A MOTION requesting that the executive develop a regional operational plan for extreme weather centers and disaster sheltering, with a special focus on the most-vulnerable King County residents.
Your call. See no further request. We will go on with our agenda and close public comment. The first item on our agenda is the motion sponsored by Council Member Zahoor ly requesting that the Executive develop an operational plan for sheltering the most vulnerable King County residents in the event of extreme cold heat or wildfire smoke. This is proposed motion 2020 20197 and Jennie Giambattista will brief us. We also have, I believe, from the executive branch, Mena Hashemi, Brandon McCluskey and Caroline Wayland. If there are any questions as. Go right ahead. Jennie unless Councilman Basile, I would like to say anything. First listen to the staff report first. Chair Coles. Thank you very much, Jennie. Thank you. Good morning. Chair Caldwell, the members of the committee, Jennie John Batiste, council staff, the staff report for this item begins on page seven of the packet. Given the very full agenda today, the Chair has asked me to provide highlights from the staff report. There are a few key points in the background section of the staff report. I'd like to highlight and provide some context for the discussion of the proposed motion. First, what's happening now during an extreme weather event? The Office of Emergency Management works with King County agencies and partners from other jurisdictions to identify and share information on available sheltering options. The Office of Emergency Management posts information during an event on the sheltering options, including links to other jurisdictions on the King County Emergency Blog. But OEM does not have an operational, extreme weather sheltering plan that details the shelters that are to be open, the hours staffing or other operational issues. Director McClusky from the Office of Emergency Management reports. The Department of Local Services has started working in the unincorporated area to find community based facilities that are suitable and willing to open in extreme weather events and to identify the operational needs for opening those facility. The background section of the staff report on page eight also includes some information on the extreme heat event in the region experienced last June. I've highlighted this event because, according to the National Weather Service, heat events are the most deadly weather related emergencies for King County. The heat dome was the deadliest climate related event in the region's history, with 32 with 33 deaths, an average age of 75.6. Based on data from public health, 91% of the fatalities occurred in the persons resident. June 28th of that heat dome also set a record for the highest number of EMS related calls in the history of VMs. There are more details on the EMS responses that can be found in a PowerPoint on page 21 of the packet that was prepared by EMS for a countywide summer hazard seminar hosted by the Office of Emergency Management. I've also included a presentation in the packet from that same seminar from the National Weather Service on page 42 of the packet, which notes some of the challenges that Seattle region faces with dealing with extreme heat events. The Seattle region has the lowest rates of any metropolitan region for air conditioning. Additionally, homes are built to keep the heat in in the northwest with added insulation and many have south facing exposures. Additionally, the National Weather Service noted that many community facilities don't have air conditioning in the heat dome event. The temperatures peaked late at night, which meant indoor temperatures stayed hot. The National Weather Service noted that these indoor evening air temperatures need to be taken into consideration when planning for the operating hours and cooling shelters. I'd like to now turn to the discussion of the motion, and that discussion is on page 12 of the packet. The motion requests the executive to develop an operational plan by February 28th, 2023 for sheltering the most vulnerable residents during extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. The motion defines the most vulnerable residents as including, but not limited to, unhoused people, low income people who live in housing without adequate protection from extreme weather and theater. Senior citizens or those with disabilities without adequate protection from extreme weather. The motion requests the executive coordinate with King County agencies and work groups, and the King County Homeless Regional Homeless Authority to develop the operational plan. The motion calls for the executive to strive to begin offering expanded extreme weather sheltering no later than June of 2023. The cost, information and the staffing requirements for such a sheltering plan are requested as part of the transmitted operational plan. I'd like to highlight some of the key actions requested in the motion. First is to conduct community outreach in low income communities and unhoused communities and unincorporated King County to gather information on the community's preferences for the location and features that result in the highest utilization of shelters during extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. The outreach efforts should also seek to identify other community needs in responding to extreme weather events. The next action requested is based on the information gathered from the low income communities. Provide a listing and map of King County owned or operating office operated facilities in King County that are recommended to serve as extreme weather shelters. Another major action requested is to develop a plan to offer hotel vouchers during extreme heat events, to offer temperature controlled accommodations to those living in unincorporated King County who are the most vulnerable to the effects of heat, including the elderly, families with infants and those with underlying medical conditions and opportunities to stay cool. Additionally, there are two requests to coordinate with the Department of the State Department of Social and Health Services to identify any long term care assistance facilities or family care homes in King County that do not have air conditioning. This is intended so that in the event of an extreme heat event, outreach can be done to these facilities. Additionally, there is a request to maintain a website with updated real time information during extreme weather events, which includes a listing of all available shelters. Where to Go to get help and public health tips for staying safe during extreme weather events and how to volunteer or donate resources to organizations providing support during extreme weather events. Those are the components of the motion. There are a few issues identified in the staff report on page 13. First are the challenges with extreme weather shelters. These include the staffing, particularly for overnight shifts. Community partners have also expressed concerns over the operating costs and security in addition to staffing, and that's been reported by DLS and some of their current work. Additionally, some shelters reach capacity while others get few occupants. However, I would note that we don't really have data now on shelter capacity to what extent are being utilized. Not all community facilities in the region have air conditioning. And then lastly, the COVID 19 pandemic continues to complicate things. The staff report also notes that council staff have requested additional information to better understand the extent to which the proposed activities could be achieved using existing resources. They also want to note that on page 77 of the packet, you will find the changes suggested by executive staff that were provided on Friday afternoon. Staff analysis of these changes is ongoing. Madam Chair, that concludes my staff report. I'm happy to answer any questions or go into more detail on some of the topics that I did go over quite quickly. We also, as you indicated, have executive staff in the meeting to answer any questions as well. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jenny, for the excellent report. Did you mean to say page 77 of the report? That I think yes, that includes page 77 of the packet is where you will find the changes that were suggested by the executive stack. Excellent. Thank you very much. Are there any questions about Jenny at this point? I can get my remarks if you're okay with that. That would be fine. Go right ahead. Thank you, Councilmember. Thank you, Chair Caldwell's. Thank you, Jenny, for that great report. I'll start off by saying that earlier this year, I read an alarming story in The New York Times about a deadly heatwave in India. Imagine week after week, unrelenting temperatures between 110 and 125 degrees. No AC, no relief. Just suffocating, scorching heat. Dozens of people died and continue to die. It's a devastating human made disaster and people are suffering because of it. Then I thought about our fates up here in the mild, mild Pacific Northwest. Last year, we saw three of the five hottest days in King County history happen not only in the same year, but in the same week. As Jenny reported, we also saw dozens of heat related deaths. On a personal note, I didn't have AC in my home. My home got up to 110 degrees and I felt like I was choking. Then I thought about all the people in King County who are living in dense apartment complexes, senior facilities, encampments with no HD, who are all vulnerable to heat waves and who face greater and greater environmental threats every year. I read in Cross that Washington historically sees only four days per year the average 90 degrees or above. But by mid-century, in our lifetimes, without emissions intervention, this number will stretch to 17 days and it'll only go up from that. Extreme weather is going to affect every aspect of our daily lives. Extreme heat, extreme cold, wildfire smoke. And when you combine that with our housing crisis, the fact that we have the lowest number of housing units per capita of any state in the country, we are in a particularly unique and dangerous situation here in Washington state. So as Jenny described, my motion asks the executive to develop an operational plan for sheltering the most vulnerable in our region. The bread and butter of the motion is creating a regional network of indoor facilities that are constantly developing and that we're building on that map of indoor facilities. I'd like to see three categories. Category A Here are the buildings that King County currently owns and is already using for extreme weather shelter. Category B Here are the buildings King County owns and does not currently use for extreme weather shelter, but that we potentially could with proper staffing and upgrades. And here are the costs and the plan for those staffing and those upgrades. Finally, Category C, here are the buildings that King County doesn't own that are maybe owned by other government jurisdictions or the private sector. Here is our engagement plan for working with those entities that own those buildings with those third parties. Think of a public school, for example. And here are the costs in the plan for staffing up and creating the upgrades needed to create extreme weather shelter out of those buildings. The motion also asks the executive to do a few other things that Jenny already described, like conducting outreach in unincorporated King County. You may have read recently in the Seattle Times, but we do not face heat waves in an equitable way. There are areas that face more higher impacts of those heat waves than others. I've noticed that Skyway is one of the areas that faces one of the highest impacts of heat waves waves in King County. So South King County and many other places. So I'll end by saying nobody needs to die of heat waves. Nobody needs to die of wildfire smoke inhalation. Nobody needs to freeze to death. These are all preventable deaths and ones that we can help prevent by making sure that we are as prepared as possible and using all of the resources that currently exist at our disposal. I urge your support and I'm thankful for everybody who worked on this motion, including Jenny, Jake, Tracy, Rosa, my, my, my staff, my staff, team member, and also the executive branch who have been very helpful and collaborative during this process. Thank you. Thank you. Councilmembers. I really appreciate the thoroughness and as well as of the thought that you put into this, really identifying a major issue which appears to be coming exacerbated with our climate issues. I have a couple of questions. First, I'd like to say I'm very pleased that you included language pertaining to long term care facilities and collecting the data on which ones are how many but which ones really do not have air conditioning. A family friend of mine who was living in a long term care facility with the brain traumatic brain injury and who died two years later, had no air conditioning. There were no windows that could open in the facility. And this was just a couple of years ago when she died. And so fans were used and it was totally inadequate and what they needed. What they need is to have an H VAC system so that they can have the air conditioning. And it was really horrible. So I very much appreciate that you included that. My question is, I as I understand the executive came out with a plan a couple of weeks ago, three weeks ago or so. How does your legislation differ from what's already in place? The thing that I haven't seen is what I described before, which is that a map, a regional network of indoor facilities and the plan to staff up and upgrade buildings that either we don't own or that we don't currently use as extreme weather shelter. I haven't seen that and I haven't seen that accounted for. And so that's probably the thing that I would say is the most different. And then Jenny can maybe chime in as well. Okay. Thank you very much. Councilmembers. Hello. Jenny, would you like to add anything on that? Sure. Thank you for the question, Councilmember Colwell. I think you're referring to the executives at press and in recent weeks about the plan to develop an extreme heat mitigation strategy. And I did ask the executive how that extreme heat mitigation strategy, how that complements or works, would work with this proposed motion. And on page 12 of the packet, you will see the executives response that the extreme heat mitigation strategy will not specifically address the sheltering needs, but the sheltering plan that's proposed in this motion could be a complement to the extreme heat mitigation strategy and about as well as they note, while the strategy will identify a new and that's the extreme heat mitigation strategy, while the strategy will identify a new or enhanced short term actions that we could be taking to support response. The bigger focus of the executive's heat mitigation strategy is examining the longer term built environment changes we should be taking to mitigate heat risks. Kate. Thank you, Jenny. And I do want to get to our executive staff, but I see that Councilmember Bell Duke, she has a question. Thank you, Chair Colwell. I want to first also express my appreciation for this proposal. It was a terrible, terrible outcome and terrible time during the heat wave of last summer. And so I really do appreciate this forward thinking. How can we make things better in the future kind of proposal? The question I have is. As with most emergency responses, there's a heavy component of inter jurisdictional partnerships that happens when we respond to weather events, earthquakes, any kind of major emergency. And I was listening carefully, and I don't think I heard an element of this proposal that would survey the available partnership shelters, spaces or ways in which we could partner. I think back to that very long term power outage we had some years ago, and in the cities here on the east side, we supported each other different . You know, there were maybe shelters in some parts of Bellevue that served a lot of Redmond and vice versa. So I would wonder if that's possible to include an element of that sort of very critical partnership potential in this proposal. Councilmember Bell, did she there there is a specific provision to call an action requirement or request, I should say. It's a motion to coordinate with city, state and federal agencies to identify any public or private facilities in King County that could serve as shelters in the event of extreme cold heat and wildfire smoke events. That's right. That's very helpful. Thank you. The only thing I guess I would add to that is that the focus on facilities is understandable and really important. We need places for people to go. That that clearly is why some people, you know, have preventable deaths during these kinds of events because they had nowhere safe to go. But I think that there's there's probably operational elements, too, like perhaps depending on the type of weather event and how it's hitting people, we might identify different shelter. There might be different configurations of response and different different kinds of partnerships. So just like let's not overlook the operational aspects as well. I think this is a very thoughtful proposal. I'm happy to support it. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you. Councilmember Bell, did she chair call us? Yes. I'm sorry. The one councilmember who's with me here. Council member Bill Perry. Thank you, Chair Colwell. So I, I also I share the appreciation for this proposal. And I'm aware in our last heat dome, there were 33 deaths. One of those deaths was in district with it was in my district, district three. And the senior citizen community, senior resident community in our district was very strongly impacted. We had that same question about hours of operation for shelter spaces, cooling spaces. It wasn't available on the weekends, it wasn't available after hours. And so I'm wondering, I'm glad to see a look at the staffing and facilities and partnerships with nonprofits, churches, temples, mosques, other municipalities to address this. I know at that time, the fire, the Eastside Fire and Rescue wanted to make sure we had an sort of on the ground network knowing where our folks in our different communities were most at risk. I would love to see a breakout by district, as you mentioned, council members ally. There are certain districts that are more impacted, certain areas that are more impacted. And I'd like to see a breakout of the actual the areas where the actual deaths occurred and the age demographic as well as the ethnic background . I think it's really important to to look at the data and to make sure that we are responding to the areas that are most impacted. I'm also wondering if beyond the shelter, there are many people that are not mobile that are at risk. And so I'm wondering if there are cooling units that would be made available. One of the things that was brought up by you said fire and rescue is just are our senior citizens that were most fragile, not having a cooling unit in their home, a small cooling unit or whatever, whatever might be available. I'm wondering if that's something that we're looking into. And I'm also aware that when western and Eastern hospitals closed, there were different locations set up around our neighborhood, three different locations set up around our neighborhood for folks that were living with developmental disabilities, Down syndrome and and others in these group homes. And it was really they had no no cooling opportunities and it was really dangerous. And that was something that Eastside Fire and Rescue also brought up as just needing equipment for these vulnerable spaces and places. So I guess analyst Jenny Giambattista, I am wondering if you can share a little bit more about the possibility of equipment, not just a movement to a location, but this multipronged approach that might include equipment and if that's spoken to already. Thank you, Councilmember Perry, for the question. The motion as it's drafted now does not specifically address a requirement for equipment, but I would note that as part of the requirement to do outreach to. Gauge the community's needs and preferences for shelter. There is also a requirement to address other needs as well, and certainly equipment could could be there. I would also note you also ask for information on the location of this of the deaths that occurred. Council staff have been working with public health. Where there is public health does have a concern about releasing the data and has noted that the heat related deaths occurred throughout the county and that any apparent pattern or distribution was not able to be identified during what they consider an extremely small number of deaths. That said, council staff will continue to work with public health to see if we can find a way to provide a spatial mapping of those deaths to provide the information that you're looking for. Council Member I would appreciate that. Thank you very much. And I think that that data helps to drive our actions and so be the more specific we can be, of course, without sharing private information that would otherwise be inappropriate. I think really recognizing where we have the greatest impact and see the greatest impact throughout King County. Having that data helps us make better decisions. Thank you. Thank you, Councilmember Perry. Are there any other questions of councilmembers, ally or Jenny? Okay. I would then like to have some comment from the executive branch, I'm thinking Brenton McClusky, director of Office of Emergency Management. But we also have Mena Hashemi, Director of Council Relations, and Caroline Whalen, Director of Department of Executive Services, with us. Thank you, Chair. Call Wells. I believe that. If. If you'd like, I would offer. Comments from the executive. That would be fine. And chaperon with us. Thank you very much for having me. The executive. Supports a regional approach to extreme weather, sheltering. And heating and cooling centers and county agencies. Have been coordinating internally and with cities and now with the Regional Homeless Authority. To reduce. The amount of. Heroics required in our. Response to extreme weather. Since discussions with sponsor council members Charlie, which began earlier this year, we've increased. These efforts with an. Eye on the potential need for warm weather response this summer. The introduction of. This proposed motion has had a very positive result. By elevating both our internal and external coordination. There is much in this legislation to. Which we agree, and we look forward to producing a quality product. In response to your future adoption of this motion, or by completing the. Work we have already initiated. Since the Motion's introduction. We've collected executive branch, and I would note that there. Are at least six. Executive branch. Departments involved in this. As well. As information from. Our city emergency partners. And. Gather their input. And we have. Compiled that in the form of amendments that. Are in your packet today. And we provided those late last week on Friday. To the sponsor and his office. Our chief concern is the. Deadline by which an. Actionable operational. Plan can be completed. We look forward to further discussions with the sponsor on the amendments. That we recommend. Thank you. Thank you very much, Director Whalen. Council members are right. You have any response? I want to thank OEM and everyone in the executive branch. They have been extremely responsive and collaborative on this motion. They've been sharing their expertize. I want to say that they have already been doing a lot of the stuff that's in the motion. They have comprehensive responses. I'm hoping that the recommendations we make through this motion are additive of their efforts, and I'm definitely willing to look at their amendments and make changes, especially on the deadline. You know, you're the ones who are doing the work. And so I will I will be fully deferential on the deadline piece to make sure that we do this right and not just do this. You know, I do think we need to do it fast, but we also need to do it right. So I'll agree with you there and looking forward to working with you on all of the other amendments as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. And is there anybody else either Mina Hashimi or or Brendan McCluskey, who would like to make any comments? Thank you, Circle Wells. I don't have much to add to Director Whalen's comments, but will echo the executive's support for a regional approach to addressing extreme weather events. We appreciate the sponsors, intent and attention to this incredibly important issue and thank them. As Caroline shared, we've begun conversations with several executive branch departments regarding implementation and have shared some of this feedback with the sponsor and look forward to collaborating with him and with council to implement the motion if passed by council. Thank you. Thank you, Director Hashemi. And what about Director Brandon McCluskey? Any comments? Thank you, Madam Chair. I also don't have anything else to add other than to echo what both. Caroline and Mina have have stated already. And we're looking forward to working with the sponsor on this the council, the cities and other. Departments of King County on creating a plan that. Works. And does the right thing. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate the three of you being here and council members. It appears that the best course of action now would be to hold this until our July 20th meeting, at which we can take up a striking amendment, possibly, or light amendments. And we'll look forward to working with you on that. Does that meet with your satisfaction? Yes, they can check. Okay, terrific. Well, that closes our discussion and hearing a proposed motion. 2020 20197. We will now turn to item number six on our agenda, something we all look forward to with a briefing by Dwight Lively, director of the Office of Performance Strategy and Budget, and basically is our Budget Director for the county.