AN ORDINANCE amending Ordinance 126000, which adopted the 2020 Budget; changing appropriations to the Executive Department’s Office of Sustainability and Environment, the Department of Neighborhoods, the Department of Education and Early Learning, Seattle Parks and Recreation, and budget control levels, and from various funds in the Budget, for the purpose of providing food support to individuals in Seattle; and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts; all by a 3/4 vote of the City Council.
Agenda Item two Capital 119 760 4126000, which adopts the 2020 budget changing appropriations to the Executive Department's Office of Sustainability and Environment, the Department of Neighborhoods, the Department of Education and Early Learning, Parks and Recreation and Budget Control levels, and from various funds in the Budget for the purpose of providing support to individuals. Seattle and ratifying confirming certain projects all by force both at the City Council. Thank you. I moved to pass Council Bill 119764. Is there a second again? It's been moved and seconded to pass the bill. Councilmember Mosqueda, you are the prime sponsor of the bill, so I will hand it over to you to make remarks about the bill. Thank you, Madam President. I want to first thank the Mayor's office for sending down this legislation to transfer $5 million from the Seattle Budget Resources to a new food voucher program, which would provide grocery money for many families in need. Thousands of families across Seattle. Council Bill 119764 creates this fund in an effort with the Office of Sustainability Environment to support 6250 low income families facing food insecurity because of the response to COVID. The program is funded with the sugary sweetened beverage tax revenues, and due to the crisis that we're in, we decided to reallocate that it was a good idea to reallocate some of the funds that were going to parks and to the Department of Neighborhoods to make sure that we could provide food security for these families. The CAB or the Community Advisory Board of the sugary sweetened beverage tax revenue that provides ongoing analysis and feedback to this Council on the implementation implementation of the tax. We have contacted them and as you all saw via their correspondence back to the council, there was a few questions, but they were supportive of the reallocation of the funds due to the large layoffs and because of COVID. We need to make sure that we're maintaining food security for families across the city to be able to put food on their table. The council is the governing body in charge of the budget, has to make tough decisions and I think this is one of them. On how we spend our resources in response to COVID. While the sugary sweetened beverage tax funds are important programs, and many of you have spent years trying to get this effort off the ground passed and implemented, the city must pass push to pause in order to make sure that we ensure families in Seattle, especially our kiddos who are enrolled in Seattle's child care programs, have food that they need so they can remain healthy during this public health crisis. I want to thank all of you for your past work on the sugar sweetened beverage tax effort. Again, this is a pause, not a repeal. And it is in line with what the goals of the sugar sweetened beverage tax revenues were intended to do. I appreciate the cab for reminding us that the very programs that we're talking about supporting are also for the population that benefits from this tax. Again, thanks to the cab members, the community advisory board members for their weighing in with overall support. And we'll make sure to follow up on implementation and tracking this closely in conjunction with the CAB members. Thank you, Councilman Mosqueda, for those introductory remarks. And I count the 119764. So we that is the introduction to that particular council bill. I believe that there is an amendment that is going to be addressed by Council Member Morales. So I will hand it over to Councilmember Morales to make her motion to introduce Amendment One. Thank you. Council President Gonzalez I move to amend Council Bill 119764 as presented on Amendment one on the agenda. Thank you. Is there a second? It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill, and I will hand it back over to Councilmember Morales to address her amendment, Amendment one. Thank you. So I want to thank you, Councilmember Musgrave, for your last comments. We know that this crisis is more than any of us really can can deal with. And I know from here out, we will be asking ourselves the question over and over again how we acknowledge the great need that we have for protecting folks who are in jeopardy across the city, whether we're talking about seniors or immigrants or children or our homeless community, those who have been laid off and those who don't have a job to have been laid off from. We are going to have some hard decisions to make. This amendment would ask the Office of Sustainability and the Environment to prioritize certain categories of satellites should additional funding become available. Particularly, we're concerned about immigrants and refugees who are recipients of the State Food Assistance Program, but who don't qualify for federal programs. We're also concerned about folks who are over 60. We know that seniors are particularly susceptible and vulnerable to this disease. People with disabilities and of course, workers have been dislocated because of the COVID virus. I have spoken to a couple of CAB members of the Community Action Board members, advisory board members to get their thoughts. And like Councilmember Mosqueda said, these folks really hard just a couple of years ago for allocation of this tax for their food security programs. And the idea was that money that is taken out of our communities of color in particular get put back in through some of these food security programs. So that said, everyone acknowledges that we're in a crisis and that it's really important that we find other ways to to protect our community members. So the folks in the camp consider this a friendly amendment. And they also want to make sure that we are serving seniors who are susceptible to COVID and that we're looking out for the folks who are falling through the cracks of some of our some of our federal programs. And that's what this amendment is intended to do. So I move passage of Amendment one. Okay. Okay. It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as described by Councilmember Morales. Are there any questions or further discussion about Amendment One? Okay. I don't see any questions or here any questions. So we will go ahead and I will I will ask that the clerk please call the role on the adoption of Amendment One . Councilmember Juarez, I. I remember Lewis. I remember Morales. I. Council member must get a. Hi. Councilmember Peterson. Hi. Council members. The one. I. Councilmember Strauss. I. Councilmember Herbold. I. I think Gonzalez, I. Nine in favor of the post. The motion carries and the amendment is adopted. We will now move over to Councilmember Herbold, who has an amendment to council Bill 119764 listed as amendment to. Councilmember, what would you like to move amendment to? Thank you for. I move to amend council bill 11 9764 as presented as Amendment two on the agenda. Is there a second? Okay. It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill with Amendment two. I'm going to hand it over to Councilmember her bill to address her amendment. Thank you so much. One of the things that we've heard from constituents, in addition to the gratitude that we are hearing from folks at finding these vouchers in their mailbox, is an interest in having more a selection of stores beyond beyond Safeway. I've learned from central staff's conversations with the Office of Sustainability and the Environment that the city welcomes having more retail partners and has identified some some priorities for what it would mean for additional grocers to join, including having multiple stores within the City of Seattle limits, being able to to use the do the technical processing necessary for the for the program and make it interoperable in their store and ensuring that vouchers expire monthly. Commit to handing back and data and sending the city weekly information on voucher debt, redemption, invoicing, partners that United Way or the city monthly and ensuring that cashiers will be fully trained on this program so customers have a positive in their experience when using the voucher. So this amendment to adds a new section that requests O.C. to continue to pursue partnerships beyond Safeway with additional retailers with a preference for those that are unionized to expand retail operations for households receiving emergency grocery vouchers. Thank you, Councilmember Herbold. Are there any questions or comments on Amendment two? Councilmember Morales, please. I just want to thank Councilmember Hogarth for this amendment. I have also heard lots of people say that Safeway is, well, we appreciate their willingness to partner. Folks would really appreciate having some other options. So if we can find other folks, other grocers who are interested in participating in this, I know my constituents would certainly be grateful for for some more choice. That's fantastic. Any other questions or comments on Amendment two? Okay. Scene one. We will go ahead and have the clerk call the role on the adoption of Amendment two. Councilmember Juarez. I. Councilmember Lewis. High. Council member Morales. I council member Mesquita. I don't remember Peterson. I. Councilmember Sala. Councilmember Strauss. I. Councilmember Herbold, I. And President Gonzales. I. Nine in favor, nine opposed. Thank you. The motion carries and Amendment two is adopted. Are there any further comments on the bill as amended? When I'm president, we council members data. Thank you so much. And again, thanks to all of you for your possible support for this and for the mayor's office for sending it down. I do want to take a minute to hearken back to something that Councilmember Swan said last week, and I think the point was really well taken around wanting to make sure that we don't have austerity budgets and borrowing or robbing Peter to pay Paul. I think that it's a really important point. Well taken. I have talked to the CBO and I understand that they're in the process of providing a sort of emergency fiscal note so that we can have a more real time understanding of how various proposals that are being sent down actually impact our budget. And I know that this will be important to all of the council members as we think about our own budgets and supplemental budgets coming up here soon. I don't take lightly in taking from any of the programs. Last week we talked about housing. This week we're talking about sugary sweetened beverage tax revenue. And while the money is going directly to, I think, priority populations that the tax had really intended, I think the bigger question remains around the revenues that we have in our emergency funds and overall, I think in other pockets of the budget. So customer response was a point well taken and I want to make sure all the council members know that the fiscal notes that we should be seeing in the future will help us in evaluating what the impact is on our current budget and potentially our future budgets and future emergency funds. I think that this is all a really critical time for us to make sure that we don't get into austerity budgeting and recognize that, as Naomi Klein talks about, we don't want to use this emergency to further escalate inequality or deficiencies in our budget, which we've seen done at the national level and across the globe when there's times of emergency. So thank you all for your support potentially for this amendment. And please know that we will have more information in the future as future pieces of legislation come down. Thank you, Customer Muscat, for those remarks. I think last week I also signaled agreement with those remarks made by councilmember members as well and have had conversations with executive director or council central staff around making sure that our memorandums or memorandums from our policy analysts and from council central staff really clearly describe and include how these the shifting of these dollars is going to impact programs that may have been identified as council priorities in our last budget season or that have been listed as priorities through the funding mechanism, whatever that funding mechanism might be. So I think it's really important for us to make sure that we're tracking how this money is moving around. And and in addition to that, what the what the programmatic impact really is as a result of choosing to shift dollars in the way that we're choosing to shift it in this period of crisis. So hopefully we will continue to see that level of analysis, good analysis from our council central staff. And I know that Director Ariston and others on Council central staff are open to ongoing suggestions and feedback about how we can make sure that we have all the information we need to fully understand the impact of of how we're moving money around through these bills. Appreciate it. Any other comments or questions about the bill before we vote on it? It seems none. Will the clerk please call the role on the passage of the bill? Councilmember suarez. Hi. Councilmember Lewis, I. Councilmember Morales. I. Councilmember Mitch Geller. I. Councilmember Peterson. I. Council members. So what. I. Councilmember Strauss. I. Councilmember Herbal, I. President Gonzalez. I. Nine in favor, none opposed. Thank you. The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it. Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf? We're going to go and move to agenda item three. We're so close to being done, folks. If the clerk will please read item three into the record. Agenda Item three Resolution 319 39 The resolution in support of the bid by the City of Seattle to host the National League of Cities 2025 City Summit Conference.