missing title

Good morning.

The October 17th, 2025 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Juarez is excused.

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Council Member Solomon?

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

No.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Council Member Rivera?

and Chair Strauss.

Present.

That is six present.

Thank you.

Good morning to this October 17th.

It's another day to seize the moment.

We have four briefings on the agenda for today that includes an overview and policy considerations of the following departments.

The Seattle Police Department, Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, Seattle Fire Department, and Human Services Department.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted and I see Council Member Rivera is present as well.

We'll move right into the first agenda item.

It's 9.31 a.m.

Will the clerk please read the first item into the record, please?

Agenda item one, Seattle Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

We're joined by Greg Doss and Director Noble of Council Central Staff.

We'll turn it over to you and then we'll have Councilmember Kettle open it up after your presentation.

And colleagues, feel free to ask questions as the presentation goes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

As you note, Greg Doss, your central staff, here to present policy considerations for the Seattle Police Department budget.

And directed by my boss, Ben Noble, the Director of Central Staff.

So we'll go ahead and launch into it.

Start with a table with a lot of numbers here and say that the 2026 proposed budget for the Seattle Police Department increases 4.4% relative to the 2026 endorsed budget.

The largest portion of that increase is a net of about $19 million, which is attributable to changes made mostly in personnel expenditures.

So as you look at this table, the majority of changes that you see, whether they be reductions or adds in that percent change column, those are really just three or four big items and some technical adjustments that are spread out throughout the department's BSL's budget summary levels.

which also serve as the bureaus for the department, how they organize themselves.

The one big exception here is the 16% that you see in leadership and administration, and that is simply money for new officers that was put in, and we'll discuss that in a little more detail later.

Thank you, Greg, and just a note, Council Member Hollingsworth has joined us as well.

Okay, thank you.

So with that, I'm going to go ahead and move into the major adjustments.

As I said, most of the adjustments are personnel-related.

As I just mentioned, there's a $26 million ad.

It was 16 percent increase to leadership and administration, and that is to fund 86 net new officers in 2026. I think that most folks are aware that the Department has been really at an unprecedented rate hiring new officers.

This is something that they've never seen before in this order of magnitude.

So there is a need for the budget to catch up, and that is the first item here.

I'm not going to talk too much about these items because I know that you have heard about them both from the executive and from SPD in the Central Budget Office presentation and in SPD's presentation.

If you have any questions, do ask.

Overtime budget is reduced by $950,000 and that is to meet a general fund reduction target.

We will talk about that more in the issue section.

There is a vacancy rate adjustment and that vacancy rate adjustment At any one time in the department, there's always going to be a certain number of vacancies, positions that are either unfillable, take a long time to fill, and we're going to talk about some of those a little later, but those positions that are fully funded, the department winds up saving salary, not having to spend that salary.

And so what is happening here is the Central Budget Office and SPD are determining that there's going to be a certain amount of unspent salary funding because of unfilled positions, and they're making an affirmative cut of $2.8 million to recognize that essentially not all positions need to be funded due to a vacancy rate.

and then the last cut is a $395,000 reduction to the temporary term limited budget which is a smaller budget, it's only a half million dollars so this is a fairly significant cut.

It is a budget that SPD uses for special projects.

They have four positions that are expiring at the end of this year and those four positions will create some savings here and it's being reduced.

I'll stop and ask if there's any questions here.

Okay.

We do have a question from Council President Nelson.

I know that there are officers that participate in special task forces with federal task forces.

And a while ago, talking to the DEA special agent in charge, he noted that there is one particular officer that participates in a task force and requested that that person be assigned permanently.

The point is, my question for you is what category are the people in SPD that work on these task forces?

Where do they live?

Okay, thank you.

It is the case that federal, state, and local regional task forces that officers serve on are typically funded with overtime, and that way the city can send officers to these task forces without having to lose capacity for shift or the other work that these officers are doing.

It's primarily the overtime budget that is funding these activities.

This particular reduction here of $950,000 will not affect those functions.

Those functions are funded primarily through grants and reimbursables from either the federal agencies or from the state agencies.

and so it's really more just a financial function of those folks serving on the task forces, getting paid overtime, and then that overtime is reimbursed by the federal government.

Okay, thank you.

One follow-up in terms of adding someone on a full-time basis to one of those task forces, that is something that the Chief could do.

Obviously, that would mean that one FTE of a sworn officer would have to move from whatever their regular shift work is into a role like that.

Yeah.

Thank you, Greg.

Council President, any further questions?

The floor is still yours.

No, that's it for now.

Thank you.

And Greg, can you speak a little bit more about the temporary term limited funding positions, partial reduction there, and the four positions that, are they set to be eliminated?

Are they civilian?

Yeah, thank you.

They are all civilian.

There were two in public affairs that were assisting with communications.

There was one in relational relational policing and that person was serving as a liaison to the central district and there was finally a position that was supporting DEI and as it turns out when we get to the next slide you'll see that the department is more or less converting that DEI work from a term-limited temporary position into a full-time position.

Thank you.

So a couple of other ads that are worth highlighting in this budget.

There is, as you know- I see Councilman Rivera has her hand.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Greg, for being here and Director Noble.

Quick question about on this slide two, the budget summary slide, also under the term limited funding.

It looks like a position supporting the before the badge program is being reduced.

How much capacity do we have in that program?

I guess what I'm asking, Greg, is will this program be impacted by the reduction of this temp person?

The department says that it will not.

I don't have the exact number of FTE for this program, but I can get back to you with more information on that.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

So moving into some other ads, I'll highlight that there are equipment ads.

You all passed a bill recently that authorized expansion of CCTV and RTCC, the active crime center.

And pursuant to that, there are ads in the budget for cameras.

and you can see there the first bullet is $435,000 added for cameras in the Capitol Hill nightlife district.

And then the second one, there's $350,000 added for CCTV in the stadium district.

One thing to note here is that There's also an appropriation in the 2025 year-end supplemental for these cameras, the stadium district, and so that total cost is more like $535,000.

There's a couple hundred thousand dollar appropriation there.

And these costs are for the stadium district cameras are primarily borne by the payroll expense tax.

That's something new with SPD.

Normally, SPD just received general fund funding, but in this case, there was planning for the FIFA events coming this spring, and that is going to be funded out of the payroll expense tax.

also funded as part of that is $422,000 and that, as the slide says, is for barriers and trailers that SPD will use during those FIFA events.

And then, finally, a couple position ads.

Greg, just real quick, we've got a question from Council Member Rankin.

Thank you, Chair.

I think you all might be able to guess what I'm going to inquire about.

And it's, again, this decision to use the payroll expense tax to fund the CCTV cameras for the stadium district.

Do we have any understanding, the rationale behind that decision from the executive?

I think that FIFA in general, there was a decision made on the executive side that all ads related to that were going to be payroll expense tax ads.

I can't speak to the reason why that particular revenue source or fund would be chosen.

I can say that SPD and the executive are considering the stadium cameras to be part of that overall event, and so they're choosing to fund them here.

that's about as much as I can say right now.

I'd have to get back with you with more info.

Thank you for that, Greg.

A couple thoughts on that.

Economic development is one of the things that is one of the authorized uses, if you will, of PET, so you could make a connection there.

The other-this is sort of Is at some level it's academic?

Because there is also the opportunity to transfer PET to the general fund, so we could call this general fund or we could call it PET at some level.

We'll ask the executive what the rationale is, but once you peel the onion, it doesn't much matter.

Sorry, but it's true.

Thank you.

Thank you both.

Thank you, Director.

Colleagues, I think I would just state my displeasure seeing that this particular item is funded with the payroll expense tax jumpstart, given the underlying intent of what Jumpstart was supposed to be and what it was supposed to fund, particularly affordable housing, equitable development, our Green New Deal initiatives.

So I'm concerned about this, and I will just leave it there for right now.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Back to you, Mr. Doss.

All right.

So a couple of position adds.

There's $580,000 for two public disclosure officers.

In 2024, SPD received over 17,000 public disclosure requests.

That is more than all other departments combined in the city.

So this is a growing industry, so to speak, for SPD.

And it seems like every budget we wind up, the city winds up adding public disclosure officers.

And so that's what you're seeing here.

And then of course, as I mentioned before, there is a diversity equity and inclusion officer that is added.

That is making permanent functions that had been served over that temporary term limited position.

I'm seeing hands.

Yes, that's an old hand, I believe.

Councilman Rink, is that correct?

I see Council President Nelson.

So what is the average fully loaded FTE amount or cost?

Because I'm noting that two divided into 580,000 is more than two divided into, you know, is more than 212. So why is that?

Is there another expense or cost that goes along with those two FTEs for public disclosure?

Yes, there is.

And I am not remembering what it is right now.

Paper?

Just kidding.

No.

I'm drawing a blank right now.

Okay.

It is more than the salaries.

You are absolutely correct.

That's a good observation, Council President.

I need to get back to you when I remember what that is and let you know.

Okay.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Back to you, Mr. Dawes.

All right.

So now we're going to move into the first policy consideration which is staffing only and information only.

We're going to talk a bit about the unprecedented hiring that SPD has seen and how that will affect their overall patrol and sworn staffing and how it will affect the financial obligations that the department will have in the future.

So start out with this slide.

It shows basically that there have been an enormous number of new hires going historically from somewhere between 60 and 80 per year up to 169 projected in 2025. That is something that again I keep saying unprecedented that the department is Very, very happy to see happening, and new officers are coming into the sworn ranks at levels that they've not seen, so very good news there.

I'll also mention that my issue paper, if you want to check out the appendixes, you'll see that Attachment 2 has information about how those sworn officers are distributed both throughout the agency, officers that are distributed to functions like specialty units like Harbor Patrol or Criminal Investigations.

And there's also an appendix that talks or shows how officers are distributed through patrol ranks, how many are assigned to each precinct.

So that information is available if you want it.

I would say that every year SPD submits a staffing plan that identifies these hiring and separations that you see in this chart.

It is the case that because we're in new territory, we've never seen hiring like this.

it's very difficult for them to project what it's going to look like going forward.

So for the most part, the blue areas on the table, the projections and planned parts are straight lines, taking what we've seen in the last five or six months and projecting it forward.

Before I take questions, I want to jump to this next slide, which is related.

and this shows how ads would work through the system, staffing ads, recruits would work through the system into becoming fully sworn officers and what would happen if we continued to hire at this pace?

And if SPD continues to hire at this pace, officers will come into the system as fully trained officers after about a year.

I think the council's familiar with the lag because of training and the academy.

And then when they are fully trained, they will be represented in that blue line.

and then the green line is the deployable officers.

That is the number of folks that we can put out on the street.

It subtracts folks that are out on long-term leave or military leave or other reasons for being away from service.

And so as you can see with the ads of 169 officers or roughly 86 or 87 net new ads each year, If the department is able to sustain that increase from 26 to 2028, it is the case that they will reach historic levels.

They will reach the historic staffing levels that SPD saw back in 2017 or 2018. And so I know that that's a question that council has asked the department, asked the chief during the last presentation.

when would we be back?

And I think the answer is 2028 at this current rate.

Fingers crossed that they can continue to hire at this rate.

And then the last thing I would note is that as officers are coming into service, so are the costs.

It is the case that the costs for the additional officers, the additional 86 officers in 2026 is going to be about $26 million.

That's $23.5 million for salaries and another $2.5 million for equipment.

and if you take the cost just for the 2026 officers and you annualize it, once they move into fully funded sworn pockets, the obligation in 2027 will grow from 26 million to about 34 million.

And that's just that one class for next year.

So as you see classes in 2027, in 2028, you'll see growing costs, again, in the order of magnitude of tens of millions of dollars.

Thank you, Greg.

I see we have Council President and then Council Member Rivera.

There is a, I can't remember what the term is, but the ratio of officers per 100,000 population, and so I think that that's what also, that is, I'll back up.

The city has grown since 2017, so we do have to take population growth into account when we're thinking about the needs of SPD and the number of people that should be in each precinct on shift at any given time.

So do you know what ratio they are using as an ideal

Thank you, Council President.

It is the case that SPD is undertaking a study coming up this year where they are going to look not really just at ratios per population for officers, but rather specific demands in the City of Seattle for officer calls and proactive work for SPD.

They're going to take a look at that this year and they're going to develop a strategic staffing plan, if you will, that should give you the number that you're looking for.

What would be the ideal number of police officers for the city of Seattle?

That's something that Chief Barnes hopes to be able to tell you all next year.

Right, yeah, because clearly the fentanyl epidemic has had an impact on the needs across the city.

So it's not just population which drives need, staffing needs.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera and then Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

And Greg, just following up on Council President's comments, actually, when we were at the height of our staffing levels in 17 and 18, how are we doing in terms of addressing public safety across the city?

Many of us were not actually, as you know, on council.

I'm not sure anyone was on council then who's currently on council and want to make sure that we also understand pre-pandemic how we were doing in terms of addressing public safety would be helpful.

And also what happens, Greg, next year if we see staffing levels higher than anticipated, meaning I see your graph here.

This is really helpful.

Thank you.

And what happened?

Because this year we saw, I mean, like we didn't think we'd get this many officers this year.

So what happens if the increase is actually more than we are planning for, you know, in this graph here?

Well, first I would, I would, I'd probably say that I believe, at least what I'm hearing from SPD, is that they are hiring at the absolute fastest capacity that they can.

Notable is that the process is still very long and complicated.

The backgrounding alone can take a month or two to get an officer through.

So it's the case that they are pushing through as much as they can, but they're going to be somewhat limited by the capacity that they have to hire background interview candidates.

I think they're at that capacity, so probably you're not going to see an increase beyond where they're at, but that's something that I'd have to get more info from the department to provide some context.

And then Director Noble probably wants to talk about the financial piece.

Yeah, at the highest level, I mean, there are two ways we can end up with more offers than we're planning, either because we hire more or because there's less attrition.

So even if the hiring is at capacity, there's at least a possibility that there'll be lower attrition.

And then, as this year, the city faces a choice to either provide SPD the funding to support those additional hires, and in fact, there is a supplemental request for SPD, in part because hiring is your outpaced expectations.

So either you gotta fund the positions, or you gotta make a conscious decision to slow down hiring.

That those are just the, it's just the math, if you will.

And that decisions about whether or not to continue hiring are those of the executive.

And then one last thing, coming back to the first part of your question, council member, how will you know that there is an improved service?

One measure that you all look at and everyone looks at quite often is 911 response times.

And I've included in your packet, in my staff report, the historical 911 response times.

and you can see that for priority one calls, if you look back to 2018, the median time for 911 call response at that time was about 6.34 minutes.

And now in July 2025, we're up to seven minutes.

And so this is one of a few different kinds of metrics that you could watch to see how SPD returns to better service when they get more officers.

Thank you.

Councilman Rivera, anything else?

Thank you.

Thanks, Greg, for answering that.

and before we go to Council Member Rink, not on behalf of only because our historian, Council Member Juarez is sick today, she was the only one of us that was here in 2017. So with that, over to you, Council Member Rink.

Thank you for the reminder, Chair.

Yes, I was like trying to thank, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you for the presentation today, Greg.

I've been trying to wrap my head around this and I wanna clarify for the record today, If there were negative police in every year until 2024, where did the funding for these staff go?

Was it put into the underspend?

And if not, how did SPD reallocate in such a way that we now need $26 million to hire new people?

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember Rank.

Well, I think the city at the time recognized that there was a lot of unfunded salary that was sitting in the department, and it got moved to priorities that the city had over the last few years, one of which was standing up the new care department.

A lot of funding that is in the care department is the result of general fund savings that were coming from SPD salary savings.

So as the city progressed over the last few years, salary was reduced in SPD because it was unneeded, and it was reallocated for things like care for technology projects that the department has.

There are papers on each one of the departments, a five-year historical look back, or is it six-year, Six year now.

Six year that the chair has requested that staff do.

And the SPD paper has a history of all of those transfers.

So if you go to that paper, you'll see all the big chunks of salary funding that moved out and more or less what they were used for.

If you go that place, I'd recommend reading both the 25 five-year summary and the 26 six-year summary.

There's complimentary information in both, some more detail actually in the 2025 five-year look back.

The other thing that happened within those years is that there was salary money shifted to overtime.

So as SPD, as the officer count went down, there was an increasing amount, increasing use of overtime.

And so some of that money was just redirected that way.

But as Greg describes, not all of it.

It's good to have a partner up here.

That is absolutely the case.

A lot of it, as you're going to see in a minute, was redirected for overtime.

So thank you, Director Noble.

Thank you both.

That's all, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Back to you, Greg.

All right.

So let's talk about overtime.

As we just discussed, it's been on the rise.

You can see that the history of overtime here in this chart shows that in 2018, there was, oh, about 350,000 hours used of overtime.

And I should say the reason that these charts show hours instead of dollars is because As the collective bargaining agreements for the unions are authorized by you all, the salary dollars go up.

So it's most comparable when I show hours from year to year.

And so you can see that there were about 350,000 hours used in 2019. And that, as the staffing shortage occurred in 2021, 22, 23, grew to be about 500,000 hours per year.

and so it's clear that the department has been increasing relying on over time to pay for things like emphasis patrols or backfill for sick call-outs or patrol augmentation.

That's what's going on here and the two things I wanted to point out to you, the reason that this is an issue, an information only issue is that As I mentioned earlier, there is a $950,000 cut to the overtime budget.

SPD has indicated that that cut was made because after examining their equipment budget and their discretionary budgets for use in other areas, they came to the conclusion that they didn't have many other cut opportunities.

So they put forward this $950,000 overtime cut.

That said, as you can see in this chart, if historic spending stays at the $500,000 or 500,000 hours per year level, the 450,000 hours that are funded in the 2026 budget is going to be insufficient to cover the expenses.

It is the case that not all of that gap is a result of the reduction that SPD made.

That reduction was about, as I said, $950,000.

The overall gap in overtime hours between what we might expect to see and what's funded is about $5.5 million.

And so this issue is really just information only, letting you know that as the department and as the executive are managing their budget next year and managing the way they use officers and overtime, they are going to be attempting to reach a lower expenditure threshold.

If they are successful, great.

If they're not, then they will probably be coming to you in the midyear with a supplemental request that could be 5.5 million or higher.

Mr. Thank you.

Council President.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the fact that in 2025, the revised and the original come into line better is because we made, council made a stink of not appropriate, the executive not putting enough money toward overtime.

because I think we were talking in committee about the fact that the previous years there was in 2024, clearly there was an imbalance about the planned need for overtime.

So whatever the reason for that better symmetry there in 2025, next year we have this big party coming to town.

Right?

World Cup.

So when you're talking about the SPD engaging in a strategic staffing exercise and putting forward a plan, I'm just going to assume that they are thinking about overtime needs during the World Cup.

Yes, that is absolutely the case.

And we'll talk about officers and new officers and their impact on overtime here in a second.

But you're absolutely right.

The 2025 budget was supplemented.

There was a mid-year, I'm sorry, year-end supplemental for $12 million that the executive proposed and the council adopted that Actually, it wasn't 2025, it was 2024, where the budget was boosted.

It's been the case since the officer shortage, since the officers have been separating back in 2020, 2021, that the city budget office has been trying to play catch-up, so to speak.

It wasn't something that could be forecast.

forecasted accurately.

They were doing the best they could to try to keep up the authority with what was being spent.

And you can see in 2022, 2023, they just weren't keeping up with the budget.

But in 2024, last year, they did add $12 million, and that gets us up into the $450,000, $500,000 hour range.

So they're now in the range.

It's just a little underfunded in 2026 due to the cut and again, still playing catch up.

One thing that I would note is that it's possible that their recent successes in hiring will translate into a reduction in overtime use.

And that is something that absolutely the chief will have to take into account when he's doing the strategic staffing plan.

but I think you all heard the Chief say in his address to you all, his budget address, that that's not going to be an immediate thing.

That's going to be something that phases in over time because his immediate priority for those new officers is going to be to ensure that there's adequate service in patrol, bringing down 911 response times to work on special projects.

So the new officers are really at first going to supplement the services.

They're not going to to supplant or substitute for the overtime that's being used.

Then over time, as officers continue to come into the system, there'll be opportunities for supplanting of these overtime dollars.

It's just going to take a little time.

Actually, in the near term, you might see an increase in overtime, because there will actually be more officers who are available to sign up for overtime and to do so in a more sustainable way.

And to the extent that the headcount overall still remains below that which the chief sees as ideal, in order to respond to individual situations and emphasis patrols and the like, there will be a larger pool of folks who can access and make use of that over time.

So I speak from experience on this point as the previous budget director.

And myself as well as the previous budget director for SPD.

It is the case that each one of these officers that comes in creates their own overtime, and for good reasons.

If they are involved with an incident towards the end of their shift and they need to extend the shift to take someone to the hospital or to book someone into the jail, they will go on to shift extension overtime.

So, yeah, it is absolutely the case that in the short term, I think you probably will see an increase in overtime.

And to be clear, I wasn't suggesting that was necessarily a negative.

If the goal is more total officer hours on the street, additional officers give you that opportunity in part through overtime as well as their base hours.

Part of my question is driven by the way you phrased that, Greg, when you said they had to come up with 950 They had to come up with an amount to take from somewhere, so they took it from overtime.

It sounded like what you were saying.

So are you saying that they were given a directive to reduce their budget by a certain percent?

And if so, was that 2%?

Yes, they were given a directive to reduce their budget by a certain percent.

I don't recall what the percent the executive asked SPD to reduce was, though.

I think the target was two, but that doesn't mean that they were going to take two percent of the budget.

It was just to give them a base for ideas.

And again, this previous budget director, you get to see what the ideas are and then evaluate whether they are tenable, sustainable and desirable.

Well, I'll note for the record that public safety is not an area that I feel comfortable, you know, just cutting across the board.

It has to be much more surgical.

than that if we don't have enough money to pay our expenses, basic services for our charter duty.

But, you know,

Anyway, go on.

Thank you.

And I should mention that the department is going to try to manage to the budget that they have.

They are setting targets and working with section directors to see if the targets are achievable without sacrificing service.

So they're doing some regular work on this to make sure that they can, where they can, stay within budget levels.

Obviously, if there's something that requires them to spend overtime, they will.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so moving on to the third issue, this is parking enforcement officers.

This is an issue that came up last year.

I will have some options for you here.

Just by way of background, SPD has about 104 PEOs, and as you all are aware, the Department has had difficulty in the past filling these positions.

The unit historically has, within the last five years, moved between SDOT and SPD.

It landed back in SPD in 2023, at which time it had 20 vacancies.

And at that time, the expectation was that SPD would fill those vacancies.

I think as you all are aware, there have been some bottlenecks in the training and in the backgrounding process that have limited the, I'm not gonna say recruit classes, but the candidate classes for PEOs in such a way that there are Just enough folks to cover for the folks that are separating, but not enough candidates to reach that historic backlog of 18 positions.

Since 2023, it's been the case that those 18 vacancies in SPD have been producing salary savings, and they've been producing salary savings to the tune of about $2.1 million a year.

and so as SPD over the last few years has had other budget needs that they've had to address.

As you can see, we just talked a lot about overtime being one of the budget needs, technology being another one.

They have redirected some of this funding that was going unused for PEO salaries to these other needs.

This year, due to the need for budget reductions for the general fund, the department and the executive budget cuts some of the salary savings.

We talked about that in the first slide, the civilian salary saving reduction.

And what that effectively does is it reduces the salaries that SPD would need to pay these PEOs if they could hire them.

So it creates a natural barrier for the department in filling those positions.

That is something that the council can fix.

It is the case that each PEO that hits the streets will create more fine revenue through infractions than the cost of their own salary and benefits.

So one thing that the council could do is to backfill that civilian salary funding.

And then if the council were to do that, central staff would recommend that it put a proviso around this funding so that it can only be used if the department does achieve net new hires, new PEOs on the street.

That way we would know that those PEOs are creating fine revenue that would essentially backfill or support the Additional Appropriation Authority.

So that is a budget change that could facilitate hiring of PEOs.

I think it's important to note that PEO hiring is Important because what we're seeing over the last few years is a lower level of service when managing the right-of-way.

It also is translating into fewer PEOs for traffic control events and incidents.

That matters because recent collective bargaining changes have allowed the city to use PEOs more frequently for events.

And so the fact that the city doesn't have enough PEOs, it really is working against the efficiency of deployment for our special events.

So one way, well, let me back up.

The council added last year to try to help with this bottleneck in training and backgrounding a couple positions to train PEOs.

The department has not been able to make those hires.

The reason they've not been able to hire them is because there's collective bargaining requirements around those two positions and so they're hung up in the bargaining process for the moment.

One thing that the council could do while the bargaining is still occurring is to help the department use short-term, what we call out-of-class funding to take PEOs out of service and have them serve as trainers.

That way, you know, it rolls back to the department being able to hire more people and they train more people and we can fill those vacancies.

So the options that I have for you today would be to do just that, to add money for out-of-class costs, and those are really that's really budget dust at $14,000 for a PEO to serve out of class.

And then also adding somewhere between $350,000 and $2.1 million with the assumption that, and provisoring it, with the assumption that PEOs would hit the streets, create revenue, and backfill that appropriation.

So I'll stop and ask if there's any questions.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any at this time.

I think it's pretty clear.

I'll ask one clarifying question that I read in the PowerPoint and in your memo regarding how much it costs us to hire more PEOs because they're offsetting with ticket revenue.

Is there a direct one for one?

Do these positions typically make money for the city or are we expending funds to hire them?

Well, I would say there's revenue generated through their work of managing the right of way.

And the revenue generated is about $200,000 a year.

it is the case that the city is likely not at its maximum capture rate of violations, meaning there's work out there for PEOs to do, and that they would likely reach the historical average of $200,000 a year in fine revenue.

The position itself costs $115,000 in salary and benefits, so the differential there, again going to the general fund, would support the additional authority that you would provide here and quite a bit more.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

I'm not seeing any other questions, so feel free to continue.

All right.

So the last issue I have to discuss today is the 30 by 30 initiative.

As you'll recall, you all added in the 2025 adopted and 2026 endorsed an unfunded strategic advisor position to provide staffing capacity for this initiative.

The council requested at the time that the department use salary savings to fund the position.

That was at a different time and a different place.

This was a pre-hiring boom, still in the situation where SPD was realizing salary savings each year.

and so at the time it made perfect sense to say that this position that would be funded could be funded with salary savings.

It turns out that obviously things changed.

SPD says that it has not been able to hire this position because they didn't want to commit salary savings, civilian salary savings that is, given the current budget environment.

And so I raised this issue today to make you aware the position has not been filled and to provide you an update on what's happening with 30 by 30 hopefully to give you context for potential next steps.

And so I'll start by refreshing you a bit about SPD's work here.

They have a work group that consists of 12 full-time and civilian employees.

It meets once a month for an hour.

The group is led by the Director of Program Development, the Executive Director of Analytics and Research, and the Executive Director of Employee Support Services, as well as other civilian and sworn staff.

Go back here.

In May of 2024, members of this group came before the Council's Public Safety Committee and presented the 30 by 30 plan that they had put together, which consisted of three separate phases.

And the overall goal for this plan would be, of course, to remove inherent bias from assessments and policies, and to ensure that women's needs can be met, and to transform police culture to support and celebrate the values of diverse and underrepresented officers, all with the goal of increasing the number of women recruits nationally to 30% by 2030. At the May committee meeting of last year, members of the work group told the committee that they had already achieved, essentially completed phase one and phase two of their plan.

Phase one was to do some immediate changes, to make some immediate changes that were recommended by the national 30 by 30 group and as you can see on this slide here, providing sanitary space, private space for mothers, for nursing, appropriate uniforms specifically designed for women.

That's something that the department did right away either in late 2023 or early 2024. Those are a couple highlights.

They did some other things around revising their EEO policies and hiring policies, but they had come to committee in May with accomplishments already being made.

Phase two of that process involved a survey of the women in SPD.

They got a pretty good response rate from the survey and identified barriers that the folks that were surveyed highlighted in the survey and potential programs to address some of those barriers.

And so those programs and initiatives are on this slide here before you.

You'll see that there's a rather ambitious list here of what the department calls its phase three goals.

And this is what the department workgroup said that they were going to achieve when they when they met with the Public Safety Committee in 2024 and early 2024. So, as you can see, this is a pretty extensive list of some very complicated endeavors.

I'm not going to read the whole list to you, but I will say that it's certainly ambitious for an undertaking for an interdepartmental workgroup.

You'll see that some of the things here, researching flexible shift options, creating a mentorship program, identifying disparities in promotions and creating leadership development pathways, that's just some of what's on this page.

It's obviously very work intensive and the department has characterized this as longer term projects.

So with that, I'm going to go to the next slide and talk a little bit about how they've been doing with this initiative.

they have actually accomplished a lot.

The first bullet is a list of some of the things that have been done.

As you can see, they've hired consultants to develop childcare options, they've reworked their marketing campaigns to focus on women, and they've improved the way that they equip and train women.

So, as I said, they've been doing a lot in the last couple of years.

They have not had as many accomplishments with some of the more complicated programs like professional development or career development.

and that is an area where capacity, additional capacity, additional staff hours might be able to help them expedite this work, get it done quicker, That's something that it's really a question I'll come back to in a moment with you all.

But before I do that, I want to end by highlighting the hiring data that SPD has with women.

Right now we are seeing roughly 9.6% of the hires that are coming into SPD are women.

That is below the national average of 20% of women that are hired into police agencies.

For a little bit of context, though, it was in the 2025 quarterly staffing update that I had told the Council that SPD made commitments to take specific action steps to try to increase hiring of women.

One of those is to have the Chief and Chief Underwood, Deputy Chief Underwood, look at applications for women that have been disqualified give them a second look, I believe is what the Chief said.

So those actions would not be reflected yet.

You wouldn't see outcomes as early as now when you're seeing the April to June data.

You're more likely to see SPD's specific action steps hopefully taking shape and reflected in the data in the next quarterly cycle.

So I think that's important to note.

Then the last thing I'll note here is that The department has always said that as the number of qualified female applicants increases, it'll be better positioned to hire more women.

The good news is that it is the case that the absolute number of women hires is increasing, and if you look at the PSCSC data on women hires that is in one of your appendix on my staff report, you'll see that With a straight line projection, it's possible that they could reach 600 qualified women applicants this year.

A qualified woman applicant is one who has been through the PSCSE review and is qualified to sit for the police exam.

So the good news is, in absolute numbers, there are going to be more women applying.

It is the case that it's still going to remain roughly 15% of total applicants when you look at the ratio of men to women.

So I'll stop now and ask if there's any questions before I move on to the options slide.

I'm seeing no questions at this time, Greg, if you want to continue on to our options.

Okay.

So move to the options slide.

As I said, it's possible that SPD could benefit from more capacity to support the 30 by 30 work group.

One option would be to add 224,000 to fund the strategic advisor.

that the position that was added last year to make sure that the department had funding for it.

Another option would be to proviso their existing authority to pay for this position.

I think as you all have seen throughout my presentation, the pressures on their budget around overtime and in other areas, are real and if the council wanted to ensure that there's money for this position, adding money would be of course the most solid way to do so.

And then option C is obviously some combination of both so that the money is added and then it's also restricted only for that use.

Thank you.

And so that's all I have for you and that's all I have for you today.

Thank you.

I'll turn it over to Council Member Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing this department for opening comments and questions.

Colleagues, if you've got any questions, I know we've been asking them as we've been going, but now would be the time.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Mr. Doss, thank you for your presentation and your work in this area, and also, of course, Director Noble for his input from his various many roles that he's had over the years.

Obviously, as chair, I've been working these direct and the committee work and so forth, so a lot of this is stuff, items that we've been working over the year.

And I just wanted to start off with the leadership and administration point.

You're talking about swearing in of new officers.

on page four.

Everybody's surprised, but they shouldn't be.

Others were talking like maybe 200 for 25. I was thinking 175. We're at 169 projected right now.

Who knows, maybe we can get there.

But it shouldn't be a surprise because we have a plan.

We've executed on that plan.

Obviously a big piece was the interim labor agreement, that was huge, but I would submit that the strategic framework plan, which centers on, with one pillar, on SPD staffing, from things that have happened before this term of the council, like with council president's work on incentives, but when you combine all these pieces on recruiting, on incentives, incentives retention, recruiting retention, and to be frank, the leadership of our colleagues, going to the precincts and talking to the officers, it makes a difference and that word gets out.

And so it shouldn't really be a surprise.

You can go back and forth a little bit on the numbers, but purposely starting at this term of the council, we had a mission, vision and plan to really address this major issue undercutting our ability to create a safe city.

I would add, and again, thank you colleagues for your work on this in terms of engaging with the officers.

I know you all do it.

I do it on the street.

I was walking down an alley in Belltown and I ran into a squad car talking to two officers and they were saying, hey, what they're doing in terms of the challenges that Belltown was facing.

the, you mentioned 911 response times, but I would also say, like talking to the West Precinct Captain, in terms of improved service, and improved service means and bringing on the second bike team for Belltown, which is really important for tackling the drug market, which is then cascading into many other areas in terms of the public safety challenges we're facing on the street.

So those are really some big pieces in here.

And yes, my intention is to continue this work and to continue to create conditions where these new hire numbers continue as projected.

Tied to this is your point about overtime.

Colleagues, it is true as mentioned that we're gonna be in a transition period, but this is gonna be something for the committee to work over the course of the year, particularly in the back half of the year, in terms of overtime and really diving in and understanding it as we go from quarter to quarter and seeing how these pieces are transitioning as we work, particularly after the FIFA World Cup, how these things are working.

And so that's my commitment to you is to work the OT, the overtime piece so that it is very complicated and it's even more complicated with the different aspects of the labor agreement, the categories and the like.

and then as mentioned, the public parking enforcement officer angled there as well, so thank you for that.

So that's my commitment for the committee, for my colleagues, is the overtime piece.

I recognize, I just wanted to also note, because it came up as a comment, that I have been very clear in my support for the Before the Badge program to Chief Barnes, Chief Rohr, Chief Diaz.

I did a lot of this prior to coming, you know, working events that included the Before the Badge, prior to coming on to the council, and since being on the council with some of my colleagues here on the dais, going to the classes and seeing these cohorts of individuals going through the before the batch program.

And so that program will continue because it's vital and important in terms of what we're doing and in terms of transitioning to our new police force as we move forward.

And I would throw out too a thank you to Ms. Victoria Beach and those that are actually working the before the batch program and to include from Seattle U. They've been fantastic working these issues.

separately parking enforcement operations.

We've had discussions on this.

Colleagues, this is something that we have to address.

I know there's bigger, there's big picture pieces moving in terms of the public safety challenges that we face, the dollars bringing on the officers.

But the parking enforcement is something that we cannot neglect.

And I have two major frustrations.

One is, as you noted, transferred to SDOT in the first place.

Prior to coming to the council, we had a, out of Queen Anne Community Council, we had a two-pager on police and public safety reform.

We did not call for that move, and that move was a mistake.

It was a misalignment of mission, a misalignment across the board, and now we're in a situation which goes to the second frustration, is that we're not bringing it back on.

And this is important because it shows that government works.

If we're going to have a situation where you go through a neighborhood and countless cars don't have updated tabs because they know they're not going to get caught, basically, or they're going to do X, Y, and Z in terms of parking because they know they can get away with it, that creates issues, that cascades to other areas.

But it also has this idea that government's not working.

we need to take care of the little things as well.

And this goes to leadership, and I think we can work on it, working on some of the ideas that Mr. Doss presented to us during the course of this briefing.

I should note, I believe the DEIA is set, I know there's been some questions, but I do believe the DEIA piece of this is gonna be set.

The 30 by 30, thank you for your presentation on this.

I'll probably defer to Councilmember Saka for details, I'm sure he's gonna have some questions.

But this is another area where if we continue what we're doing and create a positive environment for constitutional policing in Seattle with all the different pieces, this will change.

It takes time to change.

I went through this in my previous career, through the course of the 90s.

It takes like a decade, if not more.

and so we need to have continued state attention to this and you can get there.

And as noted, since I kind of referenced it to the 90s, these numbers are low but the US Navy numbers are basically coming up to a quarter of the recruits are women.

just under, so basically a quarter, 25%.

So they're within striking distance of 30 by 30. And this reflects well of the United States Navy, but I think this is a model and lessons learned can be gained from that experience and what's happening in other uniformed services beyond the Seattle Police Department.

And I think that's something that we can improve on.

Colleagues, the last thing I just wanted to note is You know, we're in budget right now, but during the course of the year in the Public Safety Committee, we kind of work budget.

We bring up issues for a reason, you know, to kind of, you know, set up the discussion and set up the conditions for budget.

And this goes to staffing, as I talked about, but it also goes to technology.

and so we have put this in place and that work that we've done over the course of the year, really over the course of this term of the council is to set us up for success in public safety and we need to continue to work this and we've made the decisions on these points through all these various votes that we've taken over the course of basically 22 months almost and so we cannot undercut that that work that we've done on staffing.

We cannot undercut that work, what we've done on technology, because it is vital in terms of executing the plan and really creating the safe base.

And so I recognize there may be temptations to go after public safety dollars and specifically SPD dollars, but that's like, you know, penny wise, pound foolish.

And we need to be smart in terms of moving forward on the issues that we're facing and really see through the work that we've done over the last two years.

Chair, thank you very much.

And again, thank you, Director Noble and Mr. Das.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I have in queue Council Member Salomon, Council Member Rivera, Council Member Hollingsworth, and Council Member Saka.

Council Member Salomon, welcome, good morning.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Gentlemen, thank you for your presentation.

I'm just gonna jump right into it.

There are, when we look at what you have shared in terms of the numbers and the buckets and where both different buckets are, one of the things I'm not seeing is where the civilian staff are playing a role here.

And specifically what I'm thinking of is the Asian liaison, Asian community liaison position that's been vacant for a year.

Is that going to be refilled or not?

The East African community liaison, is that going to be refilled or not?

The CID liaison, will that be reallocated?

What's happening with SafePlace now that Sergeant Correo is up north Do we still have an LGBTQIA liaison?

Do we still have a safe place coordinator?

Is Dorian still doing it?

This is a program that started in Seattle and I would hate to see it stop because we had one personnel move.

I've got other questions that you and I have talked about, Greg, regarding you know, the grant-funded positions, you know, given that really not trying to rely on the feds for anything, what's the plan to backfill those current positions if the federal funding gets pulled out?

And, you know, and the other thing I have to ask about is you know, my understanding that there is a budget item for investing in safe growth which is basically contract with this organization to do community capacity building.

to improve quality of life and safety issues in neighborhoods.

And as I pointed out when we talked to you, that's what your existing crime prevention coordinators are already doing.

So why would the department invest in an outside entity to come in and do training that is already being done by our existing assets?

And I know I threw a lot at you in a very short amount of time, but what you got?

Mr. Greg, over to you.

Councilman Sullivan, that's not a specific item within this budget.

I think what you're talking about is a study that SPD is doing with its professional services budget.

So that's something that is within the authority of the chief to do.

I can't answer that question.

He's better positioned to answer why they're doing that survey.

Okay, but can you speak to the existing civilian positions that are doing that community engagement work?

Like I said, the East African liaison, the Asian liaison positions, are those specified anywhere in the budget that you know of, or am I getting too granular for this discussion?

No, I mean, I think at a high level, What I can tell you is that none of the positions that you talked about There aren't any cuts to the positions.

It is the case that the $2.8 million vacancy reduction for civilian salaries that the department is taking will create somewhat of a disincentive for them to hire civilian positions.

They're going to need to achieve that cut by leaving some positions vacant.

It's really a matter of whether or not the chief prioritizes the positions you're talking about above others.

To reach that cut, and again, he's better positioned to answer those questions.

Okay.

Yeah, like I said, the questions I have really do get down to that granular level and I appreciate you saying that it's probably a discussion that, you know, better had with the Chief.

You know, again, I just wanted to, you know, flag for our folks that there is a body of work that's being done right now that I don't think has been properly recognized.

From my personal experience, when we had the events of 2020 with the murder of George Floyd and the need to have more of our specialty units basically disbanded to be put on 9-1-1 response.

So we saw a reduction or elimination, quite frankly, of precinct, burglary theft units, and then being rolled into one general investigation unit.

We saw the elimination of our community police teams, which did a lot of long-term, ongoing work to address neighborhood concerns.

And they weren't necessarily tied to 911 calls.

And they were doing a lot of that interagency coordination to impact those quality of life issues in neighborhoods that were extremely helpful for the community.

And while those units went away, the need for the work did not.

and a lot of that work was picked up by the civilian crime prevention coordinators.

And I just wanted to call that out because when the department's priorities, when they list crime prevention as the primary one, I would hope the budget will reflect that commitment to crime prevention by supporting the folks who are already doing that work.

So just wanted to say that and just wanted to leave it there.

And for the other questions I have, I'll reach out to the Chief's Office to see if I can get some clarity.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Councilmember Salomon, Councilmember Rivera, followed by Hollingsworth and Councilmember Sacca.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Greg, for the update on the 30 by 30 initiative.

I admit I'm glad to see some things have been done, and I'm a little disappointed that we're not further along on this effort.

And then I appreciate that you're saying applicants has more than doubled, yet there's still 15% of all candidates, which is a very low number.

So there's definitely a lot that we need to do in this space.

And can you tell me a little bit about what that SA3 position was doing?

I know they were supposed to be overseeing this work, but what does that mean?

And what are we losing by not having that person?

Because how is some of this other stuff?

I mean, to me, there's some low hanging fruit here and who's gonna be following up on this if that position's not there, what's the department committing to if you know.

Yeah, thank you, Councilmember.

Last year, the Council added a position 30 by 30 Strategic Advisor 3. The CBA read that the position would coordinate 30 by 30 workgroup activities.

It's the case now that there are three different directors that are in a coordination role.

It is unclear as to how much capacity each one of those directors has to focus on the 30 by 30, given that they all have their own issue areas and assignment areas that they have to staff on a full-time basis.

So when talking about coordinating a program, that could mean just the glue of making sure that things keep moving, holding together the work group and ensuring that things keep moving, something that is a role that maybe they could use additional staff for.

But in terms of defining that position and its specific duties, ultimately, I think that comes down to the chief and the work group to figure out how to use that resource.

Council can put it there and they can figure out how best to deploy it.

Thank you, Greg.

That's why I asked the question.

I didn't really know.

I mean, we put it in, we don't always know how these positions are actually used.

Not saying that they weren't used for this purpose, but I just know that I don't know the specifics around the body of work that they were doing on a day-to-day.

My other question, Greg, is do you know, I mean, there's some folks, well, the work group at SPD that consists of you know, women who are working at SVD.

I imagine that they void into some of the work that needs to happen.

Yes, actually the list of phase three goals is, is from the work group.

Um, some of those things, some of those things are, um, obviously identified in the national initiative, but those, uh, those goals are coming from the work group.

Yes.

Great to hear and, um, I just want to learn more about what we're doing on the 30 by 30 initiative because we're a long ways from being where I would like to be.

I have visited other cities where you see women officers everywhere, actually.

And so that's not the case in Seattle.

And we want a workforce at SPD that reflects that reflects the community in Seattle and including women amongst other community members.

And so I want to make sure that we're not losing our eye on the prize on this.

So thank you, Greg.

Thanks, council member.

If I could follow up and say that the council expressed its priority for this program as part of the hiring reform ordinance that the council passed in 2024. One of the things that that ordinance did is it requested regular data on police recruits, and it also requested updates on 30 by 30 semi-annually.

And so it's the case that the department is providing to the council reports on the progress with 30 by 30 and they break down their progress by the various phase three goals that you saw in my slide.

And so it is absolutely possible to have the work group come before you all and provide an update along with their next report, if you're interested.

Chair of Public Safety Kettle, that would be something I very much would support, but obviously deference to you.

And I don't sit on the committee, but I do attend.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you.

Up next is Councilmember Hollingsworth followed by Sokka and Rink.

And I'm not sure that we need to show the presentation unless it's being referenced.

But over to you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Good morning.

Awesome.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

No, I don't need the presentation.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Doss, for your memo.

And I also want to reiterate, and I also understand what Councilmember Kettle referenced to, that we were in a transition phase with our police department and also understanding the numbers that we have.

and one of the things I wanted to highlight was the priority one calls, how we were at our highest last year and it's trending down and that was on your memo on page 51, I believe.

But the one thing I wanted to bring up, which is good, so I see that we're going down, but the one thing I wanted to bring up is, and I've tried to look for this.

Does our Seattle Police Department have a customer service line?

And when I say line, a department or people that respond to folks?

I think the answer to that is probably no.

There is a non-emergency line for reporting emergency not 911 level emergencies, but issues that can be addressed by SPD.

I don't know that that really fits what you're looking for though.

Yes, thank you.

And my question then leading into this is, is there room potentially, because I see that there's added policy, suggestions regarding our parking enforcement and also the 30 for 30. But I think oftentimes there are folks that are really frustrated with just a response from folks.

And I know personally we have become the response for different departments with lack of responding.

And I would totally love to see SPD have some type of customer service slash responsive line that can maybe follow up with people on cases could be able to tell them where things are, how to navigate the system, just a response.

And I think that is much needed while we are in this transition phase, as Council Member Kettle has alluded to, because that is the frustration that I share, that people share as well.

And so that's what we're gonna be looking into with with the budget processes, is there room for that?

And what would that potentially look like?

And that response from people, because as we are adding officers and we're adding folks, I know that that transition takes a little bit, but people still don't feel that we've added officers.

They don't feel that impact yet, but when they get a response from someone, then they feel like stuff is moving.

So I just wanted to throw that out there.

I knew the answers to the question.

Thank you, Mr. Doss for clarifying that.

Thank you, anything further Council Member Hollingsworth?

That is it, thank you Mr. Chair.

Almost called you Council Member Doss.

Here we go.

Good morning.

We've got Council Member Saka followed by Council Member Rink.

Council Member Saka.

Thank you Mr. Chair and thank you Greg for your excellent work on this presentation today and Director Noble as well, much appreciated.

Some comments on a few items and then a few slightly more specific questions.

First off, I wanna take a moment to pause, reflect, and in this case, celebrate the achievements of our city and the record unprecedented officer hiring.

The current pace of officer hiring is through the roof.

It's excellent news.

I know there's some conversations around what this quote-unquote slate of council members committed to doing about budget and reforms and audits.

But one thing that I think this slate was elected to do, I know at least me, was to improve public safety and to specifically hire more officers.

Greatly on track by the data.

Data never told a tall tale.

Data doesn't lie.

So it's great, encouraging news, but we're also at a fairly fragile state as well.

We need to continue this momentum and this sustained effort over time.

Things are delicate.

So we need to continue investing, and to that end, I would echo the sentiment expressed by a few of my colleagues that as we look for opportunities to drive efficiencies and make sure we get more return on investment, I think public safety spending, which is our highest charter responsibility, should not be cut across the board for all departments.

All right, I wanna talk a little bit about 30 by 30 and appreciate Public Safety Committee Chairman Kettle for mentioning that I'm basically the 30 by 30 guy, I've been anointed a 30 by 30 guy, I suppose.

But the referenced council ordinance by Mr. Doss that includes those stringent reporting requirements, that was my amendment.

and last year during the budget, I co-sponsored along with former council member Moore, former council members Moore and I think Morales actually, we passed a budget action that I sponsored for SPD to hire a strategic advisor position to support the 30 by 30 program, which we now know it was unfunded due to the hiring freeze and potentially other factors.

My office has continued to focus on SPD overall progress for women and not just for strict hiring goals of 30 by 30 or 30% of women by 2030, which we are clearly far from.

but for making this department a great place, an exceptional place where women want to be and grow their careers and grow professionally.

Also want to recognize and support the progress that SPD has made with various initiatives in phase two and looking forward to phase three work aligning with the 30 by 30 nationwide initiative.

There's been a lot of work done within the department, a lot of it as a direct result of specific council actions and leadership, but data never told the tall tale.

Like I said earlier, despite the great, the solid initial progress, clearly more needs to be done.

And all that is to say, I led on a budget action last year in this space.

Don't be surprised if you see something again this year from a budget amendment perspective.

Noise disturbances and enforcement.

Huge challenge.

Noise disturbances with respect to two basic things.

Excessive car Noise, a huge problem in certain areas of my community, in my district, Elkai Harbor Avenue, for example, and I know the same problem is afflicting other communities across the city.

So excessive noise, in the absence of state legislative action to allow us to initiate automated noise enforcement technology or cameras, we're left to manual enforcement of noise.

There is equipment that exists today, but it's not being prioritized, which given the greater scope of challenges makes some sense, which is why, colleagues, as you know, all nine of us and the mayor added it to our, signed the letter to add automated noise enforcement technology to our state legislative agenda.

Hope to pick that up again next year.

Then the second piece of the noise enforcement is noise, excessive noise in our rights away.

I know there's conversations pending about possible legislative updates, but the fact of the matter remains today, irrespective of whether there's future legislation passed, today we have existing noise requirements and laws on the books enshrined in the city code that govern noise and excessive noise.

and when my office has reached out to SPD or I understand that SDOT has an enforcement role in noise, particularly in the rights of way.

Think of stadiums, stadiums, street preachers.

There's noise ordinances on the books today.

When my office has reached out to SDOT or SPD and I think I think FAS might have a role in that of some sort.

There seems to be constant finger pointing.

Who's on first?

No one knows.

So I also intend to take some budget action on that to get more clarity.

What is our current enforcement approach, strategy, plan?

Who's responsible for what?

How do the...

the departments work together.

What are the gaps?

What are the opportunities?

We need a more coordinated, consistent approach and strategy.

And if we have laws on the books, we need education, intervention, and enforcement.

Otherwise, just repeal the damn law.

To Council Member Kettle's point, that was a point along the lines of what he was talking about in the context of public enforcement officers and staffing, but I think that the same broader principle applies to multiple scenarios.

And I share that concern about the significant lack of PEOs, parking enforcement officer positions, proved to be a huge problem, not just for the sheer volume or lack thereof of PEOs, but it's just a problem across our city.

And I don't want people coming to the city of Seattle, I mentioned this a while back, a couple different contexts, but it's really true across the board.

Seattle is not a safe space to come do your dirt.

It's not a safe space to come park and flout our parking laws.

It shouldn't be a safe space to violate our noise ordinances, whatever the law is.

So we need to do something on that.

I know there's some conversation earlier at the start of your presentation, Mr. Doss, about task force officers.

And it's common practice, it's routine amongst all local law enforcement agencies.

A certain amount are assigned on either a temporary, partial basis, or in some cases permanent multi-year basis to task forces at the state, regional, county, or even federal level.

But not all task forces involve federal law enforcement.

So it's common practice, but just be curious to better understand.

Is there currently an inventory within SPD of roughly, not like a detailed breakdown, but like just roughly high level approximate number of task force officers that are assigned by the department, either on a permanent, like that's what they do, that's their 40-plus hour workweek job, full-time, I guess, full-time basis or a part-time basis.

Is there currently such an inventory of task force officers within the department, Mr. Doss?

There is, Council Member Saka.

That's information that I can get you.

As a starting place to look, you'll see that in your staff report, Towards the back, there's an item in the year-end supplemental budget that lists about 10 or 12 of these task forces.

It's not comprehensive.

There are other task forces that the department has, and I can get you that information about the assignments and how many officers are or on each one.

It really obviously varies by the topic area.

Some there are three or four regular assigned folks that are totally devoted.

And in others, it's just one person doing part-time work.

So yeah, I can get you that info.

Thank you.

That would be very helpful.

Appreciate it.

Final question here is, you mentioned that there's a pending SPD report and it's consistent with some of my conversations directly with the Chief as well.

Chief Barnes, pending SPD report on officer hiring, kind of a comprehensive report that includes, among other things, staffing ratios, like appropriate staffing ratios, et cetera.

Is that pending report or the information contained in that report in direct response to the sly that council specifically requested last year on an overarching, that I sponsored, on the overarching, requesting an overarching kind of hiring approach and strategy?

Or is that different?

I can't tell you how the council's request interacted with Chief Barnes' own strategic planning.

He, as a new chief, came in and identified some areas that he thought were important to look into.

Looking at and figuring out the ideal number of staff, I think, is something that it's an interest that you all share.

Thank you.

Final comment here, back to the 30 by 30 conversation, is that Again, clear opportunity from a sheer data perspective.

Mindful of the absolute numbers and then also the relative numbers, because both matter and both are important.

But there's a clear opportunity.

I do want to acknowledge the possibility that the significant leadership changes within the department, how that could potentially impact a strategic effort like this.

There are many, many strategic efforts across the department.

We've had three SPD chiefs over the last year plus, year and a half alone.

and I am confident in our current chief's ability and his commitment to execute on 30 by 30, but just acknowledging that it doesn't matter how smart or capable or qualified or exceptional any leader is, certain things get lost sometimes during periods of transition.

Looking forward to working with the department, colleagues, alongside you all to better support the department from a council perspective and collaborate and uplift and amplify the work with respect to 30 by 30. So thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Socket, Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Greg and Director Noble for your presentation today and for sharing your expertise.

Greg, SPD has committed to 30 by 30, meaning that they say they want 30% of officers to be women by 2030, which is less than five years away, but we're actually getting further away from that goal right now based on this year's hiring data, correct?

I think if you look at the hiring data between the beginning part of the year that I first presented in May, and you look at the hiring data through mid-year, through June, there's about, I want to say, 1 percent increase to the number of women that are hired, but it's relatively negligible given the overall picture.

It is the case that there are 94, I believe, hires and eight of them were women.

So that's probably the best picture to look at over the last six months rather than whether or not it's been improving since April.

You don't want to get too into the data at that level.

So I would say it's staying the same, which is still well under what the department would like to see and what the national average is.

Right, the national average is 20%.

Understood.

And SPD chose not to fund the position that council provided to oversee the 30 by 30 program?

That is the case, yes.

Greg, would another option be a policy consideration here be to ensure that SPD hires a 30 by 30 coordinator and better commits to hiring women by provisoring the money from SPD's multi-million dollar advertising budget?

That is an option that I think you and your colleagues are going to want to think about.

There's obviously pros and cons with that kind of approach.

My options suggested a proviso to ensure that money can only be spent for that function.

Whether or not that proviso would restrict other funds like the marketing or advertising campaign is something that you'd want to talk about.

There are, as I said, pros and cons.

Yeah, that's something that could be discussed further.

It's a high-level comment, and I don't think it applies to your scenario, but I just want to lay this out here.

With respect to provisos, it's a legal matter.

There needs to be some nexus between the funds that are being restricted and the thing that would be the trigger.

To the extent that advertising is associated with recruitment, there is a direct link here.

But you are, as Craig describes, you may be frustrating your own ends if they're not able to spend on the recruitment, but at the same time, finding a way to, my language, motivate them to follow through, that's That's the value of the proviso.

So you have to figure out that balance.

But there does need to be a link.

Again, in this case, I think I see the link quite clearly.

But just as we start thinking about provisos as essentially incentives for the executive, you have to be somewhat careful about those connections.

Understood, thank you both.

And colleagues, I'm being pointed in my questions here and even with lifting this up as a consideration because this is serious.

We talk about culture issues within the department, but what we're doing is alluding to the very real allegations and lawsuits by women officers about mistreatment and misogyny within the department.

The money is there and the department needs to take this work seriously.

and the funding's there to do this work.

I mean, the budget that we're talking about is now nearly half a billion dollars.

Police hiring, as has been stated, is off the charts.

We have a once in a generation opportunity to do this right and hire more women and hire a more diverse and representative police force.

And it seems like we're failing to do that right now.

And I believe it is our responsibility to provide that oversight to make sure the department is following through on their commitments.

No further questions, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rink.

Councilmember Rivera, I see you've got your hand.

Councilmember Rivera.

You're on mute, Councilmember.

Thank you.

When I spoke earlier, I really wanted to hone in on the 30 by 30 initiative, and I didn't really speak about the budget overall or the department.

But I do want to acknowledge my colleague, Chair Kettle's remarks and add my support in terms of we did come in and start working and building relationships with the department on behalf of our constituents to ensure that our police department is in community with us and with the city at large writ large and It has made a huge difference and I for one am glad about it because it really does ensure that the department and the city, the executive and the city council are all working together on behalf of its constituents.

We've had some really difficult public safety challenges across the city and as council member Saka said in his remarks, many of us newer to the council last year or new to the council rather came in because we wanted to this was a big huge piece for our constituents and we really wanted to turn the tide and make sure that we were supporting a police department to ensure we had the numbers to be able to address the public safety issues and also build good relationships so that our constituents not only were being supported with the work but that we were in this positive space with our police department.

I think it's possible.

You have seen us doing it last year and it has really had positive results.

I definitely want to make sure that we are moving in the right direction with our 30 by 30 initiative as a woman.

This is something with two daughters.

This is something that's really important to me.

As I said last year, when we were doing the council actions related to the 30 by 30 report, and we need to continue to do so.

And I also wanted to acknowledge that we did do a lot of things coming in last year to really be supportive of our constituents by really being supportive of the department, really recognizing the hard work that the officers are doing.

I've met both at roll call and just around the neighborhoods within my district.

Some really just caring officers.

I'm very grateful for their support.

And I didn't wanna leave this conversation today without acknowledging that support that our district and my district is getting from from SPD and the officers that I interact with on a regular basis.

Even saw one of the officers the other day by the stadium that is regularly in my district.

So just really grateful to Chief Barnes and for his partnership and leadership and to Captain Davidson and the North Precinct specifically for his leadership and support in the district and also for our working together to make sure that we have a police department that is getting closer to being fully staffed on behalf of our residents and that, like I said, we are in positive space with.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Mr. Gregg, do you need to respond to anything there?

Colleagues, any further questions at this time?

I'm seeing none, so I'm gonna turn it back to Councilmember Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing this department.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I did allude to my vice chair and the committee regarding 30 by 30, but it is a responsibility for all of us, and as chair of the committee, it's really important to me, and so my commitment is to continue this work that we've already done and build on it over the course of the year.

And so I am, you know, at the right time and early of the first quarter of next year, you know, we can have in committee a 30 by 30 review.

But, you know, listening to the comments, it reminds me again with my own experience that it is part of the broader culture piece, you know, that goes into like accountability.

Each time I'm at the precincts, I talk about accountability.

It's to the customer service line point that Council Member Hollingsworth mentioned.

I've talked to Chief Barnes, Chief Rohrer, Chief Diaz about the customer service piece that she kind of alludes to and how important the precincts are and having somebody be there at the precinct to respond to the question and I've equated it to the medical community and the bedside manner as well.

We need to ensure that the interaction with our community, our constituents is positive because that goes to, again, the culture but also goes to continuing to build on the momentum that we've had regarding public safety.

and then bringing on more officers and that relationship with community.

And so to Council Member Rink, I agree the broader culture and 30 by 30 needs to be part of that because we also need to work the broader culture.

And we also need to think beyond just SPD and their recruitment.

I mean, we just had a deal presentation.

I keep talking about Seattle Promise and how we can leverage that.

How can we use that to reach into community and find the young women who who may want to serve their community in this way.

And so we need to be looking at all options that we have.

And I appreciate, separately, I appreciate Council Member Saka's point about noise as we put more residents in different areas of the city as part of our initiatives.

Noise and those issues are still gonna be there.

And his point about sustained effort too is really important As I often say, nothing builds momentum than momentum.

So we have a good amount of momentum right now, but we need to keep the press on.

And that includes with the broader culture pieces, includes with the customer service pieces, 30 by 30, and the various pieces that we've talked about during the course of this presentation.

So I thank everyone for that.

And one last point, too.

I know Councilmember Rink brought up the PET.

I think we're in a unique situation with the FIFA World Cup.

I think a lot of things are driven by that.

I've been in a lot of meetings related to FIFA World Cup and it's almost seen like on page 13 of the original overview where they're talking about Third Bullet 2025, the World Cup games reimbursement.

So there's a bit of a financial budgeting piece to this.

It's not really a policy piece.

It's more of a budgeting, you know, reimbursements and all these different things.

And I suspect that's it, because I agree, PET is not the standard, you know, here.

Of course, PET, as we've mentioned yesterday, it's kind of like the old Oldsmobile commercials.

It's not quite the same as your father's Oldmobile.

And so, but I respect your point, and it's right.

But I think it's tied more to and I can't speak for the executive, but in my conversations, the point about the FIFA World Cup, the accounting and reimbursement, all those kinds of pieces may be really driving that as opposed to some, it's not a policy piece basically.

And so anyways, Chair, I just wanted to thank the opportunity to follow up on this.

And again, I wanted to work with my colleagues on all the different issues and just to close, and I love crime prevention coordinators and community police teams, which I've worked with over the last 10 years, not recently, of course, and they make a difference.

So thank you, Council Member Solomon for that point too.

Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

We're gonna move right on, unless there's anything else from you, Greg, we're gonna move right on into the next presentation.

Will the clerk please read the second presentation into the record?

Agenda item two, community assisted response and engagement for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, we are at 11.17 a.m.

as Mr. Tommaso Johnson is coming to the table, noting that we will take a lunch break at about 12.30 to 1.30.

Again, if folks feel like that's too much time, you can just tell me.

We can come to that decision at a later date, or a later time this morning.

We are just pulling up presentations.

I believe we're on the care department.

Sorry.

There we go, sorry.

Good.

With that, Mr. Tommaso Johnson, if you'd like to introduce yourself for the record, and then just dive right on in.

Yeah.

Good morning, Chair Strauss, members of the Committee for the Record, Tommaso Johnson, Council Central Staff, here to talk to you about the budget overview and proposed policy consideration for the Community Assisted Response and Engagement, or CARE Department.

At a high level, the care department in the 2026 proposed budget is slated for a fairly significant staff expansion.

The change would be approximately 25% increase in the overall budget in 2026 over the 25 adopted, with the majority of that being just over a doubling of the community assisted response and engagement or the CCR, community crisis responder.

body of work.

As folks will know, the care department has two primary bodies of work, the largest being 911 call response and secondarily the care or community crisis response or CCR.

work.

The increases in the 26 proposed budget for the care department have to do almost exclusively with staffing growth.

In the 911 call response area, there is 2.6 additional ongoing proposed, 2.6 million I should say, for 12 call takers, 12 additional call takers, three additional trainers, and the conversion of three staff members that are currently temporary into permanent positions.

in the community crisis responder team, the care side of the care house, if you will.

There is 4.9 million ongoing proposed to double the community crisis response positions for a total in the 2026 proposed budget of 48 CCRs.

Additionally, there is $2 million of one-time funding to support logistical vehicle and space upgrades to supplement the needs of the growing department.

I should say also that these increases both in 9-1-1 staffing and the community crisis response team are proposed to be supported by public safety sales taxes.

You've heard yesterday and otherwise this is a bit of a distinction without a difference in the sense that public safety sales tax is fungible with general fund because there is not the non-supplant language that comes with some revenue sources.

There is one policy consideration that we've identified related to the care department, which has to do with something which is not in the budget, what was considered in the mayor's budget deliberation process and has been discussed in different venues over the past year, and that is the potential transfer of contracts with lead, co-lead, and we deliver care contracts that are currently housed administratively administered by the Human Services Department.

Earlier this year, the care department leadership as well as members of the mayor's office public safety team stepped in and assumed a larger programmatic oversight role of these contracts.

functionally having sort of contract negotiation, operational oversight, while HSD retains administrative oversight.

HSD is where the money is located for these contracts.

So these contracts overall represent $16.5 million in the 2026 proposed budget.

There's a couple different perspectives on where these contracts and totality are best situated.

On the one hand, care department leadership has expressed the opinion that coordination of services between lead, co-lead, we deliver care, the care department and other city partners could be improved by moving the entirety of the contract administrative function into the care department.

HSD and the mayor's office holds a position that CARE currently does not have sufficient staff to administer those contracts and that the current arrangement whereby CARE and the mayor's office public safety team collaborate on operational interface with the contract and HSD retains the sort of core financial administrative contract payment function.

HSD and the mayor's office are under They hold the opinion that this current arrangement is optimal in terms of leveraging efficiencies within HSD and that contract administrative work, their expertise in that work.

So central staff is not expressing an opinion about the proper place for the entirety of that contract to be held, but because this was considered, this move was considered during the mayor's proposed budget, ultimately not pursued, but as conversations have been been occurring over the past year, wanted to highlight this as a policy consideration.

The options that we've identified here, A, transfer funding related to these contracts, that being lead, co-lead, we deliver care from HSD into the care department without making additional departmental staff changes, so that would, in essence, be a financially neutral budget move.

Option B, transfer funding related to these contracts and provide care with additional FTE to supplement the staffing proposed in the 26 budget to do this work.

Option C could be to enact a statement of legislative intent requesting that and the mayor's office and various involved departments provide a plan or map out a plan and report back to the council on a contract transfer in the foreseeable future, and option D is no change.

And I'm happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you, Tommaso.

Any questions at this time, colleagues?

I'll pass it over to Councilmember Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing the department.

Thank you Mr. Johnson for the presentation and for Director Nobles for hanging around and getting the right slide deck up.

Colleagues, this is really about a few different pieces here as we evolve what is how we do alternative response.

But first I want to start with the 911 call response.

This is really important to improve and do right.

It kind of parallels the customer service point because it's about the interactions with the public and having that ability to respond to take that call and then act on it.

in its various forms, whether it's the emergency, if it's the non-emergency, the different pieces.

And so it's really important for us to improve the 911 call response, and when I say 911, the broader, you know, the system, and to ensure that we're there.

And to recruit, this is another area where we have to ensure kind of like SPD more broadly or parking enforcement specifically another area where we need to recruit top individuals to serve in this and it's really important as it relates to overtime and so this budget action is super important.

Now for the crisis care responders or the community crisis responders, I kind of default to the first often, I just did it there.

This is about improving and building capacity.

This is something that we've been talking with the executive, my office, in terms of how do we build this capacity which we need across the spectrum, across the ecosystem.

I had somebody reach out to me from Eastern Washington because the cities out there are facing some of the similar challenges that we have and it's like, hey, how is Seattle approaching it?

and it's gotta be this comprehensive approach.

It's not just SPD.

We do need this alternative response.

We do need the care department piece here.

So improving these numbers to get better coverage because as we know, the hotspots are not just located at Third Pike and Pine, Belltown, the CID, Little Saigon, and some of the other areas.

It's in other parts of the city as well.

And then having that true coverage to help those in need and do so in a way that in situations that are not criminal in nature.

It does create a public safety challenge, but not criminal in nature.

We need to have this alternative response.

And it also goes to the concept that I've been pushing, particularly over the last six months, is addressing the scene between public safety and public health and human services.

And CARES is right in the middle of that, as is the PDA, Purpose, Needed, Dignity and Actions, LEAD program, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion.

is so important to have this done right and on the ground and CARE is closer to this.

So I support the steps that have been taken thus far related to the programmatic oversight, but we need to continue to work this issue and speak to it and I'm open to discussing that with our colleagues, my colleagues on this topic because ultimately it's about ensuring that we have a functional system, functional criminal justice system and this is a step in the right direction and I understand there's three options and again I look to work with my colleagues on this as we step through this budget process and this will be something that will continue over the course of the year because I remember this time last year saying When you have something this big and you're making these changes, we have to have this lesson learned culture where, hey, we have to make adjustments.

And not think of it as a negative, but just a reflection of the facts and then making those choices.

And that's something that's started here with this increase.

for the community crisis responders, but it's also seen with respect to the idea of a seam with the LEED program.

So thank you, Chair.

I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this presentation.

Again, Mr. Johnson, thank you for it.

Thank you very much, Council Member Kettle.

I see Council President Nelson and Council Member Rivera.

Council President, you're recognized.

It seems this is just really simplistic to say, but we should do what will produce the best outcomes for which will set up these contracts for success.

I mean, lead is different from co-lead.

One is law enforcement diversion.

The other is getting people into housing.

So it's kind of difficult to treat them all as one in one lump because they're supposed to do different things.

But this is a change long time in coming.

But I think that we have to understand how...

the degree to which the administration of these contracts is complicated or not.

I learned when I put forward the pilot program to administer $300,000 in HSD to just help our case managers get people into Lakeside Milam inpatient treatment.

I had a big discussion with HSD about how much will that one person cost and what level of expertise is that administrative person because it depends on the complexity of the actual contract.

So it seems like It's quite a nuanced question.

You know, if we move them out of HSD, but the people that are administering the contracts are still in HSD, then we, I don't know, it's hard for me to imagine how oversight of the performance of those programs would be if they're in two different departments, but I very much understand why it makes sense to move them out of HSD because of the sort of law enforcement nature of some of these the relative you know and they differ but on that score but you know it's we those are some of the things that make this question so complex I just wanted to put out there thank you anything from the committee table that intercept nothing there thank you councilmember Rivera you're up next

Oh, you're still on mute.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Tommaso, for this presentation.

I don't have a question about this particular policy consideration.

I agree that this is complicated and I have concerns about the care department's ability to manage these contracts.

So it is complicated.

I will say, Tommaso, it's the only policy consideration you pointed out, so I'm just going to ask, there was nothing else in this budget that you thought warranted some conversation, if not necessarily a decision point?

I mean, what I'll say about that, Councilmember Rivera, is that, you know, we do our best at Central Staff to try to identify policy considerations based both on the level of information we receive in the budget, the questions that we identify related to proposed changes, how satisfactory we feel that the responses we get are from the executive to illuminate the rationale behind those changes, as well as policy priorities that have been identified explicitly or implicitly by the Council throughout the year.

So that is the reason why this is the policy consideration that is here.

If there are additional questions or discussion about other aspects of the proposed 26 budget for the Care Department, myself and Director Noble and others are happy to continue to work with you or other Council members on those as we move through the budget process.

Thank you, Tomaso.

Ben, were you going to add something?

I think, again, echoing something I said yesterday, I think the most, in addition, Tomaso has talked about them both, but in addition to the 9-1-1 ads are obviously a very significant expansion of the crisis response teams, if I have that title right.

The cost of that and the hires are going to raise sustainability concerns, as do all of the ongoing ads.

But again, as a policy matter, the Council has demonstrated through actions consistent support for expansion of care.

say both in actions and in words.

So we didn't identify that as sort of a policy concern from perspective of that not being aligned to what we have seen as your general interest.

But again, whether or not that's something that can be sustained through time, again, I've highlighted is an ongoing and open question.

Thank you, Ben.

And thank you, Tommaso.

And I know sometimes there's some things that are in discussion that might not make it into a issue papers so that's why I asked just in case there was something out there that didn't rise to the level of you would have included in here but that you know you were considering so that's why I ask on that Tommaso but thank you very much I will say that I know I've been in the minority of the council who's been who's expressed concerns about the care work I fully support alternative response and I'm just not I don't have the data and outcomes necessary by which I feel like this department warrants now another doubling after a doubling of staffing last year that hasn't even been a year to double again is of concern again for me.

And I also, you know, the department has not we don't have information.

I mean, that's just the bottom line.

We don't have outcomes information.

We have information about how many calls they've responded to, but we don't have information about what happened to those folks.

And we don't have information about whether there are repeat folks that they're interacting with.

So I feel like there's a lot here that is missing to warrant this doubling.

And thank you, Ben.

Yes, not the least of which is how do you sustain this over time?

So I continue to have those concerns, colleagues, and I wanted to say it here because I don't think that this is necessarily working out in real time the way that at least I was hoping for, and I think what I've heard in conversations from many of you colleagues and many folks.

And so we have all of these various efforts that we're taking and collectively, I don't know what the impact that they're having is on actual outcomes.

And so, you know, this is not a question I understand, this is a statement, but it does go toward this particular budgeting and the sizable increase with the doubling investment and also where are all these people going to go?

Is this increasing staffing to each of the places they're currently deployed?

What is the plan for all these new folks, this increase?

I do have questions about Tommaso.

I don't know if you can answer that now or if this is a question to follow up with the department on.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

To your last remark and question, the Department has stated that the expansion will continue, staff expansion will continue the emphasis on the citywide approach, which is a relatively recent geographical expansion.

So this will continue to allow a more robust citywide approach, whereas previously and at the current staffing level, The department is citywide.

My understanding is the focus continues to be on areas of the city with the highest need and emphasis, and in particular, the staffing expansion, I think, will allow additional bodies on the ground, if you will, in North Seattle to follow up on the citywide expansion that has already occurred with the current staff capacity.

Thank you, Tommaso, but we don't know how well it's currently working.

And to be fair, it just started expanding this year and not even January of this year.

So I just don't know how well it's working in the neighborhoods.

And I also don't know how what the relationship is between care and our other public safety departments on the ground because there's this, you know, interaction and So that's why I asked the questions about where they're going to be deployed.

We don't really have that much information from the current expansion, I would think, to know where to best deploy now this doubling of staffing.

So there's a lot of, to me, a lot of unanswered questions.

And when it's, to me, translated to, and I'm not seeing a net positive necessarily, across the city and certainly not in the district, notwithstanding that I understand they're doing some work in the U district that is helpful.

I just don't see across the board how this has helped across the district that I represent.

And maybe they are, but again, I don't have that outcome information by which to be making a determination that the best thing at this juncture is to double the folks.

if we don't actually have outcome information on how well this is working, besides just being able to provide information about how many calls they're able to respond to, particularly under the current scenario, which is dual dispatch.

And quite frankly, even if they had the ability to do sole dispatch, I imagine that there would be instances in which they would call SPD for assistance anyway because they might need that for some of the cases.

So I really don't understand how well this is working currently and this prediction about whether or not they're able to do sole dispatch and what they think would be different.

is of particular interest to me in terms of information.

So thank you.

So I don't know if you're able to get some of that information from the department.

Yes, council member.

I mean, we can, we will continue to try to work with you and the other members of the council to get more robust and satisfactory information along those lines.

And I'm sure that the care department is watching and listening now as well and can can continue to illuminate that.

Thank you, Tommaso.

And again, I want to say I fully support the idea of alternative response.

I really appreciate the current staff at the care department that I've interacted with.

These are great people.

So this is not a comment on the folks that are working their you know, specifically, this is just overall how the program is actually working.

And also, I want to make sure that if we have an alternative response, alternative response, that it's actually working and yielding the outcomes that we need.

So thank you.

That's it, Claire.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Nelson.

Council President Nelson.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that wasn't there a sly or a discussion at least over the past year or so that called that was it was a request for information about or a plan for coordination amongst care and all of the providers, the outreach providers, be they lead outreach or We Deliver Care, the Third Avenue Project.

Was that right before last fall's budget?

If you don't recall right now, maybe we could.

and think about it and then give me the answer later.

But it seems like we have asked for this information before and if we were given information, that could inform our decision to this policy consideration.

Mr. Council President, I don't immediately recall if that was in the form of a slide.

We can certainly look into that and get back to you and if that's If that wasn't the case that it was a slide, if it's happened through less formal means, we can certainly continue to be in discussion with you if there's additional information that we want to elicit from the executive about the coordination function, coordination role, and if we want to pursue that through a slide this year or some other means.

But we'll look into that.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I don't think that it was a slide, but I do remember there was some, I don't know, a feeling of exasperation or curiosity about how all of these service providers interact with each other and with different city departments.

So if it exists, great, but if not, never mind.

Thanks.

Understood.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, any other questions here?

I'll make my comments and turn it over to Councilmember Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing this department just to say thank you Tomaso for this summary and this analysis I know it was maybe shorter than the last presentation and it was in part due to the robust conversation that we had with the director of the care department here on the committee table I know that they had brought up a potential for a 30-day aftercare connection and while I think that's a good idea, I also recognize the importance of you not including that in your memo because I think we're not quite ready for it yet.

So while there are many different aspects of the care department and our care response that could be included in this presentation, I really appreciate you narrowing it down and focusing on what is actionable this year.

as always with any budget summary level and anywhere in the budget, colleagues, increasing, decreasing, cutting completely all of the funding is always an option for every single budget summary level.

And so I just want to note that here, especially as we go into the next rounds of our budget where there is not very much extra money around.

And so if we have priorities, we will need to find funding sources for those priorities.

So with that, I'm just so very appreciative of the care department and our care response.

I hear from the residents of the district that I represent and from residents across our city, their desire to see more care teams in their neighborhoods and that can only be done with expanding the number of personnel that we have.

So I fully support it and I'm just grateful for everyone out there doing this work.

Councilmember Kettle, over to you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Again, thank you, Mr. Johnson, and everyone for their comments.

Again, this is, you know, a project in the works, and there's a lot of different pieces, and we continue to improve it, and I just want to thank everyone that's involved.

And that includes, by the way, I've been on the streets of We Deliver Care and CARE itself and PDA LEAD and others, and I just want to thank everybody in the entire story here, not just the department, not just the executive, but everyone that's involved and for their work on the streets looking to improve our city.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Tommaso, anything to leave us with at the end of this presentation?

Nothing further from me.

Thank you.

Appreciate your analysis.

And we will now move into the third item.

Will the clerk please read the short title of the third item on the agenda, please?

Agenda item three, Seattle Fire Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

We are joined by Karina Boll and Greg Doss to present on the Seattle Fire Department.

I'll let you get settled and then and begin the presentation any time you want.

Noting that Greg Doss has an only you can prevent forest fires mug.

I will change that to only you can seize the moment today.

Let's go Mariners.

Council members, just an editorial comment, insight into central staff's operations that you don't need.

But this is actually a four-person team, so we dove in on SSG facing some staffing issues, and everybody here at the table, myself included, I would add, have contributed to this work.

I think mainly here from Greg and Karina, because they're going to focus on the actual issues identified.

But just to acknowledge the three folks involved, and myself, we all got together and pulled this one off.

is a comment about the way the team has all, not just the four people at the table, the team as a whole has come together over the past few weeks to get stuff done.

So just wanted to share that.

We're all better for it.

All right, well, almost good afternoon, committee members.

I am Karina Bull with Council Central Staff, and I am joined by...

Greg Doss, Central Staff.

Tommaso Johnson, Council Central Staff.

And Ben Noble, Central Staff.

So I'm going to provide the overview of the Seattle Fire Department's budget and then we have identified two policy considerations for you and Greg will present one and I will present one.

To begin, the 2026 proposed budget for the Seattle Fire Department increases by $8 million.

That's 2.3% relative to the 2026 endorsed budget.

The bulk of this increase, approximately about $5.5 million, is driven by significant policy proposals that were not included in the endorsed budget and the remainder is attributable to technical adjustments, namely the $2.8 million increase that will be used to address the increased compensation costs related to a new labor agreement with Local 2898 representing the battalion and deputy chiefs.

For the policy proposals that you see reflected in the additions, the first is a $1.2 million investment funded by the Public Safety Sales Tax.

I know how we're framing that, but I do note, because that was noted in the proposed budget, that will expand the Health 99 post overdose response function.

This will add staff and funding to increase services from five to seven days per week.

It includes three new FTE funding for a contract nurse and two new vehicles.

And then to complement that, there are two case managers in the Human Services Department.

There also is funding about $684,000 for new FTE.

These are civilian ads for data analysis.

Recruitment, this will add more HR capacity to help manage the annual fire exam.

You will recall that last year council added funding to the civil service commissions to hold an annual fire exam instead of every two years in order to increase the hiring of more firefighters.

And so at the time, SFD recognized that they would need more administrative staff to help with that annual exam and this position does just that.

More position support in technology and also in fire prevention and the abatement of dangerous buildings.

Next, on the same topic as recruits, there is a one-time $2.1 million ad funded by the Public Safety Sales Tax to expand the recruit class from 80 to 100. Recruits for many years at the Seattle Fire Department has had a high vacancy rate during their presentation earlier in this budget process.

They had a slide in their presentation that showed the number of vacancies going back to 2018 and it ranged from 76 at the end of the year all the way to 132 at the end of the year which was So with the funding for these 20 additional recruits, they are expecting basically to have the number of vacancies by the end of 2026. At the end of 2025, they're thinking they're going to have about 120 vacancies, and by the end of next year, they are expecting 60 vacancies.

And just to provide some more context, for each recruit doing the math, it's about $100,000 for each recruit.

The cost for that are about half of payment for the recruits themselves.

They are paid employees and then half for the instructors that are providing the instruction to those as part of the academy.

and then last is a one-time $1.5 million to pay for equipment and training in preparation of the FIFA World Cup events and the executive has noted that the payroll expense tax is funding that.

Just as a reminder, most of FSD's budget is related to labor.

About 85% of their budget is for the expenses of labor.

As far as policy considerations, these ads haven't risen to the level of a policy consideration, but we have identified two.

One is to the potential to add eight cars, and one is related to a possible tool to address firefighter injuries.

So I'll take over and I will describe the first issue, aid cars.

The fire department primarily provides basic life support services or BLS through deployment of its aid cars.

They perform critical tasks such as cardiac defibrillation to stabilize patients before the paramedics can arrive on scene.

The department has seven aid cars, five of which are available for deployment 24-7, and they have two 12-hour aid cars that are available for deployment during peak 911 call hours.

If an aid car is not available for deployment, then the basic life support services are going to be delivered by an engine company or a ladder.

and it is obvious that the department would prefer not to deploy engine companies or ladders to do basic life support services.

It's inefficient, costly, and reduces the number of vehicles and firefighters that are available for fire deployments.

As you can see by this chart, over the years, the department has had more and more calls for aid cars, medical calls that could be responded to by an aid car.

Between 2020 and 2024, you can see that the average call number per aid car has gone up from about 3,800 to 5,300.

That significant increase is well above what the fire department and outside agencies, such as the Washington Surveying and Rating Bureau, would recommend.

Both that outside agency and the fire department would recommend that various units respond to only 2,500 alarms per year, and that once you reach that threshold, the city should consider adding new units.

So, if the council chose to add new units or wanted to add new units, aid cars to the fire department, it wouldn't be able to do so immediately.

It's the case now that current firefighting staffing issues will preclude the immediate add of an aid car as the immediate add of an aid car would require overtime funding and overtime is stretched right now.

It is the case that Minimum staffing requirements are being met through overtime.

Overtime is at capacity and an aid car could not be added until the SFD graduates it's at least its first class of 80 recruits this year.

And so SFD has said that they would like at mid-year to add an aid car once they get more staffing capacity from the recruit class.

What I have given you here on this slide is some options to do so.

Option A would be adding 2.3 million for one 24 seven aid car.

That would be the department's priority.

is to add one full-time aid car, and that would cost $2.3 million.

If the financial position of the budget is such that one aid car couldn't be added, then the Department's second choice would be to add a 12-hour peak time car, which would be $912,000.

And so with that, I will stop and ask if there are any questions.

Thank you, Greg.

Checking in to see if there are questions from my colleagues.

I see Council President Nelson.

Council President, you are recognized.

Yep, sorry about that.

I think as policymakers, it also behooves us to ask what is what's driving the increase in the need for aid cars.

And I would direct people's attention to this audit addressing places in Seattle where overdoses and crime are concentrated, an evidence-based approach.

because it on page 5 for future reference does list the addresses with the top 10 continuous, the highest number of overdose responses and crime incidents.

Now I'm talking about overdoses because that is a common aid call and this is in primarily permanent supportive housing facilities.

And so I think that this kind of dovetails with yesterday's conversation about the need to make sure that those facilities are managed well, simply said.

I think, you know, just getting at the root causes of some of the increased need over the years, I think merits attention.

That's it.

Thank you, Council President.

Anything else on this policy consideration?

Seeing none, if the Dream Team would like to continue with the presentation.

The next policy consideration that we're bringing your attention to regards firefighter injuries and return to work.

And during Seattle Fire Department's presentation at the beginning stage of the budget, there were a number of questions from council members about Ready Rebound.

And Ready Rebound is a company, it's a private company, and it functions as a concierge service to help firefighters who have experienced injuries get access to health care and they present their services as VIP treatment treating firefighters like athletes and they staff their services with firefighters and other essential workers for essential workers.

The goal as they describe their services is to to help firefighters get access to care and get them back to work sooner, contracting with municipal employers to achieve this purpose and then ultimately resulting in lower workers' compensation cost.

So in the past number of years, the mayor's office in consultation with the Seattle Department of Human Resources, which is the department that has sole authority to administer the city's workers' compensation program, have considered Ready Rebound and have decided that they did not favor retaining the program for two reasons, primarily.

One is that the services of Ready Rebound do not appear to support the medical conditions or the complicated issues that are the source of Seattle Fire Department's greatest challenges with firefighter injury claims.

nationally, musculoskeletal conditions, which are the only condition that Ready Rebound addresses right now, constitute the greatest number of firefighter injuries.

But in terms of the impact of cost for workers' compensation, Those type of claims are mostly related to issues like post-traumatic stress disorder, cardiac issues, and those kinds of conditions.

What the mayor's office saw is that 10% of all of SFD's claims, about 27 out of over 270 claims, were the claims that were long-lasting, complicated, and those were the claims that were resulting in the highest expense in SFD, not musculoskeletal claims.

One thing to note is the significance of workers' compensation claims on the department.

In 2024, the city itself spent over $17 million on Seattle Fire Department workers' compensation claims due to the way that the program is administered.

Seattle Fire Department ended up paying over 14 million from their own budget towards the city's self-insured claims fund, and then an additional $7.3 million in associated labor cost.

So when a worker is out on leave due to an injury, then the fire department is filling that vacancy or that void with overtime.

So we know that the department spends a lot of money on overtime.

It's not just due to workers' compensation, it's due to vacancies, it's due to sick leave, it's due to other reasons.

In the 2026 proposed budget, they've budgeted 42 million, about 42 million for overtime.

That is less than last year where they spent about 50 million on overtime.

When workers aren't able to be on the job, it really does impact the cost of the department, and it also impacts the ability of the department to serve the city.

If there's not enough firefighters, whether due to vacancies, which the recruits are intended to help, then if they're out on sick leave, then that is yet another contributor to not having enough firefighters to serve the city.

It's important to think about in ways to address workers' compensation issues.

Ready Rebound is positing itself as helping to get firefighters' appointments with medical doctors.

It has been seen that that's not the greatest issue with the cost of workers' compensation.

Another item to consider is that SDHR administers the city's workers' compensation program.

The city is responsible legally for the administration of the program, so outsourcing it to another vendor does have potential legal risk and liabilities.

The workers' compensation unit does a very limited amount of third-party vendor contracts, but they don't really to employee advocacy or concierge services, which is what Ready Rebound does.

It's more medical payments and those sorts of things.

And it is a tightly regulated system that the Department of Labor and Industry under state law is regulating.

So even the contracts that SDHR does now related to third party vendors are all governed by existing rules and regulations that LNI has in place and there are no rules and regulations for services such as Ready Rebound which offer employee advocacy and help with scheduling appointments.

So there are some risks associated with any sort of third-party vending relationship and I said in my memo that central staff strongly recommends discussing those in a confidential form rather than me going and elaborating on them at the table.

As far as, and there's also labor impacts regarding something like a ready rebound or anything that would impact workers' compensation as well that I encourage council members to consider if there is interest in moving forward with this kind of a program.

So as options, Council could consider adding $400,000 to Seattle Department of Human Resources.

Again, it wouldn't go to SFD because it's SDHR that actually would administer that sort of contract.

Subject to bargaining and also highly suggest subject to meeting in a confidential form to discuss risk and liabilities.

Another way to address this could be to pass a legislative a statement of legislative intent requesting SFD in consultation with HR, union partners, other relevant entities to comprehensively report on ways to develop or enhance the city's response to firefighter injury claims.

That also could include prevention of injury claims to the extent that that could be considered.

And before taking any step forward, to think about it beforehand, to think where is the investment going to be best spent.

It's not listed on here, but another possible option is adding a workers' compensation analyst and the SDHR workers' compensation unit.

Currently that unit has about 10 people for the whole city, and there are five analysts.

SFD does have a great number of claims.

If a council member is interested in that, an analyst, a senior one, position would cost about $170,000 a year.

A regular one would cost about $157,000 a year.

The reason why I didn't initially put it on this option list is because What the analysts do and what Ready Rebound do are different in that the analysts aren't helping employees schedule appointment.

That's something that they have the right to do on their own under state law, but they do facilitate the ability to get an appointment such as they need to pre-authorize treatment claims and that sort of thing.

SDHR is uncertain about what the impact of adding another person on their staff would be, so that should be explored before thinking about adding another person to their staff.

and last, there could be no change.

And so that's it for my presentation.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Karina.

Always an option, no change or to increase or decrease.

With that, colleagues, are there questions regarding Ready Rebound?

Council Member Solomon.

Yes, thank you, Chair.

I just had a quick question.

Does the fire department have their own in-house wellness unit at this point.

I'm not aware of a wellness unit.

There is a disability officer that is a uniform position that is helping firefighters find light duty and modified duty return to work.

And that is a very busy position, often having to work overtime.

So that's not a wellness position, so to say, but that is something adjacent to it.

The city does have a wellness position citywide.

that is available to employees and is promoting and developing programs to serve the city at large.

Okay.

Well, one of the reasons I ask is I know that internal to SPD, they do have a wellness unit with several individuals that are assigned per precinct.

I was wondering if that same kind of system of support was available for firefighters.

And from what you're saying, you got one person who's trying to do it all for everybody.

I will find out if there's others that are assisting in that effort and report back to you.

Okay.

Because, you know, again, looking at the what it seems like Ready Rebound may be doing for our folks.

I think a lot of what our wellness people do is make referrals to other organizations outside of the PD that may be able to assist folks who are dealing with, you know, trauma and other kind of issues.

So again, just wondering, I just wanted to know if there was something similar available for firefighters.

So yeah, I would be interested to find out more.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Central staff will follow up with you there.

Colleagues, any other questions on this?

If not, I think we'll tick to the next slide, which is questions.

And so at that point, I'll turn it over to Council Member Kettle as Chair of the Committee overseeing this department.

You are recognized.

And then colleagues, any other statements or questions overall regarding the Salifier Department?

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thank you for referring to them as the dream team.

Given my role, my committee assignment, I am quite fortunate to work with central staff's best, well, I guess I can't go there based on the director's point, but in my view, a top team to work public safety issues, so thank you, Ms. Bull for the presentation, but of course Mr. Dawson-Johnson joining you.

in the presentation.

You know, going to slide two, I just wanted to thank, you know, the presentations that we received from the department, from Chief Scoggins, but also I wanted to thank the firefighters themselves, best represented by, you know, Local 27 and local, as you mentioned, 2898, and for their work and responding, you know, this is just for the but the overall calls that the fire department is responding to is incredible.

I really encourage my colleagues to go to the fire alarm center and to go to fire stations and I know many of you have and I think that's really important because it kind of serves the same piece in terms of what we're doing and in terms of engaging with the Seattle Police Department and I think it makes a difference.

And if you do do it, like at a dinner.

I've had many.

I need to get back into the rotation.

But you'll find that there's always a firefighter or two that's from some other station, you know, covering.

And it kind of highlights some of the discussions that we've had today.

And so I definitely recommend, you know, those engagements, and not just with the fire stations, but also like Health One, Health 99, and, you know, those units as well.

Obviously this is an increased area and the work that's happening within the fire department is really important and it kind of intersects like in our past discussion with care in terms of those situations on the ground and with HealthONE in terms of how to make a positive change and do so in a way that doesn't have a criminal aspect but then it also doesn't create a criminal aspect to that.

as noted by Council President with the eight cars and with this slide number two, we do have, for lack of a better way of saying it, some high utilizer locations and this kind of drives the point and I've been to the fire garage too in terms of what is the maintenance cost for fire engines and ladder trucks and then how does that compare in terms of this increased use and the demand on those big rigs to go to essentially a BLS call, that is a lot of equipment that's taken a lot of wear and tear and equipment that costs a lot.

And you look at the fire garage, which we had some positive reports from the fire department briefing, but still the trends are not good generally in terms of the demand cycle side of things.

and we need to be smart in terms of how we're allocating assets and particularly for the long term.

And so I think it's aid cards are something that we really need to dive into and really understand how that could save in other areas in terms of being more nimble in response but also save in the broader context, particularly with our ladder trucks and our fire engines.

So I thank you for the for the presentation on that.

And, you know, equipment's one thing, but people are even more important, so the ready response discussion is really important as well.

I like the rundown.

I think this is something that we should be talking to the topic more generally with our colleagues and others outside, like mentioning with the two locals.

I have to be up front and say at the beginning of this morning I noted that when we set up our committee meetings through the course of the year we're setting them up for the budget and we've not talked about this in committee and so I really would like to do it but I also like to you'll move the ball based on what we're doing, the obvious factors that we're facing.

So I really appreciate the options that we've had and I really want to dive into these areas more as we move forward into 2026 because they're very important and they have impacts across the board as I was mentioned regarding the status of our fire engines and ladder trucks.

So Ms. Bill, thank you again for your presentation and again encourage my colleagues to go to the fire stations, go to these units like Health One, Harbor, actually not Harbor, I was thinking of a specific fire station then, but to do those because I think it's really important and it pays dividends.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

Pardon me.

And thank you all for today's presentation.

Really appreciate your work.

I just have a quick clarifying question.

Going back to the first policy consideration, am I correct in understanding that regardless of option A or option B, the first year will incur an overtime funding cost of $784,000?

And if council pursues option A, what does the FTE cost look like for years going forward after 2026?

Thank you, Council Member Rank.

Yes, there is going to be an initial overtime cost in 2026 with either option.

With option A, the fire department would use overtime to immediately fund a car starting in July.

And as I mentioned earlier, the idea there is that there's too much demand on overtime right now.

So starting in July, they would fund the car with overtime.

Simultaneously, they would put more recruits into the July class.

And the idea there is that as you got into 2026, you could have some of those recruits start staffing the car and reduce the reliance on overtime.

The staffing costs for 2026, putting those recruits into a class and funding them there with the equipment and with the other costs for training is about $1.04 million.

Moving into 2027, it would be the case that that 1.04 would grow to about a million and a half, because what you're seeing there is the recruits are going to graduate, they're going to move into fully funded fire department pockets, their salaries are going to grow.

So there is a bit of an ongoing cost there that increased.

It's simpler with option B because the fire department only staffs with overtime when they're staffing their 12-hour cars.

And so in that case, you would not have any backfilling.

You wouldn't add to recruit classes.

They would just start staffing with overtime in mid-2026 and they would continue to staff with overtime going forward.

that I get at everything.

Thank you.

No further questions, Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rank.

Other Council members?

Just real quick.

Director Noble.

This would be a data point that I could probably follow up on.

The advantage of a peak car is that it might actually be addressing when the larger increase of calls is occurring.

In general, the fire department is deployed 24-7 at an equal level, so the stations are all staffed equally 24-7, except in the context of eight cars.

So eight cars in particular, It feels to me like a particular one where targeting the peak use, again, given the issue here is responding to the increasing number of calls, that can make a lot of sense.

But as noted here, firefighters, their permanent shifts are 24-hour shifts.

You really have to do this with overtime if you're going to do 12-hour shifts.

In any case, something as we get into the analytics of what demand are we trying to meet, that might be an important piece to consider.

Thank you.

And I'll just make my comments.

I don't have questions at the moment.

I'll follow up on Q&A with you to flush out the questions and answers that I have to be able to help prepare the chair's package, especially after I'd like to better understand what the priorities of my colleagues are because everyone has expressed interest in supporting the Seattle Fire Department.

And so I wanna understand where the body is at before making final decisions for myself.

Overall, I completely support the Seattle Fire Department.

I support the items that have been raised by my colleagues and I support the things that you have highlighted as issue ID.

Much like the last presentation with Tommaso, I did not see a slide saying that we could increase or decrease health one, just noting for the record that that might be something that I'd be interested in increasing as well across the board because to Councilmember Kettle's point about the number of engines, ladder trucks, very specialized heavy duty equipment that is rolling our streets for responses that can be handled by different units.

This was the premise of Health One.

And so I may wanna look into that a little bit more, but I don't have any questions about that right now for the record.

Colleagues, last call on questions, otherwise I will turn it over to Council Member Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing the department and then the committee table for last word.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to echo my support for the department and the various needs within the department.

So I want to just, for the record, state that.

And I would be interested in having a conversation with you, Chair, about both the HealthONE, because I understand one of the HealthONE trucks, and Greg, maybe you can confirm this, but my understanding was that one of the HealthONE Riggs got with the people got transferred over to become a Health-99 and so then they lost a Health-1 and if that's the case I'd be interested Chair as you said to look into whether we can replace that Health-1 unit.

Fantastic.

Greg, you confirm.

Actually, in our dream team format here, Tommaso is going to be handling the various health one, health 99, health 98 issues.

So I don't know if he knows the answer, but I'll pass it over.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

Councilmember Rivera, I'm not immediately, I'm not recalling that immediately off the top of my head, but I will look into that and follow up with you.

Thanks.

Thank you.

I believe that is the case, but thank you for confirming.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And anything else from the committee table?

I'll turn it over to Council Member Kettle as Chair of the Committee overseeing this department.

Thank you, Chair.

Again, thank you, everyone.

And this discussion highlights that it's a very complicated situation, and Health 99, Health 1, all these different pieces, aid cards and everything.

And I think it's imperative to see the cost benefit, the trade-offs.

There's definitely trade-offs as it relates to the big rigs, as I call them, the ladder trucks and the fire engines.

And then the issues with the fire garage, which are trending better, but still, it's always precarious.

and so working through this is really important to ensure that we're best positioned public safety broadly across the spectrum to go.

So I thank you for the points raised and the answers related to all these different little pieces, so thank you.

Thank you.

To the Dream Team, the committee table, anything else to add?

Nothing else to add.

Thank you very much.

Well, colleagues, we are at 1221 p.m.

I'll say that we will now take a moment to go to our lunch break.

We'll just add the nine extra minutes.

And so today the October 17th Select Budget Committee meeting will be in recess until 1.30 p.m.

This afternoon we have one department that does many different things.

every point along our life, other than early learning and early education, is the Human Services Department.

From being a young person to, I'm not gonna start putting these subjective words, but all along your life, the Human Services Department will be helping you out.

And so we'll take that up this afternoon, and until then, we are on recess until 1.30.

Thank you.