What Did Burien Get From Its No-Bid Contract for Encampment Response? We May Never Know.

Also, Burien refuses to provide a performance evaluation for its city manager despite state guidance stating city manager evaluations are public.

Image via City of Burien

By Erica C. Barnett

The Burien City Council—which acquired two new members, Linda Akey and Alex Andrade, at the beginning of this year—declined to add a discussion of The More We Love’s $49,000 contract to respond to encampments to its agenda during its meeting on Monday, leaving the public without important information about what the group did with the public’s money..

As we’ve reported, Burien City Manager Adolfo Bailon signed a contract with The More We Love, founded and led by Kirkland mortgage broker and Union Gospel Mission (UGM) volunteer Kristine Moreland, to respond to and remove encampments in Burien.

The More We Love has claimed to be far more successful than any other group working in Burien at permanently housing people and getting them into treatment, but those claims have been met with skepticism by established homelessness organizations. Permanent housing is expensive and in short supply across King County, and there are nowhere near enough slots in licensed treatment centers for all the people seeking inpatient or outpatient rehab. Meanwhile, there is no year-round general shelter in Burien, so The More We Love reportedly transports people to UGM’s high-barrier, faith-based shelter in Seattle.

Without detailed information about where the money went, how many people The More We Loved helped, and how, Burien residents (and at least some city officials) simply don’t know what Moreland and her group did with public dollars.

A basic report, with data on specific performance metrics, could affirm that Moreland’s claims are true; or it could confirm that The More We Love has exaggerated its success. Such reports are standard practice for other homelessness outreach contracts. For example, REACH—a longstanding outreach group affiliated with Evergreen Treatment Services—provides detailed reports showing how many people at a specific encampment accessed a specific list of services over each reporting period, along with a breakdown of how they spent each public dollar they received.

Without that kind of detailed information, Burien residents (and at least some city officials) simply don’t know what Moreland and her group did with public dollars.

In response to a public disclosure request, PubliCola did receive two brief documents described as “30 day reports” on The More We Love’s contract. The narratives, which are attached to invoices for $24,500 each, do not include specific data such as itemized expenditures or results. Instead, they consist of bullet-pointed lists with items such as:

• Family meeting for Detox for a human in the encampment;

• Working with SCORE [the South King County jail] on resources.

• Work with local sheriffs to guide and strategize on how much pressure to put in what areas for successful moving.

• Helped de-escalate around the transit station and gas station where that group was creating friction between themselves and the business owner.

• Worked alongside OPS (Operation of Prosecution Survivors) [sic] and successfully address several needs involving vulnerable and sensitive females, connecting them to case management, and getting them in an environment where they are lifted up.

The Organization of Prostitution Survivors is a group that views sex work as “a form of gender-based violence.”

Despite Explicit State Guidance, Burien Keeps City Manager’s Performance Evaluation Secret

In related news, the city of Burien has categorically refused to provide PubliCola with City Manager Bailon’s performance evaluation, along with related emails and email attachments, claiming that they are exempt from disclosure under the state Public Records Act.

PubliCola requested the records after the private firm that conducted the evaluation, Nash Consulting, terminated its contract with the city, saying that their evaluation was “not met with the seriousness it deserved by several key stakeholders, and unfortunately, we have concerns that constructive action was not taken in response to the feedback presented in the evaluation report.”

In response to PubliCola’s request, the city provided a brief two-page “summary” of the evaluation from former mayor Sofia Aragon that we had already published back in December. That document summarized the evaluation process and included six brief bullet points about the goals Bailon should work toward, such as “evaluate the capacity of the organization to meet urgent challenges.”

Although the Public Disclosure Act does exempt some personnel records, guidance from the state Attorney General’s office says that the performance evaluations of city managers, specifically, are subject to disclosure. Citing a case out of Spokane, the Attorney General’s Open Governance Resource Manual says “the performance evaluation of a city manager—the city’s chief executive officer, its leader, and a public figure—was not exempt because it was of legitimate concern to the public.”

Burien’s disclosure office got so overzealous with their redaction tool that they blacked out the Employee Identification Number for Discover Burien, The More We Love’s fiscal sponsor. EINs (30-0048516, in Discover Burien’s case) are unambiguously public and readily accessible; the city has not responded to a followup about why they blacked out this public information.

In addition to the performance evaluation, the city of Burien is refusing to provide an email from Bailon and related documents about a “complaint of improper government action” that appears related to Bailon’s failure to inform all city council members about a deadline from King County to spend $1 million on shelter or lose the money.

Initially, Bailon said he didn’t see an email from Deputy County Executive Shannon Braddock because his inbox was swamped with emails about an unrelated sanctioned encampment at a Burien church, but he later admitted that he had opened and responded to Braddock’s email without informing the council, to whom he reports.

Burien’s public disclosure officer did not respond to our email objecting to their refusal to disclose Bailon’s performance review; we have asked the Attorney General’s Office to review the documents in light of their guidance that city manager performance evaluations are public records.

Incidentally, Burien’s disclosure office got so overzealous with their redaction tool that they blacked out the Employee Identification Number for Discover Burien, The More We Love’s fiscal sponsor, on both of the documents they provide. EINs (30-0048516, in Discover Burien’s case) are unambiguously public and readily accessible; the city has not responded to a followup about why they blacked out this public information.