A MOTION relating to identifying the future allocation of Puget Sound Taxpayers Accountability Account proceeds to priority educational areas and requesting the executive to develop plans to allocate proceeds within the priority educational areas.
Is there anyone else president who'd like to offer public comment today? If some of you approach one of the podiums saying no one will close the public hearing. And in 2015, the legislature, as part of the Sound Transit three funding package, directed approximately $318 million to King County to improve educational outcomes for students within King County. Those funds will start flowing into the county next year and we anticipate the funding will continue for a total of 15 years pending legislative allocation. After extensive work, public testimony, public engagement today we begin considering legislation that will frame the allocation of these resources. We have a motion in front of us that will serve as a framework for the policy document that will need to be adopted to direct this. And through the course of our discussion, the Council will determine the key elements and priorities with a overview of where we're at and the legislation before us. We have Jeff Mumm, Chief Policy Officer, to give the briefing. Good afternoon, Jeff. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, ma'am, policy officer to the King County Council. So, as you described, the Puget Sound Taxpayer Accountability Account is funded with an offset fee on donations with three projects we have and state law caps sound Transit's payment to the account at $518 Million over that over the course of those projects, I'm going to skip over the background information. And first, just to frame the discussion, I'd like to draw your attention to page 20 of the staff report and then page 20. This shows the there's two charts here. There's a chart that shows the the current projections of allocation of positive funds throughout the three counties from King, King Pierce and Sandwich counties. But I think what I really want to draw your attention is the second chart, which shows the fund and how it flows for the King County portion. And as you'll see, it's it's not evenly distributed over the years. And so this is this will be part of the part of the work that that I believe the motion is looking at is how to how to make sense out of a funding stream like this. And so let's move on to the analysis of the motion before you, which starts on page 21 or before we go into the analysis. I also want to draw attention that the in the during the 2019 legislative session, the Legislature clarified that that funds could be used for facilities and services, and they also put in a provision that it would allow the funds to be used for an endowment if you wanted to set an endowment up to to improve educational services. So to the motion itself, the motion identifies the three priority education areas that were previously identified by the Council. And these areas are early learning K-12 education for underserved youth and college and career and technical education. The current form of the motion contemplates assigning percentages of future funds to the priority areas. However, the motion as introduced leaves these percentages blank. The motion also identifies the same underserved populations that were previously identified by the Council. And those populations are children and youth of color, children and youth and families with low incomes, children or youth who are homeless in the foster care system or in the child child welfare system, and children who are involved in the juvenile justice system and otherwise vulnerable youth. And further, the motion requests that the county executive work with council staff stakeholders in the community to develop a detailed plan for future distributions of funds. The motion requests the plan to include a governance structure, criteria for allocating proceeds, future proceeds, and for what duration? A financial plan based on the most recent revenue estimates for in transient for the life of the account, which goes back to the charity's earlier speaking about and then policies for potential investment of foster funds for four facilities. If I think that the motion contemplates sort of a different different process, different sets of policies that if you're going to invest in facilities than with that. That concludes my staff report and I'm happy to answer any questions. Questions of Mr. Moment Councilmember Lambert. Against the chair. A couple of questions. This chart. Who made this chart. I'm not familiar with that chart again. It was on our diets when we got here. So anyway. Well, since you haven't seen it, I won't ask you too many questions. But the bottom chart where it talks about homeless and foster care. I'd like to know how many of those are mutually exclusive and how many are, you know, counted in both. Both of those. I'll get your chart because you probably can analyze it better if you had one. So that's that one. And then the governance is the first time that I've really processed the idea of the governance. So could we as a council do what we do often on the idea of one as nominating one person from each council district and then choosing like three or four people that we feel are experts in whatever communities we decide to be the Government Governance Committee. I mean, we have more range. Sure. Yeah. The state law doesn't speak to any particular form of governance, so it would be a policy decision. And then on page 21 at the top, where they're talking about the Senate substitute bill, 5851, where it says they use distributions from their count only to improve educational outcomes in early learning in K-12 and higher education, including but not limited to facilities and prayers for children and youth that are low income, homeless or in others. So it says K-12. What about early learning? It doesn't say that. And here is that in another early. Learning rate before K-12 on that. Okay. Okay, great. I'm sorry. Okay. So on that was my question on that. Okay. So it's anything we want to do in there. And I was going to have a question on that, but I'll have to come back to it because I forgot what it was. Okay. Thank you, mister. You're welcome, Councilmember Howells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Jeff, I understand that a recent report came in, I think, from the consultants, but having to do with an equity report. There was that community engagement report that came there that was briefed, didn't get received an oral briefing anyhow during the last committee, the whole meeting. And then it was the written version was transmitted on Friday. Okay. So will you be going over that with this at some time or with the consultant. Or I believe the consultant be happy to meet with you. I find the purpose that they'll ask me the whole meeting was that was to brief that report. Right. But now that we have an actual report, I think it could be interesting and also for the public to hear about that. That would be a request of mine that we take that up. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Lambert. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I just had to put back the other page. So two questions. Number one, when we when I was reading about the early education, I was briefed on some of the numbers when we were calculating the early learning. I seem to remember that I was briefed that when they gave the numbers, the early learning, there was only ICAP eligible children. Is that accurate? Was this a briefing. That you think I had in my office? So we. Would you check on that? Yeah. And and you have the report that you were briefed on. I'm happy to look into it. Okay. I have my staff look it up, too. So I was a little surprised. But it wasn't all the children in the state that need this, because according to other research and the paper today, it's truly and we know from firsthand experience or I guess second hand now that there are lots of daycare needs that are not being met or people who are not ICAP eligible. And then you mentioned earlier on the chart on the previous page about the first couple of years up until about the year 2025, there's not a lot coming in is not consistent is the ability for us to bond. Okay in those early years against 28 and 29, which will be much better years. So the legislature did not provide did not specify that these funds can be bonded. It's also important to note that this isn't like a a revenue stream, a tax that you're used to seeing. The legislature has to actually appropriate the funds in every budget to the county, which complicates the bonding discussion. Yeah, that does. Complicated. Okay. Thank you very much, Mr.. Councilmember, up there. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And you said the time is also right for beginning discussion filming. Okay. Thank you. At the risk of thinking out loud and deliberating in public, I know we have a limited amount of time where we're set a timeline to figure out how the nine of us get to a plan. So I thought it might be helpful for me to reflect on some of what I've heard and some of my interests and in a way that that that could be helpful, at least with understanding where I am. The some of my first takeaways are that this is a time limited fund. It comes and it goes away. It's uneven amounts of money in each year. And as was noted, it also isn't hundred percent certain. It could be, you know, knowing the state legislature, they get in the budget crunch an easy way for them to balance their state budget one year, put this money into K-12 basic and close the budget gaps. It's also not something we can absolutely depend on moving forward, and I think those factors. Shape my thinking. I think it makes it particularly. Attractive for capital investments and one time spending versus ongoing programs. Just the nature of the funding. I have an initial interest in making sure there's significant funding for early childhood facilities, in part because it's a facility, in part because it's as far upstream as we can get. And we know kids learning start shaping early part because the data I've seen shows that it serves a large proportion of young kids of color. But I do have some questions and concerns that I'm working through with the child care providers to make sure that the dollars really are being spent to benefit the students who are most in need. In terms of what those percentages are, I'm also very interested in seeing if we can go beyond facilities. There's a large number, huge proportion of families that have their kids in family, child care, some licensed, some unlicensed, particularly in the immigrant and refugee population in South King County, and the ability to provide technical assistance or capital grants or support for home based. Early childhood programs might be a way to target. I love the idea of integrating ideas. The suggestion someone made about. For example, if we have meaningful investments in early childhood, you know, targeting youth in the foster care system, targeting homeless youth in terms of prioritization or set aside. I have an interest I've met with and it really appeals to ensuring we have equity in physical education is another idea of funding that could be integrated into K-12 funding, making sure people with disabilities are served again, that could be integrated into early childhood facilities. So giving some direction even within the categories and making sure that those different, different groups are served. I think it's important. My final thought is a big picture one in a process. I think we as a council should do more than just put three percentages in this legislation. It was the council that initiated. A robust and credible community engagement process, probably unlike any. Major we've had before. And for us to conclude our work with just simply putting three figures and saying, executive branch, bring us a plan. I think we missed an opportunity as policymakers to identify strategies and conditions and priorities as a council. So I'd encourage us to maybe flesh out some strategies. With those. Percentages. And that's my big brain dump. I hope it's helpful. Thank you very much. Sharing an interesting beginning. That very real work is what we're here to do today. And I offered the legislation this before us really as a framework, as I said, and I fully expect that it will be amended quite significantly before this committee would move it to full council, particularly because it does not have percentages numbers that says x, x, x. So clearly there's work to do, but it's a framework for some of the ideas that I thought we needed to be sure to think about going forward in the work leading up to where we are today has really shed a light on and highlighted some of the things that are working well for students and some of the things that aren't working well for students, and that informs how we might be able to have an impact on their ability to succeed. I want to commend the input we've had from the community today and encourage you to stay involved and in touch with all of us about this work. And as Councilmember Up, the Grove has laid out some interests. I hope you will hear others do that today and that it will lead to a striking amendment being brought forward at the next committee of the hall on July 1st. Councilmember Gossett. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I have a couple questions for you. Concerned about the Grove and our staff did who provided this money to us was a sound transit, but it couldn't come to us until they develop some broad guidelines. Yeah, it's a it's a fee on sound transit. Three projects that are is sound transit pays this fee to the state and goes into a state account and then the state distributes to the county quarterly. So the sound transit three projects are just getting underway. And so that's why it's taken this time so. Long to get. Yeah. And this money is only tied to the sound transit three. Yeah. That's why the, that chart is so lumpy. Okay. But it does from listening to the commentators from the community, the potentially affected agencies and experts that have come to talk to us about creative ways to use this money, it does sound like we can be really creative with it, but I still don't understand the a one third, one third, one third, meaning that some money have to go to zero five, some of the K-12, some to post-secondary educational purposes. For people of color and the poor. There seems to be a constant theme that the priority funding is for the most disaffected and alienated and disadvantaged sectors of the population in King County, if that is true. Does something have to go to each of these three areas, or is it completely left up to the King County Council to determine the percentage division? It's completely left up to the king. Completely up to the King County. Council. That's great. Okay. Councilmember, is this what we are going to do between now and the first day of July? Actually come up with the framework. The amount of the funds that will go in each category. And then the general criteria that one would have to meet in order to secure in these funds. That's my hope. Yes. Good to be. You. Okay. And then finally, how will the representatives of the community have an opportunity to have to provide input, whether it be in writing or through testimony again? Or is that going to with this that I just we had an hour's worth of testimony today from the public and have it successive previous council meetings and members of the community will be welcome to continue to be in contact with this. I would particularly encourage them to reach out to us individually and in in email and conversation and meetings as this work is underway in the next two weeks. Okay. So our input, our recommendations as individual council persons, do we need to have it ready by next Monday for this committee or do we need to have it in writing to some other committee? The legislation is in this committee, and this committee meets again in two weeks, and it would be that's on July 1st. It would be my hope that there is a striking amendment written at that point in time. So we will all need to be doing work on sharing our interests and our priorities and working on that legislation. That's the work we're engaged in right now. What staff is the lead staff for this preparation of a strike? An amendment? Mr. Mum. All right. Thank you. And council member Belushi. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Hold on 1/2, please. I got to read something inside at the same time as you hear. A dog barking, I apologize. And so I wanted to start by thanking everybody. I want to thank the advocates who are here today who spent a lot of time not just today, but at previous meetings, but also everything. Do you help that the big banner about what we can do. And you've also been associated with the same level where we wouldn't have had this opportunity and we might have lost the funding entirely if it weren't for the work. Of the Advocate. Community. So I really want to acknowledge that. They've also pointed out the need for more community process and helped us put together our community process, which had meetings and additional financing until funded beyond what we initially planned. I think that'll also help us to make a better and better proposal at the end of the day. There's still an awful lot of work to do and we're talking about a framework here, but I'm really glad that we're getting to the point of thinking about how we can actually build and focus. So there is this history of work that we've done here, and I hope that the people who are still there. Are aware of. It and become aware of it. We've adopted a number of principles and goals that we want to achieve with this funding. We wanted to make sure, for example, that we make an impact, and that's why we identified the three buckets of funding, as opposed to what was sometimes called peanut butter, to give a little bit of money to a lot of different programs. Some of it can actually really not have the kind of impact we want to have. I want to share that. I'm a big supporter of what Councilmember After Girl was talking about. This is basically one time. Money is a long term, but it's one time. And that and that lends itself to one time investment. And we know that early learning will give us proven results are particularly attractive to the idea of funding early learning centers and transit oriented development, because the combination of affordable housing, a great transit of transportation with early learning opportunities are really powerful and proven methods. All three of those are bringing people up out of poverty and giving them opportunities in the K-through-12 sphere. Only and very. Supportive of investment in the focus populations that we've talked about kids and homelessness and foster care kids and criminal justice involved situation that does overlap. As we've heard today with youth of color and underprivileged, you really need the kind of supports that we can provide with this resource as an. And yet there is still a really supportive opportunity to connect youth to real post-secondary education opportunities and jobs. So that's one of the better I based on what happened at the legislature, I want to take a hard look at where those investments in live today. I remain committed to significant investment in all three areas, but I look forward to joining with my colleagues in the community agreements where we've. Got a lot to. Do here, but I think we've got a lot of opportunity and we're going to do a lot of good with this resource that came to us. Thank you. Councilmember Colwell. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I thank you two council members at The Grove and Gosford and Balducci for sharing their thoughts. I'd also like to commend the communities. I mean, many I represented here today. But there have been a lot more people and a lot more organizations who've been very engaged in this topic over the last two years. The coalition that it formed representing early learning and down in the legislature and visiting legislators before the legislative session and during the legislative session, and also a broader coalition. And in fact, of all three of these group areas, the early learning, the K-12, post-secondary, higher education, working together to make sure that nothing was taken away and that effort was successful. But it was very critical to happen before the legislature. And I'd like everybody to know that with our community listening sessions that have been taking place, with people contacting us, with meetings that are have been taking place and are continuing with many of you and our organizations representative, we're taking this very seriously. I, for one, wish that we had even more funds at our disposal and that would continue. And it would be lovely to find other sources of funding for when the amount from these funds from pass through from as T3 will slow down. And that's something we can look forward to trying to do. But for right now we have a real challenge before us and our main one is to determine what the ratio is, how much percentage will go into each three of these buckets. I'd I'd like to also commend the groups that have been working together to, to bring out the overlap, the conjunction of K-12 and post-secondary. Because as we've been hearing today, there is a real nexus there in working with our K-12 schools to provide the counseling and the guidance that is needed for keeping kids in school, not dropping out, but also to provide a pathway to them in terms of opportunities post-secondary after they graduate and hopefully not drop out. When we initiated this, we referred to the promised scholarship, meaning tuition, one year of free tuition, two years of free tuition in a college in King County. And the city of Seattle is doing that now. But we've transformed into the idea of spending the funds in a different way. A lot of that based on very, I think, excellent legislation enacted by the legislature in this past session. So now we have the issue of providing services and support and getting the kids, the young people to college, especially, again, those who are of color, have been in the foster situation, been homeless, the targeted groups. But I'm really encouraged by that to say that we could perhaps have some joining in two of these different buckets or sectors. So I, for one, will continue to be very open to input that I receive as we take on this challenge, which I think is very exciting. Thank you. Councilmember Dombroski. Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to the folks who have come to participate today and also over the last many months and the public process. I don't have a lot of thoughts right now, but I thought I would, in the spirit of dialog, join in and express my appreciation for my colleagues sharing their views , which to a large degree I'm aligned with and I don't want to be repetitive, but some things that I think about when looking at these dollars are making sure that they are consistent with the county's adopted policy on youth, which is set forth in our Youth Action Plan, which covers birth at 24 year olds. This council unanimously adopted that. I think it's been helpful in guiding our work with us starts for kids and I think that we should be cognizant of that ongoing work and the investments we're making as a county government as we spend these dollars. You know, there's a new report out today which if you haven't seen it, I commend it to you from the Annie Casey Foundation, the Kids Count data book, which has some very interesting data with respect to children living in poverty. We're making some progress in the state with regard to percentage down from 18% in 2000 to maybe 14% now. But because of our population growth, the number of children, even though the percentage is down, the number of children living in poverty is going up. And I think what the studies show, the Heckman curve is early investment yields the greatest return and so on on investment in young people. So I'm particularly interested in the early childhood work and and would be pushing for the largest percentage of our doing buckets of our investment there. That's not exclusive of the other two buckets. But from a percentage basis, I think that we should follow the econ, the follow the academic research that shows early investment is a great return. And so I don't want to throw a number out yet, but but in terms of priority investments, I think we should do some there. I also think that we should be true to what comes from about. Do you remind us, which is early on we said we're not going to peanut butter this money around. And so we picked kind of three buckets. But I do think, Mr. Chair, if we can get there, we should within each bucket list some strategies. Maybe we shouldn't have three top strategies the County Council has, but for a large, to a large degree gotten out of the business of picking particular. Programs to fund. And invest in strategies. And we leave to the executive the competitive grant and allocation of dollars to particular organization and programs based on those strategies. And I think that in putting this motion together here in this legislation together, if we could think about prioritizing within each bucket where it makes sense, a couple three strategies that might serve us some good. If there was interest in doing that, I think we should be cognizant of the county's place in helping children and young people. What are we good at? What do we know? We are not in classroom teachers, right? We have this, the state handles that and the school districts handle that. We are a good and strong provider of supportive services, the wraparound services, supporting folks to make sure that they have the opportunity to succeed in school and life. So I will be looking at it through that lens. What's the on each of these buckets? What's the right role for the county to put these dollars toward? And I'm not sure I have answers today, but we are involved in helping justice involved youth pursue opportunities and and and get on the right track. We are supportive of children and young children and getting a good start with the Best Arts for Kids program. We're involved in apprenticeship programs and job training, right? So folks can have an opportunity to pursue all the economic benefits that are here in King County. And so those are kind of the at least a few thoughts as I look at this and look forward to working with you all to get to a consensus, hopefully. Thank, Mr. Chair. Thank you both. You and Councilmember up together highlighted the possibility that we might target funds within large buckets into particular strategies. And I think that could be a strong way to go in, would encourage us to be ready to be specific about what the strategies may be, whether you're ready to do that today or in the very near future. Councilmember Lambert. Thank you. I agree with what I've heard from my colleagues. I also would like to add to the Youth Action Plan that we also take a good look at the Women's Advisory Boards plan. They've been talking to us for two years about this. I just asked for the. Their data, how they came up with their numbers, because I haven't seen that for a while. I think that what we do needs to be something that will be generationally valuable. So doing a capital project that, you know, will be there for 100 years so that kids from many generations will be able to use that facility. I'm pretty sure that when they came to me to brief me, they talked about the kids that were used in the numbers as being ICAP eligible. And there are a lot of kids, as the speaker earlier today said, that are above ICAP eligible that weren't included. And so I think it's important that we we look at what is the need out there. And I think that's what the Women's Advisory Board did, was they looked at the total need, not just one or two segments. And I think we need to focus on all kids in this county. I have a special concern about the foster care children. If you look at the data of foster care children on this chart as well as, you know, if you're let's see. And so fewer than 3% of students are, in fact, who were experienced foster care and a four year college degree. 3% is pretty frightening. So and they have no other parents besides the collective of all of us. So I think, you know, one of our strategies might be really making sure that the foster care children have some very specific goals. And then I do like the idea of identifying the strategies. And I also am very interested in us coming up with the advisory board. I think having somebody from each of our districts that we select. And then X number three or whatever that we all agree are countywide experts that we can agree on to be on the board. I think that's a good governance. So it stays under our purview and doesn't get away from making sure that it's doing what we want it to do. And so I'm excited to work with everybody on this. Thank you. Councilmember Go. Wells. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Just a status report. The Women's Advisory Board recommendations on early learning, and particularly child care, will be coming through as a transmission from the executive, a transmittal in the form of legislation in 2 to 3 weeks. So that is good because we'll be able to line that up with what decisions we're going to be making here. Thank you. Thank you. Further discussion. I want to thank my colleagues for knowing we don't have legislation to move out of committee today, having a robust conversation about where we're at, what we might want the final Stryker to look like in two weeks. I appreciate the conversation we've had and the work we've done to lead up to this. And with that, we have no other business before us today. We will meet again on Monday, July 1st. We are adjourned.