A MOTION requesting the executive to develop and transmit an implementation plan for the county to coordinate the efforts for the 2020 Census with a focus on Hard-to-Count communities to ensure a complete and accurate count and participation of all county residents regardless of age, income, race, housing status and citizenship status.
And Councilmember Caldwell's, I think, wants to join you in that motion as our Vice-Chair. All right, all in favor. Say, I, I any opposed? Those are approved. We'll turn now to item five, which is proposed motion 2018 0184. This is a motion that would request the executive to develop and transmit an implementation plan for the county to coordinate efforts for a 2020 census with a focus on hard to count communities. Now, that's the term used in the motion to ensure a complete and accurate count and participation of all county residents regardless of age, income, race , housing status and citizenship status. Andrew Kim is our central staffer who's going to brief us on the motion. The motion. I know this has gathered a number of co-sponsors, including councilmembers Val Do, Chico Wells. I think I heard Desmond McDermott asked to sign on. Thank you, Councilmember McDermott. And then we have also invited Dillon Ordonez from the executive's office, who will share a little bit, I think. Dillon, are you going to present or. Mathias Okay. And we've got some his squad with him here summiteers from all the faculty on social justice and Chandler Feldt, our county demographer. It's after 10:00. You think I could get out of two? So more three syllable word, right? All right, Andrew, why don't you lead us off on this one? Thank you, Mr. Chair. For the record, Andrew Kim with council central staff. The staff report for this item begins on page seven of your staff report. Mr. Shares, as you mentioned, the proposed motion before, you would request Executive to develop and transmit to the Council an implementation plan for the county to coordinate the efforts for the 2020 Census with a focus on hard to count communities by September 1st, 2018. As members may already be aware that this decennial census is used for apportionment of House of Representative seats to enforce voting rights and civil rights legislation, appropriating an estimated 675 billion annually in federal funds to local communities such as Medicaid and and producing and publishing data on unemployment, crime, poverty, health and education. According to the Census Bureau's 2020 Census operational plan in fiscal year 2019. That's the federal fiscal year 2019. The Census Bureau will begin its field operations, and the 2020 census kickoff is scheduled for April 2020. The operational plan also speaks to focusing on four key innovation areas for the 2020 census design, some of which include optimizing self response by focusing on more online responses and assuring data protection and re-engineering field operations by relying heavily on automation. The Census Bureau states that these design changes have the potential to save the Bureau an estimated $2.5 billion. The adopted fiscal year 2018 federal budget appropriated $2.8 billion to the Census Bureau, which was a little more than $1,000,000,000 more than the Department of Commerce's request for 2018. For 2019, the Census Bureau has requested $3.8 billion, of which 3.2 billion will be used to begin the field operations for the 2020 census, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the department's request will still be lower in comparison to spending trends a prior decennial census not adjusted for inflation. If I can have members turn to page ten of the staff report, I can speak to the hard to count communities again. The proposed motion requests the executive to transmit a plan to coordinate efforts for the 2020 census with a focus on hard to count communities that the Census Bureau defines hard to count communities as a census tract where percentage of households that mailed back their 2010 census questionnaire or obstacle. Itself response rate was 73% or less. There's a chart on page 23 of the staff report. If members would like to see page 23 and page three, the printed page 23 provides a list of all the hard to count communities now. Did you bring the reading glasses? I apologize for the font size. Worcestershire. That's our county. The so this this has a list of all the hard to count communities as identified by by in King County. The darker the shade represents a lower response rate. Of the 396 census tracts in King County, 49 census tracts listed here across 13 cities have been identified as hard to count communities. These communities had an average self response rate of 69.9%, and the proportion of population that represented people of color was around 62%, with about 40% of the population at or near poverty level. In addition, of the 49 census tracts, 33 had more than 80% of the households meeting the minimum threshold of having having Internet connectivity of 200 kilobits per second for uploads or downloads. 15 census tracts had between 60 to 60 to 80% of households meeting the threshold and one census tract had 20 to 30% of households meeting the threshold. The proposed motion would also request that the plan include. Ask your question on that answer. So how many census tracts here on this sheet? Again, you. Went there 40, 49. 49. Is that all of the identified hard to count census tracts in King County? That's correct. And out of how many in King County? Out of 396, I. Said, and who did this ID again? So the the identification is actually done by the Census Bureau, but the data that was put together was actually done by the City University of New York Mapping Service, the Center for Urban Research at the City University of New York. I see. And the criteria, again, was it based on the last census and the response rate? That's correct. The last census response rate was around 73%. So the Census Bureau used that as the threshold for anyone below that to be hard to count mostly. And if we wanted to localize this, we heard Gerry say that our King County response rate was 80%. I mean, is there if we were developing and were the motion, ask the executive develop a plan under any circumstances? Would it make sense to look at our own metrics, if you will, for identifying hard to count sounds tracks? Yes, that would be a good suggestion. And the motion allows for that flexibility in terms of its scope. It does. We'd be there. Is that the motion states that the executive finds strategies to reach hard to count communities and in the findings statement of findings we do to find that 73%. But if you want to change that to 80% to accommodate the differing metrics for King County, we can do that as well. To amend their. Model, we might just think about that. Maybe we've got it right, but something to consider. All right. Thank you. Feel free to jump in colleagues with questions as Andrew goes along. I'm now on the bottom of page 29, I'm sorry, page nine. The proposed motion, but also requested the plan, include the county's role as a convener to engage our county stakeholders, the county's role as liaison to the Census Bureau, the consideration of hiring a temporary full time employee, and use county moneys and existing resources to implement the plan. Assessment of risk to Undocumented. Undocumented Immigrants who participate in the Census and Strategy Strategies to Minimize Risks. Strategies on advocating the King County Federal Legislative Delegation to urge policy considerations regarding census questions and legal strategies to address possible equal protection or civil rights violations for deliberate undercounting of hard to count communities and or limiting federal funding for the 2020 census compared to prior censuses. The executive staff stated that the current staff work will work on the developing the implementation plan and therefore no additional costs will be incurred. And the executive staff also confirmed that transmitting the implementation plan to the Council by September 1st would be feasible. Executive staff also indicate that a budget will be developed to include funds for a full time employee and for other costs that will support the implementation of the plan for the 2019 2020 biennium. And lastly, executive staff mentioned that the county has already begun the 2020 census activities. And soon after this briefing, members of the executive staff will provide a briefing on the on these activities. Mr. Chair, that concludes my briefing. And as you mentioned, we have a members of the executive staff here to answer any questions and also to provide a briefing. Okay. And when would the requested plan be due? Back to the council on September 1st. Ah. And so that would be ahead of our budget cycle. So to the extent we wanted to make sure resources were allocated to this work, that would allow time to put that into our fall budget. And that's correct, Mr. Varadkar. All right. Thank you very much for that overview of the legislation. Do members have questions from Andrew's presentation? Don't see any. I'd like to invite up Dillon or Daniels, Matthias Valenzuela and Schindler Feldt, who are in my brief slide presentation on the status of the county's work thus far and what they see going forward. There is a copy of it on your place. Dylan, thank you for being here. Brad Simon, Dallas, Oregon. That's right. Dallas, Oregon. Thank you for the opportunity, Mr. Chair. For the record, Dylan Donor is director of external relations for Office of King County Executive Dow Constantine. Thank you for the opportunity to present today and thank you to the sponsors of this motion. Chairman Barsky. Vice Chair Cole Wells. Council Member about Dutchy. And now the addition of Councilmember McDermott and supporters for addressing such a critically important issue to our county, our state and our nation. This motion expresses many of the approaches we're taking into account in the development of our work. And should the Council adopt this motion, which we hope you do, we will be in a position to meet the September 1st deadline to transmit the requested implementation plan starting in March 2020. Households across King County and across the country will begin receiving their forms to participate in the 2020 census. This past April marks a two year countdown to census day April 1st, 2020. Simply put, the 2020 census matters as we've heard. An accurate count is essential for counties, other local governments and the people who live here. Census data is the foundation for much of our understanding of community conditions in King County and supports our planning, implementation and evaluation of our service delivery. Census data is also used for the planning and allocation of billions of dollars in federal and nonprofit funding. Additionally, census numbers are used to determine the apportionment of congressional representatives. We know that certain communities are likely to be undercounted, and many of these are historically underserved communities. We share the goal of ensuring our I believe we're calling them, work hard to count communities now, hard to count communities are engaged and participate as it is imperative in our work to advance equity in King County. In terms of fairness, opportunity, and addressing the many issues faced by our region and the nation. A complete and accurate census is paramount. That is why our goal, our vision, is to have an accurate 2020 census that counts all King County residents. In order to achieve that goal. I'd like to talk about some of the values that guide our work. First, we seek to have alignment with our mission of equity and social justice. Second, will meet communities where they're at to receive input, understand their concerns, and ensure that we work together on this important effort in order to reach hard to count communities, which is a priority of ours. A consistent priority. We're hearing from those representing hard to count communities, as well as organizations that serve hard to count communities and a goal of the motion before us. It is imperative that we partner with community, especially those that rarely, if ever, have had an opportunity to give input. Third, we will strive to align resources, messaging and engagement with community and other stakeholders, where appropriate, to avoid duplicative work and maximize what everybody can bring to the table. King County is uniquely positioned to serve as a hub, a regional convener, as we did with health care enrollment for the many moving pieces and energy surrounding the 2020 census. Fourth, we will leave no stone unturned when thinking of ways to organize, educate and make the most of opportunities to reach members of our community about the importance of the census. And now I will turn it over to Chandler Feldt to talk about some of the administrative work that's been done to date. Thank you. Thank you. Before we do, do members have questions or comments on Dillon's portion? I just if I can want to make one comment to raise a concern. You mentioned our success with health care enrollment in King County was a nationwide leader, and we used a community based approach there under the Affordable Care Act. But and I hear some discussion about replicating that model here, but I want to make sure that we're cognizant of the difference. And that is obviously with the census, we want to count everyone, regardless of citizenship status. And of course, the Affordable Care Act excluded a large portion of our community. So I think I just want to make sure that we're aware of that. And I was thinking about that as we develop this plan that we don't just hit the pause button. We know it will not be a carbon copy. It is a framework that has used in the past for us for that effort. And so we are exploring that as a starting point and understand that the framework that we are developing will not look exactly the same. Got it. Thank you. All right, Chandler, are you up next? Yes. For the record, Chandler Feldt, King County demographer in performance, strategy and budget. We actually began several months ago with preparation for the 2020 census because we recognize how important it is. So we've begun scoping. Strategies and building partnerships to be able to conduct as effective a census as possible. One part of the 2020 census is already underway. It's called the Lucca program. Lucca is a Census Bureau program to improve the accuracy of street addresses. It stands for local update of census addresses. And what it consists of is that the Census Bureau has shared their address files, street address, residential files with King County. We are in the process of correcting and updating them to account for the development that has happened since 2010 and since the Census Bureau's most recent sources. That's already underway at King County Geographic Information System Group. There's several GIS professionals engaged in that work, which will be completed about July 1st. So chatter on that program, what information is that a purely address system or are there other names and ownership fields are tied to those address? There are no names and no ownership information or no demographic information associated with that. It's simply a list of addresses by street and house number or in a few cases, in rural route advance numbers. And do you see or any need to take steps, and if so, have we to protect the privacy and make sure there's no easy, if you will, linkage between, you know, for example, our assessor's records, which often have owners who will do have ownership information or taxpayer information and addresses, what are what are we doing in that regard? The Census Bureau requires very rigorous security measures to protect their address list, and we are doing the same with regard to our address information. So the work that is being done is on a separate computer, not connected with our shared drives. And at the end of this process of identifying differences between the Census Bureau's list and our lists, we will turn in a differences data set to the Census Bureau and then destroy all of the information that that they had sent. Thank you. So that process is underway in terms of communication with the Census Bureau. The bureau has really limited resources this time compared to ten years ago. Notwithstanding what Andrew mentioned about the fiscal year 18 infusion of funds that the Congress did, that's that's only for the year that ends this October. So we still don't know what the next fiscal year of census funding will be. So, in short, were more dependent on our own resources than we were ten years ago. And we have the additional difficulty that the Census Bureau moved their regional headquarters from Seattle to Los Angeles between the 2010 and 2020 census. So we're not as as in touch with them as we were ten years ago. Nevertheless, we've had a couple of meetings with U.S. Census Bureau staff, and those have been productive in terms of figuring out resources and partnerships. And are you the lead on this? Dillon is actually the lead for that coordination. I'm the technical lead for the time being. On on that. And then that communication with the Census Bureau has also been done jointly with the city of Seattle, who has designated a couple of people as leads for Census 2020 Coordination two group. We've had a number of discussions with the Washington State Office of Financial Management Staff. They are well engaged. They're organizing a statewide complete count committee. They're providing resources to counties and cities to to develop their own programs. And both the Census Bureau and OFM are helping us identify these work hard to. Out areas within our counties and cities. That's that concludes my comment. And members have questions for Chandler County demographer. All right. It's a couple more minutes here and I'm going to. I'll dove back in real quick and just discuss our organizations. So far, internally, it is our intention to have an organization wide inter branch team that can help inform our efforts, as well as bring in traditional and outside the box ideas and tools to help our broader outreach and education campaigns. Cabinet has been informed of our census work and asked to begin developing ways to support. Additionally, we're in the process of reaching out to other separately electeds here at King County. As such, we are again thankful to have the opportunity today to share our census efforts with you and look forward to collaborating to achieve our shared goals . Externally, we will be forming a complete count committee comprised of representatives from a variety of sectors, for example K through 12 labor, business, nonprofit, higher ed community and tribal governments, faith based organizations, etc. that will help develop and implement our regional efforts and bring resources to the table to raise awareness and encourage completion of the 2020 census . As previously stated, there will be a strong focus on hard to count communities. It is our hope that we will have a complete count committee formed and operational by the end of 2018, if not sooner. To date, we have been working with partners from the aforementioned sectors to align efforts. Additionally, executive Constantine has sent a letter to the 39 mayors flagging the importance of the 2020 census and inviting collaboration. And I'll turn it over to Mathias to quickly give us some feedback on what we're hearing from communities and much of which we've heard from this morning from those who testified. Okay. Good morning, Chair and council members. I'll be quick because I think we have heard some really eloquent testimony from the community and those are exactly the types of comments that we've been hearing from then when we've been reaching out. Traditionally, the hard to count populations include the elderly, low income communities, renters, frequent movers, people of color, immigrant refugees. We heard about a lot of them today. There's a national general fear and distrust towards government at this moment, too. And then some additional barriers, such as the new citizenship question was, which is being proposed for inclusion. Those are all new challenges for us and also the homeless population. We need to just remember the crises that we have right now in terms of homelessness and also how those populations are to count, but also the added number of people doubling up short term, you know, you know, renters or people in short term housing. We know that that's an area that's increasingly challenging for us. We've been also hearing and working with some of the other jurisdictions, institutional partners. I think they'll work especially around with philanthropy, is important. A lot of of our philanthropic partners are interested in supporting this work, such as were the organizations that I spoke earlier. We need to make sure that we are not working and cross-purposes that we're actually aligned with one overall umbrella. And I think is King County as a convener, has a unique role to play in that particular area. And just finally, in terms of a lot I think has been said around being consistency of messaging. We've heard a lot around that. I think there's a lot of things that still work out in terms of what our key messages are going to be around the particular challenges that we have in this next census. But also, I think the theme that we hear very strongly and we want to be consistent with in terms of how we've been most successful as a county, is how do we work with our community organizations. So they are the trusted local voice for our very diverse community that we need to be working with them, resourcing them. So they are the ones that are delivering the messages. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Any comments or questions? As vice chair of the committee, as Councilmember Cole Wells. I wonder if she would want to put the legislation before us for adoption. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I new proposed motion 2018 0184 and given a do pass recommendation. And that's before us. Any comments on passage? Clinical control. Thank you. Excuse me. Thank you, Mr. Chair. And Council member. Council member. Felt. Council member done. By. Council Member. Carson i. Council Member. Cornwall. Council Member Lambert I. Council Member McDermott all right. Council Member of the Group. Council Member Yvonne MacNamara. Mr. Chair. Mr. Chair, the vote is nine eyes no nos. All right. We've given unanimous do best recommendation to motion 2018 0184. We'll have that heard in the ordinary course. We'll leave it on the regular calendar in the event that there is some fine tuning between here and final passage. And particularly, I want to thank leaders of the community that came and offered excellent testimony and very helpful testimony today. We very much appreciate it. And I would ask, to the extent that this motion needs, from your perspective, additional refinement or improvement that you work with Christina Langston on my staff and Andrew Kim on the central staff to prepare any needed amendments between now and two Mondays from now. Thank you all for being here. We appreciate your good work. And are you going to make it through this census or. I town. By hand? Very good. All right. You're going on, what, almost for three decades or for. Little more than four. Little more than four decades at the county. Well, thank you very much. We appreciate you offering your expertize here. All right. We will turn now to our second major item of today's meeting, and that is the proposed dates, items six and seven on the agenda, actually proposed ordinance 2018 0138 and 0178 pertaining to the Master Labor Agreement