice Initiative (RSJI) through cuts to equitable investments that center low-income, BIPOC, immigrant, refugee, disabled, and aging communities,” the workgroup wrote.

“Community-driven projects take time in order to engage those who have been historically disengaged from city planning processes due to barriers such as: language access, lack of trust, and capacity. Relying on district-level decision-making only, as outlined in councilmember amendments, does not adequately address these barriers to full participation, and risks neglecting community-identified safety concerns in underserved areas.”

3. The president of the company that created Seattle’s police officer exams, which some City Council members have suggested replacing with a test that has a higher passing rate, appeared at a meeting of the independent Public Safety Civil Service Commission on Thursday to explain how the test is designed to predict future job performance. The Seattle Police Department began using the test, created by the National Testing Network in collaboration with SPD, in the wake of a consent decree by the US Department of Justice in 2012.

To “validate” that the test predicts job performance, NTN president Carl Swander told the commission, the company compares police officers’ test scores, which are ranked, with their subsequent on-the-job performance evaluations. Swander said by demonstrating that “at [a higher score level], people are more likely to do better than at [a lower] score level,” NTN can create a “cut score”—the maximum passing score—that weeds out people who are obviously unqualified to be police officers.

Other tests, like the Public Safety Testing exam that City Council President Sara Nelson has suggested as an alternative to the NTN test, don’t “actually substantiate… that you’re that what you’re doing is predictive of job performance,” Swander said. Ninety percent of applicants who take the PST test pass it, compared to a 73 pass rate for the NTN exam.

PSCSC director Andrea Scheele also confirmed that if Seattle did contract with PST in the future, it would have to create a custom exam for Seattle, which “eliminates or reduces, at least, the benefit of working with that company.” Nelson and other proponents of changing the hiring test have suggested that switching to PST would allow applicants to submit their test results to multiple agencies at the same time.

A report the commission issued earlier this week notes that the PST test “is not an option” because the company “does not want to provide police testing services for the City of Seattle right now.”

 

City Council, Equity, Mayor Harrell, neighborhoods, Transportation

In Transportation Levy Amendments, Councilmembers Saka and Moore Propose Cutting Program to Fund Community-Led Safety Projects

By Erica C. Barnett

Seattle City Council members have proposed stripping away funding proposed as part of the 2024 transportation levy for small, community-initiated transportation safety projects and giving themselves the authority to decide which neighborhood projects get funded in their districts.

The program, known as the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnership Program (NSPP) is an expansion of an existing participatory budgeting program that gives neighborhood residents a direct say in which small-scale local projects the city funds. The current program, called the Neighborhood Street Fund, has funded work on the Garfield Superblock, safety and connectivity improvements on the Delridge Greenway, street lighting and traffic calming at Bailey Gatzert Elementary, and dozens of other projects.

According to SDOT spokesman Ethan Bergerson, the new program would “co-create safety projects with residents to directly respond to emerging community requests for safety improvements. The community engagement would go beyond the nomination and selection process of the Neighborhood Street Fund, and would also incorporate ongoing and iterative neighborhood engagement similar to our Home Zone Program,” an equity-focused neighborhood street program.

The proposal came out of the work of the Transportation Equity Workgroup, which recommended that SDOT “include a participatory budgeting process in the next transportation levy package” specifically to “meet the priorities of BIPOC and vulnerable communities.”

Harrell’s levy proposal included $41 million for the neighborhood-based projects, plus $14 million for a new spending category called District Projects, which would fund emergent safety concerns and requests” in each council district.  Transportation levy committee chair Rob Saka proposed an amendment that would cut funding for neighborhood-initiated projects to $25.5 million—a 38 percent reduction—and increasing the District Projects fund to $21 million.

At the levy committee meeting on Tuesday, Saka said he considered the new District Projects program a mere “rebranding” that would accomplish the same purpose as the Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnerships program; the only difference, he said, was that instead of community members, “the seven individual council members would decide” how to spend the money. “At that high level, it’s intended for smaller-scale capital projects, so there’s alignment and consensus” even if “we have competing visions right now, currently, for what that looks like and who specifically decides on the neighborhood-initiated safety, neighborhood street funding.”

Earlier this month, Saka abruptly shut down a presentation by SDOT transportation equity program manager Annya Pintak, which Bergerson said would have been about “how the levy proposal is integrated with the City’s Race and Social Justice Initiative,” telling SDOT director Greg Spotts that the council already had “a good baseline on that.”

A proposed amendment by Councilmember Cathy Moore would go further than Saka’s, eliminating the entire community-initiated program and adding $21 million to the District Project fund, tripling it to a total of $42 million. Moore had to leave when her amendments came up and did not discuss this amendment when she returned.

Not everyone on the council supports cutting or eliminating the participatory budgeting program, which has been around since 2007.

Council member Tammy Morales proposed an amendment to Saka’s proposal that would restore funding for the neighborhood-initiated projects program to the $41 million in Harrell’s initial proposal by reducing the District Projects fund to $7 million.

“I know that as district council members, we know our districts best, but the truth is, we can’t know every corner of our neighborhood because we don’t live on every corner of our neighborhood and see how traffic moves around,” Morales said. “So this funding would allow residents to work directly with SDOT to implement transportation solutions directly that directly affect them

Council president Sara Nelson also proposed an amendment to Saka’s proposal that would reduce the new District Projects program to the $14 million in Harrell’s, but would do so by restoring the old Neighborhood Street Fund, rather than increasing the size of the new participatory budgeting program.

“I am putting this forward as a way to bring [the Neighborhood Street Fund] back,” Nelson said. “I am open to conversation about this. I’m not completely wed to this. I would like to understand more what the new program will do versus what the old program did, but I’m just saying that [the Street Fund] seemed to be something that was working well.”

In a letter to the council, Harrell, and SDOT, the co-chairs of the Transportation Equity Workgroup, Jessica E. Salvador & LaKeisha Jones, said the work group was “disappointed to see the recommendations from Committee Chair Saka to divert funds from community to district-level decision making.

“Diverting the $15.5M from Neighborhood-Initiated Safety Partnership Program would also divert us from our goal of equitable investment,” they wrote. “Equitable investment means that we are better able to serve communities by creating programs or initiatives that can be quickly implemented. Diverting the decision-making processes from neighborhoods is the opposite of empowerment. We need to ensure that our decisions are driven by community, for community.”

City Council, education, Equity, Transportation

Spending Money Earmarked for Student Mental Health Will Require Action from Skeptical Council; Saka Abruptly Cuts Off Presentation on Transportation Equity

1. Seattle City Councilmembers, many of them still focused on undoing the legacy of the previous, more progressive council, turned their attention this week to an increase in the JumpStart payroll tax passed in the final days of budget deliberations last year.

The 0.1 percent increase, sponsored by former councilmember Kshama Sawant (with current council members Sara Nelson and Dan Strauss voting “no”), is supposed to flow into the city’s Department of Education and Early Learning to “expand educational supports at Seattle Public Schools, prioritizing mental health services including, but not limited to, school-based mental health counselors and culturally specific and responsive programming from community-based organizations.”

That won’t happen, however, without followup legislation expanding the possible uses of the JumpStart tax to include mental health supports for students—and until then, money will keep accruing, unspent.

The council and Mayor Bruce Harrell have already signaled that they plan to amend JumpStart, which is supposed to pay for affordable housing, Equitable Development Initiative projects, and Green New Deal investments, to free up money to solve a general-fund deficit of around $260 million. (The deficit has grown, among other reasons, because of a recently adopted contract with the city’s police guild giving officers retroactive raises of 24 percent).

During a budget committee meeting this week, Strauss said the council did no outreach to the school district before passing the increase for mental health programming, and new Councilmember Maritza Rivera expressed skepticism about the city taking on “a newer line of business” that they had no expertise in. The council previously added $4 million, over two years, for mental health services in schools, with $250,000 of that earmarked for Ingraham High School, the site of a 2022 shooting.

Rivera, whose kids go to Ingraham, said she had “no idea how the money was implemented, how well it’s working. It’s a new line of business, [and] there are no mental health experts at the department or at the city. There’s [Seattle-King County] Public Health, but I’m not sure how plugged-in Public Health was to that [decision], so definitely a lot of questions here.”

Yesterday’s shooting at Garfield High School will make it harder, politically, for council members obsessed with undoing Sawant’s legacy to allow the school mental-health funding (which was prompted by the Ingraham shootingl) to lapse, but anything’s possible; if the city doesn’t allocate the money this year, via the regular midyear budget process, it would go back into the JumpStart fund and be allocated among the current spending categories.

Employers have been paying the increased tax—which is based on the pay of the highest-paid employees at the city’s largest companies—since the beginning of the year.

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2. During a meeting of the council’s special transportation levy committee this week, committee chair Rob Saka abruptly cut off a presentation from the Seattle Department of Transportation about a proposed task force that will, if the levy passes in November, be charged with creating policies to guide levy spending on sidewalks, bridges, and street paving, with a focus on equity and financial sustainability.

SDOT director Greg Spotts had just given a brief overview of the levy and was handing the mic off to SDOT’s transportation equity program manager, Annya Pintak, to talk about efforts to integrate the city’s race and social justice goals into the levy.

That’s when Saka jumped in, telling Spotts, “I’m gonna cut you off here for just a moment. I feel like we have a good baseline on that. And so, you know, you were invited here today with the specific purpose and intent [of] talking about the task force. So I encourage you to direct your comments and narrow them to the task force, and I believe slide 14 is… where that starts.”

A third presenter, levy program manager Megan Shepherd, jumped past Pintak’s presentation to her own slides, leaving Pintak—the only person of color at the presenters’ table—sitting silently (and awkwardly) at the table for the rest of the presentation.

Whatever Saka’s reason for rushing SDOT along, nixing the equity section of the department’s presentation didn’t save much time; the whole agenda item took up roughly 15 minutes of an almost two-and-a-half-hour meeting that began and ended with lengthy remarks by Saka.

City Council, Development, Equity

Council Imposes New Reporting Requirements on Community-Led Development Projects

“Please don’t characterize us as misinformed. We are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects.”

By Erica C. Barnett

Supporters of the city’s Equitable Development Initiative, which helps fund organizations by and for communities of color, held a press conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning to oppose a budget amendment from Councilmember Maritza Rivera that will require the city’s Office of Planning and Development to create a detailed report on all EDI-funded projects by September 24.  This report, according to the new amendment, must include a “status update” on all EDI projects, and include, “where knowable, potential future funding requests for the identified projects.”

The council passed the amendment 8-1 this afternoon, with Councilmember Tammy Morales voting no.

At the press conference before the vote, Morales said the council was subjecting the EDI program to a greater level of scrutiny than other city-funded projects, and requiring first-time developers and small community nonprofits to complete large capital projects faster than private-market developers.

“We are staring down the barrel of an austerity budget,” Morales added. “And what we learned this past week is that when budget cuts are discussed, programs that support Black and brown communities are always first on the chopping block, and that’s not going to stand.”

As we’ve reported, the amendment the council adopted Tuesday was a significant downgrade from a proposal that could have yanked funding for existing and new EDI projects, from Interim Community Development’s ongoing renovation of Chinatown/International District community hub Bush Gardens to a child care center at El Centro de la Raza’s Four Amigos affordable housing development in Columbia City.

Originally, Rivera proposed placing a freeze on all of this year’s EDI funding—around $25 million—unless the city spent all of the funds previously allocated to projects funded by EDI, but still unspent, by September 24—more than $53 million. As the leaders of many organizations that are currently building EDI-funded projects have pointed out, this would have been an essentially impossible feat, given that the initiative funds dozens of multi-year projects that are in various stages of development.

If the programs failed to meet this goal, according to the text of Rivera’s original amendment, “the $25.3 million appropriation will lapse at year-end and become part of the 2025 beginning fund balance” and “could be reallocated in the 2025 budget.”

Explaining the need for a new reporting requirement, Rivera said she was concerned that the Office of Planning and Community Development, where EDI is housed, “has not shown an appropriate level of accountability or transparency regarding the EDI program and its ability to track and complete these important projects in community.”

In addition, Rivera suggested, the city is sitting on funding it needs to get out the door right away. “OPCD has spent, on average, only 25 percent of EDI’s total budget every year for the last five years,” Rivera said, holding up a chart suggesting that if this trend continues, the program will have $90 million in unspent funds by 2026.

Development projects have been delayed across the board since the beginning of 2020 due to supply-chain issues, higher construction, materials, and labor costs, and other factors that are not limited to community-based developers.

Community groups, including some who helped develop the EDI program, have spent the week and a half since Rivera put her original amendment online trying to explain to her how it would impact them. Rivera has responded by accusing unnamed forces of running a “disinformation” campaign that had “misinformed” community groups into thinking their funding was at risk.

Rivera’s colleague Bob Kettle backed her up on Tuesday. “At no time were the carryforward dollars or this year’s budget at risk, but the emails and the communication [council members received] had that point front and center,” Kettle said. “So where does this miscommunication or disinformation originate from or how does it get pushed? I don’t know. Some may say this is politics, but I think it contributes to the lack of civility and the ability to have a full public discourse.”

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Karen Toering, representing the EDI-funded Black and Tan Hall in Hillman City, said the council members were incorrect when they said community groups didn’t understand Rivera’s original legislation. “Please don’t characterize us as misinformed, because we are very informed about the work that needs to happen with our projects,” Toering said. Instead of imposing additional reporting requirements, she added, “What you could do is build more capacity for EDI to do the work that you’re asking them to do.”

Representatives from groups that have completed, or are in the process of developing, capital projects that received funding from the eight-year-old program said EDI is being subject to far more scrutiny than other items that carry forward in the city’s budget from year to year, such as funding for police positions that SPD acknowledges it can’t fill but for which funding carries over into the following year’s budget every year.

“The city continues to allocate $41.3 million to the Seattle Police Department for police positions that have not and cannot be filled,” Puget Sound SAGE director Aretha Basu said at Tuesday’s press conference. “And this money is allowed to carry over year after year after year. So explain to me how our communities and our programs are getting nickeled and dimed while the police department’s budget grows in the midst of such a massive budget deficit. How is that equity?”

Historically, funding for SPD’s “ghost” positions has been used to pay for other SPD priorities, such as a (recently scuttled) acoustic gunshot surveillance system and overtime for officers to provide traffic control at events. In 2022, the council eliminated 80 of these vacant positions (out of 240 at the time), a move now-Council President Sara Nelson claimed would discourage people from applying for jobs as police.

As community advocates, including Toering, pointed out on Tuesday, the city has already effectively frozen EDI funding this year. When Mayor Bruce Harrell imposed a partial hiring freeze in January, he also directed city departments to hold off on issuing requests for proposals (part of the application process for city funds) for projects above $1 million, including those funded through EDI.

At the time, mayoral spokesman Jamie Housen told PubliCola the mayor’s office was “seeking to review these in context of all projects and programs and to provide a complete understanding of upcoming financial commitments – this does not mean these dollars will not go out the door.”

Nearly five months later, the city’s planning department has not received the go-ahead to spend the money. We have asked the mayor’s office for more information about the status of this year’s $24 million in EDI funding and will update this post when we hear back.

City Council, Equity

Rivera Backs Off on Amendment That Threatened Dozens of Anti-Displacement Programs

By Erica C. Barnett

In a late-afternoon announcement Friday, Seattle City Councilmember Maritza Rivera announced she is pulling a proposed budget proviso that threatened the future of dozens of projects funded by the city’s Equitable Development Initiative, the city’s largest anti-displacement program. Rivera’s new amendment “requests that the Office of Planning and Community Development submit a status report for the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) grant program in the 2024 Adopted Budget.”

On Tuesday, advocates for EDI-funded programs filled council chambers to capacity as they waited to testify against Rivera’s proposal. EDI funds help community groups that have not previously developed projects with funding for site acquisition, capacity building, and other costs; since 2016, when the program started, EDI has funded mixed-use housing developments, supported arts organizations, and helped small businesses expand and stay in their communities.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, that would almost certainly be its impact. In addition to requiring a report from OPCD, Rivera’s original amendment would have required OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24—a virtually impossible task, given that capital projects take years, not weeks or months. If any of the funds remained unspent, this year’s funding, more than $25 million, would be absorbed back into the city’s budget.

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Specifically, Rivera’s original amendment “impose[d] a proviso1 on $25.3 million allocated for the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program in the 2024 Adopted Budget. … Council would consider lifting the proviso via ordinance after the Office of Planning and Community Development (OPCD) accomplishes the following: (1) expends the proposed 2023 carryforward amount of $53.5 million; and (2) provides a status update report to the City Council on the existing list of projects.” The “transmittal of legislation to lift the proviso,” the original proposal continues, “should occur no later than September 24, when the Council anticipates transmittal of the Executive’s proposed 2024 Year-End Supplemental Budget Ordinance.”

If the conditions aren’t met in time, Rivera’s original proposal says, “the $25.3 million appropriation will lapse at year-end and become part of the 2025 beginning fund balance.”

Rivera, who has never acknowledged that her proposal amounted to anything more than a request for information, has said the people who opposed her original amendment were victims of “disinformation” from unspecified sources. In her statement today, she continued to insist that her proposal would not have put EDI programs at any risk. “As I said earlier this week, the ongoing projects were never at risk, but I understand that stakeholders needed a strong message of support for the EDI program. I look forward to continued engagement with community,” Rivera said.

City Council, Development, Equity

Blaming Blowback on “Disinformation,” Rivera Postpones Vote on Future of Equitable Development Initiative for One Week
Dian Ferguson, director of the Central Area Senior Center, was one of more than 150 people who testified on Tuesday.

By Erica C. Barnett

On Tuesday, the Seattle City Council voted to postpone a vote on Councilmember Maritza Rivera’s last-minute amendment to freeze 2024 funding for the city’s largest anti-displacement program, the seven-year-old Equitable Development Initiative, until next week, ostensibly so that Rivera can “correct disinformation that was irresponsibly given to community about the proposed amendment.”

“I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized,” Rivera said, describing her proposal as a mere request for a “status report” from the city’s Office of Planning and Community Development on projects funded by the initiative, which helps pay (among other things) for early-stage development costs and technical assistance for projects proposed by community groups that have limited development experience.

Although Rivera claimed her proviso—a freeze on funding until a later council vote—wouldn’t defund any current EDI projects, she failed to acknowledge the most impactful element of the legislation: In addition to requesting a report on current projects, Rivera’s amendment would require OPCD to spend all the money allocated to the program in previous years, a total of $53.5 million, by September 24.

If that doesn’t happen, according to the text of Rivera’s amendment (below) and the staff analysis attached to the proposal, the council could not hold a vote to lift the proviso and the money for the EDI projects would go back into the general fund, where it could be used to close an estimated $250 million budget deficit.

Because capital projects take years, not months, the effect of the amendment would be to cripple projects that are already underway. “Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer,” Councilmember Tammy Morales, a longtime EDI supporter, said. “But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program, so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.”

Rivera’s proposal went up online the Friday afternoon before the long Memorial Day weekend, giving representatives from the dozens of community groups that would be impacted by the loss of funding just three days to mobilize against the proposal. On Tuesday, they turned out in numbers, spilling out of council chambers and into the Bertha Knight Landes room on the first floor of City Hall while they waited to speak.

Supporters of EDI, many of them from organizations that participate in the program, made up a large majority of those who testified (the remainder were mostly gig workers who came to ask the council not to cut their wages, a decision the council also decided to punt to a later date.) Speakers described how the program had enabled their organizations to buy property for a future mixed-use development (Quynh Pham, Friends of Little Saigon), make progress toward reopening a legendary International District institution (Karen Akada Sakata, Bush Garden), and renovate a building that serves as an important community gathering space in the Central District (Dian Ferguson, Central Area Senior Center.)

“I actually see the amendment close to being redlining, and we don’t need to go back to times when things were redlined,” Ferguson said. With the help of an EDI grant, she said, her organization “has helped African American communities, BIPOC communities, young people. What we are trying to avoid is displacement.”

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During public comment, Rivera rarely looked up from her computer, even when local elected officials—four members of the Duwamish Tribal Council, including Chairwoman Cecile Hanson—spoke against the proposal.

In a statement after the meeting, Rivera claimed the hundreds of people who wrote emails and testified simply didn’t understand her legislation.  proposal “The amendment does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program.does not cut the Equitable Development Initiative (EDI) program,” Rivera said. “I am deeply disappointed that the objective of this amendment has been grossly mischaracterized.”

Morales, whose Southeast Seattle district includes the majority of the projects that receive EDI funding, tried to shoot down the delay. “Frankly, if you want to propose legislation that rolls back commitments made to black and brown communities, at least have the courage to stand by your legislation and vote on it, or acknowledge that you made a mistake and withdraw it,” Morales said.

Noting that it can take six or more years for even experienced developers to put together funding to buy a site and build a project, Morales added that she was not surprised that many EDI projects take years. ” Development projects take time, and if you’re not an experienced developer, it takes longer. But that doesn’t mean that we withhold funding from your program so that you can’t continue to execute on your program. It means that we make sure you get what you need to do it right.

Rivera said she plans to reintroduce her amendment at next Monday’s full city council meeting.