Select Budget Committee Session I 9/25/25

Good morning.

The September 25th, 2025 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Sanka.

Here.

Council Member Solomon.

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Rink.

Here.

And Chair Strauss.

Present.

Sixth present.

Thank you.

Good morning.

And Council Member Juarez, Rivera, and Hollingsworth are excused until they arrive.

We have four items on the agenda today.

During our first session, right after public comment, we'll have an introduction and budget process overview.

as well as the City Budget Office's overview of the 2026 proposed budget.

After that, we are scheduled to take a lunch break and our second session will begin at 2 p.m.

with a presentation on how we are responding to the potential and actual cuts from the federal government and the first briefing on legislation relating to a public safety sales tax increase.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

I'll save my chair's comments for after public comment.

So we will now open the hybrid public comment period.

I see we have somebody else signing up right now.

So this is the first of six public comment periods and two public hearings that we will have during this budget process.

I wanted to start by being clear about how much time each person will have to speak.

This year I proposed an amendment to council rules that standardize public comment time during committee meetings to help increase clarity and consistency.

While that rule won't go into effect until next year, we used it last year in the Select Budget Committee and we're gonna use it again this year.

So this is how it'll work.

If there are fewer than 30 people signed up, each person will receive, and this is for committee public comment, which will be different than our public hearings.

If there are fewer than 30 people signed up, each person, and Council Member Hollingsworth is now present, will receive two minutes to give public comment.

If there are 30 to 60 people signed up, each person will receive one minute.

And if there are more than 60 people signed up, we will adjust time provided to allow as much public comment as possible while still ensuring Council is able to conduct business that day.

We have public comment in committee at the beginning of each one of the sections of our budget that you can find on our budget calendar.

And written public comment is accepted every day, whether we have committee or not.

I'm gonna call on the in-person speakers first, and I see we have B.J.

Last signed up virtually, and B.J., you are not present.

So if you want to provide public comment this morning, now is the time to call in, and Council Member Rivera is present as well.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up today?

I see.

Two in person to remote.

Wonderful.

So each speaker will have two minutes.

We will start with in-person speakers first, and I will read the public instructions, which is that the public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered, and speakers will call in person first and then virtual.

So with that, we have Hallie Willis and Amarintha Torres.

Welcome.

Good morning, council members.

Here we go.

My name is Hallie Willis.

I'm the policy manager for the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, and I'm a renter in District 5. I want to thank Mayor Harrell for expanding non-congregate shelter, reserving funds to cope with federal cuts, and increasing human services contracts by 2% for frontline staff wage equity.

Everyone should have access to the housing, medical care, food, and more that they need to live a healthy life.

But right now, the organizations that shelter, feed, and care for Seattle residents struggle to hold on to the experienced staff they have when they're making so little, sometimes close to minimum wage.

And it will become even more difficult to keep the doors open and the lights on if we lose any amount of federal funds.

We know that when human services can pay their staff fairly, they're able to hold on to experienced staff, fill vacancies, operate more efficiently, and serve people better.

The mayor's proposed budget brings us to a 4% increase since 2013, just over half of the 7% increase that UW experts recommended we achieve by last year just to begin to stem the flow of staff leaving the field for jobs elsewhere.

This is good progress, and we have more to do, and we look forward to engaging more with you throughout this budget process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Good morning, Council.

Is it on?

Yeah.

Good morning, Council.

My name's Amaranthia Torres.

I'm the co-executive director of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence and the co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

And I work and live in District 2. We want to thank Mayor Harrell, his team, and our partners in HSD for responding to the impacts of the pay penalty experienced by human service workers with a 2% provider pay increase.

This is a much-needed step, as Hallie mentioned, to closing that 7% gap from the UW study in 2023. It's also exciting to see investments in food banks, meals programs, non-congregate shelter, rental assistance, and treatment for substance use disorder.

There's a lot to be excited about in the budget.

However, we are disappointed that there are no new investments made to support our seniors and survivors of domestic and sexual violence.

This is especially troubling given the current landscape of statewide VOCA cuts, the Victims of Crime Act, federal funding exclusions, and the overt sexism, misogyny, and minimization of men's violence that we all are witnessing but that will have the most severe and life-threatening consequences on victims and survivors of gender-based violence.

We are working to change that story for survivors and hope you'll join us in the effort.

We look forward to working with you on the budget in the weeks ahead.

And thank you so much for the time to speak today.

Thank you very much.

And with that, we will transition to online public comment.

BJ Last, you are still not present, but Fenisha Zhang, you are.

And I feel like every time I say your name, I say it incorrectly.

So I'm apologizing now.

I see you are here and off mute.

Take it away.

Good morning.

Yes.

Yes, thank you, Council Member Strauss.

It's so close.

It's Phineca, but we'll get it in time.

Good morning, Council.

My name is Phineca John, for the record.

And this morning, I'm commenting on behalf of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, along with my colleagues who just also gave comment.

As a reminder, we represent over 200 service providers in Seattle, including organizations from gender-based violence services, homelessness, housing, food, seniors, and public health.

And just want to wish you all an official happy first day of the budget process.

We recognize and appreciate the immense amount of work that you all do on the budget.

And we're really looking forward to partnering with your offices in the coming months to help you center budget decisions around what human services and the communities that we support really need in these challenging times.

So I think Amaranthi and Hallie spoke to what we've been seeing in the budget and Just to echo that, we're really grateful to the mayor for largely balancing the budget without drastic cuts to critical human services and for including a buffer against the federal government's abandonment of our safety net.

And we're also thrilled to see a 2% increase for wages for human service workers, which is critical to ensuring that our food banks and our shelters are staffed up and ready to help people navigate What we're all kind of bracing for, right?

Potential losses to SNAP benefits, housing vouchers, and the eroding of other safety net programs.

And like Callie and Amarantia mentioned, while we're grateful for the 2% increase that the mayor included, we also just want to ground this number in the context.

The UW wage equity study recommended a total of a 7% increase by 2025, and the council passed resolutions Reflecting this goal.

So we just encourage the council to follow through around these recommendations in the 2026 budget.

Thank you all so much for the time and looking forward to the next few months.

Thank you.

Checking to see if BJ Last is present.

BJ Last, you are not present.

I'm giving you a last warning.

And do you want to sign up for public comment?

This is your last moment.

Okay, thank you.

With that, Mr. G, if you're present, can you confirm BJ Last is not present?

That is confirmed.

Thank you, Mr. G. So with that, we will close our public comment period.

This now completes our public comment period and we'll move on to the first agenda on the item.

As our presenters are coming to the table, I will provide my opening just kind of remarks and reflections as we move into is the first day of the budget process, the September 25th, 2025. And I want to acknowledge that we're undertaking this process in an uncertain time for our country.

We are in a much different place than we were just one year ago.

And if you recall, a different place than when I submitted my chair's package in the last budget process.

That's how recent this is.

Many of our values as a nation and as a city are under attack.

Immigrant communities are living in fear.

Food banks and meal programs are struggling to feed people because of cuts, to snap, and our public health system is being undermined from the inside out.

This is all on top of high inflation and economic policies that are creating incredible volatility and uncertainty, putting our economy through a stress test.

It's at times like this that we are here to stand up, Fight for our values, ensure our municipal government is running and functioning for working families and to fight for a better Seattle, to fight for a better America and a better world.

Today, we do begin the journey of a tough job because during this budget cycle, Last year, we made hard decisions.

We expected slow growth to begin, and with the volatility at the beginning of the year, our financial situation has become even more uncertain.

We have to deliver the basics of good government, like filling potholes, keeping the lights on, and we need to make sure Seattle works for working families.

My North Star is creating a safer, more affordable city where working families thrive.

As the federal government rolls back social services and pursues inflationary economic policies that make life more expensive, we must push forward.

And that starts here by going to bat for the services and programs Seattleites rely on.

I'm proud to see increased investments in affordable housing, food assistance, public safety in the mayor's proposal, and I appreciate his office's close collaboration over the past years as we work to stabilize the city's budget and defend our values.

There's so much more work to do.

I want to thank every city worker.

I rode the light rail this morning right in front of an arts and culture employee.

I didn't want to bother them on the train this morning.

And it stood out to me as I was commuting is that so many people make this city run.

So many everyday people that have everyday lives and families And last year we had really difficult decisions where for the first time since the 2008 recession, we had to lay off employees.

That was very difficult.

Those are family.

We did everything that we could to make sure that those employees found other jobs before their time ran out.

Each of those people represented a family with potentially children, aging parents, et cetera.

You all get the point.

These are real decisions that we're making here on the dais.

And I wanna thank you all for working hard to at least be able to extend everyone's employment by six months.

It really helped provide time for people to make the next choice and to find that next job, I should say, sorry.

Moving on to what we have before us this year, I guess the last points that I'll make is in last year's budget, we engaged in budget reform, both structural from the process and in the content.

We were able to close a very large structural budget gap.

We expected that slow growth to start.

It did start and then it stopped.

And so we went through a very difficult process last year where we looked under every couch cushion, found every penny.

We created additional budget reform in the content space of not only finding additional information over the course of this year, Requesting SDHR to report on developing and enhancing programs for employees subject to layoffs.

The CBO report on past grant, past underspend and grants.

The executive providing an inventory of city funded youth programs.

and exploring funding channels and funding streams that are more appropriate for discrete programs than the general fund necessarily or for jumpstart necessarily.

These were all budget reform of the content of our budget.

This year, we're engaging in additional reform in the content and also in the process.

Colleagues, this year, as you know, we've added another week of time here on the dais for you all to present your budget proposals ahead of the chair's package.

This increases transparency.

And for Council Member Juarez, this goes back to two versions of the budget process ago.

Glad to have Council Member Juarez with us.

As she reminded me, this is her ninth budget.

We are also gonna be changing how we're doing public hearings.

I can't start this meeting without recognizing the immense work that Chair Hollingsworth of the Select Comprehensive Plan has just led us through.

Felt like a mini budget.

I understand that we have another one starting in January, so I think we're gonna be doing this, but we just got through a lot of work.

And I wanna thank you Council Member Hollingsworth for leading by example and showing us different ways that we can do business here.

And so specifically in the public hearings, we're gonna be starting them earlier.

We're gonna be separating the virtual and the in-person.

And we're still working out some of the other details, but we'll be sending out directives about how the public hearings will change.

Colleagues, we're going to be using Robert's Rules as we always do.

I went ahead and used a Jurassic Parliament.

They're one of the best parliamentarian organizations.

Association of Washington City regularly hires them to help us learn Robert's Rules and parliamentary procedure.

So I bought everyone one of these little...

Laminated cheat sheets.

If you have additional, this just helps us kind of navigate through where we're going, which amendment has to be withdrawn so that we can move forward, et cetera.

And I have to say, Amelia Sanchez, our deputy city clerk, is one of the best parliamentarians, I'd say, in the state.

So use her as a resource.

Sorry for sharing that already.

But if any of this needs to, if you need clarification or additional information, she's here.

Just running down the rules of how we're gonna run this.

As chair, I work here as a servant.

I'm not the boss of this committee.

I'm just the one who is facilitating.

I will recognize and I request and require that I will recognize you to speak so that we can continue the process and allows for everyone to be able to speak.

We are gonna ask, I'll pass the floor over to you.

I'll let you get through your questions and then I'll call on the next person.

I'm going to check before calling on you again if there are other colleagues that have not yet spoken.

And while I'll never ask or tell you to stop speaking, I will be noting where we are along the way for all of our presentations.

So if we only have an hour left and 16 slides to go, I'll ask that colleagues hold their questions to the end as an example.

With that, over the next two months, we will have 19 meetings, six public comment periods, and two marathon public hearings.

On top of that, I know each of us are having dozens to hundreds of meetings with community members, and we have about eight weeks to do all of this work.

So with that, and colleagues, I'll ask if anyone needs to take a short recess at 10 a.m.

Checking.

I'm seeing no recess desired at 10 a.m.

But with that, I'll just say for the first time since 2001, the Mariners are going back to the play.

We've gotten the AL West Championship American League.

So very excited for that.

I'm excited to wear my Dan Wilson signed baseball cap earlier today.

With that, Council Member Sokka is now with us in person.

Any other questions before we begin?

Because with that, I'm going to turn it over to our presenters.

Agenda item one, introduction and budget process overview for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

We're joined by Director Ben Noble and Calvin Chow of Central Staff.

Take it away.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

We walked through this calendar at Council Briefings just last week, so don't intend to spend a whole lot of time on this today.

Just to give you a little preview of what you'd expect during this round and the next.

So obviously this first round is really the executive coming to present.

Today will be largely the Budget Office running the show, if you will, so this morning a general overview of the budget.

And then this afternoon we scheduled a couple topical and cross-cutting briefings, one specifically on the proposal related to a .1 percent sales tax dedicated to public safety, That piece of legislation will be before the Council shortly.

Actually, it was referred this past Tuesday, so it's formally before this committee today.

It's an additional meeting that's been scheduled.

We'll talk about that as well.

And then shifting tomorrow and then again on Monday and Tuesday, we'll have individual departments coming.

We don't have time to bring all the city departments.

We brought a select group.

We have tried to group them thematically, if you will.

We've been a little bit challenged on that front because of schedules for individual department directors and when folks are in town versus out of town and available and unavailable.

That said, we do have a Public Safety Human Services Day lined up where we'll have both police, fire and care in the morning and then HSD in the afternoon.

Thought that could fit together well.

Other than that, it does jump a little bit.

So again, that'll be the departments making their presentations and you're asking some initial questions.

We will be tracking the questions that you asked today and in the next few days that are that are unanswered from the table, and we will feed those into the system and get back formal answers from the executive.

So we're keeping track of all of that, and carefully so.

Then a few weeks off, we have the round of When central staff comes back with their overviews of departments and identifying policy concerns, those presentations will largely be the work of central staff based on our review of what's in each department's budget.

We'll produce an overview of every department, but again, given time constraints, we'll only make presentations on those which we think are most relevant and most significant.

Again, the focus of that will be central staff's analysis, but at the same time, those meetings will give you a chance both to hear from central staff, ask questions, and then I think initially start to discuss among yourselves some of your interests and highlights, potentially foreshadowing the next round where you will be bringing forward proposed amendments.

So that's what's ahead of us.

Looking forward to it, although obviously an intense period of both work and attention.

So if there aren't questions beyond that, we can move on, but I'm also happy to take questions.

Colleagues, questions at this time?

Seeing none, keep rolling.

We've seen this a number of times.

Appreciate it.

Exactly.

And as Director Eater comes up for the next thing, I do also want to acknowledge Calvin Chow, who's here with me, also Brian, and although they are out currently, Patty, a whole team of folks that are stepping in to help us get through budget.

I appreciate their work and their assistance, and you will see their faces as well.

Thank you.

Agenda item two, city budget office overview of the 2026 proposed budget for briefing and discussion.

Welcome CBO director Dan Eder.

I'll turn it over to you now for your presentation.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Chair Strauss and members of the Budget Committee.

Thank you for the opportunity to share the Mayor's proposed budget with you this morning.

I'm excited to provide a high-level overview of the budget.

I want to, with your permission, just pause briefly to thank the many people who helped with the challenging task of pulling together this year's budget.

First and foremost, thanks to the mayor for his focused attention, his leadership, and his vision in setting goals and helping us deliver on those goals.

I want to thank my CBO team, a smart, seasoned group of professionals who care deeply about doing the right thing and getting things right always.

I also want to generally acknowledge the incredible work of so many people, the 13,000-plus employees of the City of Seattle, from various offices and departments who worked with us for months, rolling up their sleeves, thinking through innovative ideas and ways to streamline spending and some new ways to meet the moment with some new investments.

I don't pretend to be a subject matter expert.

I won't be able to answer every question that comes up today.

But as Dr. Noble noted, we will track questions.

I won't be shy about letting you know when I need to follow up.

And then we'll get back to you and provide information in the next day or three.

With that, I will move forward to the first slide.

Thanks, Cal, for running the deck for me.

This provides an overview of the major topics that I intend to cover in today's briefing.

I'll start by providing some background and context for how the city's budget process worked this year.

The Mayor's 2026 proposed budget is fully balanced.

This is noteworthy because earlier this year the Forecast Council, supported by the work of the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, noted a significant revenue shortfall in the general fund and the payroll expense tax fund.

Talk about the tools we used to get to a balanced budget proposal in this section.

Then I'll walk you through a very high-level look at an overview of spending in the proposed budget.

And finally, I'll spend some time highlighting key investment areas in the Mayor's proposed budget.

If we could go to slide four, please.

I know that council members are already intimately aware of this.

For those watching on the Seattle Channel, I'll just note that the city already has an adopted budget for 2025, which legally authorized spending for this year.

We also have an endorsed 2026 budget, which is effectively a spending plan but doesn't yet include appropriations.

Spending in each of those years, 25 adopted and 26 endorsed, were balanced against revenue forecasts from October 2024, which was the latest revenue forecast available when the council adopted the city's budget and endorsed the 2026 budget.

The mayor's proposed budget builds upon the 2026 endorsed budget spending plan, and as I'll discuss in upcoming slides, incorporates new revenue forecast information and makes other changes.

The mayor's budget funds specific strategies to address Seattle's evolving priorities in the faces of changes at the national, regional, and state level.

If we can go to the next slide, please.

This slide shows at the top the city's annual budget process, and you can see that there are activities that span effectively nearly every month of the year.

We received grave news in April from the Independent Office of Economic Revenue and Forecasts, And we spent months thereafter grappling with how to arrive at a balanced budget for your consideration beginning today.

That work has been tumultuous, difficult, and involved a number of decisions along the way, many of which have come through this body.

We took ideas from departments in the spring, from April through the beginning of June.

Over the summer, CBO and the mayor's office and the mayor himself evaluated trade-offs.

We made hard decisions about how to balance the needs against the available revenues.

And now it's the Council's decision-making season, and that kicks off this week, and it will eventually culminate in an adopted budget in the third week of November.

Excuse me.

At a very high level, the forecast that we have received in August indicates that the city's economy is still growing.

Revenue projections this year have proved challenging and somewhat mercurial.

For 2026, the Independent Economic and Revenue Forecasts Office expects that the city's general fund and payroll expense tax fund The city's most flexible revenues will both continue to grow compared to 2025. But the cost of labour and services will grow faster and more closely match the broader levels of local and regional inflation.

The economic conditions are influenced both by local decisions and federal policy decisions, and there could be changes in future revenue forecasts.

The next revenue forecast that the city will receive is in October, during approximately the middle of your budget deliberations.

Will there be good news or bad news?

I do not know.

The mayor's budget is based on the best available information at the time that we made the budget proposal.

And if there is good news or bad news, we will be ready to work with the council to make sure that the budget remains balanced by the time it's adopted.

With that, I'll move to the next slide, please.

This slide is talking about racial equity considerations in the budget process.

Racial equity impacts are considered as part of the budget deliberations, as in past years.

Every budget idea when proposed includes a race and equity impact analysis before we decided to accept or reject it.

Each individual proposal, or change request as we call them, includes an evaluation of whether and how the change could affect the city's RSJI Race and Social Justice Initiative goals.

Thanks, Ben.

CBO's change team has also been partnering with departments to improve the use of data to measure equity impacts of city programs.

CBO created the Evidence Toolkit, which is a set of resources to assist departments to reflect on how programs achieve their goals and help articulate the evidence behind proposals.

These resources are aimed at supporting departments to use more and better evidence in program development and budget proposals.

We know this work is iterative, and every department is in a different starting place.

CBO is supporting departments' continued efforts to advance equity and budgeting, both the process and the outcomes.

With that, I'm going to turn to the balancing the budget section.

As you know, And as I mentioned earlier, the Mayor proposed and then the Council endorsed a balanced budget plan for 2026. In April of...

Sorry, this has a bit of a typo in it.

In April of 2025, the Forecast Council adopted a pessimistic forecast Due to significant uncertainty in the national economy.

That forecast at the bottom line identified a $217 million gap in the otherwise anticipated revenues for the general fund and the payroll expense tax combined.

That effectively meant that when the mayor went back to the drawing board to look at what budget to propose, he didn't have $217 million of general government revenues to support the spending that was included in the 2026 endorsed budget.

So we had to make some pivots.

And you'll see the other number on this slide is $240 million.

That's all funds.

That's the general fund and the PET, payroll expense tax fund, and also all other kinds of funds, different colors of money, some with very restrictive uses for transportation, et cetera.

We can move to the next slide, please.

Early in 2024, the city was facing a $250 million general fund deficit, and the mayor took immediate steps to slow spending that helped with the issue that arose later in 2025 as well.

Some examples of steps the mayor took in 2024 included hiring freeze, travel and training, restrictions, scrutiny of new contracts, and all technology purchases.

Those, upon learning of the $217 million general government revenue reduction in the spring of this year, we extended those strategies and We expect to achieve savings in 2025. Both those savings in 2024 and 2025 become resources for the city to use in 2026. We also ask departments to identify ways to reduce spending from the endorsed 2026 levels.

Again, because we did not have enough revenues to support all of the spending in the endorsed budget.

Between 2 percent and 8 percent reductions, I'm pleased that we did not ultimately end up needing to take what would have been very significant public-facing reductions.

But we did generate ideas for how to do that, and those ideas will be available in the case of bad news on an upcoming revenue forecast in the event that we, again, find ourselves A position where we can't support all the spending.

Our goal was to identify efficiencies and reductions with minimal impacts to public-facing services.

We looked for projects that weren't able to move forward on the original timelines, even if they had full funding.

We considered and ultimately implemented options to fold together work into departments that were best suited to do the work, achieving some efficiencies.

The next slide, slide number 11, is an overview of all the strategies that we employed to arrive at a balanced 2026 proposed budget.

Those strategies fall into three main categories, spending reductions, new revenues, and a revised forecast.

I'll go through them one at a time.

Spending reductions, as I mentioned on the previous slide, encompassed 2024 measures, which we undertook to reduce spending in 2024. And those were borne out when we closed the books on 2024, the beginning of 2025. We found that there was $65 million of general fund savings.

Those are resources that became available for Use in 25 and 26. In 2025, we went through an exercise with departments to have them let us know when they couldn't spend money or when there were opportunities without public-facing service reductions to decrease their spending that they otherwise would like to move forward with.

And we are counting on an additional $30 million of underspend this year in 2025. And lastly, I mentioned that we asked for departments to give us ideas for reducing their spending from the levels in the endorsed budget.

That achieved an additional $37 million in general fund and PET.

The second category is new revenues.

There have been a lot of discussions in the public and also on this floor.

This council took action on the Seattle Shield initiative.

That's a series of changes that will ultimately generate, if approved by voters on the November ballot, a net $81 million of additional business and occupation tax revenues, which is a general fund revenue.

The ballot measure that folks will be voting on in November provides that $51 million will be for general fund backfill, which is to say it helps address the $217 million deficit directly.

The remaining $30 million I'll talk about in a later slide, but it is generally for administrative costs and to help address the municipal-level impacts of federal budget and policy changes.

The second item in the new revenues category is the public safety sales tax proposal.

That's a 0.1 percent increment on the existing sales tax.

It would generate approximately $39 million, and it can be used for public safety needs as provided for in legislative change that allowed municipalities to move forward with this, imposing this tax.

This does not need to go to voters.

This is a proposal that is in the city's control, and the mayor has transmitted legislation, and I understand that that's something that the city council will be taking up.

The budget assumes passage of the public safety sales tax, so it is part of the balancing picture, if you will.

And then finally, we got good news.

I mentioned there was bad news in April.

The Forecast Council let us know that we were $217 million underwater, if you will, with respect to the levels of general fund and PET revenue in 25 and 26. That 217 underwater went upwards by $95 million in August when they updated their forecast.

So I mentioned that it was a year of mercurial changes.

That's what I'm talking about.

The PET and the general fund forecasts have shifted very considerably from October to April and then from April to August.

We remain, just on the revenue side, $122 million underwater.

That's 217 down, 95 up is still 122 under the revenue levels from the endorsed budget.

If there are no questions, I'll move on to the next section.

This is a very high-level overview of the Mayor's proposed budget, and in the following section, I'll dive into the next level of detail.

There are, in the Mayor's proposed budget, new historic high levels of investment in both affordable housing and EDI projects.

We fully funded the Revenue Stabilization Fund, often referred to colloquially as the Rainy Day Fund.

We also fully funded the Emergency Fund at the levels for both that are called for in the Seattle Municipal Code, and that meant we made additions to both of those funds.

We began to restore the payroll expense tax reserve.

We funded $9 million towards an eventual goal of about $43 million.

The City Council asked in the legislation in the last budget that that reserve, which is intended to address some of the volatility in the payroll expense tax fund revenues, that the executive fully fund that to a 10 percent level, which would be about $43 million by the end of the fourth year.

So we made a one-quarter One year, one quarter payment, they'll be followed by three more years on a planned basis of funding for that reserve.

I'll note also that we ended up decreasing the support for the general fund that the payroll expense tax fund does.

Part of the way we balanced the budget was by making reductions to vacant positions and aligning budget with actual needs.

Importantly, there are no new layoffs in the proposed budget.

There are some vacant positions that were eliminated, and there are some sunsetting positions which were not extended, about 19 in all across the two categories.

Next slide, please.

This pie chart shows for all funds across all areas that the city's annual budget is $8.9 billion.

About half, 48%, is for utilities, transportation, and environment.

I'm calling that out because Many of the resources in that area are restricted by state law and cannot be used for anything besides utilities and transportation in particular.

So think about utility rates.

When you pay your city light bill, You're paying for the services that City Light provides.

The city can't use your City Light bill payment to support general government purposes like parks and libraries, et cetera.

Unless there are questions, I'm going to go forward to the next slide.

This again is just the highest level look at the general fund.

It's about $2.0 billion.

Fully half, $982 million, is for public safety.

And here we're talking about police, fire, care, and some of the smaller departments of the police accountability.

I believe that law and the Municipal Court and the Office of Emergency Management are also in this biggest section of the pie.

And then you can see how we split up the remaining half on this slide as well.

With that, I'll proceed to slide 16, please.

So this is taking a multi-year look at how the general fund in particular has evolved over time.

And I'll point out that the green line is showing how expenses have changed over the years, and we've gone through not only the 2026 proposed budget, which you see is fully balanced against the available revenues, which are shown in the bars underneath the green line, but we've gone beyond that to show in 2027 what the projection looks like for The anticipated expenses versus the currently forecast revenues.

And there I'm highlighting for you that we have an expected $140 million gap between the rising expenses and the also rising but not fast enough to meet the expenses revenues.

So we don't know yet if we're going eventually to have $140 million of deficit by the time 2027 comes.

I don't want to repeat myself too much, but there was a $217 million bad news in April, $95 million of good news in August.

The revenue forecast changes.

It changes not only annually, it changes multiple times a year, and we have three or four, depending on how you want to count it, more forecasts before we get to the 2027 proposed budget.

I'll move on to the next slide.

Here I'm highlighting for you, or I'm giving you the categories of highlights that I will walk through of the mayor's budget priorities.

Like in each of the years the mayor has proposed a budget, three of the four categories are the same, affordability, public safety, reducing homelessness.

This year, we're also including a federal response category, which is a high-level look at how a portion of the business and occupation tax proceeds would be spent.

And we have a whole session on this one this afternoon.

So I'll just be providing some overview.

If we could go to the next slide, please, Cal.

Okay, so the first of the four areas is affordability.

Here, first and foremost, I want to highlight the record level of affordable housing investments.

The mayor's proposed budget includes just about $350 million for 2026 spending on a variety of affordable housing areas.

There's $325 million for multifamily capital development, affordable home ownership, operations and maintenance, resident services, provider agency supports, and staffing administration in the Office of Housing.

There's an additional $5 million in the 2026 budget for the Northgate Commons Housing Project.

That's a Seattle Housing Authority-led project.

They looked to the city, and we have committed the last needed $20 million of total support for that project, $5 million of which is needed in 2026. The balance is needed in future years.

And lastly, I want to call out a $20 million four-year planned investment of a total of $80 million across those four years in an anti-displacement and reparations housing fund.

And there'll be more to come on that in upcoming days.

You'll be able to ask me and the Office of Housing all kinds of questions about that.

Next is a look, just staying on the topic of housing investments.

I wanted to give you a perspective when we say that this is a historic high level of investment in affordable housing.

All the way to the right is the proposed budget for 2026. You see it is labeled as $349.5 million.

I rounded it up on the previous slide to $350.

That is, uh, That is, let's see, seven times roughly the size of our investment in 2015 as a city.

It was in the low $50 million range for 2015 and 2016. We have stepped up our investment dramatically in the ensuing 10 years, and we are, again, up to about $350 million of investment.

Next slide, please.

So continuing on with affordability theme, the Office of Planning and Community Development has a record level of investment in the Equity Development Initiative investments that we're making at 29 and almost a half million dollars in the 2026 proposed budget.

In the next category, Deal, childcare investments, if voters in November approve the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise levy, sometimes known as the FEP levy, in the 26-27 school year, there's about $18.5 million of new investments.

It would more than double access to affordable childcare slots and provide retention payments to more than 5,000 childcare workers.

The next category is a new back-to-business fund.

This is an expansion of the storefront repair fund, which has been funded at $800,000.

This would add $2.5 million in 2026, an additional $2.5 million in 2027, for a total of $3.3 million in each of those years.

Slide 21 is the last slide in the affordability category.

We're proud to include $11.7 million in the Mayor's proposed budget for a 4.6% increase to contractors who are doing work for the Human Services Department.

This is sufficient to not only meet the city law, which requires that such contracts get a 2.6 percent increase to address inflationary pressures and make wage adjustments for workers in those contracts, but also an additional 2 percent market rate adjustment The last time there was a market rate adjustment was in 2023. It was also a 2 percent increase.

So as one of the public commenters noted, that's a 4 percent market increase on top of inflationary increases that are required by city law.

And lastly, on this slide, we are making investments in the mayor's proposed budget to address food deserts.

There's a lot more categories and dollars that I'll talk about in the federal response slide, but I want to call out here $140,000 for expansion of the number of weeks that the farmer's market in Lake City will be in operation.

This is sufficient to expand the number of time that the farmer's market can serve people by 15 weeks a year.

And finally, I'll call out $700,000 for a pilot investment that would support small businesses, corner stores, and bodegas, primarily focusing on neighborhoods that are Described as food deserts because they don't have access to fresh fruit and vegetables and supermarkets generally.

And some areas that are being threatened to become food deserts because grocery stores have been closing.

The next slide, slide number 22, is describing investments in public safety, and here I want to highlight the proceeds of the public safety sales tax that I mentioned earlier in the strategies to get it back into balance.

There'd be about $39 million that flowed from this tax.

We assume spending that money in the mayor's proposed budget.

The biggest investment area is the care operations and expansion, the community assisted response and engagement department.

And here we have about $7 million to double the size of the crisis care responder team and also extend the hours of operation to 20 hours a day.

So they'd be on the streets helping people from five in the morning until one in the morning.

It would also add a little over $2.5 million to expand 911 call response staffing, and this would add 12 911 call takers and also some administrative staff to support that work and some managers.

And then finally, in this category, $15 million of the public safety sales tax would be used for ongoing operations to stabilize funding.

for the CARE team, and that's allowed under the state law that enabled us to propose and, with your support, enact the Public Safety Sales Tax.

It can, and in this case, is being used to help support base operations.

The next category is almost $6 million for new treatment investments.

There is a range of different kind of investments we're talking about, including but not limited to $1.8 million for the Thunderbird Treatment Center that we would be contributing to, we would not be the sole funder of.

And then there's also expanded treatment and detox investments.

There's $5 million for maintaining, let everyone advance with dignity or LEAD contract.

The LEAD has stopped taking referrals in Seattle, not because they don't have enough funding from Seattle, State funding that they were receiving that helped support their operations is no longer available.

So this would backfill that state funding so that LEED can continue the work that they are doing in the Seattle area.

The last two categories of public safety sales tax investments are in the fire department.

There's $2.1 million for additional firefighter recruits.

This would bring us from 80 recruits planned and funded otherwise to a new total of 100 firefighter recruits And the second of the two is $1.5 million for additional Health99 post-overdose treatment services.

The next slide on public safety is an investment that acknowledges that the city has been very successful in its efforts to expand the number of police officers.

We had anticipated, in the 25 adopted budget and again in the 26 endorsed budget, having 15 net new police officers come on board.

And when I say net new, I mean after accounting for the number of hires and the number of separations.

We expected there to be 15 new officers per year.

We were much more successful in hiring than we originally anticipated.

And we were much more successful in keeping staff so that there were fewer separations than we expected.

Both of those meant that instead of having 15 in 25, 15 net new officers, we're now expecting to have 91 net new officers in 25. That's 76 more sworn officers, which is absolutely good news.

It's good for public safety, and it's good for our ability to deploy the officers the way we really want to.

The only thing it's bad for is the bottom line, because it costs more than the 25 adopted budget anticipated.

It will cost an additional $13 million for those 76 net new officers that weren't anticipated in the adopted budget.

Similarly, in 2026, there are 71 net new officers now expected to be on board that weren't included in the endorsed budget.

That will cost an additional $26 million in 2026. And you might wonder why $26 million is more than $13 million, and that's because there are The officers hired for a portion of the year in 25 are on board for a full year in 26, and then we're hiring more officers in 26. So it compounds, if you will.

If there are no questions, I'll move ahead.

This is the last slide on the public safety category.

We have some investments in removable vehicle barriers.

I read in some press coverage that we were removing vehicle barriers.

That's not the case.

We are installing removable vehicle barriers that will help with pedestrian safety.

In the Pike Place market area, about $2 million.

And in various places in the Seattle Center, a little over $1.5 million.

The next item is supporting infrastructure and security improvements for grocery stores.

The mayor has included $1 million for this purpose.

And the last category are a range of neighborhood place-based investments.

And here we're talking about a little over $4 million for SDOT, the Seattle Department of Transportation.

to continue street cleaning activities, including litter abatement, pressure washing, and alleyway cleaning in the downtown area, and extending elsewhere where possible.

That's continuing work that they were already doing in 2025, but without explicit budget authority.

They were effectively reducing their investments elsewhere in order to support this work.

We are recognizing the good outcomes that flowed from this work and affirmatively adding budget to support that work.

Next item, subcategory here is $4 million to improve public safety and promote growth and encourage neighborhood renewal outside of downtown.

And we're specifically calling out neighborhoods such as Lake City and Little Saigon, and we would love to do it in other neighborhoods, resources permitting.

If there is good news in the October revenue forecast, I would heartily encourage you to consider additional money in this area so we can expand to yet more neighborhoods.

Next is the One Seattle Graffiti Plan.

We're adding a little more than $1.5 million to expand and solidify the work that has been happening in this area and adding staff to support that work.

And speaking of adding staff, we're adding three FTEs in the Park Ranger Program to expand the work that the Park Rangers are doing.

The next slide, 25, addresses the mayor's proposed budget investments in reducing homelessness.

I want to point out here that the mayor's proposed budget is, again, a record investment in reducing homelessness.

The total spending that is proposed is $225 million.

The major categories there are in the Human Services Department, the biggest item being the contract we have supporting the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

And then a range of other programs in HSD.

And then there's $56 million of support for reducing homelessness outside of HSD, the largest one being in the Office of Housing, for a range of investments that help stabilize renters and reduce the number of people who would become homeless without that investment.

The big move that is included in the Mayor's proposed budget is adding $7.8 million to create and operate three new shelters in 2026. Those would be non-congregate shelters, and we would expect there to be 155 new units of shelters that include both the investment to create and supply all of the shelters with one-time investments, but also ongoing wraparound services for the people staying there.

We would, in the mayor's proposed budget, maintain operations for nearly 2,900 existing units of shelter.

And the last slide in my deck is a high-level overview of the federal response.

There's a little over $2 million of funding that's not shown on this slide for administrative costs to stand up and operationalize the changes to the B&O tax.

The remaining 28 million of the up to 30 million bucks for this purpose is to address the needs that are caused by changes at the federal government.

And here we're talking about both budget changes and policy changes.

I'll remind the Budget Committee that on your agenda this afternoon, representatives from the Mayor's Office and I will return with a more in-depth presentation on this proposal.

But I did want to highlight the categories of federal response.

The federal government is attacking and threatening immigrants and refugees.

The mayor's proposed budget would increase support by the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs by $4 million.

This is a 70 percent increase over the 2025 adopted budget, a very significant investment.

The federal government is rolling back SNAP payments to hungry families and making cuts to food banks.

The mayor's proposed budget would add a little over $10 million to help feed poor families just from this fund source.

There's another $2 million in other categories of funding.

The federal government is decreasing emergency rental assistance.

The mayor's budget proposal would add $4 million for emergency rental assistance, bringing our total investment up to $11.5 million from all sources for this purpose in the 2026 proposed budget.

And finally, the federal government attempted to withdraw funding for continuum of care support for those in permanent supportive housing and those living in shelters.

At least for now, the courts, in part with the support from the City of Seattle, have stopped the feds from moving forward with these reductions.

Mayors' proposed budget would add nine and almost a half million dollars to ensure the city has the resources to backfill at least some of the federal dollars if that becomes necessary during the course of the year.

That is the end of my presentation.

I'd be happy to address any questions that the chair or the committee members may have.

Thank you, Director Eder, for the robust presentation that you just provided.

I'll call on colleagues, and thank you, colleagues, for holding your questions.

We absolutely over-indexed the time this morning on public comment, so I think we're running a little ahead of schedule.

As I said, I will put out these markers of where we are in the schedule.

We do have time.

Thank you for the napkins as I spilled my water.

And so, colleagues, if you've got questions, Please, now is the time.

I will go last.

I've got a bunch.

So if you don't have questions, I do, but want to just check the Zoom room and out here, Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I have many, many questions, actually.

But I know we have a timing issue, so I'm going to do my best to at least ask the questions.

And then if I need to get responses offline, that's fine.

All right.

So first, I just want to make a note that, well, A couple points.

One is we just got this budget delivered Tuesday afternoon.

It is now Thursday morning, so it was a day and a half ago, and we had not been given this budget ahead of time, so I did not know what was in here.

So, you know, as we dig into the 700-page budget, I'm sure we will all have many questions, but we will need the time to dig into the specific departments with their budgets.

So wanting to state that for the record so the viewing public understands where council is with this particular budget and why we might not have more questions today than we will have as the process goes on.

Also, secondly, I want to say that generally speaking, the city moved to a biennium system to make things a little more predictable, streamlined.

I know in the past how We have tackled bienniums.

We passed this budget the first year of the biennium for both years, and then on the midway point, we generally, for the second year of the biennium, generally are truing up the first year.

It's not really meant to be a let's start You know, many new programs and things of that nature.

It's more about sustainability of that biennial budget.

What I see initially, my response to this budget is there's a lot of new ads that I was surprised to see given we're in the second year.

This would be for the second year of the biennium.

So wanted to just also state that for the record for folks that may be watching.

I have some questions about the deficit because I think that seems to be a bit of a moving number.

But I know that we will have our central staff give a presentation later this afternoon, Director Noble, on this.

So I think I'll reserve my questions related to that until we get the full picture.

Yeah, and I would say that this afternoon we'll give you a little bit more information about the .1 sales tax.

The analysis of the ongoing deficit is a piece that we're continuing to work on, and when we come back with the central staff presentations, we'll lead off with an overview, and that will be a key component.

Great.

Thank you, Director Noble.

So I'll, like I said, reserve questions for when we get that presentation from our central staff and can have a better picture.

I will say, Director Eder, on page 10, on the early response piece, the hiring freeze waiver process for departments, it would be helpful to know as part of this budget process how many positions were given waivers, just so we know what the picture actually looks like.

You know, we have no idea looking at this how many positions those were How many waivers were given?

Things of that nature.

That's just factual information that it would be helpful to know.

Likewise, on the second point with the new contracts, what does this mean?

How many contracts did you not move forward on?

What were they?

What did we not get because we stalled on that?

I have no idea.

And that is, that I think is really critical information for us to know to get that big picture.

Same with the underspend to departments' budgets.

What was that underspend?

Is this typically every year, like you indicated later in the presentation, there was, I think you said, $30 million of underspend in 2025 that we're predicting.

But it looks like what I would call, my words, Your words, a natural underspend in that you didn't ask departments to withhold money.

That's just money they didn't use, which typically happens at the end of every year for one reason or another.

So that is quite high underspend, however.

And so it'd be really great to know what departments didn't spend their money and why.

It's really helpful to know in the context of budget setting for the future years, particularly when we're in this constant conversation about We don't have enough money to do the things we want to do.

So I want to get information about that.

And then I want to ask you a question, something you said that I'm not sure I heard correctly.

So I heard you say you generated, departments generated ideas for what would be available if needed in terms of cuts, but that you did not need to make those proposed reductions.

Did I hear that correctly?

What I was trying to communicate was we didn't have to make all of those reductions.

We did reduce the 26 endorsed budget spending.

We didn't reduce it by all of the ideas that were on the table.

We picked and chose selected items that we thought were going to be minimally impactful to public-facing services.

So you reduced from the 2026 endorsed budget, but then you increased because we have additional things in the 2026 proposed budget, then necessitating, which I will get to later, additional tax revenue.

Yes, I think that's true.

I don't want to leave with the impression that it was a trade-off of cutting in order to add.

There are some new revenues that were put into the mix that required or demanded some new spending.

So here I'm thinking about the B&O tax that has some federal response.

That's $30 million of New responses that weren't anticipated in the endorsed budget and we think are warranted and are exactly what the Council wanted us to do in passing the B&O tax with a subsection that had $30 million for that purpose.

Similarly, the public safety sales tax It could have all been used for backfill, but we think that the needs in public safety, as I described, the need to expand the care department and the need for ultimately additional funding for the police department are new needs that we didn't otherwise have resources for, but these are new revenues that allow us to address the city's public safety needs.

to that in a minute.

Thank you for that.

I do want to know what you cut.

I understand you're adding things and you're saying that the justification for that is some things that might be needed because of the federal.

I actually have questions about the federal piece because I'm not clear how much money we are losing from the feds that we're trying to backfill for.

And I want to better understand that.

I think it's important since we're making the case for why we're raising additional revenue.

In part, it's because of that.

So thanks for clarifying that you took some reductions, not all reductions.

I'd like to know what those were.

Thank you for that.

I'm not answering each one as you go, but I just want to let you know that I'm noting the question.

We will follow up with all of this information.

Great.

Thank you.

I assume so.

I don't want to take up the full time here, but I do think it's important that the public knows what is on our minds as we go through this exercise.

I did note on the fiscal highlights on page 13, a lot of this was new.

Items that necessitated new revenue.

So again, less about we had to reduce things and now we're backfilling and more of this was new items.

So I'm going to dig into that piece so you don't need to respond to that now.

I do have a question on page number 19, and I'll be looking at this, and that is, this increase in our housing, we all know we need more affordable housing.

It has increased substantially in the last 10 years.

I'd like to know how many units in each of those years were added and vacancy rates about those units over time.

All right.

I'm going to make a general point about by my calculation, from this $8.9 billion proposed budget, about $2.5 billion is predicated on either The BNO passing, the FEP levy passing, and a councilmanic sales tax passing.

So that is about a third of the proposed budget is relying on either voter-approved tax increases and then the smaller portion being the sales tax increase that that you're requesting council to pass.

So that's just a statement because that's just, it is what it is.

But I do want the public to know.

That's what we're looking at.

On page 24, the park rangers, three new park rangers.

I'm not sure given all the public safety issues across the parks with three, and I am very appreciative of the park rangers.

So this is no disrespect to the park rangers or the parks department.

But three additional, where are those going to be deployed and what really is this going to do to help?

Because we have many more parks than three additional park rangers can manage for.

So need more information about that.

On page 25 I see we have our investment in the King County Regional Homelessness Authority at $125 million.

I'd like to know what the county is giving in that regard.

I know this is a joint effort and I'd like to find out more about the plans for the Regional Homelessness Authority.

Because I know we've had some challenges there that have not been quite yet solved for.

And then I'm curious, the $7.8 million to create new shelters, which I know we need new shelters, is this coming from the housing levy?

Or is this coming from this new proposed revenue, either BNO, sales, et cetera?

This is a general fund-supported activity.

So not from the housing levy?

Is there a reason we're not using some of the housing levy towards shelter?

Well, we can talk offline about that.

On the federal response slide number 26, I'm running through this really fast, and I'm almost done, Chair, so thank you for letting me get all my questions out.

Federal response and using $28 million of the B&O tax to support federal response, I was a little confused.

This $4 million to support the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, that would be about, I think I read somewhere, a 60% increase to their budget.

I see $300K going to rapid response legal and know your rights, which I know that's directly related to the federal response.

What I saw in the budget was $1.8 million going to existing programs and then $1.35 to new initiatives, and it was unclear that this Full $4 million was actually going to federal response.

And it was less clear whether the $300K going to federal response, what data do we have to support that?

Meaning is that the number?

Is more needed?

I don't know.

I don't have a good sense of are we meeting the need in that space?

So that's another question I have about that.

I want to make sure that we are clear.

that we are meeting, we're able to meet that need.

Sorry.

And then Chair, just one last point, and thank you for indulging all my questions.

So I hope to follow up on all those questions, Director Eder.

And then a general note about this particular budget proposal and the conversation about Well, you know what, I will save that for this afternoon because, again, Director Noble, I know that we have our central staff going to come to present about the budget forecast and address that.

So I'll save that question for then.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Kendall.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I also wanted to thank Director Eater for your presentation and before that, Director Noble and Mr. Chow and Mr. McKnight too as we get into this budget process.

I just wanted to make a few points leveraging this briefing.

First, again, thank you, Director Eder, because we've had a number of meetings, usually public safety-focused, but I really appreciate the engagement, plus with elements of the mayor's team and other departments as well.

First point, and piggybacking a little bit on the Vice Chair, talking about the biennial budget process, yes, we're in 26, but we also need to review with an eye of setting ourselves up for success and with the 27-28 biennium period as well.

I think that's something that needs to be underlying what we do over the next couple of months.

In a general sense, too, I think we need to review the ability to work the funding, to digest the funding, and the ability to carry out the mission.

Concern, it's like Econ 101, if we put a lot of money to something but if the system can't digest that, you know, too much money going after too few goods or services can have an inflationary aspect.

And I think over time, over the last dozen years plus, you know, some of the policies that we've done, which are good in themselves, It can also be inflationary.

We're talking about affordability.

We need to be mindful of those pieces.

Under the rubric of good governance, I just wanted to make a few points.

One is we need to be mindful of the recent King County audits results.

We can't have that happen here in Seattle.

Doing our due diligence and I know each of us from like our committee assignments and so forth are looking to do that.

But we need to make sure that we're good to go.

Kind of to the points I was talking about.

First, community safety.

The changes are coming on.

I want to congratulate Director Kim, and I should add Chief Deputy Mayor Washington, because I think their briefing and the work that they've done, the changes that they've done, kind of go to this good governance point.

And so I really appreciate their work, and we'll follow up and engage again from our due diligence.

But I think it's important, I think it's important to address the scene between public safety and public health, and public safety and human services.

As respect to community safety, and I was really appreciative of them giving their briefing to the Public Safety Committee, that's a step forward.

And it kind of goes as a positive example of what we're looking to do with the budget and good governance overall.

I will also take the opportunity to thank Director Winkler-Chin and members of the Mayor's Office.

For our discussions related to the Seattle Housing Plan, I know there's going to be, I think tomorrow, we'll get a document related to a Seattle Housing Investment Plan that we've been speaking to first through a slide and then I've been obviously speaking to it on a regular basis.

We need to understand the revenue pieces and how they interact.

We talk about affordable housing at the 60 AMI, it's like, hey, Okay, we're good there, but how about 30%?

And looking at these revenue pieces, we need a strategy.

And I'm hoping that the Seattle Housing Plan does it.

I think I will receive it tomorrow, will receive it tomorrow.

But that kind of goes to the ability to work the funding, work these pieces, and the transparency also helpful because there's different characterizations of the monies.

As we look at, like on slide 19, We look at these monies, and we have to understand it, and we have to understand our ability and our strategy behind working that funding, and I think that's important.

So I thank, again, Director Winkler-Chin for her work, because the first phase of this has definitely started, and I think it's important, so thank you.

I also want to thank Director Ager.

I think you're on point regarding rainy day emergency funds.

We need to be doing our work that's needed there.

These funds need to be available in the event of a great recession or a pandemic.

Every year is not a emergency year.

We have to think of those funds as for That kind of level of disruption, whether a great recession example or the pandemic.

And I think we need to be thinking of that as we look and work through this budget process.

And one last piece I wanted to make too, and this kind of goes to the funding pieces, is we cannot rely on a wish strategy as it relates to trying to create revenue.

For the old adage, you know, for every action, there's a reaction.

As I know, because I know people who work for Amazon who now work in Bellevue instead of Seattle, we need to be mindful of the effects and the possibilities, particularly because we have a lot of our neighboring jurisdictions that are now going to be even easier to come as we work through our transportation with ST3 and bringing ST2 online.

Where people can live and work in different places.

And so we have to be mindful of that, and this is a good governance piece too.

I'm not saying don't pursue these pieces, but as we go through these steps, we need to be looking at the, as I like to call, the second and third order effects.

Because it could have major impacts on our revenue.

So we may say, hey, yes, we're going to have this revenue, but in fact we may not.

Because like I said, for every action, there can be a reaction.

And so again, thank you, Chair Strauss.

I just want to specifically thank Director Eder, the mayor's team, the various deputy mayors, chief of public safety office, Natalie Walton Anderson, but also the departments.

We have nine public safety departments or offices and a commission, and we've been working these areas and ensuring from a budget perspective that we're good.

So, Chair, we've kind of done many structural reform within the public safety area, and so I just wanted to acknowledge that.

And thank all those involved that we've been engaging with over the course of the year.

And with that, Chair, thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Sacco.

All right.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And I want to thank Director Eder, Director Noble, Mr. Chow for being here, and Director Eder for sharing the high-level overview of the mayor's proposed budget today.

A couple questions.

I guess first turning to slide 26, the federal response portion, noting the $28 million of the proposed B&O tax proceeds would be used principally for those four investment categories.

I would just say that I think those are the Directionally, the correct and appropriate federal backfill items and reflect the highest priorities that align with the city's values and the greatest needs.

The federal government is Cutting first and asking questions later, having tremendous impacts on people's everyday lives.

Although on the one hand, we can't endeavor to be all things to all people at all time, we do have a unique opportunity to step up and help out and support, including by backfilling these critical, vital services that so many everyday Seattleites rely on.

And I think this broad category of investments here are directly reflective of that.

One of them, for example, is the immigrant communities.

Special shout out.

I want to thank Councilmember Rivera for adding that as an authorized spending category.

On the $10.3 million in additional food investments, food is the most basic of needs that we all need.

$10.3 million there.

How much of that, and I know on an earlier slide you talked about some of the other sort of food investments and food deserts, including a pilot to support opening and expansion of small businesses, corner stores, et cetera, farmers market expansion in Lake City.

But of this 10.3 million in food investments, how much of that would be devoted towards Food banks and food shelves across our city.

Chair, would you like me to answer?

Please.

Yes.

Food banks would get an additional $3 million out of that $10 million that you were referencing, Councilmember.

That would bring our total investments in food banks to $6.5 million in the Mayor's proposed budget.

So it would roughly double our investment in food banks from 3.5 up to 6.5.

Okay, thank you.

So the year-over-year gain is 3.5 million extra on top of last year's, totaling 6.5 million for food banks.

Just a little bit different.

The add is 3 million.

The base was 3.5.

Okay, got it, got it.

Thank you.

And of that 4 million for to support tenants, emergency rental assistance.

I had a great meeting the other day with members of the Seattle Renters Commission.

They, among other things, expressed support for rental assistance, but also being paired with tenant services.

And so just curious, how much of that $4 million, if any, or just other portions of the budget to the extent relevant, What would be used to fund tenant services?

The emergency rental assistance at $4 million is an increase on a $7.5 million base.

So that would bring our investment up to $11.5 million in total for the proposed budget.

Thank you.

Does that investment include Tenant services, funding and investments for tenant services specifically, or is that just rental assistance?

I will have to follow up with you.

I believe it is just rental assistance, but I would prefer to get you a more precise answer and a follow-up.

Thank you.

That would be helpful.

And then moving on to slide 24, public safety slide.

Note the neighborhood placed investment.

There's that bullet bucket there, that $4 million reflected in that second bullet to improve public safety, promote economic growth.

Does the scope of that investment include neighborhood cleanups and revivals for those three areas, or those areas?

Is that the same?

Is that intended to be the same thing as, you know, in our pre-budget meeting you all had with my office recently?

We talked about some of those cleanup services going towards Pioneer Square, I think as part of the broader DAC cleanup effort.

Is that the same category of investments that would also go and cover Pioneer Square, which is, by the way, our back door for our front porch, really, for all the upcoming FIFA activities and efforts?

Yes, Council Member, that's correct.

It would expand the downtown activation team work that's been happening in the core of downtown to Pioneer Square, to the CID, and to the other neighborhoods that I mentioned, Lake City and Little Saigon.

We would love to be able to do yet more neighborhoods.

If the funding allows it, we will.

If there's more money to be allocated to this purpose, Then we'll have more ability to expand to other neighborhoods as well.

Got it.

Thank you for clarifying.

It's good to know that Pioneer Square will specifically be included as part of that $4 billion of neighborhood cleanup restoration efforts.

All right.

That is all.

I have no further questions, comments at this time, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sacca.

Council President Nelson.

You're on mute.

Thank you very much.

One general question, then I want to dig into rental support.

So how much total was what was the total amount that was cut when you asked all the departments to take various percentages of cuts?

Can you do you have that number?

I do not have it at the top of my fingertips, but I can follow up with that information.

Council President, you're asking when we asked for reductions in the 26 budget, I told you that we asked for a range between 2 percent and 8 percent.

You're asking what that total amount was?

Yeah, what would that represent in dollars?

I can give you an estimate, but I'd rather follow up with a more precise number.

Okay, yeah, I always want to make sure that we are spending our money wisely.

And when the mayor asks for reductions, it's good to know what is being reduced because it does indicate what programs we might have approved last year are not going to get funded, etc.

So thank you for that.

Digging into the Rental assistance on page 25 under the investments in reducing homelessness, there are 36 million in city managed programs and included in that is rental assistance.

I'm assuming you mean we're paying people's rent, right?

So if that's correct, how much of the 36 does that represent?

I'm not sure I fully understood the question.

Could I ask you to perhaps summarize?

Okay.

Yeah.

Rental assistance under the $36 million bullet point, what form of rental assistance and how much is that?

OK.

Well, the information I have readily at my fingertips is that $36 million, the largest categories, are $11.5 million for rental assistance that provides folks who are in need of help paying back rent or who have had late payments and are at risk of eviction, but for Some help from the city to keep them from being kicked out of their rental units.

There's $9 million that is included in HSD.

I mentioned the last category of federal response is effectively a what-if the federal government follows through on its threats and its attempts that have been thus far stopped by the courts.

We would be able to backfill a portion of the continuum of care funding that goes to support permanent supportive housing and shelter services.

And then the $4 million that's added for emergency rental assistance is also in the mix.

I am I will note for the record a strong supporter of direct rental assistance because it is it prevents homelessness.

I mean, if you can keep someone in their home, then it's it.

Well, it's the right thing to do.

And then also it prevents the the need for the more and more.

Housing projects to be built to deal with people who end up homeless and then sometimes fall into addiction on the street and then downward spiral.

So I just want to make sure that the record is clear.

Okay, so I'll listen more carefully when we're talking about this category later in the week.

One question is, when I was being briefed, well, back up.

Was last year's, I believe that Council allocated about $3 million.

We were getting down to the wire and then we sort of, we depleted these, the jumpstart reserves for rental assistance.

And do you know whether or not that was dispersed?

I'll have to follow up with you, Council President, on details about the spending that actually happened.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

That's it.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, any other questions, comments?

Council Member Rivera, I see you have your hand second time, so I'm gonna share my comments ahead of that.

But any other comments right now?

I'm seeing none.

So I'm gonna just kind of tick down through my questions here.

Director Eder, if you want to start on...

Well, I'll just start with my comments.

I want to thank you first and foremost for doing everything possible to take layoffs off the table.

I know that they were on the table until the last minute because there were some really hard budget decisions that were made.

Some of my colleagues here have shared about the different tax proposals, et cetera.

But the benefit here is that you've crafted a budget that is able to respond to the federal uncertainty, that is able to serve Seattleites, and that is able to keep our city workers working.

And why that's important is because the folks that choose to work for city or municipality or county or state are here because of the third bottom line.

Which is service.

Service to city, service to county, service to nation.

So often you can see a similar job that's posted at the city and you can make twice as much if you're going to the private sector.

And that's part of why layoffs are a regular occurrence in the private sector and an irregular occurrence in the public sector.

So I want to thank you for doing all you could to preserve everyone's job.

Understanding that Unfilled positions may be abrogated or reduced, and I think that is a good balance there.

You raised the items of uncertainty, noting that from the October last year to April of this year, revenue forecasts, there was a high deal of uncertainty.

And then from April to August, the volatility again created, it felt like a pendulum swinging back and forth.

In this budget, we have additional uncertainty regarding the ballot initiatives.

And as was mentioned, we depleted our reserves last year to pay for rental assistance to keep people in their homes from becoming homeless and to make sure that they are able to stay housed and be able to buy groceries as well.

These are incredibly important things.

And colleagues, for your understanding in everything that I do, I have a, Council Member Sokka might like this one, primary, auxiliary, contingency and emergency routes.

And so colleagues, please know that as I'm crafting the chair's package, and as we're walking through all of this, we should all be looking at this as, You know, best case scenario, what is the route that we're taking?

If we have to, you know, take another step to our auxiliary or our contingency route, hopefully we won't have to use our emergency route.

But just understanding that the uncertainty that our nation has felt since the chair's package of last year has been more than I think I've ever seen in my lifetime.

But again, I'm a couple years younger than everyone else here.

So with that, not everyone.

My apologies.

My apologies.

Not everyone.

And also bringing up that this is an endorsed budget.

And with every endorsed budget, every year changes are made in the same way that we make changes mid-year with our mid-year supplemental, that we make changes with our carry forward and our encumbered funds.

I mean, this is the iterative nature of budgeting because if we got stuck in the mud two years ago and the whole world changed around us and stuck to a plan that we made two years ago, we would not be serving Seattleites to the best of our ability.

Specifically in this budget, we have to make changes due to the economic volatility that we've discussed.

We have to respond to the federal government volatility.

And we have to take a look to see what's working, what needs improvement.

Are we still engaging in programmatic activities from pre-pandemic?

And now we have to create program activities that address the federal issues that we're experiencing right now.

At this time, Budget Director Eder, if we could go to slide 16. This is a very helpful slide.

This is a transparent slide.

It shows that there is still a problem in the future, and that's why we will continue to engage in budget reform here at the Council.

There is a gap in 2027. And noting that we've had a running gap in the out year for many years.

Director Eder, you did a very good job last year of almost collapsing that gap entirely until this revenue forecast uncertainty that we've experienced this year.

That, colleagues, is why this year's budget is so much more difficult.

We engaged in robust budget reform last year, and we are going to continue doing that.

But the easy decisions that were hard We're already made.

So now the hard decisions that are hard are what are before us.

I do want to ask, can you remind the body about the inflation levels over the last few years?

And through this slide, I know that they have spiked, I believe as high as 5.5 or 6.5%.

They've dipped to has been as low as 3%.

If I can recall, I'm doing this all off the top of my head.

Can you give us a picture of how inflation plays on this chart?

General inflation has been, I think, as high as 8 or 9 percent in the early 20s.

Dr. Noble may be able to fill in some.

One year at 9 percent, if I recall.

So the average over the past few years has been well above the recent history prior.

And I did ask my staff to take a look at how that green bar would have changed purely from general inflation, and I was assured that it would track very closely.

In fact, I asked them to prove the point, and they demonstrated to me that we are actually slightly under the level of generalized inflation.

About $100 million under what the 2019 spending would have looked like had we just applied straight inflation to that level of spending.

Yes, thank you.

And I will note that part of how we got to a structural budget The whole that we addressed last year and continue to address this year was from those years of 2015 to 2020 and even a little bit before that, we were the fastest growing city in the nation.

Not only were we receiving construction sales tax, we were also receiving the property tax plus new construction.

That is what built a budget.

With 2020 and the pandemic and work from home ceasing and our construction boom dropping, the JumpStart tax is what kept services being able to be applied to Seattleites, kept a lot of our basic services.

And we saw that last year in some of the work that we did, that without the JumpStart fund, We would be in a very difficult position of cutting a large portion of the services that we provide to Seattleites that they rely on.

And that said, it is intended to try to get us back into a place of a stable economy.

Again, last year we thought we would be there, yet for the federal government, we are still in this period where we are waiting and relying on the Jumpstart Fund because Because we are waiting for this economy to take back up like it did before.

I don't believe that we will step right back into the fastest growing city in the nation.

And that's okay.

But we are weight pining for that growth to restart.

Because that will, again, help our budget.

If you can tick on to slide 19. Did I get?

Yes, this one.

So can you share with me, and maybe it's in there and I'm having trouble seeing it, the difference between home ownership funding and the multifamily funding?

I see that these are from funding sources, the levy, Jumpstart, and MHA.

That's right.

Chair Strauss, this slide doesn't break out the types of spending that's happening.

Rather, it breaks out the categories of revenue that's used to support the overall spending.

I'd be happy to follow up with you and get you detailed information for any of these years or all of them if you so choose.

It would be easiest to do the 2026 proposed budget, more and more work as we go back 10 years, but we'll do whatever you need.

Happy to wait for Office of Housing's presentation, noting that in 2015 they had $52 million, and today they have $349 million.

I think that this speaks to Council Member Kettle's request for the ship shape Plan to make sure that our Seattle Housing Investment Plan is serving Seattleites in the way that it needs and that home ownership is a really key component to that.

Building that house equity, that financial equity to be able to move through the different economic rungs of our society is incredibly important because so often things like a down payment are the barrier to purchasing a home because a two-bedroom apartment can be the same price as a mortgage in the city, right?

And that barrier of a down payment is what stops a person from being able to step out of rental and into home ownership.

I'll say here that housing money should not be used for shelter and come back to it later.

If you want to tick on to slide 21, I just want to thank you for increasing our contractor pay rate.

These are people that would otherwise be city employees, but yet for the nature of our relationship.

They are colleagues doing city work.

on behalf of the city for Seattleites.

And that discrepancy between the pay rates of city employees and our contractors, it still exists.

And I appreciate you continuing to be focused on minimizing and reducing that gap.

If you wanna tick on to slide 22. You know, it's not lost on me that, The phrase that is commonly used by our current president was used first by President Reagan in the 1980s.

I took that moment to refrain from saying it because I don't want to beetle juice the moment.

But just to say that many of the issues that we're experiencing on our streets, whether it's mental health or substance abuse or housing instability, it started in the 1980s.

And we are now experiencing generational trauma and cities, counties and states are being told that it's their fault and it is our responsibility.

I'm not here to put fault.

I am here to say that the federal government should be doing their part And I'm not gonna wait for them to continue serving Seattleites and the people who the federal government have left on our streets.

And I just wanna, I note this because the lead capacity is critical.

You know, I know of people who our unified care team works with that have been kicked out of shelter, of tiny home villages.

And that is bad and it sounds bad.

But in 2019, we couldn't have even gotten them into shelter.

And so being in that place where we are now, they've been able to get into shelter and kicked out, that means that they need a different intervention.

And this is that intervention.

We have seen that people who are not successful in tiny home villages are successful in these lead units.

And we look at the right-of-way model that the state has used where, And a lot of their success was predicated based on having these lead beds and access to housing across the entire state.

And that's why I believe that they still need to do more.

And thank you for reopening the capacity to have more referrals because we've seen some issues where we aren't able to address some of the issues on the streets.

And that is because we don't have a type appropriate shelter That comes with the resources that are needed to stabilize that individual.

We haven't had access to them, so I appreciate you putting this in.

I'll also say that our expanding of care, Seattle Fire Department recruits and Health 99, this is how we care for the people who have been left behind by the federal government since the 1980s.

I really appreciate you focusing in on that.

I do want to tick on to slide 23.

Chair Strauss, do you mind, just on this slide, I was remiss in not thanking the Council President and Council Member Kettle for their partnership in moving forward the public safety sales tax proposal that enables us to, in this budget, propose spending that would allow for those things that you were Highlighting in your remarks.

So thank you to them for their partnership and to you all for your consideration of the proposal.

Thank you.

On this slide, I just want to dig in here a little bit more on the endorsed versus actual.

You've got the revised budget and I believe YE SUP means year-end supplemental.

Is that correct?

Or maybe walk me through the different lines on this.

Yeah, happy to do that.

YE is year-end supplemental.

So that's the additional spending authority that we are requesting and proposing for 2025. There'll be some other elements in there, but that's one of the biggest and most important ones.

So just looking one year at a time, in 2025, the adopted budget assumed that we would hire 120 new officers.

The second row shows what our current projection is.

We now expect to hire 172 new officers, so 52 net officers.

We anticipated that 105 sworn officers would leave the city in 2025 as of the time of the adopted budget.

We now, based on updated projections through this month, anticipate that only 81 will leave.

So that's 25 or so, 24, I guess, additional officers who are on staff.

So those two combined means that we had funded in the adopted budget a net increase in the total number of officers of 15 police officers.

Instead, we now expect to have 91 net new officers in 2025. The difference is 76 officers who weren't funded because we weren't expecting to have them in 2025. So that's why we have to...

We have to support those officers with wages, benefits, uniforms, use of cars, et cetera, for a total of $13 million in 2025. So we are proposing, along with the 26 proposed budget, there'll be separate legislation that increases appropriations For 2025, in part, part of that mix of things is $13 million for the Seattle Police Department.

I won't walk through in detail the 2026 line items.

They are similar in their both direction and amounts.

Bottom line is we have a new expectation of needing to fund the costs of 71 extra police officers in 2026 for a total of $26 million between 25 new officers who were hired and still on in 26, on board in 26, and the new officers who will be coming on board who weren't expected for 2026.

Thank you.

Just to make it a little higher level, I see Director Noble has something to share and then I'll kind of summarize what I think that I heard.

Do you have something to share?

I have a potential question, which I don't expect an answer to now, which is- Then let me finish this line of thought then.

So Director Eder, what I'm reading high level from you is that beyond hiring more people, more officers than we anticipated, and I'll say that over the course of the years, I don't think we've ever hired more officers than we anticipated, and that goes back even before 2020. Is that a correct understanding or are we in a new situation here or help me understand that?

I know that we are at a historic high by a long shot, by tens and tens of officers.

The total number 172 that we now expect to bring on is substantially higher than we've ever done before in The projections in years past I think have been overly rosy.

Reality has just shown that we either had more separations or fewer hires.

As a point of comparison, in 2024 we had one net new officer.

I don't recall how many officers we brought on board, We had roughly the same number of officers leave, and we ended up with one more officer than we started with between the beginning and the end of the year.

Compare that to 76, I'm sorry, a total of 91 in 2025, now anticipated, and 86 now anticipated for 2026.

And so beyond just hiring, breaking our expectations of recruitment and hiring, so recruitment and application being different than an officer that is hired and paid, beyond breaking that, we are also, we have fewer officers leaving the department than we expected.

That's correct.

And this is what, and I'm using your words, a good Problem, a good hard problem to have.

Maybe you didn't use those words exactly, but that we're hiring the officers that we need.

However, that creates a budget challenge because officers' salaries are expensive.

That's right, Chair Strauss.

In fact, the only way to not have some tens of millions of dollars of extra costs is to stop hiring officers, which is certainly in our power to do, but we don't think that's the right thing to do.

We think the city needs more officers to deliver public safety for those who live and visit and work here.

And taking on to 2026, oftentimes, you know, when looking at, and I see Director Noble's still got his question, so I'll come back to that once I ask this final question here, saying that oftentimes for projections will take this year, the last two years and project the next year.

I see that your 2026 proposed budget has fewer estimated hires than we have engaged in this year.

Is that, Can you help me understand your thinking here?

Is it just being conservative, realistic, trying not to over-project because, as you said, it would have a financial impact on our budget?

Help me understand where we are here and going into next year.

Yeah.

So we rely on SPD to give us a staffing plan and provide that staffing plan to the council for your consideration as well.

We're trying not to game anything here.

The police department thinks these are the number of officers they're going to hire, and they are using their best estimate as to how many officers are expected to leave the city.

Both of those are not perfectly knowable, but based on trends and We have professional expertise.

We rely on the police department to give us their best look forward on both fronts.

This is what they gave us, and this is what we're funding.

Thank you.

Moving on to slide 24. I only have two more slides of questions.

And Director Noble, you have something.

A question for Director Eder that may be of interest to counsel.

I don't believe the 2026 cost of 26 million is actually the full ongoing cost of supporting what amounts to 147 additional officers, because, again, they'll still be bringing them online over the course of 2026. So understanding what that longer-term bow wave issue will, again, I think it's a useful context.

My understanding is that everyone will be supportive of the effort, but, again, in a sustainability context, understanding what that implied long-term cost is, I think, is also important.

Thank you.

I don't have a ready answer for exactly how much the cost will be for all of those officers in 2027, but I can assure you that that is part of the thinking about what the expected expenses will be in 2027, when we showed you that slide that had a $140 million gap between revenues and expenses.

Those expenses are anticipated to come in 2027.

So as follow-up to that, are there assumptions with regard to 2027 about continued expansion of the SPD force, or is it 2027 forecast of the deficit based on the staffing levels that would result from these hiring patterns at the end of 26?

I will follow up with an answer to that question.

I'd prefer to get you an accurate answer.

I appreciate that.

That's just for general awareness.

When the deficits are projected, the general pattern is to take what is the then assumed level of staffing across the city, not just at SPD, and price that out, if you will, or cost that out for the years going forward.

So in some sense, to the extent that this council and the mayor have been dedicated to expanding the police force, we've been understating the projected deficits because we haven't made those assumptions.

In the past, we haven't been able to do the hiring, so it was less of an issue.

But now that we can, it is important to recognize that if we continue to expand the police force, the implication is that the deficit is actually somewhat larger than we were projecting, because we're not assuming that in those underlying calculations.

Kind of a technical point, but potentially a significant financial one.

Very helpful.

Thank you, Director Noble.

If we could now take on to the next slide, 24. Just noting, and maybe this is a question for either SDOT or Seattle Center, whichever department has the removable barriers within their purview.

Maybe it's Office of Emergency Management.

As normal process is, you gave us the budget two days ago and we're digging through it now, so you've highlighted these removable barriers.

I just want to ask, and I'm happy to follow up, what is the use for them after FIFA?

I absolutely understand that Pike Place and Seattle Center will need to use them.

I raise this question because I've heard from the Farmers Market Association of Seattle, whether it's the West Seattle, the Ballard, the Fremont markets, That they want these.

And so even beyond just Seattle Center and Pike Place Market, is there, what is the plan for the use of these and how can we better protect these other markets as well?

I can more readily answer the first question, which, just to lay clear what I meant by removable, what I meant was they're not permanently affixed in the street.

They can be removed either taken up and out.

and then reinstalled as needed by different days and different hours of the day.

They are not able to be, or they potentially would be designed to retract into the, you know, lower down into the right of way.

They are not available to be repurposed and used in other locations.

It would take additional resources to install Different, similar systems in other locations.

We don't have budget to do that in the proposed budget, but with additional resources, we could.

Thank you.

So these are not the ones on wheels that you can stage around in different parts of the cities?

Correct.

Ones that either sink into the ground or you have to just manually move around.

Exactly right.

And so if we wanted to create these public safety measures for these other markets, we would have to find funding somewhere.

That's correct, sir.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Last slide, 25. I think the most important question here regarding our homelessness funding, I note that we have $125 million in the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

We have always been the largest financial supporter of the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

Colleagues, I don't want there to be any question and I will make it clear that I think that a regional approach to addressing homelessness is absolutely the only and the best way to go about it and the City of Seattle cannot continue to be the largest financial and land provider.

We are providing the financing to address homelessness around this county, and we're providing the land in which shelters and permanent supportive housing.

So we are doing for the county both sides of the coin.

I know that the mayor has raised the question in recent weeks about our regional partners either need to come to the table as partners with their own financial investment or identify the land within their or nearby their communities to take on this shelter or the permanent supportive housing.

I guess my question today is, if they don't come to the table, what's the plan with this $125 million?

That's a good question, one which I feel like I can give you not a full answer on.

I know that the mayor echoes the concerns that you have just expressed and is working with other members of the governing board, has challenged them to come to the table with their own resources or land.

to share in the regional approach to addressing homelessness, and we'll see what happens.

There are upcoming meetings, I believe, as soon as Friday of the governing board to provide some input and feedback to the mayor's proposal and challenge.

to cities throughout the region who he wants to be more involved in addressing the problem.

I can't say what will happen in the future because we don't yet have responses for what and how other municipalities will step up to the table.

Thank you, Director Eder.

I'll say that this situation feels so similar to what we experience oftentimes in Olympia where Cities and counties from Eastern Washington, east of the Cascades will complain about Western Washington, this, that or the other, while they rely on the tax dollars that we generate in Western Washington.

Much like the other 38 cities and towns of King County are benefiting from the investments that the city of Seattle are making in land and dollar to address homelessness.

I think you're getting my point that my patience is fried.

It's frayed and it is at this point we need our regional partners to step up either with financing or with land to address homelessness.

Thank you for listening to that.

We'll move on to just noting here, thank you for the 155 new units of shelter.

These units of shelter, their effectiveness rate is based on how quickly we can get people into housing.

This is why I don't believe that we should be using housing money for shelter, because it undercuts our ability to get people out of shelter.

If we had been in 2019 today where we were still using congregate shelter, Purely congregate shelter, not the enhanced congregate where you can come and go and leave your things, have a pet, have a partner, have your possessions.

That's a change from 2019. If we were still using congregate shelter, I would have a lot of problems with this.

But I'm really grateful that in the last six years, we have been able to make some really substantial changes in how we address homelessness.

And something that I heard in the Tribal Nations Summit last week was the need for people to transition from the streets.

to a safe place.

And that oftentimes requires a stay in shelter so that they can better be prepared to be in a permanent housing situation that may or may not have support.

And shelter, the right culturally appropriate shelter, the right shelter based on the acuity needs of the individual, whether it's substance abuse or mental health or the combination is how we find success in getting people into housing in a stable way.

That wasn't a question, that was just gratitude for funding these three additional shelters.

Thank you colleagues for hearing my take on this budget.

Any questions?

I know Council Member Rivera, you still have your hand.

May I?

Please.

Thank you, Chair.

A couple more questions that came up as I'm listening to my colleagues.

Well, one is, Chair, I think we all agree we need more housing.

It is unacceptable for people to be living on the streets, and this is why I think we also all agree we need more shelter to get people in from the outdoors.

And so when I'm asking, and we also have limited resources, so when I'm asking about the housing dollars, to me, getting people out of the street and into some type of shelter, somewhere where they can be indoors and safe, is why I'm asking about that.

And to me, I don't think it is incongruous with our goals to have more housing for everyone that needs it, because that is ultimately our goal that we cannot meet today.

So thank you for raising that, and I wanted to make clear why I was asking that question.

And then thank you, Councilmember Saka, for your comments about I don't always I think it's the Latina in me always say the things that I do.

But I did put the immigrant and refugee, you know, what we need to do for our residents and our communities here in Seattle in that piece of legislation because I very much do care.

So thank you for giving me a shout out there.

And this is why I'm also asking about this legal defense piece because I'm not clear where we're getting this, how much.

Do we need more?

Should we have put more resources to that versus something else?

I want more information about that because I want to make sure we are passing this to meet this federal need, and I'm not clear what the federal need is, and I don't want to be making decisions about something without knowing what that need is.

So I look forward to getting more details about that from you, Director Eder, and from our partner at OIRA, Director Mohammed.

So thank you for that.

And then I have a question about fund swaps.

If there were any fund swaps in the budget, and if so, what were they?

Which I know you probably won't be able to answer now.

Unless you can, that's great.

There are a number of times and ways that we rely on a variety of different funds to help relieve the general fund.

We will be working on the detailed answers to that in some of the presentations to come.

And we'll be identifying those for central staff, who in turn can provide you with the information.

I'd be happy to address sort of narrow and more direct questions.

But I sense that you're looking for a bigger picture perspective.

Thank you, direct reader, yes, and also always the details are important.

So thanks for this answering now and then for the more details later.

And then on page 24, going back to what my colleague raised in terms of the Public safety and neighborhood renewal, you know, that work, that cleanup work and other such work, that $4 million, and you come from Pioneer Square is in there.

I had questions about this myself in terms of University District, which I was going to follow up with, but since it was raised today, I want to make sure that constituents in the district know that I am.

I have my eye on the university district and that is an area of need.

I will say that our BIA there does a lot of work.

They used to have an outreach person that got taken and was in-house I think at HSD and I have questions about whether that Outreach person will return to the BIA because I think that that then enables them to do a lot of this work in the district.

We have a lot of issues, as you know, in the university district.

So, you know, want to make sure that they are also included in this.

And I understand what you mean about we can do more with more funds.

That's always true.

And with the funds we do have, we need to make sure that everyone who needs some support can get some support.

So I want to make sure that that is in there as well.

And then true about the food banks, the $3 million for food banks.

We have a food bank in the U District that supports Our low-income families, particularly at Magnuson Park, this has been a continual issue for the families at Magnuson Park, my constituents at Magnuson Park.

There is a food desert there and the food bank does a lot of work to support those families.

They can do what they can do and so I want to make sure when we are supporting food banks that the University District Food Bank is also And then I have, I think this is one last question on page 22. In terms of care, there was a 15 million, a bit nebulous from the slides, for supporting ongoing operations.

I don't know what that means, Director Eder.

Can you expand on that a bit, please?

Sure.

So the public safety sales tax is not a general government totally flexible use.

It can only be spent on public safety needs.

So we needed to identify exactly where we are spending that money so that it's clear that it's for an allowable use.

The bulk of the city's share of the sales and use tax is a general government purpose, and we can use it for anything the general fund can support, comparing and contrasting what we're talking about here.

We have identified some emerging needs, particularly in the care department, as I show on this slide, to expand the existing staffing and and coverage hours for the crisis care responders and also expanding the 911 call center staffing.

We are also putting $15 million of the proceeds from the $39 million public safety sales tax into the care department.

The care department was otherwise funded with general fund dollars, which, as we saw in April and August, have gone up and have gone down.

This is a dedicated purpose.

Come what may, they're going to get a level of funding of $15 million as long as the Public Safety Sales Tax continues to bring in $39 million.

So that frees up some general fund resources that can be used for other governmental purposes, including but not limited to police officers' salaries.

As I mentioned earlier, there's about $39 million of unanticipated costs for additional officers.

So this is one of those fund swaps, in other words?

That's correct.

Just to further clarify or explain, there is No non-supplanting restriction, watch the double negative there, on these dollars.

So the full $39 million could be deployed to close the deficit, to fund existing services, which as soon as 2027 there are not identified resources.

A portion is being used that way in this proposed budget, but a portion is also going to expand city services again at a time when there's a significant deficit looming.

Thank you, Director Noble.

And then, Director Reeder, can you just tell me on, so last year, for the current year, we expanded care to 24. I think there were maybe, I don't know, six folks before.

So I don't know how well that expansion's going.

I know that there's some issues underlying all of that.

Nevertheless, we're not done with this full year.

And then now the proposal in this budget is to go from 24 to 48, so another, you know, twice, another expansion of two times what we have today.

And I haven't seen any information about the work that CARE is doing that warrants the expansion right now at this point to 48 in 2026. I'm not sure we have data given that this full year of the first expansion is not over yet and we still have a quarter of this year left and I haven't seen any information about how well this is working to justify then this large expansion into next year and so did you consider waiting until You know, you got more information about how well this was working in the neighborhoods before you proposed this.

And then also, I'm not clear with these folks.

To be totally honest and transparent, and I know that the CARE folks are, you know, they're good people, and this is not a judgment on anyone that's working at CARE, but Health 99 is, you know, we know what they're doing.

We have the data to support the expansion as proposed here.

I appreciate that.

These are folks that are trained.

They're all trained in the same way.

And I'm not sure why, and I said this last year, so this is a reiteration, but why we did not just, rather than establish a whole new department, why we didn't do more of Health 99 across the city and Health 1 for that matter.

And so we didn't do that.

We decided instead to create a whole other department Department, a whole other team of people.

Now we're expanding both Health 99 and a whole other team of people.

Again, I'm super supportive of the Health 99. At this point, we know we need it.

We have data to support why.

I have not seen anything on care.

Yeah, I think this afternoon when several members of the mayor's staff is here, we'll have an opportunity to talk more about the performance and we think the good results that have come from the investment thus far in care and what the additional money and staffing will be expected to deliver in the new year.

With your permission, I defer the substance of an answer to this afternoon.

Yes, I know they had a presentation.

I just wanted to know from you as well some of the thoughts behind in terms of the budget itself.

But I'll wait till I get the presentation from the folks doing the work or overseeing the work anyway.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Colleagues, any other questions at this time?

As I said, we over-indexed for a fair amount more public comment this morning.

That's why we created so much time.

If there are no further questions, we can break a little early for lunch.

We'll still return at 2 p.m.

But just as a wrapping up of this conversation, Director Eder, well, I guess, and to the body, as normal, we received this budget two days ago, and we're digging through it now.

And that's why central staff is solely focused.

They are still available, but they are digging through it.

We've got paper copies.

We've got electronic copies.

And this point in the annual budgeting process, where it goes from departments to the mayor to us, where council members have the prerogative to reduce or increase funding for programs, to be reflective and responsive.

And I'm hearing you, Council Member Rivera, your concern about the efficacy of the care department And I'll just state for the record that I believe that the care department is an absolutely necessary part of our public health and public safety response.

And so this is part of that conversation that we'll go through.

And I just want to thank everyone for their attention this morning.

We will come back at 2 p.m.

today as it is 11.57.

For everyone watching Seattle Channel in real time, you've got three minutes until the Mariners tickets go on general sale for the playoffs.

Just saying.

Three what?

Three minutes.

Let's refuse to lose.

Director Noble.

You're inviting the competition.

That's my only comment.

Luckily, most people watch the Seattle Channel on replay.

Hey.

With that, let's go Mariners.

Thank you, Dan Wilson.

Thank you, Cal Raleigh and everyone else on the team.

And as Councilmember Hollingsworth says, it's a great day to be a Councilmember.

Thank you.

We are adjourned and be back at 2 p.m.