Speaker 2: City council agenda?
Speaker 0: Item one Council 4119.
Speaker 2: 757 Amending Ordinance 126000.
Speaker 0: Which adopted the.
Speaker 2: 2020 budget and changing appropriations to.
Speaker 0: The Human Services Department, the Executive.
Speaker 2: Department's Office of Economic Development.
Speaker 0: And Budget Control levels, and from various funds in the.
Speaker 2: Budget for the purpose of providing financial assistance to.
Speaker 0: Small businesses and ratifying confirming certain prior acts.
Speaker 2: Thank you to the Clerk. This Council bill will require five votes in the affirmative in order for it to pass. What I'm going to do is I'm going to move to pass the council bill. Then I'm going to ask for a second. And once that second has been made, we do have council central staff on the line available for questions. I will go ahead and suspend the rules to allow for questions to be directed to council central staff if any of the council members have it, or if the sponsor, which is council member Tammy Morales, wants to provide council central staff with an opportunity to speak to the bill as well. So I'm going to go ahead and do both of those motions. I'm going to then allow Councilmember Morales to address the bill, and then we will go ahead and take a vote on any amendments and the substantive bill. So I'm going to move to pass Council Bill 119757.
Speaker 0: Second. Second.
Speaker 2: It's been moved and Sanjay intends to pass the bill. Again, council members, please note that Yolanda HOA, Amy Gore and Ali Bonacci of Council Central staff have joined this meeting. Should you have any questions? I will move to suspend the rules if there are any questions for central staff after the prime sponsor speaks to the bill. Councilmember Morales, would you like to address this bill?
Speaker 0: Yes, thank you. Council President Gonzalez, welcome back.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 0: If I might take just a moment, I do want to acknowledge that the staff at the Office of Economic Development have been working tirelessly, as have all of our first line frontline folks who work for the city. So I do want to acknowledge the hard work that they are putting in to help us as we get sometimes , you know, hourly new information about this crisis. You know, our OPD staff are hearing from small businesses who are worried about their employees, worried about their own businesses, and they are dealing themselves now with some of the secondary trauma from hearing those stories over and over again. So I want to I want to thank our city employees who are helping us navigate through what is a really unprecedented time. And I want to thank the mayor and Director Lee for getting this bill to us quickly. This is an expansion of the existing business stabilization fund that we have at the Office of Economic Development. It is shifting about $1.4 million in community development block grant funds to provide emergency working capital grants to small businesses, really to micro-businesses who have five or fewer employees, because these funds are HUD funds. They require that the household income of the recipients be below 80% of area median income. So that's just a little bit of context for who will be receiving these grants. And they are roughly about, you know, up to $10,000 to provide some sort of relief for for working capital and being able to to pay employees or pay rent or. Manage as best I can.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you. Councilmember Morales. Anything else you'd like to add before I go to the next step?
Speaker 0: No, I don't think so.
Speaker 2: Okay. Thank you so much. If there is no objection, the council rules will be suspended to have central staff address the council. Hearing. No objection. The rules are suspended. I wanted to open up the line really quickly just to provide counsel, central staff, an opportunity to add anything to the remarks that have already been made by Councilmember Morales as relates to Council Bill 119757. I will hand it over to Yolanda, Amy and Allie in the event that there is anything else that you want to add. And if there isn't, just indicate so.
Speaker 0: Hi. This is Yolanda. So you want to cancel central staff? Um, I would just add that, um, the appropriations from the Human Services Department, um, are to do a there are a couple of sources from the Human Services Department which, um, any could speak to in more detail. Um, and I can also speak to some of the discussions we've had with the Office of Economic Development in terms of how they are, how they are planning to distribute these funds. Because there is, um, as Councilmember Morales has noted, extremely high demand for these. And so, um, there are and so the Office of Economic Development has been accepting thousands of applications at this point and is screening them right now and is closing the application window next Wednesday. So please let everyone know. And they are also conducting outreach to ensure that everyone has a chance to apply. And they have noted that their intention is to prioritize, uh, businesses and these small micro-enterprises, as they call them, in neighborhoods at high risk of displacement. And so there, there will be a process by which they will select those who are eligible and, um, and kind of weighted towards those businesses in those locations.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Liza. Amy, is there anything you'd like to add?
Speaker 0: No, I don't have anything to add, but I'm happy to answer any questions that councilmembers have.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you, Ali. Anything you'd like to add before I go through the process of asking if there are questions?
Speaker 0: No, I don't have anything to add. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much. I'm going to go ahead. And just to avoid the that the casualty of conference calls, that is the cattle call. The question I'm going to actually call each of your names by order of districts. And if you have questions, please pose your questions at the time that I call your name. And if you don't have a question, just so you don't have any questions, but I'm going to go through the list kind of in a roll call fashion to try to keep this orderly. So I'm going to start with Councilmember Herbold. Do you have any questions for council central staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: I would love it if the council said to staff or the viewing public and the press who might be reporting on this can just very quickly go through what the source, what the this is. These are CDBG funds, their CDBG funds that were program for another purpose. If we could just go quickly through what those purposes were and how the departments are going to accommodate.
Speaker 2: Whether or not it's.
Speaker 0: There's no need for those for those purposes as originally anticipated or there's another source. Thank you, Councilmember Humble. This is a of council central staff to answer that question. Approximately $400,000 of the funds in this council bill are from HST for 2019 underspend of program administration funds. An additional 1 million of the funds that are being transferred by this council bill are from the Human Human Services Department's Community Facilities Program. And the intention of that funding was for Community Care Facility for Seniors as part of the North Lot Project at the Park Med Center in Beacon Hill. And what we have heard is that the project isn't quite ready to use those funds in 2020 and is okay with us using those funds for a different purpose, and that we believe that in 2021 and 2022 or in 2022, we will have other CDBG funds that we can devote to that project in a more useful time to the project. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Thank you, Amy, for that explanation. Councilmember, did that answer your question?
Speaker 0: It absolutely did. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Okay. Do you have any other questions for council central staff for the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: I do not.
Speaker 2: Great cabinet move to Councilmember Morales. I know that you are the prime sponsor, but in the event that you have additional questions that you'd like council central staff to run through, I'd offer you the opportunity to do that now. And if you don't, just let me know that you don't.
Speaker 0: Well, I do have one question. Yolanda was looking at that. My understanding is that the intent is to use kind of a lottery system for awarding, because we have so many people, so many small businesses who have applied. I wonder if there's any additional information about how that process will work. So I can tell you that the the lottery is going to be a weighted lottery system so that, um, the Office of Economic Development has stated that they are target and their goal is to that 80% of these awards go to those neighborhoods that are at highest risk of just businesses in neighborhoods that are at highest risk of displacement.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Yolanda, any follow up questions to that? Councilman Morales.
Speaker 0: I'm good. Thank you. Great.
Speaker 2: Okay. We're going to move on to council members want. Do you have any questions for council central staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: I don't. Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Councilmember Peterson. Any questions for council central staff or the prime sponsor or just comments in general?
Speaker 1: No, thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember Suarez, any questions or comments for council central staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: Nope.
Speaker 2: All right. Thank you. And Councilmember Strauss. Same. Any questions or comments for council central staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 1: Not at this time. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. Councilmember Lewis. Any questions for council central staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: Not currently. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Thank you. And Councilmember Mosqueda. Any questions for Council Central's staff or the prime sponsor?
Speaker 0: No, I'm good. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Great. Thank you so much. To cancel central staff for that description of the bill and for the follow up answers to some of the questions. And thank you to Councilman Morales for your attention to this detail. I know that economic developments, particularly protection of small businesses in our community, are very important to you and that you have continue to prioritize those issues. And this is certainly an important moment to continue doing that work. I also understand that you have an amendment to the bill, so we will go ahead and consider your amendment first and then we will go ahead and vote on the underlying bill if and once it is amended. So I will open up the floor to you, Councilman Morales, to make your motion to amend the bill.
Speaker 0: So thank you. So as as Yolanda said, we do have lots of businesses who are very worried about how they're going to survive this crisis. And this is going to be an important fund to help mitigate for a couple of hundred businesses. So I understand that we need to move quickly. And I worry that in our case to react to the crisis that we might set in motion some systems that will perpetuate some of the inequities in our city. So I just want to make sure that we have an equitable process for awarding these funds and any other funds that we make available to Seattle in response to this crisis. So we have, I think, about 36,000 small businesses in Seattle. Thousands of them are owned by people who don't speak English. Applications for this fund were available online, but only in English for the first couple of days. So if you speak English, you can fill out the application online and hit send. But it was a couple of days before they were made available in other languages and the online application had to be printed out and mailed in or handed over to to an outreach worker. So, you know, when we're when those who don't speak English have extra barriers put in place in order to participate, we know that we've got some some issues. And I know that there wasn't any mal intent here. What we have instead is a small example of how, you know, very often our city government operates with blinders on to anyone who isn't part of the dominant culture. And we really have to change the way our city functions so that everyone has access to these resources. So rather than slow down the disbursement of this particular fund, I'm asking that we hear back from OED this summer about how the funds were distributed. You know, how many applicants did we get from people who don't speak English? How many folks were awarded who don't speak English? And just making sure that, you know, non-English speakers also get access to these opportunities. So if we're going to live up to our recent social justice goals, we really have to be thoughtful about infusing these principles into every aspect of our work, and especially as we create these emergency responses to the COVID 19 crisis. I think it's really incumbent upon us to make sure that we aren't perpetuating these systems of inequity, even if it means that we slow down our response a little bit. We really need to make sure that people of color, low income folks, limited English speakers have access to the information they need so that they can receive emergency relief, too. And so that is the spirit in which this amendment is offered. It is not a requirement that we provide this report. It is merely a request that we hear back from them about how this money was distributed.
Speaker 2: Thank you for that description of the amendment. Councilman Morales, I still need you to move the amendment.
Speaker 0: I move that we adopt Amendment one.
Speaker 2: Great. So there has been a motion made and it's been seconded. So Councilman Morales is already, as the sponsor of this amendment, has already spoken to it. Are there any comments on the amendment? Hearing no further comments on the amendment. Will the clerk call the roll on the amendment?
Speaker 0: Council Member Strauss.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Herbold, I. Councilmember Juarez. Guy Council member Lewis. I. Councilmember Morales. I council member must get a. I. Councilmember Peterson.
Speaker 1: I.
Speaker 0: Council members who want. I. Council President Gonzalez.
Speaker 2: High.
Speaker 0: Nine in favor and then opposed.
Speaker 2: The motion carries and the bill is amended. Are there any further comments on the bill as amended? All right. Hearing no comments, will the clerk call the roll on the passage of the bill as amended?
Speaker 0: Councilmember Strauss.
Speaker 1: I like.
Speaker 0: Councilmember Herbold. I. Councilmember Suarez. I don't remember lewis. I. Councilmember Morales. Hi. Councilmember Mesquita. I. Councilmember Peterson.
Speaker 1: Hi.
Speaker 0: Council members to launch. I. Council. President Gonzalez, I. Nine in favor. None at home.
Speaker 2: The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf? All right. We're going to go ahead and move to item two. Will the clerk please read item to.
Speaker 0: Agenda item two? Constable 119 758.
AN ORDINANCE amending Ordinance 126000, which adopted the 2020 Budget; changing appropriations to the Human Services Department, the Executive Department’s Office of Economic Development, and budget control levels, and from various funds in the Budget, for the purpose of providing financial assistance to small businesses; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.