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Good morning.

The Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting of Seattle City Council will now come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

Friday, February 20th, 2026. I'm Councilmember Alexis Mercedes Rink, chair of the committee.

Will the committee clerk please call the roll and let the record reflect that Councilmember Juarez is excused.

Chair Rink.

Present.

Vice Chair Foster.

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council Member Saka.

Here.

Chair, there are four member presents, one excused.

Thank you.

We will now move to approval of today's agenda.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Welcome, everyone.

Thank you for being here.

We have a pretty robust agenda today, so I will keep my remarks very brief.

Just a quick overview of today's agenda.

We will be voting on the Westlake planning resolution that we were briefed on during our February 6th meeting.

We will then hear from three human service provider wage equity-related briefings from central staff, the City of Seattle's Human Services Department, and King County's Department of Community and Human Services.

Then we will end with a roundtable from some of our local human services providers to hear from them directly about wage equity.

And with that, we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

Public comments should relate to items on today's agenda or within the purview of this committee.

Clerk, how many speakers are signed up for today?

Currently, we have three in-person speakers and one remote speaker signed up.

Wonderful.

Each speaker will have two minutes and we will start with in-person speakers first.

Clerk, could you please read the public comment instructions?

The public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

The public comment period is up to 60 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they are registered.

Please begin by speaking your name and the item you are addressing.

Speakers will hear a chime when they have 10 seconds left on their time.

Speakers mics will be muted if they do not end their comments within the allotted time to allow us to call on the next speaker.

The public comment period is now open and we will begin with the first speaker on the list.

We will begin with the in-person speakers and then move to remote.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

And our first in-person speaker is Amira.

Oh, this one?

Okay.

Thank you.

Good morning, Chair Rink and Vice Chair Foster and members of the committee.

My name is Amira Ziada.

I am a union representative at OPEIU 8. We represent workers at housing and human services nonprofits all across the region, including Low Income Housing Institute, LifeWire, Solid Ground, Plymouth Housing, Crisis Connections, Compass Alliance, and several others.

These organizations are on the front lines of the city's response to homelessness and domestic violence and gender-based violence every single day.

So I wanted to start by thanking the council for your continued leadership on wage equity.

The investments you've made, 5.1 million in 2024 and over 7 million preserved in the 2026 budget, they are meaningful and they matter to the workers that we represent.

You backed up resolution 32094 with real dollars and our members recognize that, so thank you.

but the work isn't done.

The UW study found a 37% wage gap and we're still closing it incrementally.

Our members are shelter staff, case managers, domestic violence advocates, and housing navigators.

They do some of the hardest, most emotionally demanding work in this city and many still struggle to afford to live here.

I also want to raise two points.

First, enforcement.

Not every human services provider has a union sitting at the table to help negotiate wage increases, and we need mechanisms to ensure that when the council invests these dollars into wage equity that the dollars are actually reaching the frontline workers in their paychecks.

Second, this investment has a regional ripple effect.

So when Seattle raises the bar on human services wages, it sets the standard across King County.

So providers based in other areas in King County, like basically rising tides lift all boats.

So we thank you for your leadership about this.

And we urge the council to continue.

Thank you, Mira.

Thank you, and our next speaker for today is Tina.

Let's see.

Good morning.

Thank you very much.

And I'm here to talk about resident voices in the process of Seattle, specifically Westlake Transit Hub.

So I want to acknowledge the strong vision for the Westlake Transportation Hub, accessibility, safety, and a welcoming public place.

Hard to argue with any of that.

They matter, and it's appreciated.

and with no disrespect to the work of the Westlake Civic Committee, I want to offer a reminder and call out a gap.

Downtown residents are also key stakeholders.

Downtown residents are not represented in this committee.

Meaningful residential involvement has been extremely limited and it's a lost opportunity.

Downtown residents are subject matter experts in lived experience in downtown.

We understand how our space functions hour by hour, day, night, and that perspective strengthens planning decisions.

This hub isn't only a regional gateway or an economic catalyst.

It's the front yard for the people who live here.

All ages, all ethnicities, all income levels, we live here 24-7.

Including residents and early exploration and planning brings a lived perspective that strengthens decisions and builds solutions that community can truly support.

Engaging residents doesn't slow progress, it strengthens outcome and long-term success.

I appreciate the work that's gone into this effort and I'm hopeful that the next phase and future projects reflect a much more intentional partnership with the residential community.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tina.

And our last in-person speaker is Byram.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Byram Simpson, along with my colleague Amira.

I work for OPEIU Local 8 as a union representative.

I'm not going to repeat everything that Amira said, but I want to speak to my experience coming up as a worker.

I was proud to be a unionized worker at Plymouth Housing, working as a case manager on the front lines.

And I have firsthand experience with the difference it makes for workers when the city invests real dollars into our wages.

The majority of the people doing the work on the front lines at these agencies cannot themselves afford to live in the city of Seattle.

I myself live in federal way, but I work here in Seattle.

Many of my colleagues, now my members, qualify for the same services that they provide.

This money is important.

It makes a real difference.

The investment that was made a few years ago through the inflationary funding made that real difference, but there is much work still to be done.

The cost of living continues to increase, and the crisis that our most vulnerable city residents are facing become more complex and harder for our workers to navigate.

Alexis, you were one of the first, in fact, the first person that I heard thank a social service worker for their service and recognize it as frontline service.

And so thank you for continuing to do this work to ensure that that emergency frontline service work is honored, respected and paid equitably.

Thank you.

Thank you, Byram.

And that concludes our in-person speakers for today.

We're going to move now to our remote speakers, and our first remote speaker is David Haynes.

David, please press star six.

When you hear the prompt, you have been unmuted.

All right, David, I am no longer seeing you online.

Giving just one extra moment.

Okay, we then have no additional registered speakers, and I want to thank everybody for providing your public comments today.

Thank you for engaging with the work of this committee.

And we will now proceed to our items of business.

And so moving to our first item of business, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Resolution 3-2-1-9-1, a resolution identifying the opportunity to develop a regional transportation hub adjacent to Westlake Park, creating a vision for how this hub will integrate with the surrounding neighborhoods and setting forth directions for functionality, safety, and urban compatibility, along with guiding principles for the public projects plan for the area adjacent to Westlake Park.

Discussion and possible votes.

Welcome.

Interim Director Teal, if you could please take a moment to introduce yourself by stating your full name and organization into the microphone for the record.

Thank you.

Sure thing.

Alicia Teal, Interim Director, Seattle Office of Economic Development.

Wonderful.

Please proceed.

Great.

Thank you so much for considering this resolution in committee today.

As we noted at the briefing two weeks ago, this was developed through input from the Westlake Civic Committee, which meant over the course of last year, over several meetings, The committee's work was also informed by a set of stakeholder interviews that we did with folks, including residents in the area.

I do want to acknowledge that each of the projects that is involved, the monorail update, the park renovations, as well as Sound Transit 3, all will have their own public processes associated with it.

And so we really see today's resolution as the beginning, not the end of how we are thinking about how these projects knit together.

Certainly.

Colleagues, any questions on this resolution?

I know we were briefed during the last committee meeting on this, and the work on this preceded the formation of this committee.

But are there any questions for today?

Right, I think I'll just note, I appreciate Director Teal you speaking to just some of the, what informed this process, but can you speak to, again, you mentioned this is the beginning of additional engagement processes, how are you intending to incorporate resident voice into these processes?

Of course.

So I think a lot of that will be done actually in partnership with other departments.

So OED is not the lead department on any of those three projects.

And in fact, in the case of the Sound Transit 3 station, that's a cross-agency collaboration with our partners at Sound Transit.

but in collaboration with other departments such as the Office of Planning and Community Development, which did hold an extensive downtown sub area public engagement process and this project, Westlake and the possibilities associated with it actually rose up in the downtown sub area plan as well.

And so we're seeing a lot of consistency in this two block area being a place for increased civic investment and possibility.

I would also note that as Seattle Center considers updates to the monorail, we absolutely anticipate that there will be public engagement associated with that.

And then with phase one of the Westlake Park renovations, Our partners at Seattle Parks and Recreation, as well as the Parks Foundation, held numerous community meetings in the lead up to how construction began.

And if there are future changes to the park, I completely anticipate that there will be similar engagement held with the public.

Thank you for speaking to that.

Just wanted to reflect again the public comment today and it sounds like there's a lot to come.

So thank you for shedding light on that and excited to see how this progresses.

Colleagues, if there's no additional questions on this, going once, going twice, I move that the committee move forward with voting to pass resolution 3-2-1-9-1.

Is there a second?

Second.

It is moved and seconded to recommend to pass the resolution.

Are there any final comments?

Seeing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the committee recommendation to pass the resolution?

Chair Rink.

Yes.

Vice Chair Foster.

Yes.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Yes.

Council Member Saka.

Aye.

There are four in favor and zero opposed.

Thank you.

The motion carries in the committee recommendation to pass the resolution will now be sent to the March 3rd full city council meeting.

Thank you, director.

Thank you all.

Wonderful.

And we're going to move right along to item two.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Wage equity for human services contracts, briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

And we'll give our fantastic central staffer a moment to get settled in.

And once she is, if you can please introduce yourself before beginning, that would be great, Jen.

Will do.

Do I share this?

Yes.

I'm out of practice, I guess.

Let me put this in presentation view.

Give me one moment.

All right.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Jennifer LeBrecq and I'm city council central staff working on housing and homelessness and human services issues.

And I'm here today just to provide you with some background and context for wage equity and to summarize some of the actions that the city has taken in the last several years regarding wage equity for human services contracts.

Before I begin this presentation, I do want to make a distinction between inflationary adjustments for human services contracts versus wage equity.

SMC 3.20.060 requires an annual inflationary adjustment for most contracts administered by the Human Services Department.

Wage equity increases are not required under the code, although they have been provided in several budgets, which we'll talk about.

And wage equity increases are intended to increase wages beyond simply adjustments for inflation.

And that will be an important distinction as we talk through a couple of these slides.

So in 2002, City Council provided $600,000 in the adopted budget for a study analyzing the comparable worth of human services jobs as compared to similar jobs in different fields.

And of that $600,000, $500,000 was used for a wage equity study, which we'll talk about here, which was administered by the Human Services Department.

and 100,000 supported the Seattle Human Services Coalition to staff this effort.

In 2022, HSD contracted with the University of Washington to conduct a wage study for nonprofit human service workers, and that study was then published in February of 2023. Key findings from the UW wage study included that median annual pay for human service workers in the nonprofit sector is 30% lower than in non-care industries.

Workers who leave the human services industry for a job in a different industry see a net pay increase of 7% a year later relative to workers who stay in human services.

Women are over-represented in the human services industry, making up almost 80% of human service workers, and black African-American workers are almost three times as likely to work in human services as they are to work in non-care industries.

In 2023, following the publication of that study, City Council passed Resolution 32094, which stated Council's intent to recognize the short-term and long-term recommendations in the UW wage equity study without necessarily committing to implementing all of them.

Key recommendations included increase human services wages by at least 7% by 2025, substantially increase wages for nonprofit human service workers to align with those of workers doing comparable work in other sectors and industries by 2030, establish a salary grade system and minimum pay standards based on job characteristics, and use public contracts to further advance wage equity.

The resolution also recognized that collaboration with other private and public funders is needed to make joint progress on wage equity.

It requested a plan from HSD, or the Human Services Department, on how the department would incorporate wage equity into the application evaluation and contracting process in order to help ensure that increases in contracts for the purpose of wage equity were used to actually increase worker wages.

And it requested that the executive consider wage equity increase for human service contracts administered by departments outside of HSD and provide a report with information on those contracts.

And that just acknowledges that, yes, the majority of the city's human services contracts are administered, as one would suspect, by the human services department, but that there are contracts held by other departments which could also likely be considered human services.

but there isn't a great understanding really of how many of those there are or what the dollar amount is.

In 2024, in the 2024 adopted budget, there was a 2% wage equity increase for human service contracts administered by HSD, plus a handful of contracts administered by the Department of Early Learning and the Department of Neighborhoods.

Total wage equity increase was $4.6 million.

The 2026 adopted budget included another 2% wage equity increase for human services contracts administered by HSD for a total of $5 million.

Council also in 2024 adopted Ordinance 126963 requiring that HSD submit a report on the use of wage equity funding provided in the 2024 adopted budget.

HSD submitted that report in December of last year and they are here today to talk about the results or the findings from that report.

Although we're here to talk about the Human Services Department, I did want to take a moment to talk about the Workforce Stabilization Fund for Permanent Supportive Housing.

This money is administered by the Office of Housing, but directly impacts the workforce in PSH, which are considered human services workers.

So I think if we want a full picture of what the city is doing in this regard, it's important to address this as well.

So since 2023, OH has been using a combination of housing levy and payroll expense tax funds to support a workforce stabilization fund for permanent supportive housing projects.

Eligible uses of the funds include a variety of operational and infrastructure needs, which allows providers to shift resources to bolster staff compensation or provide other supports that result in improvements to hiring and retention.

and I would say the goal of this program is that although it does allow funding to be used for non-STAP purposes, OH's expectation is that over time providers will increasingly use it to support worker wages.

In 2024, total WSF awards were $26 million for 11 PSH providers and more than half of program funds supported staff compensation.

WS funds supported the wages and benefits of 975 frontline PSH staff, Over the course of the year, their wages increased by $1.32 per hour, representing an approximately 4.2% increase and outpacing the 2.9% rate of inflation.

The ratio of open positions to filled positions decreased from 11% in 2023 to 72% at the beginning of 2024 and to 6.7% at the end of the year.

Turnover in the local PSH sector remains high.

In 2024, organizations receiving WSF collectively had a turnover rate of 32.4%.

And I will stop there for any questions.

Thank you for that presentation, Jennifer.

Colleagues, we wanted to start with this presentation before hearing from the Human Services Department and King County and our providers just to ground us in the legislative history behind this work.

Are there any questions?

I'm seeing Council Member Foster, pardon me, Vice Chair Foster.

I'll take it either way.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you so much, Jen.

Jen, this may be a question for providers, but it came up in my head during your presentation, so I'll just ask it.

And I'll just preface it with saying, you know, I have an MSW, graduated with a lot of people who are severely underpaid, and this is an issue that I care deeply about.

But I also know that it not just impacts the individuals in the field, but it impacts the clients that folks are working to serve.

So something that sticks out to me is a 32.4% turnover rate.

So can you speak to the impact that a turnover rate that high may have on our ability to provide efficient and effective services for clients?

I agree, I think that's a great question for the provider panel as well, but I would say that, you know, as I recall some of the research that went into supporting the resolution that yes, turnover has an impact on the ability to serve clients successfully, right?

We know that both from research and data and anecdotal stories where you have a person, they spent a long time building a relationship with someone in a vulnerable position, and then they have to leave because the job doesn't pay enough, and that really interrupts the provision of services.

One of my favorite quotes from working on this is that human services is the work of one human providing services to another human or helping another human, and that's all about relationships.

So helping people be able to stay in their job is part of how we successfully help a person and accomplish the goals of whatever the program is.

Thank you, Jen.

Thank you, Chair.

Great question.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Colleagues, any additional questions before we move to our next presentation and hear from the Human Services Department?

I'm not seeing anything.

So with that, I'm gonna say thank you again, Jen, for the presentation today.

And we're going to move on to item three on our agenda.

Will the clerk please read item three into the record?

Human Services Department, 2024 Provider Pay Report, briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, and as you get settled in, please take a moment and introduce yourselves, full name, organization, and to the microphone for the record.

Okay, good morning.

I'm Tonya Kim with the Human Services Department.

Hello, is this on?

Sorry.

Okay, thanks.

Owen Cephas, he and pronouns, Research and Evaluation Manager at the Human Services Department.

Okay, I will kick us off while we're waiting for the deck to come up and look at that magic.

Thank you.

Well, I want to say first, thank you for having this, I think, really well-stacked agenda.

I think it's very balanced and appreciate Jen going over the context because that cut my talking points by 80% down.

This is fantastic.

I do want to just share anecdotally that this is very dear to me.

I worked over a decade in community and community-based organizations providing services as well and in various roles.

and I think the reason why the research is important is it's not only just about frontline workers, it's not only about comparing wages amongst the nonprofits, but it's about, as a society and as a system, what are we valuing for the skilled services that are being provided?

it's really dear to me too.

And with that, we had a full agenda that we're gonna go over and like I said, we're gonna really skip through a couple of these pretty quick because Jen has already covered that.

And so we'll move on to just an introduction to the viewing public of who the Human Services Department is.

And I always just start here because we do have other departments who offers services for people.

But HSD is the executive branch that offers and ensures that we're connecting people to services and resources, particularly during times of need.

And you can see one through six, everything from preparing youth for success to promoting healthy aging.

And when you think about our kiddos, our seniors who are staying in place, the work we're doing, all in between, again, you've already heard from our public commenters that it's a range of really critical services.

We do this in two important ways.

We offer direct services, but we also offer contracts, and that's what we're here to talk about.

In terms of scale, we have about 360 contracts.

Those are 360 contracts that we're directly contracting with organizations, and some of those organizations have subcontractors, and so I want to acknowledge, for example, we have contracts with Public Health, we have contracts with DCHS, who is presenting next, and we have contracts with the King County Regional Homeless Authority, and so we have other subcontractors that also benefit from this, and so there is a broader net.

and with that there are over 200 individual organizations that benefit from this.

Here's a slide that we're gonna skip.

I will say though very quickly that we selected the University of Washington through a competitive process and so there was a procurement process on that.

The Seattle Human Services Coalition, the University of Washington, and the member organizations with these groups did an excellent job of education.

So part of that work, Jen talked about, that 600,500 went to the research, 100,000 went to the education.

and these are just some of the headlines that, just some, really we could have filled multiple pages.

This is important and I'll just underscore this and I know my partners who are gonna come up in a moment will also underscore this.

it is not the sole responsibility for the City of Seattle.

We need all funders to be at the table lifting up wages because organizations, and again, I was a part of different organizations, most nonprofits have multiple fund sources.

and so we need the tide to lift together and then that way it benefits because otherwise you can create internal equity issues.

It's really slow pace.

People might rely on the city to be that driver.

It's important that we're leaders in this space but we need others to come in and so really happy to see our colleagues from the county joining the table as well.

and with that, here are some of the nuances that Jen covered and I really think she covered everything here and so I'm gonna hand it over to Owen who can go more deeply into the report that we're gonna share.

So we had the research study that really moved us forward, gave some recommendations and then HSD is responsible for following up on the implementation of specifically the 2024. So that was the work that we did in 2025 and submitted a report.

And so now I'm gonna hand it over to Owen who is gonna get nerdy with us for a moment.

Thank you, Director Kim.

I'm not gonna go through all the words here, but just a few things that I will lift up, a summary of what this report is focused on today, which is A, a list of all the organizations whose contracts included appropriated money, the amount of such appropriated money that were included in each of those, a list of the organizations that declined that funding.

Thank you.

a narrative of how such appropriate money was used by providers, a description of other fund sources that contributed to increases in human services wages, and a description of inflationary adjustments provided to staff.

Section A, I'm not going to go through the whole list of organizations and their contracts, because there were 244 contracts across 148 agencies that received these provider pay funds.

13 of those contracts, as Director Kim mentioned, have subcontracts with varying numbers.

And you can find a full list in Appendix B of the report.

The amount of such appropriated money, including each of the organization's contracts, amounted to a total of 4.2 million, just roughly, excuse me, 4.2 million dollars that were added to those contracts in 2024, which represents a 2% increase from their base contracts.

Again, you can find that on the contract level in Appendix B of the report.

To the right, though, we grouped these contracts and the provider pay increases into groups based on how much each of them received in their contracts.

And you will note that for some of these contracts, the majority of them, this was less than $4,000 that was added to their contracts.

So significant in response to what we are trying to solve here on provider wage increases, but worth noting the range that we see.

Sorry, I got a little lost in my contract.

That's okay.

While you find that place, I think you made an important point, which perhaps we didn't underscore or clearly articulate before, which is that this is a 2% increase from 2024 in the base.

which is really important and so that carries forward.

It's not a one-time, it's a base and that means something because we'll talk about then, you know, later on the additional increase and where we want to go.

So we're really, this is supposed to be ongoing budget implication.

Thank you for that, Director Kim.

Next section was the organizations that declined these appropriate fundings.

We incorporated provider pay funds automatically into the 2024 contracts and no agencies declined that funding.

Now for sections D through F, we required a little bit more detail than what we had for the first three sections.

And I want to walk you through really quickly how we got that information.

So rather than serving all 244 contracts, HSD was approved for a sampling technique to survey providers that received more than $4,000 and to do a sub-sample of those of at least 30%.

So what that means is we went from 244 total contracts that received 2% provider pay down to 119 that received more than $4,000 and then we oversampled to make sure that we got at least a minimum of 30% of those 119 who we then surveyed.

44 contracts were represented in that across 43 agencies.

We use that to answer questions such as how such appropriated money was used by providers.

And we see that across the 43 surveyed agencies, we had 455 positions that were funded at least in part by their HSD contract.

And of those 455, 342, or 75% of them, received a wage increase.

Agencies reported an average wage increase of 8%, and we can see more of a breakdown of that here.

Most wage increases went to lower paid positions, is what this table is telling us, with 74% going to positions earning under $4, or not $4, excuse me, $40 an hour.

Section E of the report asked us to provide a description of other funding sources that contributed to increases in human services workers' wages.

When we were looking across these agencies, we found that 38 agencies used provider pay funds to increase worker pay.

32 agencies leveraged additional fund sources towards worker pay, so not just the 2% that HSE is providing, though we did find that five agencies used provider pay funds in other ways to support staff.

including maintaining pay for existing staff due to decreases in other funding, providing health, dental, vision, life insurance, and other benefits, contributing to staff retirement accounts, and adding physician.

Here we can see that most agencies are actually, excuse me for a second.

Let me describe this table.

On the right, you can see the number of contracts and percent of contracts that are using other fund sources in addition to HSDs to increase worker pay.

and we can see that the number one source for agencies was fundraising.

Though close behind, we had state government, county, and federal government.

To Director Kim's earlier point, this shows that HSD is not the only one contributing to this solution, that there are many partners at the table here, and all of us need to step forward.

Section F focused on a description of inflationary adjustments provided to staff.

As a reminder from earlier, we had 342 positions in our sample that received a wage increase.

Agencies reported an inflationary increase separate from total wage increases in only 158 of those positions.

And many agencies did not distinguish between the amount of wage increase attributed to inflation versus other fund services.

Here we can see what agencies reported regarding inflationary adjustments versus other wage increases.

You can see to the right, we broke those down into groups based off of how much folks were adding for inflationary increases by position and percent of positions.

And what I'll lift up here is that of agencies that did include inflationary adjustments, a majority reported inflationary increase between 2% and 4%.

So with that, a few key pieces to lift up.

In 2024, with the provider pay increases, we saw that 75% of staff working at AHSD contracted programs received a pay increase, and that those staff received an average increase of 8%.

Most wage increases went to lower paid positions.

As we said earlier, 74% of wage increases went to positions earning under $40 an hour.

And we also see that most agencies are leveraging other fund sources in addition to HSD's human services worker wage increases with the top sources that I indicated earlier, fundraising, state, county, and federal governments.

And with that, I'll pass it back to Director Kim.

Okay, so we're gonna close out by circling back to some of the information that Jen has already shared.

So that was our report out for the impacts on the 2024 2% increase for wages.

And then in 2026, there was an additional 2% provider pay increase.

And so of course that's 4% total since 2024. And then on here we do also note, though very separate, the annual increases for inflationary altogether since 2024. For our base contracts that were eligible, we had 18.5% increase since that time.

But, you know, it's important to know how the base contracts have increased in terms of their budget, but it is also important to distinguish the difference between what is equitable wages, again, going back to the study, in comparison to other sectors versus the inflationary costs, and so there's rent, food, all of the things that I know that you're familiar with, insurance, et cetera.

So I wanted to flag that increase and underscore there's more work to do.

In addition to that, we do also want to acknowledge the amount of work that is going in, particularly with the Human Services Coalition and their leadership to organize other, because there was a slew of round tables and presentations to get and other funders to contribute to this space.

And so it's great that the city is leading and we continue to partner moving forward.

And that's it.

We'll happy to take any of your questions or yield the time.

Thank you for the presentation.

Colleagues, any questions?

Vice Chair Foster.

Thank you so much.

I just have a quick clarifying question.

So the SMC requires the inflationary adjustment.

Something else I heard I believe Jen say earlier was, you know, we have, and I know this, we have multiple different human services contracts that live in different departments across the city.

Does that SMC inflationary increase apply across different departments?

It does not.

It is specific to contracts, most contracts that are administered by the Human Services Department.

Okay, understood.

So if there's a Human Services contract that's held by, I don't know, FAS, OH, somebody else, the existing SMC does not require an inflationary adjustment to those contracts.

That's correct.

Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Vice Chair Foster.

Colleagues, additional questions?

Maybe while folks are thinking, I'll just go into one that I have.

I mean, thank you for this presentation, and it's clear the Department has spent some real thought into really taking a thoughtful approach to how to assess the impacts of wage equity increases.

Um, I'm wondering, maybe this is something for a follow-up, but thinking about what, how we can measure or understand the impact for our subcontractors as well.

I don't know if there's anything you all would want to speak to on that matter, but I would hope we could have a conversation in future reporting and how we measure impact for our subcontractors.

That's something that I think we're ready to do now.

This was new for us and we needed to develop a process by which we could get the information back from our colleagues.

We can certainly, there's actually a list of things that we need to contemplate and figure out with our competitive funding processes, our contracts, how there was a comment about enforcement, that's probably not HST, but in terms of contract monitoring and culling more information, we can impose our contractors to monitor for compliance, and that would be part of this.

But certainly we could, now we're in a better position to even survey those agencies as well, but we had to start with our base.

Certainly, yes.

This is the first report.

It is the first report, and we're looking at the frequency.

Does it make sense only when there's an additional add?

What would that look like?

It's a balance of not overburdening our organizations, too, and if things are a status quo, then would we return back to that survey?

I don't know how useful that would be.

And have we gotten any feedback from providers on approximately how much time was spent participating in the survey?

Anecdotally, I had heard that it was a good partnership and not over burdensome at the level that we have provided, but certainly they will let you know if it was.

that was too difficult.

Fabulous.

Well, thank you for this.

I'm not seeing any additional hands, and so I am gonna move us along in the agenda.

Thank you to our colleagues in the Human Services Department for giving us this groundwork.

And with that, we're gonna move on to our next agenda item.

When the clerk please read item four into the record.

Overview of Veterans, Seniors and Human, excuse me, Overview of Veterans, Seniors and Human Services Levy Workforce Investment Briefing and Discussion.

Thank you.

And I believe our presenters are virtual today from King County.

Good morning.

Just confirming that folks can hear me okay?

Yes, Mr. Bailey, we can hear you.

Awesome.

And confirming that you can see my screen.

That as well.

We are good to go.

Thank you for being here this morning.

Please take a moment to introduce yourself for the record before starting your presentation.

Absolutely.

Good morning, everybody.

For the record, my name is Michael Bailey, serving as the Division Director for the Adult Services Division here at the King County Department of Community and Human Services.

That said, good morning Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair and members of the committee.

It is certainly a pleasure and privilege to have the opportunity to join today's discussions.

As a result, I do bring greetings from our County Executive, greetings from our Interim Department Director, Dr. Susan McLaughlin, and I myself am just genuinely excited to help contribute to a vitally important conversation.

Within our division, we do believe that advancing wage equity is critical.

to improving the human services sector and as a result, I'm hoping to speak further to that as I move through my briefing today.

For those of you who may not be aware, the King County Department of Community and Human Services, also known as DCHS, helps to support close to 500,000 individuals every year.

We do so by stewarding investments in housing stability, behavioral health, employment and financial empowerment, veteran services, domestic violence prevention, aging supports, disability supports, and so much more.

With a population of approximately 2.3 million residents, It's actually interesting to think about King County at a state scale.

We are in fact larger than several US states, including Hawaii, Nebraska, West Virginia, and even New Mexico.

So in many ways, we do operate at that scale and level of complexity, but with the benefit of having locally sourced funds to help support locally designed solutions.

That scale also means that DCHS is not simply administering contracts, we're actually working to steward public trust to coordinate across cities such as City of Seattle and with community-based organizations, all while ensuring our locally sourced resources reach the residents of King County.

This aligns with our mission to ensure that we are providing equitable opportunities for people to be healthy, happy, and connected to community.

The department leverages five divisions to help advance this work.

The division that I'm here to discuss today is the Adult Services Division.

Like many of the divisions within DCHS, the Adult Services Division, which is the division that I'm responsible for directing, is responsible for managing one of several major initiatives.

For example, the Behavioral Health and Recovery Division, also known as BEHERD, manages the Crisis Care Centers Initiative.

Our Housing and Community Development Division, also referred to as HCD, is responsible for managing their Health Through Housing Initiative.

Within the Adult Services Division, our primary initiative is the Veteran Seniors and Human Services Levy.

And while veterans and seniors are embedded in the title, I do want to stress that the levy serves far more than just those two populations.

In fact, every day, the levy helps to support residents across King County, regardless of veteran status, age, or background.

These residents include low to moderate income families, new parents, immigrants and refugees, communities of color, individuals re-entering the community after incarceration, survivors of domestic and gender-based violence, and others who are navigating various types of instability.

Together, these community members, along with veterans and seniors, represent our three priority population groups of the levy.

And while not formally designated as a priority population, the levy also makes significant investments in strengthening our nonprofit provider network.

and in fact through workforce stabilization efforts and technical assistance strategies and even capacity building supports.

We're working to ensure our community-based organizations have the infrastructure and support needed to deliver high quality and culturally competent services at a scale that helps support the region.

I heard Director Kim speak to the scale of investments Within the levy, we're fostering approximately 550 million worth of services and supports that span from 2024 to 2029. We have north of 200 providers and close to 400 contracts.

So to advance these priority populations in our human services sector, I mentioned the 550 million in investments.

These investments are organized around five community-directed result areas, which are essentially designed to help disrupt disparities and to help improve outcomes.

And for the sake of time, I'll quickly highlight them here.

We have our healthy living result area, which is comprised of multiple strategies, many of whom are executed in partnership with the Seattle King County Department of Public Health.

This result area also helps to support behavioral health, prevention services, and also access to healthcare coverage for certain populations.

our financial stability result area, which includes our workforce development investments, which again we'll talk about shortly.

This helps to support employment supports and also helps to fund our nationally recognized King County Veterans Program.

and in doing so, it aids us in helping veterans but also everyday residents with achieving economic security.

Our Housing Stability Result Area, which is implemented in close partnership with our Housing and Community Development Division, works to prevent and reduce homelessness while also increasing access to stable affordable housing.

Our social engagement result area funds programs that ultimately help to combat social isolation and preserve cultural identity.

And our service system access and improvement result area focuses on improving access to services and strengthening our regional human services ecosystem.

And in fact, it's actually through this result area that we're able to deploy mobile outreach and employment teams to help connect residents directly to supports and opportunities.

And at the same time, we're also leveraging this funding to help invest in system-level improvements that make services more coordinated, accessible and responsive.

One of our service system improvement investments also allows us to fund our nonprofit workforce surveys, which are administered in partnership with 501 Commons.

This collaboration helps to provide critical data to inform workforce stabilization strategies, compensation investments, and other improvements.

And in fact, it's through this data that was collected that we're able to further validate the problem of wage and equities here within the region.

So much like our colleagues at the Seattle Human Services Department, we apply a results-based accountability framework to guide our work.

This framework challenges us to begin every endeavor with a fundamental but often overlooked question, which is, what is the problem that we are trying to solve?

I believe today's agenda makes clear that we're working to address wage equity.

However, before moving to our solutions, I thought it important to further define the nature of the problem.

And much like other presenters that you'll hear from today, I believe a shared understanding of the problem helps to ensure that the strategies we design and co-design are targeted, measurable, and responsive to the root causes rather than just the symptoms.

So through our 2025 501 Commons workforce report and in looking at prior additions, we're able to see a consistent picture of challenges within human services and nonprofit sector related to recruitment and retainment of staff.

The data shows an 18% turnover rate among full-time employees and a 20% turnover rate among part-time staff.

In addition, it also shows a 29% of respondents sharing that they themselves believe that they are underpaid for the work that they perform.

And as many of today's panelists will likely agree, without a stable workforce, we're actually unable to ensure the continuity of care, to maintain institutional knowledge, to deliver services at the scale and quality that our residents deserve.

And I heard our vice chair speak to that earlier with some of her questions.

Turnover, especially high turnover, often disrupts relationships with clients.

It increases onboarding and training costs for providers, it slows down program implementation, and ultimately it weakens outcomes.

That said, workforce instability is not just an HR issue, it's fundamentally a system performance issue.

And if we're serious about disrupting disparities, we also have to be serious about stabilizing the workforce that delivers the services designed to address those disparities.

So additional data from the survey also highlights the specific retention strategies that nonprofit organizations are using to support their workforce.

The same 2025 report asked organizations, which programs and policies are you using to improve employee retention and engagement?

I've attempted to provide a summary of those responses here.

So you'll see that 84% offer flexibility around working from home.

81% conduct regular wage and benefit comparisons with similar organizations.

81% provide training and professional development opportunities, including mentoring and coaching.

80% offer flexible work schedules 67% clearly communicate their compensation philosophy to employees 62% have defined pay ranges and communicate how those pay ranges are set 50% implement workplace inclusive programs 44% offer employee wellness programs 43% maintain career development plans for staff and 41% use some type of employee recognition program When you review these together, the data makes a suggestion that while organizations are implementing flexibility and professional development strategies, there's still opportunity to further invest in structural retention practices that connect directly to sustainable careers, but also workforce sustainability as well.

So now that we've attempted to paint a clearer picture of the problem, and to a degree look at the data that validates both the scale and persistence of that problem, I wanted to close out by talking about one of the solutions we've identified in partnership with community to help solve for that problem.

And through targeted investments within the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy, I just wanna stress that we're not only working to acknowledge the wage equity challenge, but we are actively working towards addressing it.

and one such investment is our human services workforce stabilization strategy.

So our workforce stabilization strategy, which is identified within our implementation plan as financial strategy number six, this is intended to directly address the recruitment and retention challenges that I discussed earlier.

Over the 2024-2029 levy lifecycle, this strategy is intended to support a total investment of $57 million with funds strategically going towards co-designed workforce stabilization strategies.

As we work to improve recruitment and retention, we recognize that wages matter.

Increased compensation is explicitly identified as an eligible and recommended expense within the levy's implementation plan.

And beyond wages, the strategy also supports improved benefits, initiatives that help reduce cost of living pressures so that paychecks can stretch further, and investments within professional development.

And I do want to stress that these professional growth opportunities are designed not only to build skills, but also to create pathways to higher paying roles, ideally within the same human services ecosystem that we're working to strengthen.

To design this strategy, our division's policy and community engagement team led a series of listening sessions with prospective applicants to better understand what types of investments would be most meaningful and useful to those providers.

At DCHS, we hold multiple definitions of community And while our priority populations, which are those furthest from opportunities and in greatest need of services, are in fact our primary community, we also recognize that the nonprofit community is itself an equally important community.

These organizations are essential partners in delivering services, and we believe that they deserve a meaningful voice in shaping the investments intended to support them.

So following this co-design process, we released three rounds of procurements in 2025. Again, 2025 was the first year we launched this type of workforce stabilization investment.

This phased approach allows us to incorporate community feedback, test assumptions, and work towards building a funding structure that reflects both the legislative intent but also the real-world operational needs.

As a division, I often encourage our team, our partners, and community supporters to dream without boundaries.

And rather than focusing solely on the barriers of the past, we often encourage people to ask, you know, what could be possible if we design the system differently?

And sometimes this exercise is a little bit easier to participate in when we take the time to intentionally expose folks to what is possible.

So in that spirit, we're working to create pathways for our contract managers to share similar programs and outcomes with their providers.

We're using evidence-based interventions and lessons learned from other wage equity efforts so that we can maintain a state of co-design and collaboration and learning with our providers.

I've shared some of those interventions here with increased wages listed at the top.

You'll see that these are connected to outcomes recorded by similar human services organizations.

These measurable outcomes include things like decreased turnover and decreased vacancies rates.

And again, this helps to paint the picture of what's possible.

As I mentioned earlier, we released three rounds of funding in 2025. The data you see here reflects rounds one and two, with round three data scheduled to be incorporated next month in March.

What stands out immediately is that at the top of category selected, we see that folks are selecting a desire to increase wages and bonuses.

These are all intended to help support recruitment and retention.

But what's really meaningful is that when folks were submitting applications, we required organizations to make these selections in partnership with their direct staff.

So you'll see that many of folks here prioritize direct compensation strategies as the most immediate and impactful solution to workforce instability.

And again, I believe that this reinforces what we've heard consistently through our listening sessions and through our workforce survey data, which is this.

compensation remained central to stabilizing the nonprofit workforce.

As part of our efforts to operationalize the Workforce Stabilization Program, we conducted provider check-ins to understand how implementation was progressing.

Because this is a fairly new investment and a fairly new strategy, We don't yet have long-term performance data to formally evaluate the overall effectiveness.

However, we do have provider feedback, we have testimony, and we have perception data.

And in workforce stabilization efforts, perception matters.

If employees and employers perceive improvements, then that perception itself can often influence retention, morale, and also organizational stability.

I'm excited to state that even at this early stage, we are seeing promising indicators.

For example, on staff recruitment, 28% of providers reported decreases in vacancy rates after receiving the workforce stabilization funds, while 17% reported moderate improvements.

And while 29% indicated no impact yet, that data also suggests that that 29% of providers, for those providers, things have not gotten worse.

On the staff retention, the signals are actually stronger.

So 40% of providers reported decreases in turnover and nearly half reported moderate to high impacts on reducing staff attrition.

An additional 29% reported some impact, indicating early stabilization success across those organizations.

So while vacancy and turnover rates have not shifted universally, in these six to eight months of the program, the directional trend is encouraging.

And these early results suggest that targeted investments in wages, bonuses, and workforce supports are beginning to make a measurable difference among our providers.

As we continue to administer the program, we are continuously assessing how to improve the operation of that strategy.

Per the implementation plan, we are required to evaluate the first phase of investments, which are those investments made prior to 2027, and then use that data to design a more robust and responsive program for the remaining years of the levy, which again concludes in 2029. I'm sharing this data because it may be helpful as you continue your wage equity discussions which we are hoping and excited to participate in in collaboration with the Seattle Human Services Department.

One of the clearest themes we heard from providers was the need for predictable multi-year funding.

Stability in funding, especially in a wage boost, will allow nonprofits the time necessary to recalibrate their internal systems, and in some cases, it'll give them time to thoughtfully redesign pay scales.

Short-term funding can provide relief, but ultimately multi-year commitments is what's needed to help support structural change.

We also heard strong appreciation for flexibility in the use of funds.

recognizing that workforce challenges vary significantly by organization size, service model, and also the community served.

There were explicit call-outs regarding bonuses, which in some cases were actually preferred over permanent wage increases.

I do want to call out that this preference emerged primarily as a result of the workforce funding, or at least the first phase of it, ending in 2026. A lot of our organizations expressed concerns about committing to permanent salary increases without sustained funding to support those increases long term.

And in fact, we saw some organizations choose not to apply for funding due to the limited duration of that investment.

And because we're operating with finite resources, but also a clear legislative direction, we had to make hard decisions on what eligible uses we would permit with this first round of funding.

At the same time, we believe in continuous improvement.

And as part of that, what we attempted to do was to collect feedback from providers.

And to that end, we asked this question.

What currently unallowable expenses would further support your workforce stabilization efforts?

And by asking that question, we saw several themes emerge.

At the top of the list, which you'll see here, we saw funding for new staff salaries.

Providers shared that being able to hire additional staff would allow them to meet growing client demand while also easing pressure on existing employees and in some cases, creating room for internal wage adjustments.

We saw strong interest in capacity building supports, which is actually another strategy within the Veterans, Seniors and Human Services levy.

There were repeated requests for expanded salary support for current staff, which again reinforces the ongoing importance of wage stability.

Other cost-saving mechanisms were also identified as well, including support for student loan repayment, funding for interns and volunteers, and assistance that would ultimately reduce overhead pressures.

There was an other category that was also used by about 12% of providers that responded to this assessment.

There was other category include temporary work coverage to reduce overtime and protect work-life balance, tuition reimbursement for licensed staff, additional loan repayment models, but also software and administrative infrastructure costs.

Many of these requests share a common thread and even if they're not directly labeled as salary increases, Each of them, in some shape or form, seek to free up organizational resources or reduce financial strain in ways that ultimately support compensation, morale and retention.

As I mentioned when starting today's presentation, the Veteran Seniors and Human Services Levy is just one of several major initiatives within the King County Department of Community and Human Services.

As voters continue to improve new levies, communities are increasingly calling for strategies that address workforce sustainability and wage equity more directly.

And we're beginning to see that reflected in other county investments.

For example, the Crisis Care Center Levy includes targeted wage enhancement programs designed to strengthen the behavioral health workforce.

Items included include things such as paid internships, support for clinical supervision, the cost of licensure, workforce well-being, and also expanded clinical training.

These are all practical but necessary supports that help people enter, stay, and advance within the behavioral health field.

The Crisis Care Center Implementation Plan and the Veteran, Seniors, and Human Services Levy Implementation Plan were designed for slightly different workforce needs, but they work together and are very much complementary of one another in multiple ways.

Our divisions are coordinating closely to ensure providers can access funding without confusion or duplication and that together these investments can help strengthen the overall human services ecosystem.

So in closing, I hope that this discussion contributes meaningfully to your ongoing work around wage equity and highlights additional opportunities for partnership.

To further support that partnership, I would welcome the opportunity to brief individual members or community members who might be listening in on the broader range of services and programs available through the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services Levy.

One of my greatest concerns in this role is that someone will choose not to reach out.

Not because they don't want help, but because they're unaware that that support exists.

And I do see it as our responsibility to help reduce that gap in awareness.

And with your partnership, I believe we can do just that for our King County residents and community members.

The levy has over 55 strategies and sub-strategies.

These are ultimately your services and everybody deserves to have access to them.

So thank you again, Madam Chair, Madam Vice Chair for the opportunity to join.

That concludes my presentation.

Happy to take any questions that you or other committee members may have.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Director Bailey.

I want to first express my appreciation to just have a county partner at the table today sharing this work as was expressed earlier.

You know, this we're able to make progress on our shared goals of achieving wage equity when we have different levels of government working together, swimming in the same direction.

So it is truly appreciated that the county is participating in today's discussion.

And thank you for this very detailed presentation.

I know I have a couple of questions, but I want to allow my colleagues first to ask theirs.

Colleagues, what kind of questions do you have for our colleagues at the county?

Vice Chair Foster.

So first of all, I just want to echo my appreciation.

That was a fantastic presentation in level of depth and detail and care.

So thank you so much, Director Bailey.

I did not write down slide numbers, but I wanted to ask, there was a slide where you showed data on turnover rates, and I believe it showed 18% for full-time, 20% for part-time employees.

So just noting, I think that's even a higher turnover rate if we combine that for a combined 38% turnover rate than we tracked in our study, where I believe our study had 32% 0.4%.

And I'm wondering what, whether your takeaway is just that our study was completed earlier and there are, you know, increased turnover rates or just if there's anything we should be gleaning from those two numbers.

Absolutely.

And again, the data that was provided to you was through our 501s Commons partnership.

It is an assessment of the region and for a lot of the providers that we contract with, it is a requirement.

So in some cases, the data points could be a representation of response rates from the two different surveys.

Ultimately, I think to get at your question, I think it invites a dialogue.

We are very much aware that there is an issue with retention, there's an issue with recruitment.

I believe next steps would be to have intentional dialogue and conversations with providers to see what's necessary to help reverse those trends.

We've started some of those conversations with our workforce stabilization efforts and a lot of the community engagement that we did prior to releasing the funds, but I believe Director Kim makes a critical point in the fact that there's power in convening both the county, local jurisdictions, but also perhaps our state partners to really look at the providers that we're all likely funding together to see how we can move that work forward together instead of in silos.

And if I need to expound on that response, I'm happy to do so, but to respond very candidly, I think it invites dialogue and would love to be a part of that conversation.

Thank you so much, Director Bailey.

I think that's a perfectly complete response.

The one thing I would add is, and I appreciated this in the data and also sort of just in my former career working as a funder, is that we're talking about local, state government, but there's also a role for whether it's philanthropic institutions or other folks at the table, just seeing how much of a significant source of income and of resources fundraising is for these partners.

So as we, so Chair, as we continue on this process, and I'm looking forward to the way that you set up the following presentations, I hope that we get an opportunity to go even further on that dialogue and think about those other funders in the region.

Thank you.

Thank you for that, Vice Chair.

And certainly can make space for that discussion in committee.

Can't hear?

Okay.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any additional questions before I go into mine?

Right, I'm gonna pivot and give folks time to formalize their questions if they have any.

I wanted to, again, thank you, Director Bailey, and I wanted to dig into a little bit about the survey.

I understand if I ask some questions that maybe require follow-up, but I wanted just a quick refresher, just because I think the findings from this survey are really interesting and potentially informative on how we do this work moving forward.

But I would like to understand a little bit more just as a refresher for this survey.

who were the primary respondents and what was the sample size?

Absolutely.

And I'm happy to get additional data.

If I could clarify which survey you're referring to, is it the 511's comment survey?

Yes.

I'm looking, there's no page numbers, I apologize.

I'm just looking through, let's see, on the implementing our strategy for change section.

Absolutely.

When we look at the data, we're often looking at performance data, which is kind of our more explicit outcomes.

How did the program perform at the end of a particular strategy?

We also try to segregate that data against operational data, which allows us to continuously improve as we're administering.

As funders, it's important that we don't just give the funding and then step away.

We very much see this as a partnership.

So as part of this partnership, we reached out to all of the funded partners who were funded through Phase 1, which includes Rounds 1, Round 2, and Round 3. Because Round 3 hasn't officially kicked off, a lot of the providers from Round 1 and Round 2 were the providers that responded.

So within the first round of funding, it was exclusively contracts associated with the Veterans, Seniors, and Human Services levy.

As we entered into the second round, we then extended contracts to all DCHS providers.

So regardless of division, regardless of levy, regardless of funding source, if you do in fact have a contract with DCHS, you are eligible to apply.

So we reached out to those providers.

We had a relatively strong response, but it was an opportunity to get feedback on how the program's going.

Again, because the program is relatively new, it was more so an assessment of perception, but also an invitation to say, hey, this is new.

We want to make sure that this is meaningful and would love your feedback on how we can continue to improve the program.

For specifics, I'm happy to follow up directly with your office on the number of providers who are represented.

We did try to capture the category in which those providers worked in, just because that was a request from one of our human services coalitions.

So in an attempt to honor that, I think we actually have richer data than what was presented here.

But again, happy to follow up directly with your office and with anybody else here who has the same interest.

Fabulous.

Appreciate that offer and definitely will be taking you up on that.

You know, I'm curious about it, again, from a respondent perspective, you know, if we're hearing primarily from organizational leadership, I'm thinking about a worker perspective as well throughout this, thinking, would love to know sample size.

And then I think there's, again, this outstanding question of just overlap too, given the city's investments and the county's investments.

So really, I'm gonna take you up on that offer to unpack some of that and hopefully we can do that work together.

I'm curious, there's a list that you identified on other areas providers wanted to invest in for stabilization.

Is the county thinking about next steps or how to investigate further on what that may look like or how you might be meeting that need?

Absolutely.

So there's kind of a two-pronged approach here.

One, we're trying to reach out to folks who indicated that they haven't seen any significant change and to try to unpack that.

So it's an opportunity to inquire to say, hey, we want this to be meaningful.

Are there additional things or pivots that we need to make within the program design to help support you and your organization?

And those conversations are happening now.

I believe the implementation plan actually gives us an amazing license to revise the program halfway.

So as we're collecting feedback through that first prong and through the second prong, which is more intentional, unallowable expenses that we need to convert to further this work.

We're hoping to see what types of supports we can add to our next phase of workforce stabilization investments.

Our goal is to try to go forward with that second phase here in 2026, with contracts likely to begin in 2027. And to piggyback off of your previous point, I think there's ample opportunity for us to provide a list of partners to Seattle Human Services Department and in the event that we are co-funding the same organizations, you know, solicit their help in helping to advertise that opportunity for folks who are indeed eligible.

Thank you for that, Director Bailey.

Again, I appreciate you coming to share this information with us today and hopefully we can build some bridges in this work now moving forward.

Thank you.

And I'm not seeing any additional questions.

Colleagues, last call.

If not, I'm going to move us to item five so we can hear from our amazing providers now.

So clerk, will you please read item five into the record?

Thank you again, Mr. Bailey.

Human Services Provider Roundtable briefing and discussion.

All right.

give our folks, our panel, a chance to come on up to the table and get settled in.

I know we've been talking a lot about the incredible and hard work that our provider agencies do, and now this is our opportunity to hear directly from a handful of them, as well as the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

Well, everyone take your time and once you get settled in, if you can introduce yourself by stating your full name and organization into the microphone for the record and then feel free to begin.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

Really appreciate it.

Good morning.

My name is Janice Taguchi and I'm executive director of Neighborhood House and I'm the co-chair of the wage equity leadership team as part of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

Good morning.

My name is Marissa Perez.

I use she, her pronouns.

I am the executive director of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

Good morning.

My name is Karen Lee and I am the CEO of Plymouth Housing, a permanent supportive housing provider here in Seattle.

Good morning.

My name is Liz Vivian and I serve as the interim executive director of Aurora Commons.

Thank you all for being here this morning.

Please proceed with your presentation.

Good morning again.

So we've got a couple of slides and the first one we're gonna really briefly touch on because it has basically been discussed, really focusing on the past few years and the changes and the policy wins and the process of the last few years.

So SHSC has been a critical part of wage equity work from the beginning, working with Councilmember Lisa Herbold to launch the wage equity study in 2022, and then that was completed in 2023. That study confirmed a 37% wage gap.

There is a typo on the slide, my apologies.

It should just be 37%, not 30. But what hasn't been mentioned is that one of the key findings of that study was that it's going to take 52% increase in order to meet that gap, taking into account the changes in inflation and changes in cost of living and all the other things.

37% is not the goal we are reaching towards.

That is the gap.

The goal we are reaching towards is 52% wage equity increase across every contract, whether that is the city of Seattle, King County, and private philanthropy.

At the time, SHSC also convened a wage equity leadership team, which had philanthropic and funder representation from across the state and across the region that joined on to this effort, coordinating and sign-on letters, urging that it's a multi-pronged approach.

Like we said, it's not just the city.

Our philanthropic partners have been involved in this conversation from the beginning.

in 2024 after that first recommendation, which was initially 7% in the next two years, we have failed to meet that.

We have only received 2% or 2% per year, which is 4% total.

That includes 2% in 2024 and 2% in 2025. So the key takeaway from the slide is that we are we are not keeping pace with what is required.

And that 52% that I talked about earlier is just going to keep growing the longer we take to achieve it.

So that is kind of the takeaway here is that this report confirmed gave us data that backed up what anecdotally our agencies have told HSD and everyone else that they're underpaid.

And we can talk about some of the reasons for that.

Survey, survey, surveys.

So we also did a price survey about wage equity.

Our poor providers had with juggling act with surveys last year, and we focused more on the intangibles.

So you're gonna not see a lot of numbers on the slide.

You're going to see some things that my colleagues to the right and left are going to discuss in a bit that how the wage equity and the wage inequity affects service delivery and how it affects community and what the effects are of just that 2% increase, which for some providers was negligible.

For other providers, it was significant.

And for some providers, they were able to take that information.

That's another big piece of this is that the agencies can take this information back to their other funders and say, hey, look, City of Seattle is doing this thing.

They are increasing wages.

We need you to also do the same thing, right?

So this slide discusses some of those intangibles, but the takeaway is that wage equity increases, no matter how small or large, they strengthen workforce stability and they support service continuity, which are key aspects of what our human services agencies do.

And one thing I do wanna point out is that the city of Seattle has made a deliberate choice to not keep all of the human services in house.

They've made a deliberate choice to outsource and contract all of the human service, most of the human service delivery to community-based organizations, which means that we're doing this work for you, the city of Seattle government, which means that there should not be a pay disparity between what the human service agencies make and what a victim advocate makes at the city.

And we have documented incidences of that happening, of victim advocates and case managers and other people that work for the city making substantially more than human service agencies.

Human service agencies are not a cheap way to get services to the people of Seattle.

We are not a cost cutting measure for you, the city of Seattle.

We are the experts and we are doing the work that you cannot do because you are a government.

We are the ones that are experts in our community and what they need.

So this is really coming back to what we value and what type of work we value and who we value in our community.

And with that, I will pass it on to Janice and my other colleagues here.

And I, well, before I do that, is there any questions?

Colleagues, any questions?

Okay.

That was a mic drop moment.

No wonder there's no questions.

Thank you, please.

I'll go next.

I'm Janice DiGucci with Neighborhood House, and so just a little bit of background.

Neighborhood House is a human service organization.

We serve about 13,000 people in Seattle and King County.

We serve people from birth to end of life with early learning, youth development, employment, housing stability, and and aging disability services.

We're in the relationship business, so that is why it's so important that we minimize our turnover because the work that we do is really critical that we have meaningful, culturally responsive relationships with the community members that we serve.

Our case managers, our teachers, our home visitors, Especially right now, they're providing comfort, they're providing resources to the people that are suffering, especially being targeted by this administration.

We have 350 staff, our staff speak 40 languages, and About two thirds of the people that we serve are immigrants or refugees.

So the people that we're serving are really afraid right now.

And so it's so important that we recognize the important work that our staff are doing.

They themselves are witnessing things that people shouldn't have to witness.

They're dealing with their own secondary trauma or primary trauma from having to relive things.

So I want to just to piggyback on what Marissa said about the City of Seattle.

And I just also want to say thank you for giving us this opportunity and for listening about the wage equity being an issue.

It really, really means a lot.

I'm so grateful to have this opportunity to talk about it.

The additional $4 million, the 2%, that amounted to about $16,000 for Neighborhood House for two contracts.

We're a $37 million organization with, like I said, 13,000 clients and 350 staff.

And we did use that money to pay and pay additional costs of operating.

But one thing that this ordinance did not apply to is some of our contracts through Medicaid transformation and long-term care.

So we receive about $5 million from the City of Seattle Aging Disability Services to provide Medicaid support for people that would otherwise be in a nursing home, to provide care coordination and resource navigation and caregiver support and we are just asking for parity with our case managers and the case managers that the city employs.

So just to give you an example, the pay range for our case managers for that exact same program is between $30.27 to $42.81.

and for the city, and we were made aware of this when a staff member brought the job announcement from the city last year that the range for the city position for the exact same duties was $42.55 to $50.42.

The pay disparity is 40.5%, 40.5% pay disparity because between the city of Seattle and neighborhood houses doing the exact same job.

So we applaud the city for paying people what they should be paid, but we would like to be paid the same.

We would like our staff to be recognized for the cultural competence, the language ability, the rooted in the community that they bring to their roles.

Many of our staff members have this similar lived experience as the community members that we serve.

And so, you know, that is this one thing I know, you know, I'm really appreciative, but it doesn't apply to everything.

We also have contracts with the ORIRA, Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, and we're supporting people that are trying to apply for their citizenship and things like that.

And those contracts were also not considered in that adjustment.

So I thank you for the opportunity and I ask you to do more.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

Again, my name is Karen Lee and I'm the CEO of Plymouth Housing.

We primarily operate in the city of Seattle.

We have about 14 properties where we serve probably, I'm just thinking overall because we don't divide out all of the residents that we serve here.

but we have about 400 employees and we are quite thankful for the workforce stabilization funds that we have received.

I completely agree with my colleagues with respect to wage equity with the city, so I will just add some additional color to this conversation.

The first thing that I would like to talk about is that the workforce stabilization funds that we receive from the city are exclusively for frontline staff.

And that is incredibly important, but we also have to consider that when frontline staff are underpaid, that ripples throughout the entire organization.

So that means that all of the people that support the frontline staff are underpaid as well So for example an accountant that we have where because that's considered an administrative position They're paid on the same, you know with the same philosophy as our frontline staff.

So if our frontline staff are underpaid and then our accountants are underpaid.

Then our middle managers are underpaid.

And it is impossible to run an organization where you have funding for your frontline staff but you don't have appropriate funding for middle management and administrators.

And I speak about the accountant as an example because of all the rigor that we're required to prove that the funds that we receive are being used appropriately.

So at the same time that we're underpaid for our staff and we're barely reimbursed for administrative staff, we have...

existential requirements to document all the work that we do, so it is one of the things that really impacts all of the nonprofit sector.

In addition, I want to talk about compensation generally.

Now, all of us are in leadership positions, so we're aware that we have cash and non-cash.

When we have non-cash benefits to our employees, they still take cash from the organization.

It's just a non-cash benefit to our employee.

So while we haven't talked about the benefit deficit that many of our nonprofit organizations have, I'd like to highlight those.

so I don't have to repeat the good work of my colleagues.

And if I take a look at the benefit package that you receive and the employees from the City of Seattle, that is not the same benefit package that we extend to our employees.

whether it's health, whether it is the 403 contribution that the organization makes on their behalf, whether it is the employment benefits or the educational.

Plymouth doesn't even offer tuition reimbursement, for example.

So when we talk about the entire compensation package, that we pay to our employees, it's significantly less than what could be made in another industry.

And when our administration and our support employees, they move to go work to a law firm, for example, their work might even be easier than the work that they do at the nonprofit.

So, you know, we are, you know, in the housing space, Plymouth is no different than our peers at DESC, for example, so our balance sheet is a half a billion dollars.

And so, to run that organization, and to deliver the services, we have to have the same sophistication in all of our staff from our frontline all the way up to our executives in order to do the work that is so difficult to do for this city and for this community.

So my request is that we continue to use the funds, more intensively than they've been in the past so that we can have 7% pay increases every year and then one-time funding or some other tool so that we can take a look at our benefit packages and make them eligible for many of the funding sources and then also to consider the administration of the organization, and there's a number of ways that we can approach that that I can speak with both of you at a later date.

And so with that, I am open to answering any of your questions.

Thank you.

Good morning again.

My name is Liz Vivian and I serve as the Interim Executive Director of Aurora Commons.

At the Commons, we are cultivating belonging and community to foster health and healing among our neighbors in North Seattle that are experiencing homelessness and poverty.

We're located at 90th and Aurora.

and at the Commons we talk about the work that we do with and for people we serve as our neighbors the way other organizations might talk about clients or participants so that you'll know as I talk about our neighbors that that's who I'm talking about.

Our neighbors describe the Commons as their living room It's a really engaging, comfortable third space for a lot of people who aren't welcome in all the other third spaces in our community, and our neighbors play a key role in shaping what we offer, which includes a warm welcome and access to community and friendship, We offer healthcare through our onsite clinic that we run in partnership with the University of Washington and Harborview.

We offer advocacy and support to navigate really complex housing, legal, social safety net, education, and housing systems.

So we're walking alongside people on their journey toward health and healing, helping people implement their priorities, what's important to them.

And then we also offer basic needs like a cup of coffee and a pair of shoes, access to restrooms and water and Narcan and all of the things that people are needing in our neighborhood.

The Commons is also a safe and supportive place for women experiencing gender-based violence, domestic violence, and commercial sexual exploitation.

We were founded in part by a grassroots group of friends who came together to say, what are we going to do for people experiencing sex trade and homelessness along Aurora.

And so that continues to be a piece of work that we do and where we get support from the city of Seattle.

We really appreciate the contracts that we have that helps us provide those services, the mobile outreach services, the access to emergency housing for women who are fleeing and making different choices in their lives.

We received the city's 2% increase, which helped us give a 3.5% increase to our staff in July of 2024. So we appreciate that boost, but we're in that 85% of organizations that receive less than $10,000.

So with a staff of 20 at the time and a $2 million budget, it was helpful.

and now it's time for the next steps.

We're excited to be part of that as well.

So I wanna echo everything else that my colleagues have shared up here and say again that from a Commons perspective that our mission, which on purpose starts with belonging in community, relies on stable, well-trained, skilled staff in order to build the relationships so that we can do all of the other pieces of our mission, our professional staff, both our advocates and our community engagement specialists who do our work with and for neighbors, in addition to our fundraising staff and our administrative staff, are all making between $27 and $38 an hour.

I think we would all agree that in Seattle, that's not enough.

And one of the things that I wanted to offer is that half of our staff doesn't live in the city.

They're living in Shoreline and Everett and Des Moines and Kent, and so they're spending an hour commuting, which is pretty arduous when you think about doing that by public transportation.

So from our perspective, this is like as a small business, we think about this in terms of our cost of turnover.

We think about this in our cost of lifestyle and can our staff show up regulated and calm and ready to do the work versus stressed by taking an hour to get to our site.

Thank you.

I'm going to stop there.

I'm happy to answer any questions as well.

Thank you, thank you again to our panel.

All of you spoke to very different elements and areas of consideration, some of which are new to me, and so thank you for participating in today's discussion.

Colleagues, what questions do you have for our panel?

Vice Chair Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And I'll start off with just an appreciation for each of you.

And what I want to say is both thank you for the work that you do in your organizations, but also thank you for showing up and just like keeping it real with us.

And I know you're like, yeah, okay, thank you for the 2%, Look, so we hear you and I just want to appreciate you for that.

I think sometimes it's a lot easier and it's more structurally sort of set up in a way where providers go, okay, great, thank you.

And I just want to appreciate you all for being direct and honest with us.

And okay, so that's a statement.

I got another statement and then I have a question.

You know, the other thing I want to say is that we hear you and that we're not keeping pay and so I just want to say to you, we hear you.

I want to ask a question of Karen.

Karen, you spoke directly about not just the lack of the financial resources in the contracts, but I believe it was you who also spoke about the reporting requirements.

And I wonder if you can share a little bit more with us there and also, you know, not just about maybe what we're doing, but if you're seeing other gold stars, gold stars, gold standards in the field when it comes to reporting requirements, because I can appreciate the amount of time that that may take your team and that time is also a resource.

Absolutely.

So thank you, council member.

The reporting requirements are arduous, and the good news is that the City of Seattle is probably the best out of all of our funders, but one of the things that we have to do, for example, the Office of Housing was where most of our grants come through from the City of Seattle.

it just recontracted with us for 2026. And what we have to do is for every independent property that we have, we have to tell the city we get this much from the feds, we're going to raise this much money, the state is going to give us this much.

So we have to outline every single fund source and then every single expected costs.

prior to the city delivering or offering us our grant.

And then when we have a significant change, that process has to be done all over again.

So I would just say that that is an example.

And then in addition, for the other fund sources that are available, they are on a reimbursement basis.

So something has to happen and then we have to go and then request that funding.

And again, that takes time from the accounting team.

And I made the, you know, my colleagues really spoke to the work of the frontline staff and I don't wanna minimize that because the frontline staff are the ones that enable us to deliver on our mission, and their relationships are very, very important with the residents that we serve.

However, to support the frontline staff, you have to have a human resources department.

You need to have somebody that does the payroll.

and I brought up the accountants in particular because they're excluded from this conversation, but the accountants that are coming in are barely, they are making less than our case managers.

And so I say that, so I'm very serious when I say that the low wages will ripple throughout the organization and these are, professional positions in our human resources and in our accounting and in our payroll where that if they, you know, they're exceedingly important to us and we're not able to pay them the wages that they deserve so that they can then support the folks on the front line.

We have IT just like you do.

and so we have software needs just like every other agency.

So long story short, it's incredibly burdensome, the administrative work that we have to do and the level of professionalism that's needed is quite high.

Thank you.

If I can jump on what she just said, something that I think is not always discussed is that nonprofit agencies are small businesses.

They have the exact same regulations, the exact same requirements on an HR and an admin perspective that a small business does.

The only difference is that we cannot pass on the profits of our organization to our employees.

So if we make more money, we don't get to keep it.

We don't get to turn it into profit.

That's not how a nonprofit works, but we are a small business.

And so treating us like less than you would treat a small business is where some of the problem lies.

as some of you know and the rest of you will get to know, I am one of those straight talkers.

We do this every year.

We have this conversation every year.

Every year I sit with every single council member and I try to convince them of the worth and the value of our human service staff and why they deserve to have equitable wages every single year.

at some point it just needs to be predictable ongoing funding.

It just needs to be a natural part of an expected part of the city budget that there will be a wage equity increase in addition to not replacing, not behind, not lowered because of the inflation adjustment.

It just needs to be part of the standard budget in order to actually put our money where our mouth is.

The city of Seattle government, as an entity, cannot function without human service workers.

You cannot do the work.

You cannot come up here with big campaign promises about homelessness and housing and crime and public safety and trafficking and, and, and, and without human service staff.

So why do we have to have this conversation every single year where I have to sit there, my colleagues have to sit there and convince you all that we're worth being paid our value.

I appreciate you.

I'll just say thank you for that and we have a lot of work to do and I think you've laid it out for us very clearly and you've probably laid it out for us very clearly last year and the year before that and the year before that.

So thank you for continuing to show up.

Thank you, Vice Chair Foster.

Colleagues, additional questions?

All right, I'll go into a couple, and I actually want to repeat back just a couple of the key things that I heard, because again, each of you touched on some different elements here, and I want to express my appreciation for New Room Director Liz, just for our comments and speaking to the fact that many of the folks carrying out this critical work can't afford to live in the city of Seattle.

And there's a certain kind of irony that we have folks who are coming in to do some of the hardest work for our city, caring for our most vulnerable neighbors, and they themselves are living at the margins or at least not living in City of Seattle.

And there's a cruel irony to that.

And so I want to thank you for speaking to that and kind of a question to the panel.

How do we understand, do we understand the level at which we're talking about when we're thinking?

I've heard anecdotes.

I understand, you know, anecdotally that this is an issue, but do we have data to support at this time approximately how many of our human services workers just don't live in City of Seattle?

Maybe that's a question for Marissa.

Or if anything, folks can also share about what they understand about their respective organizations.

Well, we can certainly provide you with that information, but I would say that, I would say, just top of my head, most of our employees do not live in the city.

And when I talked about non-cash benefits, we had an employee leave to go work elsewhere, and they got parking in their new position.

That is something that, you know, I can't imagine a nonprofit would have that particular benefit.

So it is, yeah, we have some people that communicate that, I'm sorry, that come from Pierce County to work every day.

But we can get you that information as well, council member.

Certainly.

I'm just thinking also about connecting the dots, you know, this year, and I want to recognize STEPS Committee Chair Saka in this as well.

You know, this year we're going to be taking up the Seattle Transit measure to fund much of our bus service, but what is often not talked about about the importance of the Seattle Transit measure is that it also funds accessibility measures such as the ORCA lift program.

and it funds additional bus service on our equity priority bus routes, so providing extra late-night service to routes that transport actually some of the most people in the entire state, some of our busiest bus routes.

And so thinking about how we connect, also our transportation work, understanding if folks are taking at times multiple buses to get to work, often at later hours at night, too.

How can we just map those strategies together?

Not to put you on the spot, Chair Saka, in that way, but I'm just thinking about important connections to our work in transportation for this year.

I don't know if there's anything you want to add, but I wanted to at least put that on the record to kind of connect those dots.

I see you.

Hi, Councilmember Saka, please.

Thank you, Chair, for the acknowledgement.

No, I appreciate the acknowledgement on the intersection between, you know, the work here.

So I think you said it well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chair Saka.

With that, too, I wanted to repeat back just a couple of pieces that I heard as well.

Hearing just the note about, you know, we've targeted some of the investments in terms of pay equity through HSD and through OH but hearing also just highlighting that this is not consistent across the city.

So thinking about OIRA and I don't know if any of your organizations receive funding through Department of Early Learning and Education.

I'm not aware at this time if this is a consistent policy perhaps.

but we have a large early learning program but our early learning is Parent Child Plus.

We do get money for Parent Child Plus.

I believe it's probably through early learning through United Way of King County.

And so we sort of think about 200 children and toddlers, two and three year olds in our home visiting program.

But the vast majority of our early learning is through federal funds, through Head Start.

and we have not had an increase in Head Start for three years.

So we have had to reduce the number of children to be served in order to be able to retain our staff, even in the face of having like increased behavior challenges in the classroom, staff burnout, So it has really affected our ability to provide services and maintain high quality.

So there's all of these different pressures and we have about 70 plus different grants that we're managing that are federal, state, county, city, and other jurisdictions, other cities as well.

And I certainly appreciate the work that the city is doing and the platform that we have to talk about it.

to then bring others along like the county and other jurisdictions.

I appreciate that.

I hope Director Bailey is still on the line.

I don't think he is.

But hearing that point about just city and county connecting on this work and more, it's really appreciated.

Thank you.

But also hearing that also very clearly articulated just the issues around parity between city roles as well.

And I also want to point out what was addressed earlier and just reiterate that the inflation adjustments that are mandatory do not apply outside of HSD, and the wage equity increases do not apply outside of HSD.

So my colleague to the right here and others who have OH contracts, OIRA contracts, SDCI contracts, all of those that are doing human services do not get this increase.

So that is a huge gap that has not been filled despite advocacy efforts for the last several years.

And so that is another thing I'd like to flag as we move into city budget season.

How are we ensuring that that equity applies to those who don't fall under HSC's umbrella?

Fantastic flag, thank you.

And those that do fall under HSD's umbrella, like I mentioned, with a Medicaid transformation program and long-term care, the municipal code does not apply to those grants.

I also ask, in addition to parity, transparency and how those rates are set.

The city contracts with the state and there's, you know, How do those funds flow?

How are the rates set?

How are the pay rates set?

How much is being used?

How is it being used?

And how much is getting to contracts, contractors like us?

It would be incredible if the city, the city's health benefits were made, you know, were offered as a part of the contracting to the nonprofits because it's a significant, significant difference in the level of benefits that we can offer.

Wow, what an idea.

I love that idea.

Yes, thank you.

Yeah.

We're in collective bargaining right now.

So I know it's important to all of our members.

Appreciate you all fighting for your members here at this table.

Certainly appreciate that.

And just looking across, I want to offer again, colleagues, any additional questions for our panel today before I offer some closing remarks?

Thank you again for your participation.

Right.

Well, with that, I want to thank you all for being here today and for the work that you do for our communities.

I wanted to, as chair of this committee, I felt it particularly important that we advance a conversation around wage equity and considering my own work in the sector.

There is such an onus and focus on outcomes in human services and what is often missing from that conversation is sometimes we fall short of meeting a desired outcome because we don't have the person to carry out the work because of turnover.

It was emphasized really clearly but I want to voice again that human services work relies on a human helping another human and the relational aspect of this can't be understated.

it is so important for the sake of supporting folks in their path to stability that we maintain that human-to-human connection while they're on that path.

And so I know I've spoken to folks experiencing homelessness who have voiced to me that they've had 20 different case managers and they've lost faith in getting housed and have a great deal of skepticism about how we can be able to support them.

And that's heartbreaking to hear.

And in those conversations, they understand why they've expressed to me the close-knit relationships they've had with case managers over the years and understand why people have left the profession.

But it doesn't change the fact that that person starts losing faith in their ability and our ability as a city and a region to support them into getting instability.

And so I want to thank everyone who was a part of today's discussion.

Thank you all again for being here.

I know you're all very busy, so it means a lot that you spent some time with us this Friday morning, and I hope you have a fabulous weekend.

I hope you hear that it's clear that we have some work to do on the city side to try and address some of these measures and hearing loud and clear.

I know we're not in budget season, but we are in budget season.

and budget season never really ends.

So looking forward to continued work with all of you.

I wanna also, again, recognize our folks who came out for public comments today, OPEIU 8, Local 8. Thank you for being here and making your voices heard.

It has been a real pleasure and a treat to work with all of you and looking forward to our continued work together.

And with that, I'm going to move us to the final bit of our agenda.

Thank you again.

Colleagues, we have reached the end of our agenda.

Is there any further business to come before the committee before we adjourn?

Wonderful.

The next Human Services Labor and Economic Development Committee meeting is scheduled for March 6, 2026. Hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

It is 1131. Thank you, everyone.

Have a great weekend.