good evening my name is michael jacobson i am the deputy director for performance and strategy in king county s office of performance strategy and budget i'm here with me in elliott who is working with me on the county strategic plan would like to talk to you today about ways that you can be involved in shaping the future of team county king county provides a number of services to the public some in collaboration with the city of seattle some that are the county's responsibility and we wanted to make sure that you had opportunity to participate in letting your voice be heard and telling us what services were important some of the services that we provide include the metro bus system we have county parks we run the county jail and the wastewater system we also in collaboration with seattle run the public health department there's a number of other services that people outside of cities use as well including land use planning and many people use the county runs the election department so there's quite a diversity of services that we provide and we're here to get your feedback on those different services and get your ideas for how we can improve our services and improve our community no participating in a project that is about updating a strategic plan may not sound very exciting but is actually very exciting if you are not familiar with what a strategic plan is it's kind of a simple kind of like a road map for the county and where we're going to go over the next five years and how the county will try to meet your needs five years ago we were out talking with community as well in public meetings and other forums and asking similar questions and we heard a lot of really important thing is for instance we heard desire for their county to work on ending homelessness community our committee to end homelessness actually set a target of creating ninety five hundred new units for homeless housing by the year two thousand and fifteen and we're about halfway to that goal right now in two thousand and thirteen so it's things like this that you might be able to impact by making your vote boys heard through these forums so this year as we're out talking with the public we're again holding a number of public meetings and talking to small groups of people but we have a new and pretty exciting way that you you can participate on your own time in your own place or at your nearby library and i'd love to show you a little bit about that today and it's called one king county dot info and that's w w w one king county di i n f o so if you can see my screen you can see when you go to one king county dot info you see this banner at the top here it just has some basic information the first thing that you m have noticed there is you get points for participating so that's my plug early on and by participating with points you get to go into our fancier word story here and claim different prizes from a coffee mug to a pet license for a year or a an orchid card so you can get around on the metro transit system so there are a lot of different prices so how do you get there you can come in here and go back to this house in may tear and that takes you back to the home page and if you scroll down you can see a few different questions that we want to know in those three basic questions that were looking to hear from you is one what makes king county a great place to live for you what do you really like about living here because we want we want to know that because we want to know the things we need to continue to support and maybe even do a better job supporting then we'd like to know what challenges that you're facing what is kind of getting in your way of getting to were or you know enjoying your life and then also what ideas you have to make us even better to make the county government serve you better to make life better just living here in king county so let me show you how it works first of all if you want to tell us about what you like about living here and you click on what makes king county a great place to live and then you can go in and i'm actually logged in here so you can't see the survey but it'll say take this survey you click on it and i'll give you a variety of options and you pick the top three reasons or you can click in this box here where it says add your comment and you can write in your own ideas about what makes it great to live here so then if you want to go into the next question you go over here under topics and click up on topic number two challenges you face and this is kind of where it gets exciting because this is kind of it's a place for you to actually talk with people who live near you who live far from you all the way across the county and that have lots of different viewpoint so here you'll see that people have already had some ideas about what's a challenge about living here so this person name is judy mentioned that she's having an issue with property taxes so if you click on that you can find out more about it so here she's saying that the property taxes are pretty high here and you can say oh yeah i really agree with that and if you do you  click on i love it or if you don't really care you can click on neutral so that's or you can have a discussion with judy about it in it add your own ideas here ok and megan judy points for putting that idea up there or she sure did and you would get more additional points if you use if you voted on it right that's right so right are the different ways to earn points in the in the on the website yes so if you go back up here topics go on to the next one where big ideas and it's the same idea here but now i want to show you where people have actually had more of a conversation so i can see as  scroll down where there are comments so here's somebody talked about reducing obesity and making affordable healthy food available to everyone and the number of people like that you can see by the number sixteen here it's got a sixteen point rating this person is actually posted a video so that's another thing that you can do here you can take pictures or post videos  to further explain whatever idea you have and then if you scroll down you see that there are some people that have commented on it this person wins that this is are these ideas already in place and then there's another one another person that says there aren't they basically we haven't gone that far so those are just a couple of examples of how that works there are two more questions in there that are not our biggest priority questions but of course we would love to hear from you on them this when is how how can we get the information back to you and this is actually an important question to us because we want to make sure that you know that you're not just going to put your ideas out there and never find out what happens to them we are absolutely committed to making sure that you know what the results of this process are and we'll have those that information available in the diff a number of different ways for you so you can come in here again take this survey and tell us which way you would prefer to get your get the feedback and finally we would like to know a little bit about you and this is just asking you about how many years you've lived or are you are you working those kinds of things just so we can understand who we're hearing from throughout the community so really encourage you to do that if you like to but it's certainly completely optional for you begin to help how long is the website going to be operating fine question it is going to be open until november thirtieth so you can participate at any time but we really encourage you to participate early and often go right away get on the computer right now and get started participating and by the way all you have to do to get fifty points is to sign up  and then you get more as you go on and then keep checking back to hear to hear what people might have said in response to an idea that you posted and also to comment on new ideas that come up on the site now if you don't have access to a computer or if you have which issues we do have partners that are available to help you  you can use if you do have a computer and you want some help with the language and not comfortable reading in english there is google translate here so you can go on and select the language that you want and it will translate as you can see i selected arabic here and it translates into that language for you it's not perfect which is another reason we have those partners available so all of these a king county libraries are available to assist you some of them have people available who can help in language not all of them you would have to call in advance to find out about that is like its name sounds not just for women you can go to multi service center near you their main one being in federal way and  share i just i think one of the really important things that i want to be able to to convey is how important your participation is to us we know that the two million people live in king county  have many different experiences there are many people from different places different languages different religions and we want to be sure that we can include all the perspectives of people from all walks of life in our process  we are really trying to think big about what the role of the county is trying to get your ideas and really design our services to meet the communities in the us so if you have concerns ideas jens we really would like to have your participation the website this one king county dot info is a new thing for us so we're also we're we're really interested to see how successful it is and if  people are using it and there's lots of the dialogue then it's likely to be something that we're going to be interested in trying in the future we know not everyone can take an evening out and go to a public meeting we know that that's hard to do for either because of job or kids or other obligations so we just want to make it try to make it as easy as possible for everyone to participate and i think one other little thing that i would like to add is if you're not sure what county service areas don't worry about it we want to hear what your experiences and what your needs are and we are actually communicating with other local governments in the area so you comments even if they aren't directly related to you county service won't go unheard plus there are lots of things that they can e can do that you know you might not think that we would do a one last thing people can come in person we might be will be asking many of these same questions but will you obviously have more opportunity presented your ideas in person with specific experience and example yes so you can see here and you can always refer back to it it is a e by clicking on the link at one king county dot info that was on the side there that weakest go back there and show you that if you look down here it says public workshop schedule and that just puts you out back to the county website where the listing of all seven of those workshops are and we really encourage you to come if you need an interpreter for any of those please contact us at two zero six two six three one one eight to let us know that you need an interpreter and we can use language line to help out with that request thanks for your interest and we really hope to see you on mine or see you in one of our meetings and i really name is megan elliot i work for king county as the project manager for the public and gage meant portion of our strategic plan date we were invited here at two am m r t i to share with the community our need to hear back from them and i just feel so grateful that we've had this opportunity to connect with the community is a tremendous resource here and we wouldn't i know that we wouldn't be able to reach the community in the same way if we weren't here so i invite you to take advantage of this tremendous resource as well hi my name is michael jacobson i work for executive doubt constantine and his office of performance strategy and budget i got invited here to m m r t i if you know youth media t v to talk about our strategic plan work but this is a great place the word is getting out about all sorts of different topics to the community and you have a special channel to reach the community in amazing ways the friendly people nice operation really appreciate it awesome hope you get a chance to work with these guys thanks he has served eleven years in the house in the washington state house of representatives said emirate is currently running for mayor of seattle he's in our studio today to tell us a little more about himself and tell us why we should elect him as  grandparents were immigrants from ireland i went on to college in portland and before i was in the legislature i work for martha cho in the seattle city council source hobbies and interests i have a dog who i spent a lot of time working with and enjoying and from time to time my cross country skier hike depending on the weather and i love to read you have three good what are you challenged point in its history right now i think we have some really significant issues around transportation around public safety around police reform around whether the city is going to be an affordable city that people can actually live in think yes well i think one of the key things that we need to do is enter into a discussion with our school district about how we're going to improve graduation rates and how the city can play a part in that because graduation  rates particular among immigrant children young people is about forty five percent that's just far too low for a city like seattle secondly i think the programs that we can do in our parks and recreation facilities to make sure that we're reaching out to all cultures and all people involved those youth there is programs the city conducts mail to get youth involved in activities and keep them off the streets i think that's also very important and seattle continues to grow in incredible diversity to our city but we're not seeing those numbers reflected in city government we're not seeing those numbers reflected in who we hire in the police department and other places and one of my goals is actually to be sure that one of the largest immigrant groups in the city if i may or have positions in jobs throughout our city government what is your the seattle channel and i think that is an opportunity to utilize that resource to create programs in the different communities that could be broadcast on that as one of the things that i think we could do as well  over these last eighteen years i worked on a lot of issues such as transportation such as civil rights i also specialized in working on immigrant issues to ensure that the funding is there for the new american program the funding is there for food assistance to refugees in the original author of something called the dream act that would allow young people who are undocumented but immigrants to access financial aid at our university and called system so i think that is the type of leader that seattle's looking for someone with that kind of background and i would love your vote i would love your support thank you thank you thanks very much what do you think  well one of the exciting parts of this campaign has been getting to know the east african community better in a very diverse community you know  islamic christian orthodox in the diversity is really very impressive and i think that enrich a seattle but i also know that there are some significant challenges that the resources around language in working with language skills so that people can get in to good jobs it's a challenge i know that also this a challenge and when it comes to dealing with education because education is and was still one of the best ways to get a good job and be able to raise a  family also understand the challenges that a lot of young people particularly teenagers in the african american community are feeling alienated in their schools and that can lead to a lot of problems on the streets so i think we have a real challenge to make sure that our schools are culturally integrate the east african communities so that young people feel that it is also their schools and not just caucasian american school but also an east african american school so those are some of the issues that i've become aware of over the time that i spent visiting with with leaders in east african community having a chance to celebrate thanksgiving yesterday and have great food and visiting with some of the religious leaders as well it's been an opportunity to for me to hear about these very significant challenges and as i mentioned earlier a real disconnect between the number of east africans who are living in seattle and the number of east africans who are actually working in the city government to seattle that's a real challenge that we have to change you know we need to see african police officers they're going to understand the culture in the challenges of that community better than anybody else we need east africans to be in city government because that is another way you can address some of these problems ye immigration but i don't think that city office of immigration has been effective in being able to reach out and offer the assistance that these communities need so i think we need to go back and look at the mission of that office and  develop it in a such a way that it actually responds to the needs of the community so that would be one of the first things i would do when it comes to the issue of the east african community secondly i would want to engage the school district in a discussion around what are we missing what are we doing wrong that we're not able to be more successful with immigrant young people graduating from our high schools and look at what sort of sort of changes that we need to make so that those young people stay in school and actually graduate mayor's cabinet has seventy percent men in traditionally in seattle or around forty percent of the cabinet has been women so we need to have a more i would have as a mayor of far more diverse cabinet and staff  that reflects not just women but reflects the city of seattle that a cabinet that looks like the city of seattle that represents its racial and ethnic diversity and there are incredibly in regards to the youth commission the youth commission has done some good work i think we want to be sure that the youth commission i wouldn't do away with it i'd keep it i would want to be sure again is it diverse enough is it representing all aspects of oh i'm a state senator ed murray and i'm currently a candidate for the mare seattle and it is just an incredible privilege to be on m m r t i it is an opportunity for politicians like myself and community leaders and everyday people to express her views and learn new information about different cultures it certainly enriches our media world so that we just don't have you know the stations that we see on t cable but we have a variety of ways of learning information about our very very diversity so my thanks to m m r t i for for being pioneers in this very important work thank you i think he have a better understanding than this guy as a mayor as far as what we have seen now is give him a chance and i hope he's going to deliver it which he promised that he will we will give him a chance we will give him but if i doubt the first thing that we need to do office and they will find out how many people are the voters we can help we can become all citizens but if you don't hold your voice does not matter so we only can get is you have to vote please my dear brothers and sisters the largest you know east african communities and the african diaspora here in seattle and i've appreciated getting to know many of the leaders in the community in working with them and supporting the things they're working on for connecting community through a media this is all about where the east africa and african immigrants are getting their news and information dates where people are getting training our youth the future leaders of this country they have this way w they get their training in terms of the media media is important the twenty first century media plays a big role without media people may not be aware what's going on surroundings is the place that gives us the day to day information for community supported this is a very very strong place and i hope everyone will come and express their views the elected leaders the officials the community leaders the indicators the