Human Services Commission - Regular Meeting

Good evening, everyone. This meeting is called to order at 6PM. Live captioning is available this evening. To access this, please, select the show captions button in the meeting toolbar and select your preferred language. Staff and commissioner are participating both remotely and in person. Members of public are welcome to provide public comment and listen to the meeting in person or on Zoom. I will now call the role. Commissioner, please say here after I call your name. Commissioner Gonzalez? He's not here. Commissioner Hayes? Here. Commissioner Fan? Here. Commissioner Rashid?

Commissioner Pearlman?

Here.

So vice vice chair White is absent today and no minutes to approve. Human Services Commission value community input and looks forward to hearing from you during its meeting. The compliance with the Washington state campaign laws regarding the use of public facilities during elections, RCW 42.178. Five five five. No speaker may support or oppose a ballot measure or support or oppose a candidate for election, which include your own campaign.

Any speaker who begins discussing topics of this nature will be asked to stop. At this time, we are taking oral communication. Staff will call the names of the people in order they have signed up either online or in person. Members of public may speak during tonight's oral communications for up to three minutes or an agency program. There is a limit of three people speaking on the same topic.

The oral communication period will end after thirty minutes. After everyone who signed up to speak has been called, staff will ask if there's anything anyone else who would like to speak. Staff, can you please call speakers for oral communication?

Thank you, chair. Our first speaker for oral communications is Jessie Franklin with Rainier Athletes. They're online. Okay. I don't see Jesse online or in the room, so we'll move on to the next one. The next speaker is Mark Vermouth with Sofia Way.

We'll go with that one. Good evening. Thanks for having me. My name is Mark Vermouth, and, thank you for your support of the Sofia Way. I don't know how many of you are aware of the Sofia Way, so I'll just give you a brief overview and then kinda what we're looking at this year. So we are the only organization that supports single adult women on the East Side experiencing homelessness. That's at a high level what we do. And we provide emergency shelter, transitional care, day center support, and our gamut of programming runs all the way from vehicle outreach up to a two year program for women experiencing homelessness. Ness. I think it's probably best conveyed in a story, so I'm gonna give you a recent housing story.

We had an 83 year old woman, who, came to us at 80, living in her vehicle. She accessed our day center services here in Belle Vue. We moved her into Helen's Place, which is our emergency shelter up in Kirkland, and then into our two year program, up in Lake Forest Park. At 83 now, she is housed. And what were her barriers to housing?

It's mostly an income gap. She had Social Security income, disability insurance, which wasn't gonna make rent payments. And, actually, all of this time, she was waiting on a section eight voucher. To go from living in your vehicle at 80 years old, to being housed, for us, it's all about a journey of stability. And we take into account every woman's trauma for how she gets to us in that point of or in her life. And in particular, for this individual, I think about that has to be very traumatic, to find yourself at 80 living in your vehicle. These are the stories of our neighbors, and

I think sometimes that goes underrepresented in how homelessness is talked about and things like that.

But we see it every day that these are often just women seeking a better and more stable future. So, we find too I was just gonna mention that, federal impacts are obviously top of mind for organizations like ours. My deep concern is how federal impacts will continue to matriculate. We've seen an increase in for services, just this year alone, and that's due to external factors that are just actually local and regional and not even, touching at the federal level as of yet. But we anticipate those impacts to come.

So I know we're considering how we're gonna do 2027 funding, and I would keep that in mind that the situation is still kind of elevating and escalating even as we're in it right now. And we'd welcome an opportunity to share more about that. You're always welcome to tour our facilities and hear more about what

we

do. But I can't thank you enough for what you do do for us. It's noted in supporting the woman that we serve because of your support. Tonight, there's over a 100 women who are receiving support from an organization like the Sofia Way. So thank you. Thank you for doing that. Appreciate your time.

Okay. Our next speaker is Christina Mendieta, Kindering.

Good evening, commissioners. My name is Christina Mendieta. I'm here tonight in my capacity as director of, public affairs at Kindering. You all may be familiar with Kindering. It was a nonprofit organization that was founded about sixty three years ago by five Bellevue parents of children with disabilities, and every year we serve thousands of little kids with disabilities and developmental delays and their families every year.

Thank you for inviting the community to provide input into your twenty twenty seven-twenty twenty eight funding priorities. By way of background, Kindering has been a very grateful partner to the city, and we've been grateful to partner on a number of different programs over the years, including childcare preschool consultation, developmental supports, and case management services for families who are experiencing housing instability and parent education. And we've also appreciated the city's proactive approach to community engagement, and we recently participated in your parent focus group for the Human Services Needs Update. And actually, of those parents who participated is here with me, so I will keep my remarks very short. As you consider your allocations for the upcoming funding cycle, we urge you to prioritize child care and early learning.

This area of need is essential for the youngest residents in Bellevue, and it is especially essential for little kids with developmental delays and disabilities, children of color, and children from low income families. Science tells us that 85% of brain growth happens in the first three years of life, which is why early learning can have such a transformative impact on cognitive and social emotional development. Studies also show that for every $1 spent on high quality early learning programs, we get back as much as $17 And that's because of things like savings in special ed, higher graduation rates, and better employment outcomes. And we actually see some of that firsthand at Kindering, because about fifty percent of the kids in our program or in our early support program, graduate at age three no longer needing additional special education services, which, of course, saves East Side schools millions of dollars every year in special education funds. Unfortunately, we also see disparities in the early learning system, of which I know that you all are aware, but which of course need to be addressed.

As one example, children with disabilities are fourteen point five times more likely to be expelled or suspended from preschool or childcare than their typically developing counterparts. And black children are three times more likely than white children to be expelled. Obviously, this can have, profound impacts, not just for the child, but also for the parents. When you lose access to childcare, it may mean you have to scale back at work. And we also know that research shows that when kids are expelled early, they are also expelled later in their academic careers, which is why our childcare and preschool consultation program emphasizes the importance of inclusive early learning.

And last year, they were successful in helping ninety five percent of the children served retain their child care setting. So in other words, by investing early, you are making the most of what I know are very limited public funds. And I just want to again thank you for your commitment to the well-being of all families in Bellevue and for your ongoing commitment to human services in our area. Thank you.

Okay. Our next speaker is Sunny Luke.

Oh, it was good. Okay.

Good evening, commissioners. I thank you for loaning me your ear. When I see through my eyes, I see nothing. But when I see through my daughter's eyes, I look and I see hope. Twenty years ago, there was no hope.

And early support anchored me to life support so that I could live again and live for my daughter. It was devastating, her diagnosis. Twenty years later, she now is a part of the Evergreen Transition Program, and it is a program that allows students to go from school to work. She is disabled, and I am her guardian. But what was most devastating for me was that I didn't have hope.

I wasn't gonna do it, and I didn't care. When Kindring started to come in house for us, I just saw it as just they're coming, and I don't care. But they kept coming. And every day, there was more hope. They shared stories.

There was a family counselor. So literally, it offers life support for the families so that they can lift themselves up to help these little precious ones that come with either medical issues or a disability. So I know there's so much here, but this has to be prioritized too, and it's hard. So before I could accept my own blindness, a daughter was born to me who came with so many medical issues. I didn't know how to deal with them.

She's stable now, and she just wants hope, for us to have hope. So as long as she's thriving, I'm happy. But I don't know where her life will lead her because she has a lot of medical issues. So she has a condition called tuberous sclerosis complex. It's a disorder that affects her neurologically.

All of her organs are compromised because it is nonmalignant tumors that grow in the organs. So early support is so important, not just for the survival of the little ones. It gives the families hope. If your mom is floored, how does your dad go to work? How does the rest of the family thrive?

And I had little ones too, and I didn't care. And today, when I say the word devastating, it takes me back twenty years where I was. And if it wasn't for kindering, I wouldn't have found my way back. So now I can do this with my daughter in mind, but I wanna make sure that other families get the support they need just the same way I got it through kindering. So I hope that you will consider what I am saying, and thank you for the job that you're doing.

Thank you. Our next speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

You remember my name. It's very unusual. I complained to police three, four times right now. You're not supposed to be acting like this. You're to be show people faces. If you're gonna show people faces, you're a Nazi pig. It's exactly what you want. Yeah. It's better. Maybe you can see this.

Oh, $2.39. Good. My Nazi pig, a big bandita. You know what has been in various? Mary Robinson, a Nazi gestap of pig who make last week, like, Tuesday new rules. This rule is very interesting. This come from sixty day to hundred thirty day trespasses in all commissions. Six six commission can be doing this too. Situation very unique. You know what this mean? This Nazi pig, you know what this mean? A pure freaking creatina. Scared what is Alexander man speak. In 2012, they did in this video. You can pick up just what is you want.

Only three minute in only 10 people. Why? Because they don't want what is I speaking. They put me over 10. It cut and cut and cut. For this year, for one year, they don't give me a chance to speak in every meeting. Trespass me three times by sixty day. Mayor Robinson, very happy. I'm happy too because I know right now. Guys, can you answer me for one question? What is I'm totally confused? Why is this mafia Bandita a criminal? Yeah. Scared what is one man coming talking for three minute. Can you explain to me?

There's a mafia Bandita. King County right now, number one in Trump list, one from 500 because it's typical fascist government what is because this. In Bellevue, they are one fascist government in King County. It's very simple. You know what this mean? Why they doing this Nazi pig? You know what this mean? Make price in Bellevue raise up, up, up. So 120,000 slave will be paid for this. And who's this slave?

It's very interesting. 65,000 is Indian, and 45,000 is Chinese. Chinese is number one American enemy. Supports this. Mayor Robinson support Muslim terrorist. This is true. No problem. And who's Indian have a complicate complication with America too? A huge complication. Trump talking about this every day, so we need to understand it. So why they use this 120,000 for making money? It's look to me like a slave. You know what is in black slave hundred year ago. So right now, I speak to you. Viva Trump.

Viva new American revolution. Stand up, slave and happy cow. It's time for bring America back. Thank you very much.

Thank you. And that concludes everyone we have signed up for oral communications. If there's anyone in the room or online that would like to speak, please raise your hand.

Okay.

It looks like we have Christy Murphy online, so I'll go ahead and allow you to speak.

Hello, all. Thank you for your time. Can you guys hear me?

Yes. We can.

Okay. Perfect. Thank you so much for your time. My name is Christy Murphy. I'm the director of grant services, for the Boys and Girls Club of Bellevue. First, we would like to say thank you so much for the increase in funding that we received, this last year for funding and for this next year coming up. Your support has been amazing. But, again, with education and childcare, there's still a huge need that is not fulfilled. Lots of families currently still on wait list, due to the ability of not being able to afford, after school care. They're not able to sorry.

I had this all in my head. It's kinda last moment thing. I didn't realize we were getting the chance to do this. But a lot are still awaiting scholarships, and we just don't have the ability to give everyone scholarships, based on the HUD requirements and everything else. So thank you for your time.

Thank you. And that concludes everyone we have for oral communications. You can go ahead,

K. Thank you. Mayor Inman, do you have anything to share? Major Inman. Sorry.

No. I do not. Thank you.

Okay. Actually, do we have any commission reports? Any staff reports?

Yes. Thanks, chair Singh. A couple of things to share with you all. Bellevue is going to be hosting a food and hygiene drive that will start on October 1 and run through the fifteenth. There will be collection bins around the city, and we have asked all of the agencies that we fund to participate if they want to.

So we're hearing back from them last week and this week, and then the items that are collected will be distributed to the agencies that want to participate. There'll be there's a a link for the website, and I'm happy to answer any questions that you have. Also, we've heard a little bit about the federal funding cuts, and I wanna talk a little bit about our community development block grant, CDBG. So last spring nope. A year ago, you all approved funding for the twenty twenty five CDBG funds and porch light for tomorrow, IACS, CCM, Upwards, and the city of Bellevue were the agencies you all approved to get that funding to start this past January.

It was about $1,000,000. Those contracts were never executed because that money was paused because of what's happening federally. So we are hopeful about where we are in the federal funding for 2025, that that money may still land this year for 2025. And so these agencies are still waiting patiently. And as soon as this money lands, we're going to let them know, and they will be able to spend this money out this year.

But the path forward is a little bit of a mystery as to what will happen with CDBG for 2026. But what we have to do as an agency that we have a five year plan, and we're in the middle of our five year plan, is we are putting out applications for 2026. So next week, at our next meeting on October 6, you all are going to be looking at the recommendation our preliminary recommendations for funding for 2026. And we have decided for this round to only invite these agencies that were already funded to reapply. Because we felt like if we opened it back up to the universe, we don't even know if we're going to get this money or not.

But, anyways, some of the work you have coming in the next few meetings is we're having a public hearing, and then you all are gonna be looking at the recommendations. And those recommendations will go to council in November. All of this is dependent on congress passing the 2026 budget. There are conversations about shutting the government down. There are conversations about a continuing resolution, Unknown what will happen, but we're still required to move forward for 2026, and then we'll see what happens. Does anybody have any questions about that?

What is the date for the we'll get the answer about this?

That is such a good question. So they have until the continuing resolution. Do you know the timeline for when they have to decide? September.

September.

Continuing resolution or shut the government down. Yep.

Or pass. Thanks.

Or pass bills and budgets

Okay.

And things, which

There'd be something in, like, the preliminary, like, your proposal for if that million dollars does come through and you've already and the organizations have already gone through for applying, what would that look like?

So if the money for 2025 comes through, these agencies you already approved Right. So then they're, frankly, they've we will just reimburse them. They've been running these microenterprise programs and running shelters, so we'll just give them the money.

Okay.

For 2026, that money will not land until one year from now.

Okay.

So those agencies would again if if the budget comes through, they'll still be on hold until the money actually lands. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Any other questions? Good. That is my last report. Thank you, chair Singh.

Thank you. A new business item. For our first agenda item, Hannah Burnmiller is here for from city of Bellevue, office of housing. She has here last spring to share the plans of affordable housing. Tonight, she will provide a update on Bellevue's affordable housing strategy. Welcome, Hannah.

Thank you, commissioner, and good evening, members of the commission. So excited to be with you this evening. As you may recall, I was last with you in February when this work was really kicking off to give you an up, overview of the scope and approach of the 2025 affordable housing strategy update. So as a reminder, the affordable housing strategy is the city of Bellevue short term action plan for housing. So it's really what actions the city is going to take to address our housing priorities over the next five to seven years.

So we're not looking twenty years out, we're really looking at what we're going to do in the next couple of years. So very excited to come back as we're kind of cresting the halfway point of this project and going into our final couple of phases to give you an update on the work that we've done as well as an indication of what's to come in the last couple of months of work that we're doing. Next slide, please. So really today, just going to focus on a brief overview again of the affordable housing strategy. February was a long time ago, so let's refresh our memories.

And then I really wanna share with you all, some of the really, meaningful work that we've done around engagement, both, in the first phase of our project and some things that are still ongoing, right now. Next, I'll talk briefly about our overarching project goals as well as how that is informing some of the draft strategies that we're proposing for this plan. And then finally, I'll close out with some next steps so you can know, what's upcoming, for the next, stages and, obviously, some time for questions from you all. Just because I have questions on the, at end doesn't mean you can't interrupt me if you you have a pressing question during the presentation too. So as a reminder, this plan is really focusing on actions around housing affordability and affordable housing and looking at what the city can do to meet our affordable housing goals in the next five to seven years.

So our council, we have existing affordable housing strategy at the city that was adopted in 2017, and last November council said it's time for a refresh, let's bring that 2017 strategy up to today's conditions and needs, and really think about what's next that the city is gonna work on in terms of housing. So they launched this work in November. And since then, we've been working very hard to engage the community, understand where our priorities are, doing technical analysis, and beginning to bring that all together into draft strategies. Where we are right now is we are entering the final two phases of our work. And during this stage is really where we're working, with our stakeholders to refine and prioritize our strategies and actions.

And we anticipate bringing this plan to our city council early next year, in January, February time frame for adoption. Next slide, please. So at our council launch, our, city council, decided that they wanted to set a, actual target for the goal as the overarching guidance for this strategy update. We had a unit production goal with the 2017 plan, and we did really well. We actually met that goal to produce or build 2,500 affordable units.

And so with this update, our council decided to set another objective for us. And this time they raised the bar. They recommended that we seek to build or preserve 5,700 affordable units in ten years through this strategy update. And one thing that is unique to this target over the last target is they also adopted these sub targets by income band. So we know that needs are not the same from 0% AMI to 80% AMI.

And so as part of this overall target to build or preserve 5,700 affordable units, We also have sub targets at the zero to thirty, thirty to fifty, and fifty to 80 income vans, which as you all know are our extremely low income, very low income, and low income folks. And as part of this, we know we're also going to have to build market rate units. And so that 8,300 restricted unrestricted units on there, that just represents what we anticipate the market bringing on without city support. Next slide, please. So engagement is really key, as part of this strategy update.

There's been a lot of surveys coming, through different entities in the last couple of months. And one thing I always notice is affordable housing or housing accessibility and affordability is almost always on top in Bellevue. And so we know this is a very known community need across lots of different types of folks. And so, as we've been thinking about this strategy update, we're thinking about how we can intentionally engage folks through this process, not only to get their buy in, but because we know that people who are dealing with these issues or work in these fields have really valuable input, to help us draft this strategy. And so we have three overarching engagement goals as part of this project.

First is that we know that there's a lot of, need for just more information in the community around affordable housing, both access to resources and understanding of what the value of affordability in Bellevue is. So that's really our first priority and objective. Our next one is to create opportunities so folks can engage with this work to make sure the public and, our stakeholders have the opportunity to share with us how they're feeling about this and where they would like us to go. And then finally, we do have, new policy guidance within our comprehensive plan about really focusing on engaging with those most impacted by issues. And so as part of that, we're really seeking to elevate diverse and representative voices in this process.

And by representative, I mean both of Bellevue as a whole, but also representative of those who actually experience housing needs, in the city. And so we know that we can't just engage everyone the same way and get good results. So we kind of bucketed our engagement towards three groups of people, acknowledging that there's overlap between these different groups. But we've called out our organizational partners. So these are our developers, our property managers, and our providers within the community.

These folks we know have technical and organizational experience around these issues. That's really valuable for us. Next, we called out folks who actually need or utilize affordable housing. So these are folks with lived experience. They're the ones who know the challenges within the system because they've experienced them it them themselves. And they're the folks who are going to be most impacted by the solutions that we're proposing. And so it's very important that they weigh in on this process. And finally, the general public. We also want everyone in Bellevue to have the opportunity to know that this work is happening and to have an, input on it. And so this includes Bellevue residents and our work our workforce.

And oftentimes, these folks are still dealing with housing affordability issues, maybe not as directly, but can be within their family. And so what we hear is still a lot of concern within the general public around these issues as well. Next slide. So our first phase of engagement really did focus on our general public and that education and information that was in our objective one. We did this through actually some really fun events that I felt were pretty successful, and you can see those on the screen here.

But really, the goal of these events was to use different types of activities to get input on values, priorities, challenges, and to get stories from folks. Oftentimes, we distill information down into, you know, the top three one word values, But oftentimes, you don't get the same, example of lived experience that you do through folks' stories. So that was really important as part of this process as well. Next slide, please. So some of the examples of, exercises that we use to get input are on the screen.

And, I did run up and I grabbed some, copies of our phase one engagement report, because this is actually a really good summary of everything I'm presenting today with a little bit more detail. So I did leave them, Ruth, I hope it's okay, on the back table. So please help yourself if you have interest in it. But we got some really good insights through these activities, and we're able to connect with almost 300 people through our different public events and had over about what does it say there? Yeah.

Over seven fifty visitors to our online engagement hub. And so some of the things I just want to call out that we heard was that affordability is a concern across incomes in Bellevue. It is not just people who make under 80% AMI who are struggling with these issues. It is really across the board, and there's a desire for more affordability at, various different levels in the city. We also heard a lot about aging in place and universal design and how important it is for folks, in Bellevue to be able to stay here and age in a place that has support and community, and a recognition that this isn't always staying in my big home that has too many bedrooms and takes too long to upkeep.

It's oftentimes a desire to be able to downsize but stay within the community that they have their network and support in. And then finally, just, there's really an emphasis on belonging in Bellevue. There's a lot of questions from folks that, you know, if, I can't afford to live here, is Bellevue really the place for me? And this is often expressed by people who actually support our Bellevue community, our workforce, folks who come to school here. And still, there's this questioning of, is this the place for me if I can't afford to get a home here?

So on our next slide, I start I wanna talk a little bit about, some engagement that we started to do a little bit more targeted. So in our phase two, we started engaging more with our organizational partners and with folks with lived experience. And so for organizational partners, we put out the first of what we will be doing two surveys, and we shared this out with quite a large network of folks. As I mentioned, this is our developers, our providers, and our other, advocacy partners, that we work with. And, we got, 59 people to respond, which I thought was a really good, response rate.

And we heard a lot of different things in this questionnaire. And, really, the goal was to understand some of the barriers, challenges, and trade offs within this work. And I think the trade offs is really especially important because we know there's lots of needs out there and the resources to meet those needs is not equivalent. And so we really have to think about what do we want to solve first, what do we want to prioritize. So a couple of themes just to call out that we heard from our organizational partners.

I think one, which is not unexpected, is just ways to reduce costs to build affordable housing. This is a really big need amongst our developers, both affordable and market rate, that it just becomes so challenging to make projects feasible in our community because of those costs. We also heard a lot from our providers and our community based organizations about improving navigation for housing within the community. Lots of stories and experiences about challenges to be able to navigate a really fragmented, complex, and often barrier ridden system within folks who are often experiencing trauma. And so from our community based organizations, we heard a lot of requests about improved navigation or funding to support organizations who are already doing this navigation work for communities.

And then finally, as I said, balancing trade offs. This was something that really came out in the responses to the questionnaire about how can like, the work that we do will never appease everyone in housing. There will always be somebody who comes to who leaves the table unhappy. And what, the solution that kind of boiled out through the boiled down through the responses was is that you need to lead this work with values. And that is how you know what trade offs to make is by leaning into the values and using that as a foundation. And what we heard from many of the responses is to really lean into that value of equity and making sure that folks are able to get services and find a home in Bellevue.

Excuse me.

So the next, engagement effort that we actually just wrapped up today, was a community facilitator program. And so we know when we have public events at the city and we invite everyone to come to city hall, there are certain types of people who are able to come out, and there are certain types of people who won't for various reasons. And we really wanted to think about how we could get out and reach those folks. And so we developed a community facilitator program in which we recruited community ambassadors from not only folks who lived in Bellevue, but folks who were connected to the Bellevue community. And those community ambassadors facilitated listening sessions across the community, with folks within their network who were experiencing housing issues and challenges.

And so really leaning in on existing relationships within our community and utilizing trusted community members to have these conversations in spaces outside of city government, outside of city hall. So this was a paid program. We provided training to our facilitators. We just wrapped up our debrief today, so it was really exciting to hear from them and hear a lot of the stories and lessons learned that they heard from their listening sessions. So all of that engagement is really valuable, but for it to have meaning, we need to make sure that it's distilled within the guidance, the guiding principles of our work, the goals, and the strategies and actions that we'll implement.

So I want to talk a little bit about that in the next couple of slides. So as I mentioned, the work that we do has a lot of competing priorities, and within the world of housing affordability, there is a lot of different focus areas that we could take. And so when we were thinking about project goals, we know there's a lot of important work to do that's not just building new affordable housing, which is one very important part of it. And so what we did is we went back to our comprehensive plan, which is the twenty year overarching long range planning document for the city, and looked at what was called out as housing goals within that document. And we identified five focus areas housing stability, housing for unique needs, housing equity, housing supply and diversity, and affordable housing, meaning that income restricted affordable housing.

And so we identified those as our five strategy update goals, and we know that we have a limited amount of resources and capacity, and so to really focus in on being able to meet our new affordable housing target, we are prioritizing the goal of that income restricted affordable housing. And you'll see that here on the graph on the screen, that just shows a distribution of what we have as draft actions right now by the different goals. And you'll see about half of our actions are really focused on building or preserving affordable housing within the community. We also have actions that are about housing stability, that are about inclusive design, that are about other items, but we want to be really transparent that to meet our affordable housing target, we really have to focus in our efforts on that production and preservation of affordable housing. And then I also wanna call out, within this work, there is some overlap with other efforts that the city is undertaking.

At the beginning of this year, the city established a new office of housing within our city manager's office. And right now, we're undergoing some organizational development work to really flush out that office of housing and to understand how it can grow within the city as an entity and, a body of work. And so part of that is really looking at what funding do we need to support this work. And so just want to acknowledge that the affordable housing strategy is going to be looking at new revenue and different financing options to support affordable housing, but there is concurrent work that's really thinking about how do we fund this overall. So I didn't want to talk about draft strategies without giving you some meat to chew on.

So I wanted to provide a couple of example draft strategies to you, while also, letting you know that in a couple of weeks, we're going to start sharing these out in full with the public so we can get some more feedback on the full body of work that we have. But just to give you something to think about in the meantime, I wanted to share four strategies, and an action under each of them. Our strategies, we have about 25, draft strategies right now, and each of them have about one to six action more specific actions underneath them. So again, you're just seeing a small subset here, but wanted to give you something to think about, an indication of, where this work is going. So the first strategy that I wanted to call out for you is a focus on acquiring and rehabbing naturally occurring affordable housing, which we often call NOAA in the housing world.

So this is usually older multifamily housing that has naturally, become more affordable or having lower rents, there's often opportunities to acquire these existing buildings and to, put covenants on them to establish new affordability, on the units. And it's actually a very cost effective way to bring on new affordable housing units in the community because it is much less expensive than new construction. So there's lots of opportunities within Bellevue around acquisition and preservation, particularly with our development partners. But we do have to be nimble in being able to get out financing for these projects. And so one of our actions is to work with Arch to be able to provide short term loans so that we can, in a short period of time, be able to act to acquire market rate properties, either as the city or through a partner to be able to convert those to affordable housing.

Another strategy we oh, sorry.

I had to take a Yeah.

Moment. No.

I'm good. Thank you. The next strategy I wanted to call out is really, you know, in response to what we heard about the challenges of navigating the affordable housing system. And so thinking about ways that we can really increase pathways to get people into affordable housing. And as I mentioned, this came out of some of what we heard from our community based organizations, but we have right now an action to be able to partner and fund our community based organizations to do the housing navigation services that they're often already doing or may want to do but don't have the capacity to without additional funds.

The next strategy I wanted to call out is reducing costs for housing overall through innovation. And so one idea we have around this is we have a lot of talent at our local university who have graduate programs in these fields. And is there ways that we can partner with them through things like design competitions to really build out new, innovative, and efficient models for affordable housing development. This is something that happens in other areas. There's some really cool projects that come out of it, and we could be a partner in this work as the city of Bellevue.

And then finally, we heard a lot about inclusive design. And this can, apply to universal design, aging in place. But one action, under this strategy that we've identified is around family size units and thinking about how we can prioritize the funding that we give out towards these larger two plus bedroom units so that we're not only seeing studios and one bedrooms, come online as affordable housing. Now I'm ready to sell. So I've been talking a lot.

This really just leads me into the next steps, what to expect in the next couple of months. And it's pretty simple. What we're going to be doing, if we go to the next slide, is we're going to be taking this draft strategies that we have and working with our partners to refine and prioritize them. As I said, we have lots of ideas, and we can't do everything at once. And so we really need to think about what are the priority areas that we want to implement in year one, and what are the things that we want to have on the back burner to pick up when we have capacity and resources.

Next, we also have to write the document. That's the part I'm not looking forward to. But we have to draft the strategy so that we have a plan to present to the public and our council that documents the work that we do and the basis for the decisions and recommendations that we're making. And finally, we need to present to our council, as I mentioned, we have a January council date, to go to them with the draft plan. We will be going to our council in late October to present them the overarching goals and guidance of the project, before we come back early next year.

And on the next slide, we have a couple more opportunities for folks to get engaged. So, while this work is wrapping up, we are still looking for public to give us feedback on the work that we're doing. So over this next month or so, we're going to be really, targeting our engagement with our organizational partners. We have our draft strategies. We've done a lot of technical assessment in the background, and so we're going to start talking with our providers, our affordable housing developers about if we're on the right track and what they see as the opportunities that we should really be prioritizing.

We also have some, just general public opportunities coming up as well. On November 6, we're going to have a public info session. We'll we're still nailing the excuse me. Nailing down some of those details, but we anticipate that it'll be a hybrid info session, at city hall. And I'll make sure that, Ruth shares out that invitation to you all.

And then following the, public info session, we'll be opening up a public survey as well. As I mentioned, we want to make sure that folks are able to express how they feel about these different strategies and actions. We're going to make that opportunity available, and we're also going to be sharing it out with our provider community so that they can share it to their clients, and we can get a wide response rate to that as well. And that brings me to the conclusion of my presentation. I'd be happy to take any questions from you all, and I really look forward to being able to come back in a couple of months and share the plan in full and the work that we're gonna be undertaking in 2026.

A few questions. How are we working on reducing the cost? Like, is there anything from city, the permitting thing coming out? How will be the permitting process?

So I know that the, our development services department are implementing, some new state legislation to reduce permitting times. This so they are doing some work there, and I would not be able to speak, without checking with them about the status of that project. Okay. But we do know that is a big challenge and barrier, not just to affordable housing, but to, housing development in general. The city does have an expedited permitting program for affordable housing that we've implemented in the last couple of years that's been pretty successful. And one of the actions within this strategy is thinking about how can we expand and make more projects eligible for that program. But that would be only for that income restricted affordable housing. Okay.

That, also the how will be the new sewer lines, water lines, everything? Because I live in a house in 1953. We have the old sewer line, old water line. Lot of the work has to be done and the affordability, the spittle housing is going all over the spectrum. Yeah. And neighborhood are worried how which area you're going to develop, and there's a lot of concern. I I know you already told that not everyone will be happy. I know there's a change coming.

Yes. Yeah. So a couple of thoughts on that. So one is that as part of our overall twenty year long range planning effort, we did look at infrastructure needs, compared to, like, our growth projections as part of our planning process. And so thinking about infrastructure, capacity and ability to accommodate the impacts of growth is very important. At kind of like a site or property specific level, yeah, those infrastructure costs can be really challenging to be able to take on. There is a really great grant program through the state. It's called

the

CHIP grant. It's connecting housing to infrastructure, and it is a program that affordable housing projects can get some grant support for utility and infrastructure costs. So the city has been able to utilize that for a couple of affordable housing projects. So that's a couple of things that we've been thinking about. And

the last one, how are we going to implement the equity with the family size, disability? And are these the things you're

Yeah. So housing equity can take a couple of different approaches. And we did separate housing equity as a goal different from housing for unique needs. And so there is honestly a lot of overlap, but we are trying to be specific around those two items. And so under our goal for housing for unique needs, this is where we're thinking about actions and strategies related to things like family size housing, universal design, aging in place.

While housing equity often becomes things that are looking at rectifying disparate outcomes amongst racial populations. And so these are things like affordable homeownership, increasing access to information around affordable housing, some of our language access efforts, and also being transparent and accountable in reporting out on the strategy. So those are some of the things that we kind of grouped under housing equity. That being said, we'd love to hear if you all have suggestions about, you know, things that you think are very meaningful that would move the needle on that.

Okay. Thank you. And one more. Sorry. No. Okay. Okay. Good. No. I'm good. Go ahead. Yeah.

I I think I asked it last time, but to refresh our memory, how many units do we need to kind of move the needle for affordable housing in comparison to how many units you are building or the goal is to build?

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great question. So the affordable housing target that I showed on the screen, that 5,700 units in ten years, that was developed based on a need informed methodology. And so I think on one hand, we could say that 5,700 affordable units in ten years is the need that we're trying to meet to move the needle on affordable housing. There are other longer range planning goals around affordability in Bellevue that actually would exceed what we have as a ten year target. But our hope is to be able to ramp up into that work over time.

Okay. Thank you. And what's the dynamic of the planning commission? How does it impact your your strategy? Do you go to them to present this too?

Yeah. Great question. So this is not a statutory plan, so it is not something that is recommended by planning commission to our council. So our comprehensive plan went through Planning Commission. Planning Commission recommends that document to our council. This does not do that. We just go straight to council, and they are the ones who adopt and review the plan. That being said, we know Planning Commission's very important to this process. They're often going to be seeing things that come out in terms of implementation actions. And so similar to you all, we're going to them for regular briefings to keep them up to date on the work.

I have a question. I have a couple questions. The first one is because it's so extremely expensive to build here in Bellevue, what are some of the incentives that you're you are using to incentivize board developers? Like, Like, what are the what does that look like? So

in terms of incentives, are you thinking, like, tax and land use incentives or funding?

Like, how are you getting them to be okay with building here when it's so expensive and then also having a certain percentage of affordable housing within their units?

Yeah. So there's kind of two buckets of housing that we think about. So one is market rate developers who we are either incentivizing or requiring to set aside a portion of their units as affordable housing. So these are projects that make sense on paper, and, we are trying to find ways to make them make sense on paper when they're also setting aside a certain proportion of affordable units. So ways that we do that right now are through property tax exemptions or potentially, allowing density bonuses, for building higher if you provide those affordable units.

There's been some recent work at the city through our Wilburton, Luca work as well as some ongoing efforts at the city that are looking at affordable housing requirements for new development. So instead of asking developers to do it, we would require it, as a condition of additional density within that neighborhood. So those are some tools that we use right now. I will say in terms of incentivizing market rate development, we've done a really good job at the city of Bellevue, and we pulled out a lot of tools. And actually, when you look at the present our production within the city, we do really well at the 60% to 80% AMI level, which is really where those incentive type tools are the most useful.

So that's one side. And then the other side are the 100% affordable housing projects. And those are really where the rubber meets the road in trying to make those projects pencil out. So the city does have several on both local and then pooled regional funding sources that we allocate. But in terms of new things that we're thinking about in terms of the strategy is we're thinking about how can we grow those revenue sources?

How can we grow that revenue through new sources? Are there other ways that we can have revenue generation streams strictly for affordable housing in the city? We're also looking at ways that we can reduce the cost of financing for developers. So King County has what they call a credit enhancement program. And it basically says that we, as a jurisdiction, we're gonna provide a guarantee to this developer that they're gonna pay back a loan.

And that guarantee actually allows their, financing to be less expensive because they have this guarantee behind it. And so we're thinking about actions where can we also do that as the city of Bellevue? We have great credit. Can we utilize some of those tools we have as a city to help make development less expensive without just saying, here's a million dollars? So those are some of the things we're thinking about as well as back to the market rate side, just how can we monitor how our market rate incentives are doing. So if they're not doing well, they're not doing the performance we'd like, we can tweak them so that we're getting the results we'd like. Hope that answered your question.

My other question was, do you go back to present your findings to the focus groups that participated in all of the great

The other do you have any other commissioners, any question? Good? Okay. Go ahead.

Okay. Thanks, Jimmy.

Comment, but I can wait. Okay.

So we are going to be inviting our community facilitators as well as the folks that the they engaged with to an event in January so that we can show them the draft plan and share out the ways that their input informed the final recommendation. Yeah. We thought that was really important not to just say, thank you for all your work and then close the book, but really invite them back for them.

That was one of my comment. I have an opportunity to attend to one of these meeting Oh, okay. With one with the Spanish Spanish speaking facilitator, and it was great. But the question was, how I can hear from you guys?

Yeah.

The our voice was here.

Was that with Rosalba? Rosalba. Okay. Yeah. Well, if you gave her your email, we have that.

Yeah. We did. Yeah. Okay. Thank you.

Any other? Oh, all good. Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Our next agenda item is human services staff will review funding performance data. I will hand it over to Christy to get us started.

Actually, I'll go first, and then I'll hand it over to you. Thank you.

Because her name here. Yeah. We switched.

Yep. Okay.

Thank you. So tonight, we're going to review some of the performance data that we have from the last funding cycle so that we can use it as we launch into the 2728 funding. So I'm going to start with the one year report of our six year strategic plan. So so just quickly, there had never been a strategic plan for human services before. And one of the before the pandemic, the cost of living was going up.

The cost of housing was going up. The cost of groceries were going up. The needs in Bellevue were going up. But when the pandemic hit, the we had a big influx of money, the COVID ARPA money. And one of the things the council was aware of was that the ARPA money was going to end, but the needs were still continuing to escalate.

So council wanted a strategic plan so that we could answer a few questions about how funding gets used. So two slides, Giselle. One more. These were council's questions. How do we get dollars out the door differently?

How do we continue to advance and improve equitable funding? How do we implement an equitable funding framework? How can we improve the connection to the community for the services we're providing? And how do we better measure and show the impact of our investments? Next slide. So for the methodology, we hired a consultant. It was HMA. The same group that we hired to do the needs update simultaneously did the strategic plan. So they had the survey. They had the focus groups.

They had subject matter experts. They had all the data, and they came up with four objectives in our strategic plan, and council adopted those strategies in February 2024. So we're going to be looking at what we accomplished in the first year of the strategic plan. So next slide. The first objective of the four was to expand equity focused and data driven decision making that best addresses the most significant community needs, prioritizes investments in the areas of greatest disparities for the Bellevue residents.

And next slide for our accomplishments. We facilitated panels. We participated in community network dialogues. We conducted the needs update. We had public hearings in this group on May 6 and October 21.

Our recommendations prioritized disparities in culturally specific services, housing, food, child care, and behavioral health. And then for our funding cycle, we had representatives from BDAN, CCC, and Youthlink who joined our retreat. We all went through an equity and funding training. We developed a standardized rubric that we used to evaluate the applications. And we our funding recommendations were analyzed by disaggregated data.

So those were for the first objective, those were the things we achieved in year one. Next slide. Objective two was to increase the capacity of Bellevue's human services system by providing equitable access to human services funding opportunities to support ag organizations in meeting the needs of and reducing disparities among Bellevue's most marginalized residents. So this objective was really related to how do we support these agencies to do the work. Our accomplishments.

Next slide, our staff conducted 89 site visits. We participated in multiple East Side work groups to improve the contracting process. We accepted applications and reports in any language. We translated and distributed the request for proposals widely. We provided one on one assistance to 43 agencies.

We created a support library for the agencies, and we adopted the 20% indirect cost practice for all of the contracts in human services. Our third objective was to expand access for Bellevue residents to culturally and linguistically specific human services. And our accomplishments for that third objective, we supported you all in prioritizing the service gaps, and we provided a framework with allocation targets. And finally, our fourth objective was to increase key stakeholders' awareness regarding the city's human services needs, including disparities by community, and serve as a to collaboratively address those needs. For the fourth objective, our accomplishments were we presented the needs update to 20 stakeholder groups.

We've been co hosting a shelter provider convening with the other Side cities. We presented to over 200 business leaders at the Chamber of Commerce, and we supported the chamber in outreaching to smaller nonprofits. So that's twelve months' worth of effort for our first ever strategic plan. I think the effort to reach out to stakeholders is an area where we're needing to put a little more focus and make a little more ground. We are improving the rubric for this next funding cycle that we're gonna be using to evaluate applications that you all will be looking at.

Any questions that you might have or any ideas that you might have for other things we can do to meet these objectives?

Deborah, I had a question. In regards to the 20% indirect costs, how does that like, practically, how does that work? Because I know what it means, but, like, how does that work in our funding?

Yeah. So what we saw was that oftentimes a larger agency is able to take our money and use 100% of it to meet a need. And a smaller agency tries to say, we'll also use all of this money to do this thing, but they're not actually paying for some of the overhead and for some of the cost of doing business. And by requiring or highly recommending 20% administrative overhead for every agency, it really makes it more equitable amongst the agencies that they're using some of the money to keep their infrastructure going and then using the rest of the funds for the services instead of having to guess based on the size of the agency and the way they're doing their budget how the money is being spent.

Are you assuming that then we might be able to fund less agencies with having this 20%, or they will do less work with our dollars?

Well, they that's that's a tricky question because I think we have agencies that are have the luxury of being able to do a lot of work because their overhead is already taken care of by other grants that they have. And a smaller agency doesn't have that luxury. But I wouldn't assume that they are doing less work if they are claiming or penciling out the overhead. I think it's just a little bit of a more realistic way to support an agency to do the work and to fund their infrastructure so that it gets done well, especially if we're really wanting these agencies to do the administrative functions well.

But the King County has the same thing. Right? They they are putting, like that's what should be the reasonable administrative costs. But when I think about it, if you have $10,000 and your 20% is your administrative cost in your smaller agency, last time you were able to do a 100 units. This time now that you're saying 20% is your gold standard, they might only be able to do 90.

Could be. Can I offer an observation? Yeah. Of

course. What I think you probably know, commissioner Perelman and everybody else is the other experience of many small agencies is their staff weren't getting paid. And so, you know, larger agencies have that already built in infrastructure. And so what we were hearing from a lot of our small agencies is I need to compete. And so the only way I can compete is I don't pay myself or I don't pay my other staff to help. And so that was a priority as well to make sure we were kind of I I hear what you were saying, but to make sure we were actually paying for what we were we were getting with our contracts.

No. I'm all in. Like, I know there was a big coalition of agencies working on this. I love that.

Mhmm.

The cities in King County are hearing them and actually implementing that. I know King County is doing their workforce, like, true up where they will give some dollars to the nonprofits as well. So if there's an opportunity to do that, living wage, great stuff. Just, like, math at the end of the day, it will be fewer units towards potentially direct services.

Yep. Yeah. Could be.

Any other questions, comments? Alright. I'll pass it over to Sara.

You. I will wait for Giselle to pull up my presentation, and it will be pretty brief. We're gonna be talking about the dashboard, and this aligns with our objective one. And our accomplishments was actually creating a dashboard. So you can go ahead and go to the next one.

The human services dashboard is a critical accountability tool for tracking how the city's investment translate into services and outcome for Bellevue residents. It brings together key points, funding, program performance, and compute community impact. In short, it ensures transparency, accountability, equity, and community engagement. Tonight, I'll share highlights from 2024, the scale of our investments, and the number of residents served, and the outcomes across each major area of need. Next.

In 2024, Bellevue invested 40,000,000 in human services, including 1,700,000.0 in rental assistance. These funds supported over a 159,000 residents across 188 programs with 58 programs funded for the first time. Funds provided rental assistance, child support, legal aid, youth programs, and direct financial help with 99% of programs meeting or exceeding goals. Next. Can you go ahead and yeah.

Thank you. This is just a quick visual of how the funds were distributed by area of need. As you can see, over 50% went to housing and food security. 15% went to supportive relationships like mentoring, legal aid, and culturally specific programs. 5% supported safety from abuse and violence.

14% funded mental and physical health, including counseling and medical care. And 10% went to education and employment, such as childcare and workforce services. This distribution reflects both urgent needs and long term investments in the well-being of residents. Next, Giselle. Housing and food were the largest investment areas. In 2024, providers delivered over 1,100,000 meals, nearly 400,000 shelter bed nights, and thousands of hours in case

management. Next.

Beyond housing and food, 2024 investment strengthened mentoring, survivor advocacy, mental health, and dental care, as well as child care and employment services, showing the broad impact across the community. I'm gonna go ahead and leave this up for just a couple of minutes so you all can see the incredible work that our agencies are doing and the impact that they are having in the community. Alright. Next, Giselle.

Is is this data are these receipts directly tied to the dollars we spent, or are they the organizational, like, outcomes

Yeah.

Their yearly reports?

Yeah. That's a great question, Chris. These are the data that you're seeing here is directly associated with the dollars that you all helped recommend. So these are the services that they're providing based on what they were awarded.

Good. Yeah.

And we will also make sure that you all have the link for the dashboard so that you can spend a little bit more time in that. Looking ahead, we will be updating the dashboard annually to ensure it remains a tool for accountability. This way, we can keep tracking our investments to translate into real impacts for Bellevue residents. And, again, we will make sure that you're all provided with the link so that you can engage with it. Any questions?

Is there something that shows us out of all of the organizations that at, like, requested funding, how many of them were culturally?

Yes. Do we

that's

Oh, that's

well, commissioner Angela, thank you for that question. Yes. That's a perfect transition to Christie who will actually be talking to us about human services funding analysis. And, Giselle, thank you for doing all of our slides for

us.

So

while she's pulling that up, so in front of everybody, there is the human services funding analysis. And so I will be going over this, kind of making it, like, a little bit more narrative, but all of the, like, raw data is in here, and I will talk about that kind of as I'm going through it. Next slide, please. So tonight, I'll be providing an analysis of the overview of the human services funding awards, and it will include reviewing the human services funding by comparing the requested amount and allocated funding for culturally, linguistically specific agencies and other agencies. I'll also be providing an overview of the funding for the culturally linguistically specific agencies and then the programs and then as well kind of talking a lot about what Ruth already talked about with the strategic plan, the efforts that we really took to be able to make sure that we were improving our equity for funding.

Next slide, please. So the goal of sharing this data is to highlight the areas that show the progress in equity and funding and to provide the data to to identify opportunities for improvement. The human services, began formally analyzing the funding recommendations for equity and funding starting in 2021 and has continued this work for each funding cycle. The city council has emphasized the need for the Human Services Commission to form recommendations, including both community wide based agencies and agencies providing culturally and linguistically specific services. Next slide, please.

Ruth already discussed the human services strategic plan in detail earlier, so I won't cover all the details here. But this slide is an overview of the key objectives from the strategic plan that guide that guided the staff and commission's work to focus on the equity. Next slide, please. So just to ensure that everybody is using the same definitions, we have defined the culturally and linguistically specific services, which I'll be referring to numerous times through this whole presentation. So culturally and linguistically specific services are services that are designated for a particular linguistic and culturally community and delivered by individuals from this community.

This is different than culturally responsive, and that is a system that values diversity, understands differences, and develops services and supports to meet the unique needs of each community. So the datas I'm focusing on is the culturally and linguistically specific. And so just to be really clear, I think often as we're talking, they get intertwined, and so we are talking about people that the community is delivering the services.

Next slide, please.

So this slide provides a list of all of the twenty twenty five funding sources and the amounts that are included in this analysis. It includes the human services general fund, the housing stability fund, CDBG fund, and the parks and community services fund. For a full description of the human services sources, you can refer to the last page of the document. That also does include our housing stability OMS funds, which are not included in this analysis.

Next slide, please.

So this chart shows the breakdown. Oh, yeah.

Go ahead. May I

Yeah. I wanna make sure I'm connecting with

us. Please.

You were talking about that there's 14,100,000.0 in 2024. We're saying that in 2025, the number is at 9,000,000.

So that less. That that included the ARPA funding. So which which was we got over $17,000,000 over is it two and a half years, three years? Something like that. And so that amount of money was the amount of money that we allocated in 2024.

Quick. Great question. 3%. That was really bad.

Yeah. Good question.

Okay. So a where is that? Yes.

So

this slide or this chart shows the breakdown of the culturally and linguistically specific agencies funded compared to the all of the agencies. So the second column is the amount that was requested. The third column is the amount that was awarded, and the last column is the percentage of funding awarded. So I will say when I went because I'm all about not recreating the wheel. So when I went and was using my PowerPoint from the last time I did this, previously, all of our percentages were almost exactly the same.

And so I do think it is big kudos to the work of the commission and really using the strategic plan to see that 63% did of what was requested was awarded.

Can I clarify, I mean this is a genuine question because I don't remember? The 60 that column, the percent of funding awarded is the percent they got of their ask Mhmm. Not the percent of total dollars. Right?

That is correct. Yeah. Okay. The percent

of the 63% of their ask. All other agencies got 45% of their ask. Thank you. I just couldn't remember.

Yes.

Any other questions around this slide? Next. So across the twenty twenty five human services funding sources, 28% of the agencies funded are culturally and linguistically specific. 24 of the agents 24 culturally and linguistically specific agencies applied, and of those that applied, 23 agencies received funding. And five of the culturally and linguistically specific agencies received funding for the first time.

You can find the chart with the full list of all of the agencies that received funding on page two. On that chart, you'll see that there's an asterisk next to the names of anybody that received funding for the first time, and it also tells you the source of the funding that they received. So some of the agencies received funding from numerous sources. Some, it was only from one.

Next slide, please.

So this is looking at the program. So for culturally and linguistically specific programs, 28% of the programs receiving received human services funding for cultural of the overall pot of money, 28% of the programs receiving human services funding were are for culturally and linguistically specific programs. 27% of the culturally, linguistically programs were receiving funding for the first time. And, again, more details located in the report on page the third and fourth page of the data analysis report. You can find a list of all of the programs that received funding and, again, an asterisk next to anybody that received funding for the first

time. Thank you.

So this is gonna be a little bit of a repeat, but I'm gonna go through it anyways. So this is the staff and the commission made several efforts to improve equity and funding. And so I will go through some of the items that were highlighted in this report, but it won't be the complete list. So the first is that the human services strategic plan guided the commission and the staff's focus on equity, that all of the human services commissioners and staff reviewed the application, received an equity training. And in addition, over the last, I would say, few years, the commission meetings have really included a lot of panel presentations from several agencies, serving marginalized communities.

And then in addition, for the first time, we had a rubric, was implemented for the Human Services Commission and the staff to use when reviewing the applications. And this included both funding priorities and highlighting the culturally and linguistically specific programs. Next slide, please. The application continuing with the equity, the focus on improving equity, the application reviewing process and the funding chart highlighted the culturally and linguistically specific programs so that commissioners could easily identify and prioritize these programs and agencies as they were discussing funding. Staff completed outreach to the community based organizations both during the funding cycle and throughout the year, including agencies that received ARPA funding that ended in 2024.

Next slide. And then the staff also provided technical assistance for agencies during the application process. Language and interpret language interpretation and translation could were provided upon request at funding sessions and at any of our city meetings to discuss human services funding. And the RFP was also translated into Bellevue's top eight languages. And Bellevue has and will continue to accept funding applications and quarterly reports in languages other than English.

Last slide. So for the last slide, just a question for you guys. So if you have questions for me, we can do that as well. But something for you guys to talk about today or just to ponder is how will the commission maintain the progress on the oh, sorry. I forgot to change the language on that. For the culturally and linguistically specific agencies, not BIPOC, but M4. That's what was previously. So how will we continue the progress on that? And is also, is there areas that we need to focus on? And do you guys have questions for me?

So I had one question regarding the funding. Back to Tony's question about the 63% of their ask was funded. Mhmm. So was that a predetermined percent the commission came up with? And then we just went down the list, and we said, everybody gets 63% of their ass.

That is a wonderful question. So, no, that was not how it was done. It was just I took the information that there was, and we analyzed it. It was just a lens that we had during the conversation of our strategic plan said that we would be focusing on culturally and linguistically specific organizations. So are we doing that, and are we saying what our strategic the guidance from our strategic plan were?

That is that is a lens to look at for future funding of do we say we're going to be doing this amount? I'm gonna calculate the number of actually what the percentage is, because it will take me two seconds of what how much what percentage of funding actually went to culturally and linguistically specific. Because that that was not 63% of the funding. That's just what they ask for. And there's many factors that could go into that.

It could be that a community based organization is less likely to ask for a larger amount of money because they don't wanna look like they're asking for too much. I mean, there's a lot of factors that could go into why that amount is higher, and it could just it could be partially because it was the focus of the commission. So I think if we looked at it, it would be more of what is the overall breakout of the overall percentage. Yeah.

And the other side of the coin, the reason why I asked is that a organization could per se know that we give a percentage to what they ask and then increase the the number of what they ask. I just think there's a equity concern.

Yeah.

Yeah. So thank you for the clarification.

And it was about 73% went to culturally and link I mean, 23% went to culturally, linguistically specific, and 77% went to.

Great. Thank you so much. Do we people watch him again? Oh,

can I have a commissioner Hayes to take over? I have to leave. Can you Yeah. Yes.

You want to?

Yes. You

can also stay there.

I'll just stay here.

Okay. Thank you.

Yes.

You.

For the quest like, the question that you posed, I would say the first time that I joined the commission, we did implicit bias training as a commission. And I would highly I mean, I know training costs, And so but I think implicit bias was extremely helpful, especially for the new commissioners.

I'm taking recommendations for trainers

Okay. For our training.

I don't know who we use. It was online,

and I don't know who it was.

I'm sure I have the information somewhere.

Does anybody else have any I have a question. So on the last page, we have the the first one who we had found in for the first time. I got confused with that. What was that? For the first time. So it's the last page? No. So funding for the

first time is the asterisk next to the names. Oh, okay. For the this the second page here, this is the agencies. This is where it gets confusing. And then it goes to programs. And so the little asterisk that's next to it, that is receiving funding for the first time. Okay. So you can see there's some agencies that were funded before, but they have a program that received fund funding for the first time.

Okay. I got it. Thank you.

Is now a good time to make a comment about the needs update report, or should I save that to next day?

No. Because we have time, so I think that all the data, this is it all kind of goes together. So this we're analyzing past data, and then there's the needs update, so that would be wonderful.

So I just noticed a common theme or thread within the the report. I'm about, I think, 80 pages in. And a common theme is a disconnect in awareness for, community members to know what resources are out there, and they disconnect between service providers. And I just think that that might be low bearing fruit to grab that might be economically not cheap, but economically well spent to kind of focus on on that that that theme. I was also wondering I went to the MyBelvieu app, and I saw that there wasn't a place to find community resources.

And I'm curious why we're not leveraging the that tool yet. And just one final thought, I also thought it would be really nice to have community advocates that have gone through, you know, with the the process or the system to come in and maybe help other residents or or community member navigate their the systems. So if there's a way to to also leverage people that have the knowledge of the system too, I just had those thoughts when I was going through it. Yeah.

Thank you.

My first comment about having a on the website, the resources, one of the biggest challenges with that is that if we were to list places that have rental assistance, food, shelter, those the the actual calling that number to get what you need would be really inconsistent because the agencies have a really hard time keeping the information up to date for what they have to offer and for what's available. So I think rental assistance is a good example of that. So some of the agencies, when we give them money for rental assistance, they spend it down based on the users that come through the door, so it's gone really quickly. And we are trying to keep our website a little bit up to date with rental assistance, but it's really, really hard to do. Some of the agencies, take phone calls at the beginning of the month and first come, served for rental assistance.

And then for the rest of the month, it's out until the beginning of the next month. So I think what we find with people who try to have a directory for services is it's really, really hard to make it accurate and to not have it be a phone number that gives someone a dead end. And that's very closely linked to your other the observation you made that what comes up for people is this lack of awareness for how to get things. And the challenge with that is that someone who doesn't know that the city of Bellevue utilities department has a program to help you pay your utilities bill, if someone doesn't know that, how do you do you reach them? And the city will try.

They'll do a mail out. The city will put it on your bill. They might have a recording when you call the city. But what you don't know is what people don't know. And so it's really hard to figure out how to help somebody know something when you don't know how they're out there.

Where are they connected? Where are they getting information? And I love the idea of having people who have used the system be available to help other people. But my challenge with that is that people who are using the system often I would hate to be asking them to do more. So it really and one of the categories of funding that we're going to have this upcoming funding cycle is in that category of navigation because we did hear so strongly from the community that people are having a really hard time getting connected to services.

But the mystery of how to help people make that connection really needs to happen from the agencies that are in that community and of that community and can help people get connected. And I don't know if you all have anything else you'd want to add.

Can I add a board? Okay. So navigation services showed up as, like, two cycles ago that we we saw a trend of organizations requesting human service funding for navigation or navigator. And the same the same instance as this last funding cycle, there's not enough money to go around. And the trend that I saw this last funding cycle is that adult education and mentorship kind of was the first things to not be funded by us.

Mhmm. And that was what navigation was a couple of cycles ago. And so really, it's one of those things is, like, we see it. Like, this is the importance of being a commissioner is, like, you see it, you read all of these things, you see it in the human service needs update, and then you have to advocate, like, and continually remind everyone that this is a need that the community is saying that they need and that we need to fund it. And so I think, like, just continually just bringing it up and saying, like, hey.

But, again, we're all going to be tasked with, like, this duty of what doesn't get funded and what does. And so really just keeping that in mind. But, like, I'm I love that you brought that up, and it's not new because it's been a it like, people are asking for how to do that. Yeah.

Thank you so much. And I'm new to the process, so I'm just learning about kind of is the historical institutional knowledge of of of human services need need, but but that's just something that I kept seeing pop up over and over. And so I was thinking to myself, well, how can we just connect them? And in my head, it's so much more simple than I hear all of you, saying it is. So it's, fascinating.

So thank you.

Small, step of progress that has been made in the midst of needing so much more is, when we opened community court in the city a couple months ago, every Tuesday afternoon now, there's a community resource fair at the Bellevue Downtown Library that anybody can access. You don't need to be Yeah. Every Tuesday afternoon at the Downtown Bellevue Library starting at 01:00 till about three or four.

I can also follow.

You might gonna have to I

can follow-up in an email with the information. Yes.

Love that. So the community court exists. It's and I can explain that or somebody can. But in addition, for the benefit of the court, for the benefit of the entire community now, providers convene at the Bellevue Library, and anybody can go there and access services. Yeah. Didn't know that. Yeah. We'll bring we'll get you flyers.

It just started in July.

Yeah. It just started.

Mhmm. Uh-huh.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So little step.

Little step.

Because you're right. It's been a need, but small step. Yes.

I think the only other piece I would add with the culturally specific services is trying to equip our agencies that are the trusted messengers to be present for us to be able to support them, fund them because they have direct access to clients and community members that need those services. So I think that's another little, little progress.

So at Crossroads, the the mini city hall has so many service guys, people who help you navigate all the brochures. And I'm I'm just curious about how we can digitize that and and bring that to the people where they are because almost everyone has a phone. And, yes, there's a technology gap, but at least that's one tool of of of getting those resources knowledge to the people where where they are. So I guess there's no more questions, thank you, staff. This data will help inform our funding decisions for the twenty twenty seven, twenty eight funding cycle.

Thank you so much. Appreciate it. We will begin our discussions and deliberations on funding at the next meeting. Our next commission meeting will be on Monday, October 6. This concludes our meeting. We are adjourning at 07:43.

Nice. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you all.