Select Budget Committee Session II 9/29/25

Good afternoon.

The September 29, 2025 Select Budget Committee will come back to order.

It is 1.20 p.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rivera?

Council Member Sokka?

Here.

Council Member Solomon?

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Present.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Councilmember Rink?

Present.

And Chair Strauss?

Present.

Seven present.

Thank you.

And council members are excused until they arrive.

We are moving on into our morning afternoon session.

By that, I mean the second item on the agenda.

It's 1.20 in the afternoon.

We have about three and a half hours until the close of business.

So again, colleagues, we are in control of our own destiny.

We can be here till six.

We can be here till four.

It is up to us.

I will ask that folks take 10 minutes or less when they're asking and receiving answers to their questions.

With that, I'm going to hand it over, as well as there's snacks in the green room.

Every year I bring snacks.

They're there for you.

Get them.

Stay good sugar levels and well hydrated.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Chief Barton to introduce your team and walk us through your presentation.

Colleagues, please hold your questions to the end.

Thank you.

I am Amy Barden, chief of the Seattle Care Department.

I am here with Tommy Roland, who is the chief administrative officer in care.

He has budget and finance oversight.

So off the top, I want you to know that I did listen to last Thursday's hearings to some of the questions that were asked, and I'm going to attempt to answer all of those questions in my opening remarks.

First, I want to react to a really crucial point that Councilmember Juarez made last week.

She reminded us that the care department represents the city actually responding to broad demands from our community that we go about public safety differently.

It represents a promise kept, and that can be a rare thing in politics.

I am fortunate, I feel, to dwell in a space of general consensus across our neighborhoods and across political perspectives.

Nobody thinks that we should compel law enforcement to go to social work calls.

Police officers were the first to teach me how frustrating it is to be forced to police issues that have nothing to do with their training or expertise, and then even worse, they're often vilified for it.

This is terrible for police morale and it's terrible for public safety that I still can't consistently get SPD to the highest priority calls in our city in under 10 minutes.

We are building something significant.

This is not another little city acronym pilot team that can be easily abandoned.

The care department represents a tangible acknowledgement that the 911 calls coming in overwhelmingly relate to mental health issues, to homelessness, and to addiction.

Next slide, please.

in response to Councilmember Rink's question about who we learned from.

I sit on the national CSG Expanding First Response Commission, which is comprised of 29 different leaders and academics all around the country.

We meet frequently, and we are now issuing specific recommendations for a national blueprint.

CARE is heavily featured in these recommendations.

And then concurrently, Georgetown Law has convened a research collective of the nine jurisdictions with the greatest momentum and success in alternative response around the country.

Albuquerque, Atlanta, Dayton, Denver, Durham, Rochester, San Francisco, Seattle, and Trenton.

I sit on the board of the Meadows-Karuth Police Institute, which also seeks to advance crucial mental health initiatives in the public safety system.

Now, these are not sleepy, passive conversations.

We are all working with incredible urgency to change and to improve the national public safety landscape and coordinate a path forward.

Today, unlike 2021, there is broad consensus about what works and what does not.

We know that a 911 integrated unit of community responders is far superior to other designs.

It provides the ultimate coordination in the field with police, fire, and EMS.

It accommodates the safety concerns that are inherent in first response.

Care can function just like the fire department does.

when they need law enforcement help, they can radio.

And we have specific terminology that indicates level of urgency.

I learned day one in 911 that you never say help over the air because that term is reserved for the highest possible emergency support of a first responder.

It's been specifically recommended this year by think tanks like the Law Enforcement Action Partnership that community responder teams be embedded in 911. And currently there are more than 60 cities around the country with that design.

But only a handful of us have taken the further step to create a fully independent department.

So the work you all are supporting here has historic significance and national impact.

During the past two years, we've been working hard not just on staffing up and creating new policies and protocols for an independent department, but also on establishing a new culture, refining our mission and values, articulating a grander vision.

The mission is to provide the best first response to a 911 call, but the grander vision is to develop a data-centric system that supports the correct balance of compassion and accountability in first response, and then hands off to the right resource to predictably repattern behavior.

Next.

We're proposing to add 49 additional positions across the department, 31 in the care responder division to take us citywide 20 hours a day, and then 15 staff specifically dedicated to Seattle 911 to improve wait times, and then several business supports.

We must invest in more dispatcher positions and the training and quality assurance supports imperative to maintaining strong operations.

The past three years, we spent between $1.4 million and $2 million on overtime alone.

As Seattle's population grows, the call volume grows, and so we need to stop pretending that we're not going to spend just as much or more on overtime next year.

As Chief Walton Anderson mentioned last week, mandatory overtime is devastating in this work and a functional impediment to staff retention.

I heard it implied by several of you last week that we are having trouble hiring in 911. That is not accurate.

We get floods of applicants when we open positions, but the hiring and onboarding can be bottlenecked often by inadequate HR and training team staffing and too few training officers.

Those are called CTOs.

SPD is dealing with the same challenge.

You have to have field training officers available to train the new recruits.

Our academies only minimally prepare first responders for the work.

The real training happens in the field under real life circumstances.

And I'd remind you that the recruiting, interviewing, backgrounding, onboarding, and training of first responders with CJIS requirements, like care and SPD, it is entirely different, much more rigorous and complex than a typical hiring process.

I'm happy to share with you that currently our hold time for a 911 call is less than 15 seconds 93% of the time, which exceeds national standards.

Our current non-emergency wait time is 4 minutes and 18 seconds.

which is dramatically improved in part thanks to Councilmember Rivera's good advocacy last year, those dedicated call taker positions.

Next.

So we have tested and proven the safety and the utility of dispatching care responders to 911 calls.

Several of you asked about outcomes.

I cannot stress enough that simply freeing up officers to do police work is essential.

Every time we dispatch an unarmed team and get the same or better results, and that team costs half as much, that is a benefit to the community, it is a benefit to the budget.

Last year, in preparation for care expansion, we analyzed which 911 calls virtually never result in any kind of law enforcement action, including even a citation.

We found seven call types representing more than 47,000 calls last year, both priority two and priority three levels.

Less than half of 1% of the time, they involved any kind of law enforcement action.

What a tremendous waste of a scarce police resource.

We wasted, at minimum, 100 police hours a day dispatching police to those calls that could have been better handled by another unit.

And if we want a safe city, this simply has to change.

We do talk a lot these days about staffing up the police department.

I want to remind council that even during our high water staffing mark in 2019, the average response time to priority one call was nine minutes, priority two was 38 minutes, priority three was 83 minutes.

Those response times were completely unacceptable by industry standards, and there is no path to appropriate response times without building out the care responder unit.

Today, the SPD response time to priority three calls, which are often the ones care is designed to go to, is 173 minutes.

So I would argue that three hours could really be considered a non-response to a call.

Our population has grown significantly since 2019, and so has the call volume.

Last year, high priority calls, we got 60,000 more in 911 than the year of 2019. And so we need to dwell on the reality that although rates of crime are currently dropping, rates of crisis are escalating.

I know you are all aware of the homeless numbers.

Care responders are already citywide, seven days a week, working 10 hours a day.

But we only have two to three units in each of the three zones.

So that means all of North Precinct may have two units during 10 hours of the day.

And it's the same in East and West Precinct, that's Central Zone, and then South and Southwest, that's South.

Adding 24 responders will allow us to be citywide between the hours of 5 a.m.

and 1 a.m., and we'd consistently get crisis calls during those hours.

We think it's the most financially prudent move because if we try to move right now to 24-7, those shifts overlap, and that means many more vehicles and phones and equipment need to be acquired, and we don't want to do that.

We want to just have shift one handoff to shift two, sharing the same equipment.

We do get 911 calls every day asking for a care team, and it's really frustrating when my dispatchers have to explain it's 10 a.m., they're not online yet.

They get even more frustrated when we tell them we can't send them because we don't have SPD officers to accompany them.

Every day my dispatchers can see on the monitors that we might have a care unit five minutes away from this person in distress that we cannot deploy.

And then what makes matters worse is that our department also receives a lot of angry comments about why we didn't send help.

Regarding the question about whether we have evidence that we should expand this unit, I would remind the council that Seattle University published a 118-page implementation evaluation in March about the care pilot, studying January through December of 2024. The principal investigator was Dr. Jackie Helfgaard, who also, interestingly, provided the pilot evaluation for the police co-responder unit back in 2011. Now, when I met Jackie the first time, she said, Amy, I want you to know I believe in co-response.

I do not believe in alternative response.

And I said, you're hired.

Because I understood for a good, rigorous academic evaluation, it is better to start with that cynical lens.

The evaluation was conducted by a research team of six.

It was mixed method grounded theory and comprehensive, carefully analyzing 1,585 calls for service over the course of the year, and inclusive of interviews with Seattle police and fire personnel up and down the chain of command, interviews with human service providers, and many ride-alongs with CARE.

The executive summary states, Results show that the CARES CCRs fill a need in Seattle to complement existing first and secondary community response to emergency calls for service and community need, and that there is widespread agreement within the first response community that CARES CCRs serve an important function and are a welcome addition to the city to address the high volume of need.

And then there are specific recommendations that follow, which really are for the legislative and the executive branches.

One, that the city resolve the labor issues that impact care.

Two, that the city resolve the bureaucratic obstacles that impede care.

Three, that the follow-up case management gap must be solved for, and moving lead into care is the obvious choice.

Four, that care should expand to 24-7.

And five, that we need to get the word out about care in ways that clearly explain who the CCRs are, what they offer, how they are distinct, and how they partner with Seattle police, fire, social service, and mental health providers.

This month also, I was passed a new OIG draft of their report, their study, which is not as comprehensive, but comes to precisely the same conclusions.

This is wanted, this is needed, but this is heavily constrained by bureaucratic and labor restrictions.

And so I'll pass that to you when I get the final draft.

Next.

As I think you all know, what we have been doing in first response for decades is incredibly ineffective and it's really expensive.

Every single day, people are arrested, booked for a few hours, then exit our jails no better off than they arrived and sometimes worse.

People on the other side of these brutal cycles tell me that they went straight back to the same circumstances and thus back to the same behaviors again and again.

I am really excited that we are working to establish a direct line for jail deputies to be able to call CARE, to meet someone exiting jail who is likely to be in crisis.

This is really basic, and I think it's kind of ridiculous we haven't done it yet.

We can do the same thing with Harborview.

Let's try to actually intervene before that 911 call comes in.

We're currently working with crisis connections to strengthen call deflection and interoperability of the 911 and 988 systems.

Michelle McDaniel is one of the best leaders I know, and she has surrounded herself with a team that's just as smart and innovative and generous as she is. the lead contract should be functionally integrated in care so that we can track what happens to someone and whether or not the intervention is working.

The care responders fundamentally are the diversion first responders, and so those first responders can best analyze through a clinical lens what is needed next.

who will thrive and lead with that intensive outpatient case management, and for whom do we need inpatient case management?

Some people actually have a loving, supportive family, and they really just need a ride home, and they're likely to sustain recovery if we provide it, and we've done that a number of times.

And so I believe that we will save the budget and start to heal our city when we support people in permanently breaking the cycles and rebuilding their lives.

And I'd remind you, I know you know this because this council reflects it often, most folks on our streets, those folks on 12th and Weller, they could be here with us a year from now, most.

And I still get the message almost every day from community members all over the place with words like, thank you for knowing that we do recover.

People do.

Next.

And so, I know you know this, while there's a budget upside to not re-arresting and reverse overdosing the same person day over day over day, there's an economic upside to fewer property crimes, fewer people visibly ill, and suffering on our streets.

But the reason for the investment is not economic, it is moral.

We have failed our most vulnerable neighbors for generations.

And in Seattle, historically, we do prioritize process over people.

I see this every day.

We do sacrifice meaningful progress in pursuit of an imagined ideal.

About a year into the job, I came across Andrew Lewis's op-ed, which was published about five months before I was hired.

He wrote, in the time it took Seattle to develop an outline for a pilot and write a term sheet, Albuquerque responded to 16,000 calls.

And I really cracked up when I read this because that is absolutely true.

I spend a lot of time with the Albuquerque folks.

And interestingly, their circumstances were almost equivalent with regard to 911 calls, form of government, police staffing, political tension, labor issues.

A major difference there, though, is that the police chief Harold Medina pioneered the concept of a third public safety department.

it was his leadership and commitment to alleviating public suffering over protecting his own body of work.

That is why ACS was quickly established and funded.

They're two years older than us only, and they've responded to over 120,000 calls without incident, solo.

They have already set up and fully staffed an Office of Violence Prevention.

They have successfully consolidated the work described in care ordinance 126954. And now only four years in, you actually do see incredible improvements in police staffing and morale, rates of violent crime, rates of property crime, and notably in community confidence.

And so across the country, the cities where we're seeing huge strides in violence reduction, homeless response, overdose response have something in common.

They're simplifying the work, they're breaking down bureaucratic silos.

Public safety investments should be made in public safety departments.

These departments must work together functionally as three divisions of one team, care, fire, and police.

The work is fundamentally and functionally interdependent and interrelated, and all emergencies should be treated like emergencies.

A person who is struggling on our street should not have to interact with 15 different teams and all these different phone numbers and all these different forums.

They should be able to interact with one first responder who has access to whatever resource will stabilize them in that emergency.

So in closing, I just want to share with you an interesting experience I had a couple months ago.

I was on a conference panel with two police chiefs and with my Albuquerque community safety counterpart.

Her name is Jody Escobel.

Jody and I were both caught a little off guard when one of the chiefs started speaking directly to us and to our peers in the alternative response space, referencing a scene from the movie Moneyball.

I know you've taken it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody, always.

It's the threat not just of the way of doing business, but in their minds, it's threatening the game.

It's threatening the way they do things.

Anyone who is not tearing apart their team right now and rebuilding it using your model, they're dinosaurs.

and it meant a lot to look out into that vast audience, mostly of police chiefs and sheriffs who were all nodding, all on the right side of history.

And so last week, I reached out to a few of my favorite significant police chiefs and sheriffs around the country, coast to coast, a couple in Canada, and asked if they would provide a statement about our Seattle care approach.

And it was really touching to wake up to a flood of responses.

I'm not going to read them all because a chair would be like an hour, but I'm going to share a few highlights.

The Seattle Care Department model highlights the strength of having an in-house, city-based team of crisis responders.

Building this capacity within the department ensures everyone involved shares the same mission, priorities, and standards of accountability.

Unlike outsourcing to nonprofits, which often do meaningful work but may have different goals or conflicting duties, this approach allows for seamless coordination, faster decision-making, and a unified response.

The CARE team model represents the future of government response to low-risk, high-acuity calls for service.

As chief of police, I strongly support the CARE program model.

By integrating alternative and co-response services in-house, we better ensure continuity of care, greater accountability, and consistent service delivery for our community.

CARE creates a unified response framework, bringing police, fire, and human services together under one roof to improve outcomes, strengthen trust, advance both public safety and community health.

I support the care program model.

When these functions sit outside of public safety, coordination often breaks down and the community gets fragmented services.

One chief replied in context to the help that we've provided his city because they're setting up their care style team.

He shared, I'm proud to grow the ranks of our public safety responders with this coordinated response and recognize we need a more holistic balance between law enforcement and public health within the department.

and I'm gonna close with remarks from our own King County Sheriff who is a great partner.

An integrated mental health team is an essential part of the Sheriff's Office.

These highly trained crisis responders bring a unique and necessary set of skills to the agency.

They provide an additional level of behavioral health support and de-escalation and match people with services as quickly as possible.

We value and we appreciate our partnership with the Seattle Care team.

So it was interesting to me how thematically similar all these different statements were, and I want to thank those leaders for all of their support, their encouragement, and for everything they continue to teach me.

This is the right thing to do.

It is a joy and an honor to promote it, to defend it, not just for Seattle, but for the sake of a grander movement.

I'm happy to answer your questions.

Thank you, Chief.

And Councilmember Kettle, as chair of the committee overseeing this department, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

What I'm gonna do, because I'm sure my colleagues have some direct questions, I'm not gonna do the 10,000 around the ground questions.

I'm gonna just intro with a 30,000 foot kind of question or observations.

And the first one is, First, I want to state that I do believe in alternative response.

And I've said this, I said this last year, that I believe there's going to be different reflection points where we're going to adapt and adjust and then change course potentially.

And we're at one of those again today with the mayor's budget submission and how we look to move forward.

And again, I think those steps are going to be very important and I think we can make them.

I just wanted to start with 9-1-1.

Again, I'm happy to visit again.

I'm happy to meet the training recruits.

I had the opportunity to do that.

It was really nice to meet those that were looking to join, to your point.

But that's so important, because that is the first touch point when somebody's in need, in crisis, and they call that number.

That response is so crucial.

This is where we have to look to set you up for success as opposed to failure, and this kind of goes to, is looking at the different pieces and make sure that we're aligned, because the frustrations, as you noted in your testimony, are real.

Trust me, because I hear them too differently.

So my ask is to continue to work that, the bedside manner kind of aspect.

It's the same with the other departments too, because I've had similar discussions with them.

And then the 98 piece is really important.

You know, for the business case, I have some additional bullets.

One is, and you talked about this, but you don't frame it the same way I do, is that we need to address the seam that exists between public safety and public health and public safety and human services.

As I've noted in my past career, seams are bad, whether it's within the military or the intelligence communities, and we do need to address that.

And like what you said, I think CARE is in a strong position to do that, not just CARE, but we definitely need public safety to be working those seams.

And to this point, PDA's LEAD program, Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, is really, you know, has a human services piece to it, public health piece to it, but it's really public safety.

And I know, like, operationally, you know, the requirements piece have shifted, but we do need to ensure that that piece is there for all the reasons that you mentioned, the case management and so forth.

And what it really goes to, and this is the second piece, is ensuring that we have a functional criminal justice system.

A, the case management is key to this in so many different ways.

I've mentioned from the dias before, like with Medicaid, in terms of when those requirements start filtering down from the Trump administration.

We have to do that right.

But it's all those little pieces too, like your point about King County Jail, KCJ.

We need to ensure that those pieces, particularly when it comes to these challenges, when it's not criminal, but still a public safety challenge, that there's a group there to work those pieces.

We had Chiefs Goggins talking about medical.

you know, pieces.

And you have your lane, your pieces of that too.

So we, so from a bigger picture point of view, working the seam, having, aiding and and creating a more functional criminal justice system is so important.

I see care as a key piece to that.

And finally, too, and I like your ethical case, part of this is reaching out to community.

I note Miss Beach, Victoria Beach in the picture there, because I've been in many of those meetings, although not recently, and that's a shame on me, but the African American Community Advisory Council, plus, by the way, her great work with the Before the Badge program, which was mentioned earlier today.

And then secondly, and I was at that meeting no doubt with the Asian American community and the CID.

So those outreach pieces are key, so thank you for that.

And so Chair, no direct questions at that kind of on the ground level or 10,000 foot level, just bigger picture in terms of how I see us progressing.

And LEAD is like an example of that.

And so that's like a case study, if you will.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle, Councilmember Salomon, followed by Sokka, Rink, Nelson, and Rivera.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Chief Barton, we've had a lot of conversations over the years, and I've appreciated your approach.

One question I have is, when I think about the spectrum of outreach workers, of human services providers, whether it's lead, co-lead, reach, we deliver care.

You're operating with those partners in that space, is that correct?

That's right.

Okay.

Why is the lead contract housed in HSD as opposed to care?

And would it being moved actually improve outcomes?

I might jump in to say that there are considerations that involve significant contract administration and capacity that HSD is currently set up to do for a variety of, I think, hundreds of millions of dollars of contracts.

this is in their portfolio.

So there certainly could be other paradigms with trade-offs from those different ways of doing business, but that's one of the reasons why we elected to keep the contract within HSD.

And again, my question is, okay, why is it there?

And I was actually going to ask Dr. Kim that later on, I don't need to be redundant since you've already answered that part.

What I'm concerned about or thinking about rather is if the contracts that are currently in HSD are moved to the care department, which already has alignment in terms of mission and clientele served, would that result in better outcomes than what we're seeing right now?

So how do we get better bang for our buck?

Better integration would be better for public safety, yes.

I always think in terms of the 911 emergency, any function that bumps up against that 911 emergency, so I think about late stage diversion, right, when people are really struggling and they're at risk of needing that 911 response, and then I think about the first responders, and then I think about the functions immediately after.

The emergency stabilization piece, it would be my preference that those functions were integrated in the three public safety departments.

Ongoing case management, things like that, I think that's perhaps not appropriate.

The prevention functions as well, I think that that's very, very much not a function of the first responders.

But right now, if you were to ask HealthONE, if you were to ask that team, if you could have anything in the world tomorrow, what would you have?

They would tell you access to a tiny house village.

every time we talk to each other.

Because, again, we get to know people.

They're connecting people to services.

The long-lasting buprenorphine is a game-changer, as you know.

But if they then can't find the person in two days to follow up and do that care coordination, it's catastrophic.

I appreciate that because, again, this is one of the things that I'm finding with the work that's being done in Little Saigon, the work that's being done by REACH, where United Care team goes out, they do a clean, yet the clients that REACH have been working with they can't find them anymore.

So now we're having to start from scratch.

And it just makes me think that if what we're doing isn't working, let's do something different.

If we need to look at if, you know, one of the things that's being asked for is more tiny house villages, how do we make that happen so people can be stabilized so that they can get the services that they need?

if there needs to be better coordination and integration between lead, co-lead, REACH, CARE, CSOs, We Deliver Care, We Heart Seattle, whoever it is.

It seems that that coordination shouldn't be There should be coordination rather than silos, is basically what I'm trying to get at, so.

That's right, and the care ordinance suggests that that is a primary function of the care department.

That was one of the primary functions, was to consolidate, coordinate, and simplify public safety investments across the city.

Okay, great, thank you.

So no further questions, but just ask when the fire department adheres, and I encourage folks to visit the fire alarm center.

If you have not done a tour of 911, set with call takers as those calls are coming in or having sat with dispatchers as they're putting those calls out, I would highly encourage you to do so because it is illuminating.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Salomon, Council Member Saka, followed by Rink, Nelson, and Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Chief Barton, for being here today.

Appreciate the budget presentation, but more importantly than any presentation on a proposed budget, I appreciate the work that you and your members do every day to help keep our city safe.

And we certainly, I think in our city, ask too much of our police and our police department, which is why we need to continue to roll out and expand alternative response capabilities, diversified response capabilities in the fire department context, like Health One, Health 99, for example.

And your department is another example we need to continue to invest in to bring to life a more truly diversified response to better meet the unique needs of residents and visitors across our city here.

Your, the care department budget calls for an expansion of staffing and operations above the endorsed budget levels and appreciate some additional clarity around further to my specific questions last week about that.

Appreciate some additional clarity around, at least initially around what that investment would look like in terms of hours of service, service levels, geographic scope, et cetera.

So if the budget is increased, so a couple scenarios I'll float here.

So in my district, we get frequent requests for services, diversified public safety responses, including care, primarily in the junction and near the Rotary Viewpoint Park, about half a mile away.

but we have not yet heard at least the feedback loop of care showing up and deploying to those specific locations and one of my offices reached out requesting service from CARE, we've been met with deferral to SPD, which I understand not every case or scenario is appropriate for an SPD officer response.

Not every case that some might think our care department should be responding to truly does warrant them as the appropriate sort of frontline response.

But just curious to better understand, if we increase funding as part of this expansion of CARE, Can we expect more service calls to places like The Junction and Rotary Viewpoint Park in West Seattle?

Yes.

So what's happening currently is, as you all know, care is precluded from going solo.

We would like to dispatch that team all the time to appropriate calls, person down, welfare check.

Those priority three calls, again, if we have to wait for SPD, you heard the current time, it's 173 minutes.

So care can get on scene real quick once we're dispatched, but we're often contingent waiting on those officers.

The original MOU says that police have discretion to waive care off the calls, and that happens sometimes.

We've been studying that pretty rigorously the last few months.

The plan forward is first to expand that 911 dispatch capability through a new MOU.

and I know you all are working on that.

I believe that there is consensus about that need.

I believe the police department understands that at leadership levels.

I believe they can validate what I said, which is there's no path forward to real quick response times across priority one, two, and three calls.

just using the police department and fire department.

That is not on the horizon.

More significantly, it's not what the community wants.

They do not want us to be sending police to non-law enforcement calls, and I know that.

We get those requests every day, and there has been consensus when I'm in the neighborhoods.

If we are precluded from using 911, I think a good plan B is to integrate with 988, right?

Might 988 send care to high acuity calls?

Because the King County mobile crisis team, that's not the same type of clinical team that the care responders are.

They are thrilled to do that, happy to do that.

I'm a little bit cautious about creating duplicate systems, and so I want to be really thoughtful about that.

We've also talked about having for providers.

So think about our permanent supportive housing environments or the jails, places where we know there's going to be a lot of crisis calls.

might there be a direct sort of B2B line for the care responders?

But the optimist in me believes we're going to get the MOU, we're going to be able to solo dispatch care, and they will continue to arrive within 10 to 14 minutes, as they are now.

Expanding the team, we're not going to expand the saturation of the team.

We would like to expand the hours.

So in South and Southwest, you'll still only have two to three units, but you'll have two to three units all but four hours a day.

And that is going to be significant.

I want there to be consistency.

I don't want somebody to call 911 and go, wait, why can't I get this unit?

Same thing with LEED.

I want to have LEED citywide, right?

We should have uniform availability for all of our different community members for the thing that they need.

Thank you for that.

So my next question pertains to something you mentioned at the start of the presentation, towards the beginning of your presentation, when you appropriately kind of noted a third party recommendation report for specific city actions from the executive and legislative branches of government coming together to solve some specific concrete set of challenges.

One, for example, resolving certain labor obstacles that impede the care department.

Talked a little bit a moment ago, actually addressing that one.

Another one you mentioned, which is the focus of my question, calling on city leaders to address the bureaucratic obstacles that impede our care department.

And so, that's sort of like a general call to action to our executive and our legislative branches of government, but as the executive department head for this particular agency, directly responsible for effectuating policy in this area, what kind of investments What kind of investments are included in this proposed budget to directly address that, and knock these down, namely the bureaucratic obstacles that impede the care department?

What I would say is high level, when you think about the folks that we're interacting with every day, if you ask the care responders, and we have a lot of data about this, you ask, especially the police co-responder unit, the community service officers, and Health One, Health 99, what portion of these folks do you believe are unhoused?

60, 70, 80%, that is what they will tell you.

We're all interacting with the same folks all the time.

Sometimes we're getting to know them quite well, but we're not tasked to actually get them out of the cycles, right?

Police are tasked to make an arrest if a law is being broken, even then to what end?

You know, I often bemoan that, that they might be booked for a minute, but if they're not then provided resources, if there's no re-entry planning, if there's nothing diagnostic that happens, it's a bit of a timeout and then they return to the same circumstances.

I'm really pleased that CARE Now, I was just checking the stats, about 20% of the time, those calls wind up at the Crisis Solutions Center.

About 8% of the time, connections in Kirkland.

I've heard lots of folks say, I don't want to go to Kirkland.

They have an idea they're going to get stranded there.

So it's not that it's not a good facility, but it just feels far away.

And as you know, we'll be building out.

We'll have a Seattle Crisis Care Center as well.

and so it's good that we have that direct line, we have an ORCA center, but very often the causal factor is that the person doesn't have a safe place to sleep.

And as you know, I run 911, so I'm seeing crime statistics all the time and I understand the rates of crime against folks who are living outside, especially women.

So I feel real urgency around this issue of high level.

Just look at public safety investments and see, are we putting them someplace where the first responders can use them?

If somebody is trying to exit human trafficking, any one of those three teams should be able to have access to that resource.

That is really imperative.

And one of the really cool things happening right now is that we've integrated the data of the three teams, police, fire, and care, and what's called the RMS, so records management system.

This is protected information, which is really cool.

So again, I don't have to be concerned about compromising somebody's privacy, but I can look and go, oh, this officer actually has a really strong relationship with the person.

and not be so prescriptive, assuming, oh, it's mental health, it's gonna be care.

We actually should deploy whomever is going to have the most productive conversation because ideally we want consent-based solutions, not coercive solutions.

Thank you for that, Chief.

And then the final question, I'll really just read into the record in the interest of time.

I know my other colleagues have questions as well, but it pertains to case management capability.

And for context, Earlier this morning, we heard our fire chief talk a little bit about some of the case management capabilities that are built in with respect to certain of the fire department's own diversified response capabilities, whether it's Health One, Health 99, et cetera.

and the follow-up, the ongoing, continuing, ongoing follow-up case management functionality that's included.

And I also note a moment ago in response to an earlier question or comment from one of my colleagues, I think you opined on your preference for case management capability within your department being minimal.

Don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think some level of case management functionality within your department is appropriate and so the question for the record is what is the current extent and scope of any case management functionality that exists within your department today and What more is needed to achieve more optimal results from a case management perspective?

Thank you, Chair.

I'd like to just respond briefly.

It looks like the best model for my counterparts around the country is a 30-day care navigation follow-up design.

And so, again, that allows us to make sure if we hand it off to services, that is the period of great vulnerability, is that first two to three to four weeks.

So that's what I would like to have, but we don't currently.

Thank you Chief.

Up next we have Councilmember Rink followed by Nelson and Rivera.

Councilmember Rink you were recognized.

Thank you Chair Strauss and thank you Chief Barton and CAO Roland for being here today.

Thank you for your work and for your presentation and it's lovely to see that this department will start expanding the hours of operation and scope of service and I know we've spoken to it a bit but could you just give us a bit more detail on what these anticipated expansions will be able to accomplish for the record?

Yes, so again, we're going to assume solo dispatch for our purposes today.

We're going to assume the same call types.

It could be that there's more call types, but there are thousands and thousands of person down and welfare check calls.

That's generally, if you're walking down Third Avenue, that's what most of the calls would be by the criteria, is we're not quite sure what is going on.

Is somebody asleep or they look like they might slip into traffic, something like that.

Those are the calls.

We would like to add, to expand to 24, we would like to add three more cohorts quickly at the top of the year.

Part of this budget proposal is converting a temporary training manager and care to be full-time.

That's imperative.

It's important to note that the training team in 911, those are guild-represented members, and so there's a body of work issue there.

I can't just bring them over to the care responders to run an academy.

And so we partner with the University of Washington.

We've got a really good six-week academy, again, that's led by Rose Nakano, the training manager.

And then they do six weeks of field training.

And so I would anticipate that you would have all 48 responders up and running by April.

and they likely will be divided equally across those three zones, north, central and south, because unfortunately the calls for crisis response are pretty uniform all around the city.

Thank you for that.

And we also appreciate the development investment to Seattle's 911 Center, citing those additional 12 call taker positions and three trainers.

I'm curious what investments will Seattle's 911 Center be making in fielding calls that are coming from non-English speaking populations?

So what kind of language access training, which may include language line, is included in our budget as we continue to serve our community and live up to the promise of being a welcoming city?

Yeah, if I had planted a question.

I am of the mind that we are not investing enough in technology in this department.

One of my favorite companies out there right now is called Prepared 911, and they have the best translation and transcription abilities anywhere.

It's incredible, actually.

They can do real-time translation through text as well.

And so we will be recommending that.

We have some tech monies on the books, right, Tommy?

I'm watching his face.

that we might try to re-appropriate, but we know it's a top priority.

I was shocked that we translate consistently into 200 languages in 911, and I wouldn't have actually guessed what the top 10 languages are myself.

I would have gotten about five wrong.

We know that FIFA's coming, right?

And so we know there's real urgency around this investment.

it would be my preference that there was more money for tech investment in this proposal.

Because you have to remember, too, even non-emergency, these customer service lines, an average call taker is about $150,000 a year.

And there are technologies that can automate some of that process.

Think about normal customer service centers, you know, hold your place in line to call back, chatbots, things like that.

And we've investigated a number of them, so we can have a side conversation if you'd like.

Certainly would like to continue the conversation, but just for my understanding right now, so understanding there's something to be improved, but what kind of is the current state right now if someone is a non-English speaker?

Do you want to speak to that?

Yeah, we actually have the language line, similar to what police is doing, so we have full availability for, I think, over 200 languages currently.

Understood.

Thank you.

And my last question for today, could you elaborate more on the partnership between 988 and 911 as it pertains to coordination, integration, and critically dispatch?

Yes, so this is similar to why I'm working with the Sheriff's Office and the Prosecuting Attorney's Office.

What we want is consistent service across King County.

I know that the whole county needs this clinical team.

By the call data, again, if you were actually to staff up, CARE would be the biggest team relative to the call types.

Health One would be huge.

The police co-response team would be huge.

Most of these calls do relate to behavioral health.

They just do.

These low-level misdemeanor crimes are following mental and behavioral health issues and are sometimes related to being houseless.

So the imperative is to make sure that there's not system duplication.

Now, I didn't get here fast enough.

The state was already really excited about 988. I was very excited about the crisis hotline, but then decided, oh, we'll just make a separate system to then dispatch crisis response.

By the time I learned about that, I was like, oh no, because I knew too much about 911. You can't say, oh, this portion of the public is just mental health, and this portion is just doing crimes, and this portion is medical.

It's not like that.

Overwhelming overlap about 90% of the time.

The good news is that these leaders are so collaborative.

And so they understand, okay, 988 is most appropriate if you need just resources.

I'm worried about my daughter.

I don't know where she should go.

Very appropriate if somebody needs to be on the phone, right?

Dark night, I feel very vulnerable.

I need someone to talk to.

And I've done live listening in Crisis Connections.

They do have the, there's two teams, the sound team and then the DESC, they call it the Meerkat Team, Mobile Rapid Response Crisis Team.

And they're going out now, and again, it's a great team, but it's more appropriate for less urgent calls, right?

So we don't think the person's gonna be worse off in 45 minutes.

So we're trying to make that acuity scale so that 911 knows when to route to 988, which we do all the time.

but then 988 needs to know when to either route to 911 and we can dispatch care or could they just direct dispatch care?

So they have a separate, it's called Rainbow Health, basically their version of the CAD, but we could pull the trigger tomorrow on that.

We've been working on it for a number of months knowing that we just need to at least coordinate because the person on the phone doesn't know the difference, right?

They know they need help and it's on us to make that seamless, to make sure they get the right resource.

And Council Member Rink, happy to continue.

I think Director Eater has a point.

Well, I just wanted to say how thrilled we are to be supporting the care team with more than doubling of the crisis care responder team.

It's about $6.9 million.

And as Chief Barton pointed out, 31 new FTEs total in the department, including 18 new FTEs in the 911 call center.

is just a huge infusion of resources and staffing to a very important function that the city does, and I think we'll all be the better off for it.

Thank you.

Council Member Rink, you still have the floor.

Thank you, Chair.

That actually concludes my questions for today.

Thank you all for being here again, and thank you for your work.

Thank you.

Council President Nelson, followed by Council Member Rivera.

Hello.

First I want to recognize that the council is the oversight body of the city.

This is not directed at this department here, but I just want to say that sometimes we ask questions that could indicate that we've got a problem with something the executive is doing, but what we're doing is we're surfacing information and also that's transparency because our constituents need to know because they're watching too.

and I, in this circumstance, I want to remember Council Member Moore and who had a lot of, usually some tough questions for you.

So, and Council Member Rivera, I want to acknowledge your very candid questions as well.

That's what we're supposed to be doing.

I don't have one, yay.

But what I want to say is I want to correct any impression that's out there that somehow that the problem is that we designed it right but it's not being implemented correctly because, of course, everybody knows that officers don't want to go to calls that they're not trained for, the public doesn't want that either, everybody agrees on that, we always say this, and there are all these, you know, so why do we still have dual dispatch?

I just want to say that it was anticipated that the the the care responders would be a team of I don't know less than five or six or something like that for the first year and then last year council expanded it expanded the well provided for more FTEs and then you you spread your your service calls which I appreciate very much I'm not and then every we've you know There's a long record of the fact that we're negotiating with Spog to be able to clearly delineate who does what going forward, right?

And with Ideal, we want to free them up to do different kind of work.

So just wanted to make sure that everybody recognizes that it's not that we overstaffed a department or a program that isn't fulfilling its potential because we didn't think through the details all the way.

It's just coming into its own and hopefully that'll be soon.

So the question that I have is, Where do care team members take people who are in crisis if it's clear that they have, or where do they take anybody?

To me, that is a big barrier and I'm just wondering, especially when it's a substance use disorder or whatever, not necessarily, it could be untreated schizophrenia or bipolar or severe PTSD.

What is the location where people are, where people receive care.

And somebody who was sitting at that end of the table earlier this morning talked about, yes, we do really need to develop the space at the King County Jail for this sort of purpose that Sue Rahr was working on when she was here before, et cetera, which I fully support.

I don't know when that's gonna really be a reality.

Yeah, I heard that.

Well, first I will just say I have yet to ever be offended by a question.

I truly appreciate the urgency.

That never bothers me at all, so I appreciate it.

I'd remind you that the congressional earmarks from Smith and Jayapal supported that expansion, so it didn't really hit the city budget initially, and I'm glad.

I will be the first to recommend that we do not continue down this path if we can't really use these people, right?

I don't think they've been going to enough calls.

and so that is why I'm trying to be very careful to identify other strategies, the direct line to the jail, right?

There's 11,000 times last year fire screened calls that they declined to go to.

They were completely correct to do that.

Chief Scoggins has clear protocols that say if it doesn't reach this medical acuity, we're not going.

They kick it back to 911 and then we make police go.

Deputy Chief Barden last year was very frustrated about this and advocated for about a year that those do not make them police calls.

His contention was it's because it's not medical, it doesn't mean it's a law enforcement call.

The city should set up a different unit, whether it be care of somebody else.

And so there are these buckets like that of tens of thousands of calls that really are not or should not be police body of work that we could go to.

Regarding where we take people to, the most common is still the Crisis Solutions Center.

I've asked, why is that?

Is that muscle memory?

Because that was a police resource for a long time.

It's a great place, but we have many more places to go to.

And the theory is, well, it's because it's close and we're used to taking people there.

Again, about 8% of the time it's connections.

I'm gonna be tracking data on the ORCA Center, on the STAR Center.

We don't use, as you know, the involuntary referral, we really don't use in King County.

We don't use those beds at Recovery in Kent, the Valley City site at all.

And so I think, again, that's the work of the executive and the legislative to figure out what is the threshold You know, when do we leave someone and then when do we intervene?

That will be an SPD function because CARE will never be an enforcement team.

But I do think a lot of the people that I see who lose their lives unnecessarily, they should have been referred involuntarily to a screening.

They should not be here dead on our streets 24 hours later because the law wasn't being broken.

And so that's philosophical, but it is a challenge.

So I'll keep reporting, you know, as we have these new resources where we're taking people to.

Thank you for that.

I want to emphasize that there is a vast, not vast, but there is a network of care providers out there, a mix of non-profit and private, public-private partnerships.

Hope and Chance in Belltown.

There is a recoveryhousing.org.

It's a network of, if you need short, medium, long-term housing, of any kind of recovery.

It doesn't have to be abstinence, of course.

And then there are other behavioral health resources, too.

So I want to always push our city department people and also our outreach workers that there might be more than we really think.

And what's most important is that you take the blinders off.

I'm not assuming that they're on, but that everybody force themselves to look a little bit to the side and also straight ahead when we're dealing with this problem.

Yeah, I want to affirm that.

There's actually about 15 nonprofits that we work closely with.

Again, we're not really organized to map the system the way that we have, but people know, you know, I talk about Salvation Army, UGM all the time, Bread of Life, Mary's Place.

We do have a hub, but again, that work is a little bit siloed right now.

I always remind the care responders, just talk to the person you know what the best fit is likely to be and just take them there.

We don't need a formal government contract in order to make that referral.

We can attempt to make that referral.

So thank you, council president.

It's a very important note.

And the CID, last week there was a presentation of a 15 point plan with Lehigh and council member, former council members, Wu and Della and one of the top priorities is a location where outreach workers or all these different agencies can have a presence in Little Saigon.

Maybe that would be the thing.

I've been asked for that there and in Lake City and I think it's awesome.

I think it's a great concept and I am open to it.

All right.

Thank you.

Thanks.

Thank you, Council President Nelson.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Chief Barden, and your staff for being here to answer questions, and thank you, Councilmember Nelson, yes, our job is to ask questions.

That's a huge part of our job, so, you know, that's what we do, and that's how, you know, and I talked about this with Chief Public Safety Officer, Walton Anderson, who I see in the audience, and, you know, we ask these hard questions, we engage in dialogue and conversation so we can have better outcomes.

Because one thing I want to underscore that Council President also said is that I don't think there's anyone up here who doesn't believe in an alternative response.

And I don't think there's anyone out here who doesn't want better outcomes for the people that need help on the street.

and I'm gonna underscore that because anytime we ask tough questions there is somehow out in the stratosphere this accusation that somehow we're lying when we say that.

So I'm just gonna keep saying it because anyone that knows me knows I may be a lot of things but a liar I am not.

I really believe that we do need to do better to help people and I think where we differ is what is that strategy that's gonna get the best outcome and the reason why I've you know I've asked hard questions of care as you know in the past and now is because I want to make sure that if we are putting a lot of eggs maybe not all but a lot of eggs into this basket that it's really going to help people because at the end of the day, that's what I care about.

Is it really helping people?

And so toward that end, we put in last year a slide.

I put in a slide about a dashboard.

I just want to be very clear.

I'm seeing a public facing dashboard today for the first time and I want to thank Chief Public Safety Officer, Walton Anderson, for sending me a link to that today.

I'm on the dashboard.

I understand from your slide in June of 30th that it was not operational at the time.

There are all these IT issues, and I understand there's always IT issues when you're trying to stand up something online, such as a dashboard.

It is missing information from what we asked for in the slide.

I appreciate knowing the number of calls that we're getting and part of the slide was getting at what is the response that CURE has had what are the outcomes, where, you know, to Council President's point, where are you taking people and are people getting that help?

When you are able to respond, now I know you're limited in your ability to respond, we've talked about this a lot, the dual dispatch, but when you have responded, what are the outcomes that, what are mainly you addressing?

What do people mainly want and where are you taking people?

And is there any follow through?

Who's doing the follow through on the, What happened to that person?

Because I very much care about that, right?

It's not just the initial contact.

but it's did they get the help because that's the whole point of an alternative response is to have better outcomes.

If we don't know what happened to that person then we don't know what that outcome is.

So part of this dashboard piece was not just to report on how many calls because I see there's a lot and without even knowing the actual data I would have suspected as much.

That's why we've engaged in this conversation and why CARE was created to begin with.

What is happening to these folks?

So if you have a response, great now.

If not, you know, later is fine, but...

Several points.

I actually love everything you've addressed.

First, on the dashboard, as you know, the council has not added any research or analytics people to the department at all.

We don't have that.

That function sat in the Seattle Police Department, and luckily I am...

know a little bit about data science and know how to code, and I'm CJIS background.

And so the Seattle Police Department was incredibly generous to bring me in as a user in their data sets.

That was how I was analyzing crisis data.

We do not have staff to build that dashboard.

That is a centralized city function that we've been reliant on.

So we have been at the ready with our data, our CAD and RMS data, but we have not had that investment.

I would like our dashboard to look like Durham's.

If you go to Durham Heart, it is fascinating to see not just the calls for service, the disposition, but the demographics, and again, what was provided.

That would be a top financial priority for me, but that is why the delay, we just simply don't have it in-house.

we invested in one of our 911 operators to learn how to use Tableau.

We paid for that training.

I did not have one person in the department who could do it.

So the initial pilot analysis that was me after hours, doing all of this rigorous analysis and even still trying to look at regression.

If I do this, what can I forecast as far as outcomes come?

So I love the question.

I think being able to tell the story through data and narrative is really important so that people understand high level about 40% of the time, 41% it was last week, we connect somebody to services and that can mean lots of different things.

It can mean we took you to a place or we took you to a food bank or we got you bus fare or, you know, we basically there was a gap and we addressed it.

A lot of the time though, there isn't a lot that we can do other than triage and stabilize for the moment.

When I reference those SPD call categories 47,000 times, I sent police last year to calls where they could not do anything.

They made sure that a law wasn't being broken.

They moved on to the next call.

And so I think, again, as a system, we need to address that gap.

First responders are not actually designed to break the cycle.

They're designed to triage and hand off to a system that breaks the cycle.

When Chief Scoggins sends firefighters to remediate a fire, they don't rebuild the house and restore the family.

And it's the same thing with police.

Police are reliant on making an arrest when appropriate, diverting when appropriate, but then they're reliant on that criminal justice system or the rehabilitative system and behavioral health, and the care responders will be the same.

So I think we are an imperative piece of that grander puzzle.

But we will not be the outcomes people.

We're going to be output people.

That's the nature of first response.

I do wish we had 30-day follow-up.

And that's something in between long-term case management, like what LEAD does.

I just don't think it's appropriate.

The same thing for the police department.

It wouldn't be appropriate if they were responsible to restore the person who had been arrested and referred.

So we can talk more about that.

But I think the LEAD contract's moving.

It's a great first step, because then I have transparency.

If the person that I referred to LEAD is doing more crimes than ever in six months, I'll be able to see that, right?

And we'll be able to drive some accountability.

And Lisa Dugard's a great partner.

We have talked a lot the last two years about how today's issues are different, the drugs are different, the interventions need to be different.

Chief Barton, okay let me see if I, so you said there are calls, you've sent SPD to calls where they were not able to do anything but this is a dual dispatch system so I imagine CARE went to those calls with police and then it's the CARE folks who then would help that person.

Sorry, to clarify, I was referencing call types that are not the care call types.

So expanded call types where we send police, they don't actually make a positive impact.

They just kind of triage and move on.

That's what I was talking about.

I was saying across first response where none of the teams are getting the outcomes that we want because we're one piece of a larger continuum and sometimes we're not sending the right first responder to the call.

but you're the one sending folks to the call, right?

Sorry, I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

We have hundreds of call types and there are two call types at priority three level that qualify for care.

We are defaulting to police as the primary first responders for all these other call types.

And again, that's what I think the community outcry was about in 2020 and 2021.

Okay, I'll follow up offline on additional with that.

And then I'm really disappointed to hear there isn't more information for the dashboard because you don't have the capacity is what I'm hearing for that.

But to be honest, when I always think collecting this data is part of the work, so it should be baked in.

So if, you know, in my mind, part of the staffing then there should have been some type of conversation and solve for we're going to need someone then to track this because how do we know how well we're doing if we don't have that in house?

So I guess I'm surprised to hear that that was not taken into consideration so that that has had an impact on our ability to gather this data because then we're saying we're going to expand care and I'm looking to, okay, so what's happening in that system and is this really helping the folks on the ground if we don't have that information?

We have loads of data.

Again, if you read the Seattle University evaluation, we have very, very detailed disaggregated data.

What we don't have is the translation tool and I was told by the city they were providing that, meaning, How do you take all that RMS data, all that stuff CARE is tracking, and then get it on a public-facing dashboard?

That's a completely different platform.

The public is not in my police data and my CARE data.

And that is what I was told, is that we have a centralized team in the city who will provide that.

It was a question I asked day one.

It's really important to me.

And so back in 2023, that's what I was told, is we were building your dashboard.

So I need to defer to my boss and her office on that.

Okay, so what I'm hearing is you do have data, it's just not in the form of a dashboard or in a form you can readily share with us because you don't have that was supposed to be maybe centralized.

I don't want to put words in your mouth.

I'm just trying to understand.

I think like so many functions, I can do it in-house.

You'd have to give me staff and technology to do it.

I know how to do it.

If the city's going to do it, cool.

I can crosswalk the data to them and they can put it up.

Either way is good, but I agree with you.

It is a priority.

It's a top priority.

So it sounds like this is something we need to figure out.

Yes.

Thank you.

Chief, in the interest of...

Chief, sorry.

Chair.

Chief, thank you.

Chair, in the interest of time, I have other questions, but I will cede my time and put that in the dashboard and also follow up with Chief and with CPS.

Thank you.

Do you want to read your questions into the record?

I'll just follow up with them.

Thank you, Chair.

Fair enough.

Fair enough.

Colleagues, I will make a couple remarks, but just want to check in with Council Member Warriors and Hollingsworth if you want to ask questions.

After me is the time to go.

Seeing...

not, just starting the clock on my timer.

I'm tracking myself too, folks.

Chief, thank you.

I just want to quickly read from our six year look back that central staff has provided looking at the budgets over the last six years and reading from that book, CARES budget, which is entirely supported by the general fund increased by $14.9 million over the six year period, an 83% increase between 21 and 25. and that is because it did not exist in 2019. Quoting from the Chief, this is a tangible acknowledgement that calls for mental health and substance use need to have a specific response.

That was the part that I wrote down, but just that it is not necessarily the right call for a gun and a badge.

It's maybe not the right call for a Medic 1 as you described earlier.

I will also opine that it is difficult to have reliable data as we grow and expand a department.

It's hard to have reliable data when the department only works downtown for a few hours a day.

It's even harder when we deploy citywide, but again, with only a few staff, you noted two folks in North Precinct, which is over 300,000 people.

every, yep, I'll just say that.

And so it's even harder when deployed citywide, but with few staff and again, only a few hours a day in our conversations.

And I appreciate your team being here because we've had the conversations about how best to deploy in Ballard, especially to support the Edible Hope Kitchen and noting that it might not be the right response for you to show up there every day because then people come to depend on you.

in that way that is not actually helpful.

And so getting to work with you in such close partnership has shown me what the holdups are and it's not you, it's not your employees, it is how we are growing this.

It's also not responsible for us to say zero to 200% overnight.

We have to make sure that you're able to be set up to grow successfully.

So this budget would double the number of care responder teams and fund 18 new 911 call center staff.

Both of these things I fully support.

I would even do more if we had more money.

We already put in a lot on your plate in what is a growing department.

Do you have a plan in place to manage successfully these changes, the increased workload and your growth?

Yes, we do.

I learned in the first six months on the job.

You'll recall I arrived in April, and we created a brand, created job specs and classifications, operations, new protocols, new call signs in about five months.

And I remember it was, you know, wait, wait, wait, not yet, not yet, go.

And so I learned something from that.

And actually, when we deployed the first team of six, we were already starting to plan for the next six and the next six and the next six.

I could scale to 96 in a year, no problem.

We have the academy design, we have the operational protocols, we know proportionally how to grow D1, D2, D3, supervisors, ECAs.

Tommy is brilliant.

I have a small but really talented team who are great at scenario planning and we are prepared.

My urgency is that I am watching people languish and die on our streets and we can sort out the business and operations to get those people help.

Thank you.

And what metrics are you using to track demonstrating success or areas needed for improvement?

Yeah, on the care responder side, we're looking at the things that the other council members have asked about.

Are we successfully referring people to services?

Ultimately, I want to look at jail bookings and ED referrals, right?

Are those going down?

Because they should as we start to scale capacity and as we have other places to take people.

On the 911 side, I'm always looking at the call response times, the hold times, and then we actually do have a feedback loop now.

a technology called spider tech where we can see what the community is saying.

And then concurrently, I'm always trying to assess right now the mental health of my first responders on both sides because nobody really looks at that, right?

What is the level of compassion fatigue?

What is the emotional impact of this work on these dispatchers?

That has a lot to do with retention.

The care responders, again, around the country, my counterparts and I talk about that.

The work is so complex because it's not always as simple as making an arrest or dropping someone off.

we become invested in these people and it is devastating sometimes to lose people, either just physically lose them.

We can't find them and get them help or lose them to unnecessary death on the street.

So I'm still, we're doing these little surveys all the time with the responders to see if we're growing in the right direction and supporting our people the way we need to.

Great, thank you.

It's important for us to track this as we're continuing to grow so that we're able to make adjustments as we're moving.

Last question here is, you'd mentioned the difference between us and Durham, which was just somebody in the background translating data that only the city should be seeing to what can be publicly available.

When we're looking at the difference between us and Albuquerque, are there operational differences?

I'm trying to hold the labor conversations constant and take them out of the picture.

If not for the labor conversations, what are the differences between us and Albuquerque?

Yeah, I mean, Durham had such an advantage.

First of all, the city manager form of government, no labor considerations.

They really got to study and design for about a year and then go to action.

They have great design thinkers.

Their leaders are brilliant and they have a couple people in-house who are great with Power BI.

and there's post-it notes all over their offices.

So I envy the way they were able to go about it.

They have that 30-day care navigation follow-up unit, which I really like and I'd like to take that concept.

In Albuquerque, what I'm most envious of right now is they really have launched, they have their own headquarters, so big headquarters.

but then they also have another building that is an Office of Violence Intervention and then Survivor Support, and they have dedicated teams.

So if somebody shows up at the hospital there and there's a report of DV, there's a specific team that they can call at ACS to go.

They still struggle the way we do because their homeless response is not integrated.

Durham is bringing homeless response in-house to Durham community safety and re-entry strategies, and I'm talking to them all the time about how they're doing that.

So, yeah, stay tuned.

Thank you.

Well, I look forward to the growth.

I can tell you on behalf of many District 6 residents, they are constantly asking me, when are we gonna see more of the care department in our neighborhood?

And so I know that folks are pining for you already.

It's our best metric.

I get that a lot, yeah.

With that, Council Member Waters, I do see you have a hand.

I do.

Thank you.

I apologize.

You called on me first, and I was frantically writing my notes.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to add with this, Chief Barton, since we've been working on the CARE and standing it up for, what, back in 2022, 2023, right around there, I think some of the most important things that affects for my sensibilities, and I know for my colleagues as well, is that CARE is not an enforcement team.

And you've said that over and over, and it's really important The fact that you work with 15 nonprofits without a contract, that you can just refer them.

We don't have the siloing of, we have to go through AHSD, we have to have a contract.

Common sense just tells you we can call these folks.

And I think we've always known, and thank you for actually giving us the percentages, that 60 to 70 percent are unhoused folks that are dealing with mental health addiction crisis.

And the best response to all 911 calls if we're first in the country to do this is to have that dual dispatch.

That we are that police SPD care system of the 21st century where we recognize that every human being is dealing with these type of issues and you don't need an officer for that.

So one of the issues I brought up and I want to thank Councilmember Strauss who chairs the tribal nations tribal government section and when we met as you were there at the tribal summit is that Your client base is the client base of many of the non-profits that service Indigenous people in this city, like Seattle Indian Health Board, Chief Seattle, Seattle Indian Service Commission, United Indians, Mother Nation.

These are all the non-profit Indigenous-led organizations that we continually work on.

Homelessness, addiction, mental health, are there beds, who do we call?

and so I'm hoping one more aspect that I hope I can add and can assist you is that we have a nice nexus between the care team and Indian Country, not just within the city of Seattle, which people think is just the city limits because we're everywhere, however, beyond a land acknowledgement, that we have a relationship where we have somebody within the care team or SBD or however you guys set this up, and when you're looking at doubling those positions, that you have some subject matter expertise in this particular client base to get, because we have those services in Indian Country.

We have the Cowlitz Tribe here that offers services, whether you're native in your family.

CLD and Health Board that offers all those services, not only to the individual indigenous person, but their families.

We have people that call me from Montana, California, Oregon, you know, how do we get our person home?

Can we get bus fare?

Can we get airplane fare?

And we do that.

I mean, I just do it.

I don't, you know, I call up Esther, I call up Colleen, I call up whomever and just say, what do we got to do to get this done?

I don't need a committee meeting for that, right?

Because these are all our relatives.

We care.

We literally look at these people and we care.

So I'm not into performative politics and I'm not a headline-making politician, but I appreciate the work you do because I remember when we first hired you when they weren't going to give you the title chief, and now you are a chief.

That's a fun debate.

but just knowing the times that we've worked together, I'm hoping that in the future, what the care team with dual dispatch looks like, besides office space and having these additional people, is we have a real integration of Indian country and indigenous folks that are dealing with these things, that you actually can use the system of Indian country and tribal governments because we have those systems for our people to bring them home, to give them treatment, like the Lummi tribe, the Tulalip tribe.

We've sent people there to go live either with family or their tiny house village, put them in their treatment center, and that's covered by the tribe in Medicaid, Medicare, and tribal systems.

So I'm hoping that we have that integration.

So I'm looking forward to working with you on that.

Yeah, just thank you for the note.

Seattle Indian Health Board is, I probably have more reverence for that institution than any other.

I had asked the first time I went to the Thunderbird Center in Vashon, I was like, can we get a care team ferry or something?

This is the best design I have seen.

So I just appreciate you acknowledging that, that that system exists and it is brilliant.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Rivera, I see you have a new hand.

Thank you.

I did want to say, Chief Barton, that I did meet with your folks in the University District.

They're operating actually out of the UW Police Headquarters.

And I really appreciate their presence in the district.

I know that there's more that they can do.

They know that.

We've all talked about that.

So again, I did want to acknowledge that Your team has been very responsive when I've reached out to ask questions or to meet with them and to see, you know, on the ground what they're doing and, you know, I want to acknowledge that.

So I went straight to what are the issues?

How do we solve for them?

And I want to acknowledge that.

I have had a positive experience with your folks on the ground in the U District.

I just want to make sure that this investment is yielding the results that we intended because at the end of the day, you know, if we help someone and then they're back where we found them to begin with and it's a cycle, we're not really helping that person and that's the thing that I care about the most as I've told you so, this is why I'm asking all these hard questions and we'll continue to prod and see what we can do differently and including on the dashboard and my last question is, is there an internal dashboard that we have access to because This came up, but I've not seen an internal dashboard.

I certainly don't want to know people's personal information.

It was in the context of what we're doing, but it sounds like you have internal information.

I just want to level set what kind of information, because I'm not trying to find personal information on people.

I more want to know outcomes information.

And I don't have access to or a link to any type of dashboard.

So I want to make sure I'm understanding on that.

I will add you and any council members who are interested to the weekly reports that we circulate, which has all of the calls for service, the call types, year to date, pilot to date, the last month.

And then there's, interestingly, there's a detailed narrative about each and every call.

It's anonymized.

We're very careful about that.

But that's what I provided the Seattle University researchers.

And I'm happy to add that.

That would be great.

I didn't know that existed.

I didn't know you had shared that.

So that's important for us to know and that's the kind of information I'm looking for.

So thank you.

No problem.

Sometimes we don't always know what you have that we're not seeing.

So this is why these conversations are important.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Any other questions?

Seeing none, I'm gonna pass it over to the Chief for any final comments and then over to Council Member Kettle to close us out with the last words.

Chief.

All I have is thank you.

This council has been great.

I've appreciated the candor and I do feel like you're all allies in the work and representing the best interests of the community.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

And again, thank you, everyone, Chief Barden, for coming today and speaking on this.

And it's a good discussion.

I just wanted to close kind of on the 15,000-foot level is that, and there's been questions to this, kind of falls under the idea of expectation management, something that I've been saying in interviews recently.

You know, some announcements made, people think it's going to happen the next week.

This is budget pieces, you know, that take the next budget year to start before they can be buttoned in place.

And I think expectation management is really important, understanding timelines in terms of what we're doing with CARE.

And then the pieces that take to, from what I like to say, IOC and FMC, initial operating capability, and FMC, full mission capability, and obviously you already started but in terms of these changes it takes time even for that and I think that's something that we need to communicate and we can do it through committee but also through this budget process and the questions that we have because it is important for the public to understand that It takes time for this to happen.

Citywide, that doesn't happen truly until we get the staffing up and so forth.

And the other thing I just wanted to note too, and it kind of goes to what I said at the beginning, I think it's important to embrace that lessons learned mindset that there's going to be mistakes and adjustments need to be made.

It kind of goes to my point at the beginning.

and then we should just embrace it and say, okay, and now we're going to make these adjustments and we're going to move forward, maybe through a mid-year supplemental or to the next fiscal year, next budget season.

But I think if we do that and in partnership, both within the public safety realm and to the point that I was bringing up earlier, you know, with public health and human services, because that's when we're really gonna take it to the next level, that partnership with Director Kim, who's behind you, or Winkler Chin, who was here earlier, I don't see her right now, but anyways, these are the things that we need.

So I just wanna say thank you, and thank you colleagues for your questions along these lines.

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you, and with that, we are going to transition into our next presentation.

If the clerk would like to read the short title into the record.

Agenda item four, Human Services Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

And as we are making transitions, A little bit of housekeeping.

I made the announcements.

Do my colleagues need a three-minute recess?

If there's no objection, we will be in recess until 2.50 p.m.

It is 2.47 right now.

Seattle Channel, you can just stay on if you want.

I'm going to go to the top of the top of the top

Affirmatives.

With that, the September 29th, 2025 Select Budget Committee will come back to order.

It is 2.54 p.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Will the Clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Rivera?

Council Member Saka?

Here.

Council Member Solomon?

Here.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Present.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Oh, thank you.

Councilmember Rink?

Present.

And Chair Strauss?

Present.

A present.

With that, we have already read agenda item number four into the record.

We're still trying to address some technical issues to get the PowerPoint presentation up.

As we're addressing those technical issues, I'll ask Director Kim and Dee to introduce yourselves and start kicking us off.

I'll say, just as a little bit of a filibuster, the Human Services Department is everything in life other than early learning.

It used to also include early learning, but from cradled a grave, you care for people who live in our city.

And that's really from youth to affordability and livability, homelessness, public health, and aging gracefully.

So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to you and hopefully we'll have our technical issues resolved shortly.

Okay, I will introduce ourselves for the record.

I'm Tanya Kim, the Director of Human Services Department.

I'm Dee Lamini, Chief Financial Officer, Human Services Department.

Dr. Noble to the rescue once again.

So it looks like we are up and running.

Thank you.

Man of many talents.

Okay.

Well, thank you, Chair Strauss and Select Budget Committee and members for having us here, of course, acknowledging my committee chair, Chair Juarez.

As Chair Strauss mentioned, we are all things human services.

I will note we don't have permanent supportive housing, so that's a different department.

The mission of the Human Services Department is to connect people with resources and solutions during times of need, so all Seattle residents can live, learn, work, and take part in strong and healthy communities.

HSD is both a funder and a direct service provider, so think about some of our flagship programs that are very popular, Utility Discount Programs, Seattle Youth Employment Program, Councilmember Mercedes-Benz Ring, Victim Advocacy and Case Management, We are a city department, but I do want to highlight, and I know Chair Strauss knows this very well, that HSD's Aging and Disability Services Division also serves as the Federally Designated Area Agency on Aging, and we serve countywide.

We're known as the AAA.

It's a federal designation.

and our workforce is really strong.

We've got strong leadership and we work with eligible adults with disabilities and seniors to age in place, keeping them safely in their homes.

Our portfolio, as reflected in the budget book, is organized by six impact areas listed on this slide.

So it is the breadth of services, everyone from youth to healthy aging that I just mentioned.

So with that, we proudly, as a department, partner with the mayor's office, various departments, many of whom you've already heard from.

So some of this will be a little bit redundant, and I'm going to do my very best to thread the conversation.

I've seen every presentation.

or have been here.

And we will make sure that we are addressing the seams when possible when that overlap does come up.

So Councilmember Kettle, we've got you in our heads in a good way.

And so with that, we're gonna first align with our mayor's proposed budget.

So HSD is very much aligned with Mayor Harrell on several priorities.

In our space, we'll highlight addressing homelessness, you will know that we are expanding prevention and shelter capacity.

Second, we're advancing community safety.

So in that world of public safety, we're supporting citywide efforts to increase this work.

Third, which I know is top of mind for many people, Food and nutrition, increasing access not only to food, but nutritious food.

And then number four, public health.

We talked a lot about the need for services.

We'll talk some more, but HSD is the one who is bringing online a lot of these services that we're calling for.

and so I'm gonna walk us through all the different priority areas and the specific ads that we'd like to highlight but before we just jump right in, D, our CFO will provide an overview of our department so you get a glance at what we do by the numbers and give you an overview of our budget.

The Mayor's 2026 proposed budget for the Human Services Department is $432.4 million.

This is a 12% increase compared to HSD's 2025 adopted budget.

On the first two rows on this slide, you'll note significant increases in both the general fund and other fund sources in HSD's budget.

We'll review the major additions to our budget throughout this presentation.

We're really proud to present Mayor Harrell's proposed 2026 budget for HSD that has no major cuts to human services, strengthens investments in our most vital services, and is able to create a buffer against the uncertainty from the federal administration.

In the bottom row, you'll see there's a total increase of 10 FTEs in HSD's 2026 proposed budget compared to our 2025 adopted budget.

This increase includes Health 99 case managers and FTEs that support the expansion of grant funded work from the state of Washington.

On this slide, we demonstrate changes from the 2025 adopted budget in the following impact areas.

Impact areas, by the way, are reflected in the budget book as our budget summary levels.

The largest increases are in the addressing homelessness, promoting public health, and supporting safe communities impact areas.

HSD's 2026 proposed budget of $432.4 million supports 480.5 employees and about half of our workforce provides direct services in the Aging and Disability Services Division.

These are mostly Medicaid funded case managers as part of the AAA as mentioned by Director Kim.

While HSD provides direct services for thousands of residents throughout all of our program divisions, aging and disability services, youth and family, homelessness through UCT, and safe and thriving communities, approximately 80% of our budget is contracted out.

HSD's budget includes a variety of revenue sources, which you can see listed on the left side of the slide.

Many of the additions to HSD's proposed budget are funded by revenues from the proposed changes to the BNO tax and the proposed public safety tax, which fall under the general fund category.

You can see by the wheel on the right, the largest components of our budget support addressing homelessness, which is 39% of our budget, promoting healthy aging at 19% of our budget, and supporting safe communities at 17% of our budget.

I'll pass the presentation back to Director Kim to review the changes in more detail.

Okay, so in the next set of slides, I'll just orient you to the cadence.

I'll share, remind us what the priority area is, and then I'm gonna go through each of the ads.

And so I won't read everything that's on the kind of the title slide, if you will, but we'll then go into the ads themselves.

These are just the highlights.

It's not all the incremental changes in our budget because there are several.

So first, we're gonna start with addressing homelessness.

HSD invests in a continuum of services to reduce homelessness and to shelter individuals.

The majority of the budget goes to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

The 2026 proposed budget to address homelessness is $169 million, as Dee just mentioned, which is 21.8% higher than the 2025 adopted budget.

This ad brings online additional shelter beds, supports people to remain housed, and plans for the unknown under the Trump administration, and includes an innovative pilot.

The first ad to highlight is $7.8 million of ongoing dollars in general fund to open an additional 155 shelter beds that will begin serving clients in 2026. This ad will support shelter site identification, startup development costs, and three months of operating funds.

This investment reflects the city's commitment to ensure our shelters are designed to meet the complex needs of clients to achieve long-term stability.

Critical wraparound services will be a part of the shelter success.

Services will include case management, housing assistance, and intensive behavioral supports for unsheltered people with significant under-treated challenges.

For those of us who have been around for a while, we know that just mats on the floor and congregate settings, that does not work.

And so this is a commitment to building on the lessons learned that we've identified throughout the years.

The next is rental assistance.

As discussed in last week's federal response presentation, the proposed budget invests $4 million in ongoing funds for emergency rental assistance.

This will bring the city's total funding in this area to $11.5 million in 2026. As outlined in the mayor's recent executive order, quote, delivering rental assistance, end quote, this investment will support three strategies.

So one is to support those at imminent risk of homelessness due to financial hardship.

Two, intervene in active evictions due to rental arrears.

And three, supports renters with early signs of instability such as late rent payments or income loss.

and this ad is backed by the B&O tax.

One quick note, we did talk about this at the federal briefing, so just want to underscore again that there was tenant services that was raised.

So while the majority of the funds do go to rental assistance, these programs were designed to offer more than just that.

So case managers ensure clients remain stably housed for the long term after receiving assistance.

This includes creating housing stability plans and searching for more affordable alternative housing options.

I want to clarify that SDCI, which is the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, will retain the legal supports, the legal assistance.

Next we have the Reserve for Shelter and Housing.

We did discuss this as well in the federal response briefing.

This is 9.35 million one-time add for an appropriate reserve.

enables the city to quickly backfill lost investments for shelter and emergency housing should we need it.

Again, I view this as a potential emergency.

It feels like the emergency is coming.

And this reserve can ensure that we can immediately act to keep as many people housed as possible if and when we need to address what may come.

This funding is backed by the proposed B&O tax.

The last slide reflects Seattle's commitment to keeping people sheltered and housed.

Rental assistance is so important, so we need to keep people in their rental units.

The next investment demonstrates innovation and partnership.

The Downtown Association, or DSA, is partnering with an organization called Community Solutions for a pilot to innovate in downtown Seattle.

They're currently in the planning stages, including PDA, the Purpose Dignity Action Organization, to launch a low barrier shelter with outreach, navigation, and aftercare to individuals experiencing homelessness.

And I do want to thank DSA for their leadership and desire to actively support our unhoused neighbors through this pilot.

Okay, that was a suite of our housing and shelter.

We're gonna pivot now to community safety or public safety.

We use that term interchangeably.

This highlights a couple different items here, and HSD funds programs that help reduce instances of individuals experiencing trauma services, excuse me, experiencing trauma, violence, and crisis that includes services from ending gender-based violence to victim support to gun violence reduction.

In 2026, the proposed budget for community safety HSD is 72 million, which is 12.6% higher than the adopted budget.

One of the things, I know that we've talked a lot, and it was wonderful listening to the CARE briefing, we talked a lot about LEAD and WDC, and so I'm gonna go into a little bit more detail, and I know that there'll probably be some great questions coming after my briefing.

So the mayor's office provided this committee a briefing on public safety sales tax last week on Thursday, September 25th.

You heard about the mayor's spend plan.

Those items are in HSD's budget.

And so with that, we'll begin with $5 million ongoing with LEED and then $1.07 for We Deliver Care.

Okay.

So the mayor's proposed budget includes $1 million in ongoing funds for We Deliver Care or WDC for street outreach.

Since 2022, WDC has supported the city's public safety efforts by deploying safety ambassadors in neighborhoods to provide a daily de-escalation presence and offer care and service referrals to those suffering with substance use disorder.

They liaison with community stakeholders, including small businesses, to respond to their public safety concerns.

And so this add in the 2026 budget brings their total to 3.47 million, which allows WDC to continue the work at both the Third Avenue Project as well as the CID, or Chinatown International District.

As Chief Public Safety Officer Natalie Wharton Anderson mentioned, the PDA lead and WDC outreach contracts are in her portfolio, meaning that her team, also in coordination with CARE, offers the oversight, policy direction, strategic direction.

They go to all the policy meetings and so forth.

HSD administers the contracts for contract administrative efficiencies.

In other words, we handle the invoices, they develop the contract, the outcomes, and oversee the reporting.

The next mail priority...

Outreach and engagement?

Oh yeah, I talked about that, we'll do food and nutrition.

Okay, great.

The next priority is touching on food and nutrition, which we also talked about.

So sorry to counsel that this is a little bit of repeat, but for the viewing public, the one-time ads bring our total food and nutrition investment to $30 million.

That's 15.9% higher than the 2025 adopted budget.

HSD provides an array of investments in the service area from food banks to prepared meals to senior congregate meal programs to our summer food service programs for children at your local community center, libraries, and other nonprofits.

in the proposed budget includes 1 million to support pre-made nutritious meals, and those are for various vulnerable populations.

We named youth, seniors, and people experiencing homelessness.

Separately, there's an add of 3 million for food banks.

We talked a lot about this at the federal response briefing.

Food banks offer an array of services, including mobile food pantries, home deliveries for homebound residents, and groceries on-site, and as Chair Strauss has noted, they also offer information referral services, host on-site clinics, and much more.

The final mayoral ad we'll highlight is public health.

While the state and county are certainly responsible for the core public health systems and services in our region, the city has increased its investments to ensure our needs are being met.

We continue to fund Public Health Seattle King County as a department, we fund them, for enhanced services, and this year we redesigned their contract for greater alignment with our priorities.

And, as you know, with both counsel and executive ads, HSD started to expand access to behavioral health services, including detox and treatment.

So we started contracting with providers directly ourselves.

This type of investment was new to the Human Services Department and I want to thank both the Mayor and Council, specifically Council President Nelson, good timing, for expanding our work in this direction.

This ad totals 7.35 million and brings HSD's public health portfolio to 33 million.

That's 28% higher than our 2025 adopted budget.

Now, the following content will be familiar as they were also included in last week's briefing on public safety sales tax by the mayor's office.

And you heard Deputy Chief Public Safety Officer Sarah Smith speak passionately about these investments.

Our public safety first responders have talked about the lack of places to take people, I've heard questions about that today, when they're in crisis and the need for long-term care supports.

HSD continues to work tirelessly to increase capacity and fill in the gaps where we can.

The first 2.85 million of planned public safety sales tax revenue is ongoing to increase vital services such as licensed mental health support, withdrawal management, intensive inpatient treatment services for those with substance use disorders.

And this is a really good opportunity.

We named some good providers out there.

We plan to have a request for a proposal in 2026 to identify those providers.

The $1.24 million in ongoing public safety sales tax revenue is for DESC ORCA Center's specialized outreach team, referred to as ORCAPOD.

And that stands for, and I know Chair Strauss does not like acronyms, ORCAPOD stands for Patient Outreach Diversion.

ORCAPOD.

For a little context, DESC opened the ORCA Center just last month and HSD provided capital and operational support.

ORCA provides low barrier access to post overdose recovery and offers connections to treatment.

Their team can even start clients on medications for opioid use disorder.

DESC has many funders and partners in this space, and I'll note, because accountability is top of mind, they are working with the University of Washington, their Addictions Drug and Alcohol Institute to track impact and improve services.

So it's relatively new, but they have research baked in.

With this ad, OrcaPod takes their services into community.

They will send registered nurses to meet people where they are and provide engagement and medication services.

And the good news is that they're targeting outreach to shelters and permanent supportive housing sites citywide.

You've heard this announcement, some of you.

This ad is $1.8 million in public safety sales tax revenue of one-time capital support to reopen Seattle Indian Health Board's Thunderbird Center.

We've talked about this center in a couple different briefings.

This 92-bed residential treatment facility will offer expanded behavioral health services, including dedicated beds for pregnant and parenting adults.

This is a rare service that's provided.

Thunderbird Center will emphasize recovery from substance use disorder and connections with community and recovery services including traditional Indian medicine.

and it's been mentioned before, but I'll say it again.

For me, it was moving to hear Mayor Harrell's announcement of this investment at the Tribal Nations Summit on September 16th.

I do want to thank Council Member Warris.

I feel like Chair Warris, for my chair, you were in your zone.

It was really wonderful to see your leadership shine in that space, as well as with Chair Strauss.

And for Council President Nelson, who has expressed support in this investment area.

The Tribal Nations Summit holds the city departments accountable, including HSD, and we're committed to making this happen as soon as possible.

Finally, this morning you have heard, oh not finally, there's another one.

Okay, so this morning you heard Chief Scoggins speak rapid fire off the top of his head.

He just has data aligned.

He might be the most proficient speaker of all the department directors.

Talk about ads for HealthOne, Health98, Health99, and the reasons why.

I won't go through all that data because I'm not Chief Scoggins.

However, I will just point out that this ad for HSD is the case managers that join their teams and are co-responders in the space.

I once asked when I first started as department director, why do we have case managers at HSD and supporting FHIR?

Why aren't these positions just in fire?

And there's a direct link with our Aging and Disability Services.

It's that long-term care support.

Many of the folks are eligible for Medicaid.

And so there is a direct access to not only our internal database, making sure we connect them to those long-term case managers.

And so there is a nexus there.

But we're proud to partner with him.

And then, I believe, finally, special mention to Frankly, the Seattle Human Services Department, our partnership with the Seattle Human Services Coalition and all the nonprofit providers who have really asked for funders, not just the city.

They've been good.

They've been asking all their funders to step up in this space.

And so I'll mention, spanning all of our contracted providers, regardless of the investment areas, Mayor Harrell proposed budget includes $11.7 million in ongoing funding for both inflationary and wage increases.

So this is a little wonky, so I'll say what it is and then I'll say it in plain language.

So we've got 2.6 increase, which is for inflationary as required by an SMC.

An additional 2% is for non-inflationary wage increase.

So there is a 2% I want to underscore the 2% ad for non-inflationary which I'll thank the mayor's office for which is really for wage equity and over since 2024 that's been a 4% increase.

So we mandated to do the basically the and the AWI inflationary increase for the contracts.

But we recognize that wages for lots of reasons have been generally low in the human services sector.

But I think one of the lessons through the pandemic, we became really crystal clear that these are workers who are both highly skilled, necessary, they're essential services, and a lot of the work is physically demanding.

if as a city we are expecting higher retention, recruitment, and quality services, we also need to support competitive wages in this sector.

And so I guess I'll just, while I have the microphone, thank the mayor and council for your ongoing support in this, but I do call on other funders across our region to do the same thing because many of our service providers have multiple fund sources, and so this is not the city's burden alone.

And with that, Chair Strauss, I would simply like to thank the committee.

Thank you for your leadership, your teams, your offices, Dr. Noble for your tech support as well as your analysis.

And I know that central staff is, we are getting a lot of questions, we're gonna respond as quickly as possible.

City Budget Office, I do have to acknowledge the leadership under Mayor Harrell, but also my boss, Chief Deputy Mayor Tiffany Washington, who is a champion of our work, and finally, we've got members in chamber here too, if I just may.

I wanna thank the incredible workforce at the Human Services Department, all 400 plus of our colleagues.

Most of them are drug service providers and social workers.

They, along with our contract providers, are the backbone to our region's critical human services safety net.

We've heard from our public safety, our first responder departments, all morning and early afternoon.

where are we taking folks and who are picking up for the long-term outcomes?

HSD is working as quickly as possible to fill this gap, and we're proud to be partners in this space.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, at this time, I'm gonna open it up for questions.

I'm gonna stand in for Council Member Juarez, since she still gets the new title here.

Just a little bit of overview again.

In the areas of operation, HSD provides services for humans in their youth.

during adulthood, as they're aging and getting older, really everything.

As I said, finance and administrative services is the backbone of city operations.

The human services department is the backbone of serving humans in our region.

And that goes beyond just, you mentioned the federal funding for those council members who were here last year.

noting that we are a pass-through, so there is not any general fund used to serve people outside of our city, and we are that agency that provides federal services to people all over King County.

With that, I'm going to hold my questions because, colleagues, you all have been asking questions that have been on my list, so it makes my life easier.

Council Member Juarez, is that a new hand, old hand?

That's an old hand.

I apologize, but I will be back.

No problem.

I see Council Member Salomon followed by Council Member Rank.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, first of all, for being here.

I have a lot of questions and my questions may come across as challenging or even confrontational.

and I apologize for that up front and if there's conversations we need to have one-on-one, I welcome that.

If there's, you know, things that I'm going to bring up that you can't respond to right now.

The first one of which is, you know, gets back to something I asked about in the previous session, what had to do with, you know, certain contracts.

You know, why are they in HSD as opposed to in care where there seems to be more of an alignment?

just as I'm looking at the item of the budget item for the UnitedCare team of, you know, 5.6 that's in your budget, but it's being, are you looking to move it out of HSD into the UCT bucket by itself?

Does that just transfer funds?

And I'm also wondering, you know, we're talking about city employees who are pretty much already paid for, so are we paying for them double?

I'm happy to answer the first question that's clear to me about why contracts are at HSD.

I'm unclear about the second part of your question and happy to follow up offline just so I'm clear.

The FTEs that we have are for HSD.

There are times where our staff work in partnership with others.

And so for Health 99, Health 1, Health 98, Those are our case managers that essentially are co-located with FHIR and go out when they're dispatched or as the follow-up care.

And the reason why we have case managers there is because they have a direct link to our Aging and Disability Services Division.

and we can do very smooth, they have internal access to databases and case management notes and all that good stuff, but if there's something specific, happy to talk more about that.

There are other positions that are added that we passed during supplemental.

This act just allows it to be ongoing and those funds are through Medicaid because we offer case management supports, since we're the Area Agency on Aging for King County, and those are purely funded, grant funded.

But going back to your first question, which is a good one, HSD, you know, and I'm gonna deviate a little bit, going off script, sorry, Director Eder.

So a couple times throughout different presentations, it's been...

the county has been referred to in their audit, and really thinking about how our departments, and I know it's not targeted to HSD, but how are all of our departments being accountable?

One of the things that I know, and Dee and I have been working on this for three years since we've been working together Dr. Noble actually could speak to this before in his time in different roles.

But HSD's functions are a funder and a direct service provider.

And to be a funder and to do it well is to make sure that we have internal controls, that we have not only our compliance with auditing, but we have our financial practices and all the policy and procedures in place.

We have our grants and contract specialists, and we have the units.

who are designed to supervise and to make sure that they're doing the review.

It's kind of more of a functional bread and butter that we offer.

And so with contracts like LEAD, Co-LEAD, and WDC, We know that that's public safety and it should be closely aligned and I have been in numerous meetings and actually have passed off many of the decision-making, most of it, to Chief Public Safety Officer Natalie Wharton Anderson and so through her Deputy Sarah Smith and others, that is very much in line with care and those operations.

And so we administer the contracts for efficiencies.

We're doing them a solid because we have the infrastructure.

We have just absorbed the work.

And sometimes, to be frank, we're asked to do contracts because we could do it quickly and effectively.

We're happy to do it.

But we know that it isn't our role to determine how that works with CARE.

That is their responsibility and they're taking up on that.

And I think there was a question that was asked before, you know, what are the outcomes and how are you making improvements?

They're the ones who are leading in that space, but happy to provide the administrative support.

So just wanted to offer that.

Thank you very much.

And I do have a few more questions, Chair, if you'll indulge me.

I'm looking at the preparation of preparing youth for success, and I'm seeing 17.6 mil in the bucket for that, 7.9 mil for family support, 9.6 mil for youth development.

What is that?

What's included in that bucket?

We can give you a more thorough description, but I did a little shout out to Councilmember Mercedes Rank earlier.

One example of youth development is our Seattle Youth Employment Program.

And so during the summer, we hire a couple hundred young people who qualify to be in our internship program.

And we pay for not only their wages, but we offer support to our supervisors as well as the young people who are in those internship programs.

It's a wonderful service.

Oftentimes, that'll be their first entry into launching into another job and being exposed to positions that they ordinarily wouldn't be exposed to.

And I think we are a great vessel to channel that it's a 50-plus-year-old program.

I think it's older than me.

There are other family resource centers and other types of services, but it's supporting the social-emotional supports to allow young people to have access to the resources they need to thrive.

So it's preventative.

Thank you.

Appreciate that.

Now for the things that may get a little bit uncomfortable.

When I'm looking at the homelessness bucket, I'm looking at expenditures in city-managed homelessness programs.

2024, we're at $12.67 million.

2026 proposed is 36. So we're looking at a three-fold increase in the amount of city-managed homelessness programs.

we're spending more money, and we're seeing what appears to be an increase in the problem of folks on the street.

Not only that, but I look at the expenditure of $161 million this year, $169 million next year, What has that produced for us?

I remember first sorting the body, I think it was having discussions about accountability for what we're spending.

I think it's fair for and responsible of us to ask, what are we spending?

What are we spending it on?

And what are the outcomes of what we've spent?

And I'm looking at the increase of spending on homelessness, in the homelessness bucket, How much housing have we built for those folks?

How many folks have we gotten off the street?

How many folks have we gotten into treatment?

How many tiny villages have we stood up?

Even though a tiny village may not be an ideal situation, it's still a roof with walls and a door that can lock, which is a lot better than somebody being in a tent next to a school.

So this is where I really have questions about, can we show the effectiveness of the money that we're spending on homelessness response.

And that's what I'm saying.

How many units of housing have we produced with all this money that we're spending?

Or are we spending all of this just to do street cleanups and trash pickups and moving people from one side of the street to the other without actually addressing their needs?

And again, if you want to have that conversation one-on-one, happy to do it, but this is where my brain is going when I'm looking at how much money we're spending and what are we getting for what we're spending.

Yeah, no, I appreciate your question.

One of the things that I really appreciate, again, about going last after the public safety briefings is where are people going and the desire to have the appropriate types of housing that people will want to accept.

And so we don't have enough shelter spaces right now, and this budget reflects a commitment to expanding that.

and not only expanding it, expanding it in the ways that are desirable, that people want to not only say yes to, and they have the services that are more enhanced.

They are not going to be where it's just your basic operations.

There are going to be enhanced services, which does cost a little bit more money.

We want providers to do better, and so we do have to invest in that, whatever that do better means.

and so we heard from, for example, Chief Barden, I mean, name a chief, and it's just, so if they receive any level of detox or even treatment, if the majority of folks that we know that we're serving initially in that initial triage are homeless, they will not be successful if they don't have a safe place to rest their head.

and if they don't have the environment where they have the services to continue that, including medication and ongoing medical and psychiatric support, we are creating a revolving door.

And so this ad is really important to that.

And so I think it's a lengthy conversation, but I'll just highlight a couple things.

And so one is the shelter focused on providing intensive behavioral health supports, and the other is for non-congregate shelters, but like I said, the non-congregate shelters have additional wraparound.

And when I say behavioral health supports, just to give you a little bit more flavor to that, it's modeled after the STAR Center, which is proving to be effective.

and the Star Center is another just down the street by DESC with enhanced shelters.

And I've done visits, I know many of you have too, but they have detox, they have medical supports, they have also access to ORCA, so there's a seamless transition.

Our shelter that we're investing in is modeled after that.

We need more of that.

The two non-congregate shelters that will serve unsheltered individuals, they're going to provide the case management and housing navigation to support long-term stability.

These are folks with maybe less of those issues, but wanting to just acknowledge that we don't have enough places and this is what we're bringing online.

We're committed to making sure we have places for people to go.

And then certainly there's a major investment on the OH side to have more long-term housing options.

Thank you for that.

Again, you just made the point for me, which is if we have a unified care team going out and telling people you can't be here, yet we have no place for them to go, then what, right?

We have to have some place that folks can go.

There need to be those supports built in.

You just can't say, here's your key, good luck.

There's got to be some kind of ongoing support for those folks.

So that's really what I wanted to get down to.

And final question before I yield is, what is getting in the way right now of us deploying more tiny homes throughout the city?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

What is getting in the way of us right now deploying more tiny homes throughout the city?

Oh, well, it's really siting and property and available land.

Does the city have available land where we can stand some of these things up?

It's limited.

It's limited.

And I'm happy to talk offline about some of the progress, If you have any private, if there's churches, if there's anything that we are missing, we welcome that conversation.

But I will say, and of course, this is my briefing.

I represent the Human Services Department.

And again, a reminder that we have the majority of our investments go to the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and we invest heavily in them.

So I do rely on KCRHA to be in that space.

And so these funds that we're talking about, they're going over to KCRHA.

They're responsible for supporting the tiny home villages and good neighbor agreements.

All of those things, I can speak to our expectation, but we do have to do that in partnership with KCRHA.

So I neglected to underscore that.

I'd also just weigh in that we were just talking about huge amounts of money, $125 million of city funding that supports KCRHA's work.

siding and operating tiny home villages and other kinds of shelter.

We have made investments in the mayor's proposed budget that would increase the base level of funding so that KCRHA can expand the number of people who can be accommodated through those kind of shelter opportunities.

Happy to answer other questions.

I don't know if I'm going to the left or right of where you're trying to get to.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much, Dr. Kim.

I think this highlights the accountability portion for us.

Again, if we're giving that kind of cheddar to KCRHA, I want to know what our return on investment is and what is the effectiveness of what are the outcomes?

are we getting what we're investing in?

So that's where I'm going.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Salomon.

As Chair of the Finance Committee that Finance and Administrative Services reports to, they are the holder of all city land, so they are the owners.

I have scoured the surplus land.

I have scoured every piece of land that I can find that the city owns.

and if there were an easy site, we would have already used it.

And that is also part of the call that I made earlier this week on KCRHA either needs to put other municipalities, either need to put up the money or the land because we're already doing 80% of the work.

With that, Council Member Rink, Kettle, Saka, Juarez, and then me, if we all speak for 10 minutes, we will get out at 10 to five.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and thank you for being here today.

Director Kim, welcome back.

Before I start, I wanna ground us in the 2024 point in time count numbers, which found that in a given moment in King County, 16,868 people are experiencing homelessness.

These are our neighbors, our family members, workers in our community, students and friends.

so it's absolutely urgent that we find ways to bring them inside into safety.

And particularly in this moment when the federal government is now abdicating their responsibility in taking care of our vulnerable neighbors, it is more urgent that we step up and work across the region to serve everyone.

So I'm encouraged to see new investments into expanding our shelter capacity for these additional 155 beds and I have a couple of questions because folks may know I've spent a lot of my career working in housing and human services.

So I wanna quickly take us back to last year because it's my understanding that the city also invested in two new congregate shelters in 2025. Is that correct?

Did we award those contracts and are those shelters online?

Oh, great.

I'm going to use chair's prerogative.

Council Member Kettle knows the answers.

Council Member Kettle.

Sorry to jump in on the question, but since you asked it and I was looking at you, I just wanted to know, because my team worked this last year, and so we got to new congregate shelters.

I'm working with KCRHA, so we worked with Dr. Kinison to get them.

and then we worked with the county, but unfortunately right now, so the funding has happened, HSD, the money's gone out to KCRHA, KCRHA then went out with the bid, and then Lehigh got it.

And this is where we have our snag now.

The snag is on one out of two.

So one is going to Lake City.

The second one, the counties decided to go south somewhere, which is a bit of a problem because we're looking to address our Seattle public safety challenges and housing homelessness challenges and placing it so outside the city limits is a challenge, particularly because a location that we had fell through because individuals at the juvenile detention center had some challenges with that siting.

It goes back to the chair's question.

So I've been working with King County Council members on this because we need to get that unstuck and we need to get a good site for that second one.

I just happen to be sorry, Kim, to jump in on that.

No, I love that.

And actually, I welcome for those of you who support on the governing board to chime in.

So the funds went to KCRHA.

KCRHA did a request for proposal or qualifications.

And Lehigh was awarded.

Olympic Hills is one of the locations that they're moving forward with and that should be online in December.

And the other one, we're working on land.

Understood.

Thank you all for weighing in on this point.

No, I appreciate it.

I'm glad that we have folks hands on for each of these projects.

I asked that question just to understand what's in the pipeline right now and especially as we're growing our capacity.

Which brings me to now looking at these two additional sites.

Can you unpack a bit who's shaping the RFP for that project?

I understand we'll be administering through, KCRHA will be putting out the RFP, but what is the process for shaping that RFP should it go forward and what can you speak to with the proposed projects?

Well, we usually just offer them direction, but it's Casey RHA who does the full planning and administering and the contracting.

Understood, and at this point, I hope we are also taking into account and ensuring that these investments are in line with the five-year plan.

I know that plan identified the scaling across the board of different kind of housing types, and so I'm hopeful that HSD is also aligning and in conversation with KCRHA about making sure that this investment is in alignment with the plan.

Absolutely, yeah, we're not deviating at this time.

Great, and at this point is, do you have a sense of, if approved, what will be the timeline for the RFP?

Oh, our expectation would be that it would be in 2026.

Thank you.

And moving us from homelessness briefly for a second, I'm wondering, does City of Seattle and HSD provide any fiscal support to 211?

We have a crisis connections contract.

There's 411, 211, different information or referral services, and we can get you specific details on the contract amount.

Certainly.

I'm wondering about that level of connection between, of course, 211 is a great resource.

It's where we direct folks in our community to call when they're in need of human services and support, but also looking to them as a resource to understand level of need in community is something that I'm particularly interested in.

and taking us to also the investments in wage equity and inflationary increases for human services providers.

So I know in my conversations with our human services providers, this is a top priority repeatedly brought to my office.

Our social services providers deserve to be paid what they're worth for the critical work that they do.

And I know that the UW wage equity study has highlighted the, unfortunately, many ways that we're falling short.

And I often think about the frontline outreach and shelter staff I've worked with over the years who commute every day from Tacoma and Everett to come serve our unhoused neighbors because they themselves cannot afford to live in our city.

So there are some increases to wages included here, which I think is a step in the right direction, even if it's not to the level that's needed to fully remedy this challenge.

Could you help me understand how we were able to make this proposed increase happen?

Where is that revenue coming from?

And that might be a question for Director Eder.

The 2% contract wage inflation is pegged to CPI, and so that gets recalculated on a 12-month average, so the scale of the increase is directly pegged to CPI.

The other 2% is the mayor's addition, that is the direct wage equity increase to the HSD budget for community providers.

That's exactly right.

It is part of the general fund investments that are included in the proposed budget.

That money could have been spent on any other municipal purpose.

The 2.6% that's tied to inflation is city law, and without a change to city law, that was required.

in the budget, the additional 2% bringing it up to a 4.6% contract increase sufficient to raise the wages by 4.6%, that last 2% was a discretionary call by the mayor.

Thank you all for unpacking that point.

And moving us along, I did notice, so, of course, very excited about the new proposed investments in food.

I did notice that our food investments are marked as one-time ads rather than ongoing.

Could you provide some detail as to why they're distinguished in that way?

I'll be happy to jump in on that.

The food investments that I think you're referring to are the $10.3 million of investments that's part of the federal response that the city is doing, assuming that voters support the B&O package of changes.

There are a number of unknowns with what the federal government's going to follow through with in terms of threats, promises, plans, however you want to think about it.

Some of the things they've tried to do have been stopped by the courts.

Others have been allowed to proceed.

We wanted to take a beat and see what actually happens in the coming year.

So we've made the investments one-time investments in that federal response bucket for the most part, including all of the food investments.

We have nonetheless kept the 2027 and beyond financial plan assumptions to account for the fact that we will have some level of ongoing investments.

So that money doesn't just disappear, it just isn't specifically allocated for that food investment that you're asking about, but it could be continued.

We will reevaluate in conjunction with your oversight when we propose the 27-28 budgets.

Understood, thank you for delineating that.

I just wanted to highlight that point because on the slides it was one of the only ones that was marked as one time and so just wanted to unpack that for a second.

And I also would like to highlight, I understand we're holding steady right now on gender-based violence and senior services.

There's no additional proposed investments.

What I'd like to understand from the department perspective You know, I understand we're in a constrained budget and I also understand the department is tracking a lot of what's happening on the federal level.

Can you speak to how the department is understanding impacts in these particular areas that we should be aware of, thinking of gender-based violence services and services serving our aging population?

Well, we have a close relationship with various coalitions and also review data.

We know that there are funding reductions with the federal and state level, so we're tracking that closely.

We did receive a $2 million new ad, ongoing ad, in 2020. I had to look at the calendar.

2025 for commercial sexual exploitation.

That's new.

And we're just now contracting for that, which does expand just kind of the portfolio.

and so in monitoring, we're taking a look at the impacts of our new investments as well and we'll keep a close eye on it.

Fabulous, thank you.

And my last question, this proposed budget adds significant funding for important services, I think we can all agree to.

And I'm thinking about then understanding that timely contract administration, compliance checks and oversight are also tremendously important.

So what ways do you need to staff up to support the growth and support the execution of these contracts?

In what ways do we need to staff up to support the execution of the contracts?

Can you repeat your question?

Yes.

In this proposed budget, there's expansions to services that translate to expansion to contracts, I would imagine.

Correct me if I'm wrong in that.

And so my question is essentially, do you have what you need to ensure that we can provide the proper oversight, timely contract administration, and so on?

Oh, thank you.

That's an easy one.

So, yes, we have what we need right now.

A lot of the dollars, again, are passed through to, for example, KCRHA.

We had some contracts that were one time this year, and so the new contracts will come on.

It is my responsibility to kind of recalibrate that.

If we find ourselves in a situation where we're at capacity or over capacity, we need to be prudent, and so I'll certainly ask for what I need, but right now we're okay.

But thank you for asking.

And that is important, again, going back to some of the findings that the auditor had for our partners at the Department of Community Human Services.

It was a ding on not having enough staff for oversight, training, et cetera, and so we're very mindful of that.

Thank you.

Thank you, yes.

And that's the source of that exact point.

So thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

We've got a couple more hands in the queue, Councilmember Hollingsworth, and I'm adding Councilmember Rivera because I know she'll have questions by the end of it because we just chatted.

With that understanding, I've taken my hand down, but that's still one, two, three, four, five, potentially six of us that still have to speak.

So if each of us speaks for 10 minutes, we will be out of here at 5 p.m.

Time check there.

Councilmember Kettle, over to you, followed by Saka, Juarez, Hollingsworth, and Rivera.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, and I just wanted to say, you know, welcome our HSD, which is a new area for me.

I will admit my year one was definitely public safety, but because we've been doing a lot of work in public safety, I've been shifting some attention, which Director Kim knows, and so does Director Eder, too.

So because of time, I'm gonna be making a few statements, maybe one or two questions.

First, thank you for your community safety brief.

I started this somewhat with the idea of neighborhood, school safety, and those kinds of pieces.

I also like the we deliver care kind of.

And so it's been great to get into this space because this is that scene point that I talk about between public safety and public health or human services.

and so I really appreciate the briefing that you gave to the Public Safety Committee.

I also appreciate, because I'm one of those people who keeps referring to the King County Audit, your points about accountability.

You know, these are the things we asked the question and you made your statement, so thank you for that.

That was very important and that's part of the engagement that we need to have as well, so thank you.

Looking at this and working the public safety piece, diversion capacity is huge.

I mean, with Star Center, different pieces, we just talked about the two non-congregate shelters, which goes to show how I've been jumping in with both feet into the housing piece and getting into the weeds.

And we are working it, Council Member Rink, don't worry.

And I'll follow up with you on that.

But that goes with outreach and engagement.

And this is across the board.

This is where LEAD is so important.

I've spoken to this many times.

And LEAD, my question on this is gonna be related to not so much the the drug or substance use disorder kind of side of things.

But coming out of the soap, the prostitution side, we need capacity.

And I read an email or a letter, or a letter within an email, talking about the awarding of contracts.

And it talked about a review panel.

And they said, OK, we're going to give these contracts to this organization, or to a couple organizations.

and one organization that was not given any funds to was The More We Love.

And so my question to you is when they make those determinations, who do they do the outreach to?

Like how do they make that decision?

And the reason why I ask, because I was at the North Precinct talking to a couple lieutenants and other men and women of that North Precinct and like the only group that shows up at second and third watch is The More We Love.

and they noted how other organizations didn't show up or they're nine to five or whatever.

And so I'm not sure of the decision calculus, but it's striking to me when I hear the North Precinct says, on the ground, when these women are so vulnerable and so in need, there's one organization according to the Seattle Police Department, and that's not officially from the Seattle Police Department, but for my engagement with North Precinct that shows up.

But yet, because of the decision calculus tree, whatever the system you have, they weren't selected.

Can you speak to that?

I can, thank you.

So I typically don't go into great detail of the organization's applications and their score, but I'll take this opportunity to provide some sequencing reminders, which will help explain why the More We Love is showing up.

So we had that, as I had mentioned, an ongoing ad in 2025 for specifically commercial sexual exploitation to address those issues.

There was a proviso that asked us to do an RFP.

And there was acknowledgement that There's a need now.

I don't want to use the term emergency regularly in the work that we do, but there was a need now, and we acknowledge that.

And so we heard the request to do a door contract with the More We Love while we were doing the RFP.

And so we did a contract.

It's their first time, I believe, contracting with the city.

So we need to make sure that they met all the requirements.

We started contracting with them.

And that's when they really, to their credit, absolutely started the work immediately with great enthusiasm.

So there's no knock on that.

Their contract was in place acknowledging that we needed time to do the RFP.

We issued the RFP.

We made awards.

and they didn't receive an award, and I know that you're asking me to speak to that.

We have a review panel, and it's not a perfect science, of course, because you're putting out the guidelines and application organizations are applying, Again, this is our due diligence.

And then when you have the panel reviewed, they do score to that guidance.

It really first starts with developing the guidelines.

What is it that we're purchasing?

And we had lots of folks chime in, including SPD.

And when we did the awards, what the review panel says is, here's the scores based on the amount of funds, based on those types of services that you would like to procure.

We recommend these organizations for funding.

there were many organizations who scored relatively high who didn't get awards, including the More We Love.

And so I want to be really clear, and I told this directly to Director Moreland, she didn't score low.

There were also agencies who scored higher than her agency who also didn't get awarded because of our limited capacity.

And so I've been at the city for 15 years.

I've been a planner who did these RFPs.

we always receive more asks than we have budget for.

That said, we're looking at outcomes and we're looking at performance and they're on my radar and so we'll keep seeing what their performance is and what the need is in the future.

And so again, I wanna make it really clear it's not a knock to the organization.

There's lots of things to consider.

And I understand that, and we have our own things to consider.

And as you know, in Public Safety Committee, all five of us, I believe, made that determination, understanding based on North Precinct's input.

So to be blunt, don't be surprised if Council Action also addresses this point.

Switching over to addressing homelessness, KCRHA, I know the mayor's been speaking to KCRHA recently, and I do believe in the regional support.

I believe I support Dr. Kinenson and the work that she's doing, which is very important to include the two non-congregate shelters.

And it's illustrative of some of the challenges in terms of the example of the two from last year that we've been working on.

And we'll continue to work on those.

And for Chief Deputy Mayor Washington, this is the reason I was trying to get a hold of you at the end of last week.

So it's kind of come out on the dice instead.

So I apologize to her.

But it sounds like you're up on it as well.

I did want to say one thing, too, related to this.

And this kind of goes to what the mayor's been talking about, having other participants in the program.

And part of this is that we need to ensure KCRHA is working hard and performing so that it becomes an attractive organization to other jurisdictions around the county.

but you know, Council Member Rink talked about point in time and that's fairly important but I also know from doing lots of on the ground research myself and talking to a lot of organizations and then having organizations, you know, in terms of these points, it's like I made the point that 15 to 40% of the people at Third Pike compliant do have housing but there's challenges with that housing or the addiction may be drawing them to the streets more and so then there's pushback on that point but when I'm talking to service providers and I make this point, I've done this more than once and they said, yep, we do have this issue.

And I bring it up because it's important to bring up because it is facts in terms of all these observations and so forth.

But the other thing that goes to housing is should we be building new stuff or should we be maintaining old stuff?

And I'm raising this up because one reason why people who may have housing and supportive housing or affordable housing is that if their housing is in poor shape, and I've been on the street looking at a massive rat's nest around one, that I did dealing with an issue in District 7, a public safety issue.

No surprise that they're on the street.

So this kind of goes to, let's have an honest discussion about these points.

And then it's also to, the mayor's been talking about like, where are they from?

You can listen to Blue City Blues podcast from a couple shows ago, where they're talking on the street over at Little Saigon.

And the person who's a true expert on this is, oh yeah, we have these two people.

One's from Gig Harbor, the other one's from Port Townsend.

I've talked to a lot of service providers who are on the ground on a daily basis.

They say, yeah, it's about half and half.

And then some say 60%.

We have to have honest discussions about these things, otherwise we're really never gonna solve it.

If we say they're all, not everybody's from here, or everybody on the street does not have housing, then we don't really get to the root issues, like the status of the housing, in terms of is it livable?

and I just raise this up because I think it's important to do and I say it in a matter of fact way, I'm not looking to be provocative or anything, but I've gotten 20 months of just walking the streets, talking to lots of people and I just wanted to highlight that.

Public Health, thank you for that.

The two case managers for Health 99, another example of that connection between the two areas and I really appreciate the support to that.

And the idea of building capacity, you know, the ORCA, the Thunderbird Treatment Center, the Crisis Care Center that's going to come in.

You know, the Star Center, all these things are so needed.

We have to build capacity on these things.

And with these groups that are doing this, we also have to have good neighbor agreements.

And I've talked to, I know this has become a bit of a touchy subject, and I talked to a service provider and I said, hey, I'm not looking to do this as, you know, punitive or anything.

All I'm looking for is communication and collaboration.

And I said to the service providers, hey, if you have a different name, You know, give it to me.

We won't have to use good neighbor agreements if that's got like this, you know, intinuates like something that's wrong.

But I just bring this up because the good neighbor agreements is really important.

And it seems like the service providers are taking these on board themselves.

And I just want to thank your work on this.

And I think this should also go to housing as well.

And I just wanted to note that.

And I'm running out of time.

and I just wanted to say thanks to the folks that work in the unified care team.

I know it's a mayor's oversight, but in reality, obviously it's a human services piece and HSD's part of that.

And I just wanted to thank the department's participation in that.

Okay, I think I want, did you time me?

I did time you, but don't worry.

Director Kim, anything that you want to respond with?

So much there.

Such a good summary.

You, I think, underscored a lot of the briefing.

It's complex.

in this space, and I think those of us who are in human services continue to learn the complexities, particularly the homelessness and the intersectionality.

I do want to underscore that, yes, we're working.

Most of the dollars go to KCRHA.

They will be doing their procurements.

They're looking for locations but anything outside of the city of Seattle, if there are properties out there, just in case the general public gets confused, wanna just set the record straight that those are still going to be for the purposes of supporting Seattle's priorities and it will have a nexus to Seattle.

And so even if there's a site outside of the city location, we will be making referrals for our efforts.

want to make sure that people are clear that we need people to lean in and if it's our budget that's going to these operations, then certainly we will see Seattle benefiting from that.

Thank you, Director Kim.

Councilmember Sacco followed by Juarez, Hollingsworth, Rivera, and Strauss.

Again, if everyone speaks for 10 minutes, we will get out at 5.05.

And I will be brief.

I don't anticipate this lasting longer than five minutes.

but, and I'm glad I'm able to go sort of the middle towards the end of this, because some of my colleagues have asked some good questions, and my questions are really offshoots of some of those.

But first off, Director Kim, thank you so much for being here today.

Really appreciate all the work that everyone within HSD does to keep our community safe, and it's not just the embedded Health 99, Health 1, and case management capability.

It's a lot.

You all do a lot.

So really appreciate that.

I'm really excited about, among other things, the food investments in the mayor's proposed budget and specifically some of the food bank support.

So I know that the mayor's proposed budget includes new one-time, as was pointed out, funding for food banks, $3 million specifically, and $1 million for meal programs.

to help reduce food insecurity, which is a huge priority for me in my office, to reduce food insecurity and just someone, and just speaking firsthand, I know personally what it's like to rely on food banks and food shelves, and so I'm excited about this investment because it helps us in part backfill against some of the cut first, ask questions later slashing that we're seeing at the federal level, but also because as a policy matter, I think it's the right thing to do and I know and I've seen the benefit of it.

Has HSD explored ways to develop a strategy to make some of these investments permanent?

I do understand the wait and see approach with respect to the broader 9.5, 10.5 or whatever food investments, but I'm talking specifically now about the food banks and the meal program dollars this year that are one time.

Well, I think Director Eder responded to that, you know, while it says one time, excuse me, while it says one time, you know, we reserve the right and we'll look very closely at the ongoing need.

And so do you want to underscore again the Federal Reserve response?

Yeah, just reiterating what I said to Councilmember Rink, I believe, that we have the money in reserve to continue the same level of federal response spending in 2027 as we have for 2026 proposed, but we are just going to reevaluate what the highest priority needs are.

Earlier in the conversation there was a discussion about the nine and a third million dollars that's being held for housing vouchers and shelter investments.

That is a small, too small fraction of what the need could be.

The federal government has threatened to stop supplying continuum of care funding to permanent supportive housing and shelter operations, that alone is on the order of $23 million.

So we've set aside $9 million for at least being able to do something in that space.

We'll have to see as 2026 unfolds what the needs are, and we'll reevaluate for 2027.

Thank you.

I heard that part about this year and then plan for next year.

I understand that.

That was my question.

That effectively suggests short-term temporary.

What I was specifically referring to in contrast was longer-term permanent and with respect to those two buckets of food investments in particular.

So $3 million for food banks and meal programs.

It sounds like the answer has not You're taking a wait-and-see approach on all of it across the board and I am interested in particular for those two buckets to be made permanent beyond current funding levels.

My next question pertains, and I think this will be fairly straightforward, this pertains to some of the rental assistance items, the $4 million we previously talked about.

We reaffirmed here today that some of those, the $4 million, some of that funding is specifically for tenant services as opposed to pure direct financial support for rental assistance, which is great.

I recently met with the renter's commission amongst other things.

They expressed support for increased funding and capacity for tenant services.

So do we know an exact breakdown of that $4 million, how much is currently anticipated to be earmarked for tenant services versus pure rental assistance?

If not, maybe this might be a good SharePoint question.

That's a great SharePoint question.

And we do plan to RFP as well, so we'll see if we have that level of detail.

I do want to, if it's okay, address the food ongoing.

I love what Chief Scoggin said earlier, which is, I hope we don't need Health 1 and Health 99 and Health 98 long term.

And I would say, looking around to see if our food providers are in the room.

I would say, I think we all agree that we also hope that we don't need this level of supports in food banks and meal programs ongoing too.

One of the things that we're waiting for, and we're here to provide it if needed, one of the things that we're waiting for, in particular like SNAP, is we also need to see what the state does in terms of their response.

I don't want to leave the impression it's just a wait and see to react, but there are layers to this.

While the Human Services does a lot, we don't administer SNAP, for example.

and so when the feds react and then the state needs to recalibrate their budget and see what their response is, then we'll have a clearer idea of maybe the impacts directly within Seattle and King County and so there is some calibration that they might provide as well.

Sure, totally agree, and I just know respectfully that the hope and pray approach is not an effective planning strategy for anything.

I also hope that as well, but as a policy maker, I am responsible for contingency planning, any number of scenarios, and that's what I want to make sure our city is best positioned to do.

and some of those scenarios should contemplate some of those policy priorities, investments that we as a city think are a little more important, notwithstanding whatever particular federal administration may be at play or not.

So I'll name it.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Council Member Saka, there is $22.6 million of ongoing food and nutrition in HSD's base budget.

These ads are specific to any additional impact from the federal government uncertainty.

Excellent.

Thank you, Dee, with that timely response.

With that, Council Member Juarez followed by Hollingsworth, Rivera, and Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Please look at the time and keep me on task at 4.13.

I have two questions about the PowerPoint in the budget and then one comment to bring people up to speed for King County Regional Housing Authority.

So under the proposed changes, well, you have for proposed changes to the B&O tax, which Council Member Salomon, Rink, and Saka mentioned, the rental assistance, the reserve shelter and housing and the food and nutrition, Those are voter contingent, correct?

The B&O tax.

Yeah, the B&O.

So that's voter contingent, what's coming up if the voters vote yes.

So even though they're listed there, we don't know if that's a given.

And I know that these are additions to the base of what we already fund, so I got that part.

So hopefully the voters come through.

I'm not supposed to say that.

Proposed, I got it.

So that was where I was a little confused.

The second question is, under the new public safety sales tax revenue, is that the .01?

What is that?

Okay, let me go back.

Hold on.

I know you're getting ready, Dan.

Hold on a minute.

So you have five programs listed under there.

The diversion capacity, detox, orca, Thunderbird, case management,

That's the public safety sales tax, the 0.1% increment to the existing sales and use tax, correct.

And again, that's contingent that we get that done.

That's contingent upon council action.

That doesn't go to the voters.

I'm more comfortable with the second part I raised, B, on the public safety sales tax revenue.

So that isn't as tentative, if you will, than the proposed changes to the B&O tax.

So the other thing is going back to the King County Regional Housing Authority, the $125 million that the City of Seattle proposes.

I don't know.

I know Council President was on the call Friday with King County Regional Housing Authority, and I know that the mayor is going to provide a resolution to go back to regionalism, and Mayor Bacchus made a phenomenal contribution in suggesting and requesting of King County Regional Housing Authority that they do an inventory of what cities are giving how much and what services, including brick and mortar, they are providing.

So hopefully we'll have that soon, Councilmember Bersaca, and some of you, yeah, some of you other folks.

So I'm really proud of some of the folks on King County that pushed that, and we were on the call.

So we will have a better sense, and I'm hoping you will get back to us too if they don't.

if this inventory comes forward, because we really do need to see.

And just going back to when King County was created in 2019, originally the regionalism, there were some issues there.

I thought some of them would be resolved.

We're still having some outlining cities within King County that are not contributing and continue to, I'm just going to say it, point fingers and say it's a Seattle problem.

So we are trying to overcome that.

So having an inventory, and it has not gone unnoticed by any other city how much the city of Seattle contributes in services.

And I don't think we get enough credit for that, quite frankly.

And then the last thing I just wanna add is, that King County Regional Housing is really a clearinghouse of contracts.

They're not an advocacy.

Like, was originally, correct me if I'm wrong, originally thought the foundations would be more on advocacy, but that has shifted in the last three years.

So basically, they take the contracts and they decide where they go.

And I think people are confused.

They're thinking King County Regional Housing Authority is in the business of building stuff, of finding property and building stuff.

They're not.

They're like the clearinghouse of contracts.

Is that a correct characterization, Director?

Well, they do have their strategic plan and they are receiving funds from us as well as county and other for emergency shelters.

So they have a very clear lane, but they aren't in the business of brick and mortar like permanent supportive housing and other types of facilities.

That's true.

Right, and permanent supportive housing is the county under DESC.

We have permanent supportive housing at the Office of Housing, but also, yes, the county retained their dollars, and they also have permanent supportive housing, too.

Okay, thank you for that clarification.

And then one last note.

I want to thank Council Member Zaka for stating something that I was thinking while you were speaking, and I thought it was incredibly authentic and kind.

I, too, have had to, as a child and a young adult, rely on food banks.

and so I understand the urgency of his questions and why it's a little shaky when we were like, oh, let's hope the B&O tax thing happens so we can do this.

But again, thank you for clarifying that these are additions to underlining.

And if we can make this happen and this becomes part, like you said, part of the law, the ordinance, how we do baseline funding, then that's a good thing, because that's where we all started.

And I want you to know, I did get a lot of flack for saying things about the UW and the sugar tax.

I told you I would and I did.

So thank you for that.

That's how it's done, folks.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

And for the record, you have called it the Housing Authority since its inception.

You have been consistent with that.

Me and the mayor.

Yes, with that, so that's nothing new.

Just everyone, Council Member Juarez literally made sure that this thing happened years ago.

I just want that record to reflect.

With that, I see Council Member Hollingsworth, Rivera, Nelson, and Strauss for, if we each speak for 10 minutes, we'll get out at five.

Over to you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I'll be quick, and I mean it.

And just for the record, my mom would be really offended by you all referring to the Regional Homeless Authority as the Housing Authority.

Our King County Housing Authority, which she worked for 30 years, is phenomenal.

And they do a great job.

So I just wanted to remind, it's different.

There's a King County Regional Homeless Authority, and there's a King County Housing Authority.

They probably all work together in some ways, but, and I know that council member Juarez has always called it the housing authority.

So I'll, I'll keep my mouth shut.

Thank you.

So real, real quick.

And just, and I just have two quick comments cause I'll director Kim, I'll talk to you offline.

with some questions.

Number one, great appreciation for you and your department.

What you all have to juggle is a lot in this city with all of the personalities, the organizations, the community groups, just a lot that you have to navigate.

And then also the human services is not, it is a It's very emotional.

It is spiritual.

It's all these different things connected and it's tough, especially navigating when people have really great needs and we have to meet those needs and people are in distress or in crisis and just having to navigate all those emotions and stuff is a lot.

I wanted to say that.

The second thing is, I know that it is a challenge with the King County Regional Homeless Authority.

Yes, we give a lot of money.

They're in their infancy stages.

and we need to have a little bit of humility, them included, on we just need to do better.

Like we just have to do better, the implementation of it, the outcomes that are happening, we just have to do better.

And I know your department is working every day on that, making sure that we are meeting those needs.

But I know as council members, we hear it every day.

I've seen it on the street, I've talked to people, I've experienced it with people in my community and organizations have had to navigate really tough things, and we just have to do better with our regional homeless authority.

Progressive revenue should be in progressive outcomes.

The last thing I wanted to mention about the food access, I love the investments in it.

Last year, we made one-time investments.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, for figuring that out in the chair's package.

with those one-time investments, Operation Sack Lunch, which is in Councilmember Saka's district, and the meal providers, they serve all of our districts, made a big purchase.

They purchased a refrigerator, a walk-in fridge, so they were able to collect more meals and get those out to the community.

And that is huge when you're talking about capital investments.

It could be as simple as a van, a refrigerator, it could be an automated forklift, so they're able to It could be a lift on a truck, right?

So they're able to go and get things.

Usually a lot of people don't understand that oftentimes food banks can't accept donations because they don't have a dock.

And so then they have to go and ask if they can get a forklift.

If they don't have a forklift, they can't take off these massive pallets.

They can't accept a donation.

There's just little stuff like that where one-time investments for capital projects help.

and I know some people had hesitancy with wait and see, but I also know that there are two major funders for food banks.

You have the Emergency Food Assistance Program, which is federal, that's USDA.

emergency food, excuse me, TFAP and EFAP dollars.

And EFAP are state, and oftentimes they coincide.

They see what the federal is doing, and then EFAP tries to say, okay, well, we see what the federal is doing, and that's what we're gonna fund.

And then it trickles down.

Then the county's like, okay, what can we do?

And then the city's like, okay, where can we fill in?

And there's other creative models that we could be doing, like bulk purchase.

There could be transportation, logistics support.

There's a whole bunch of things that we as a city could stretch our dollars even more.

So I just don't see it as the financial investment.

There are other ways in which we as a city can help out and partner with a lot of private folks that are in this industry as simple as Starbucks.

A lot of people don't know Starbucks donates all of their food that people do not consume and it's individually packaged.

It gets sent to a distribution point and then out to different meal providers already packaged.

and that logistics support, is that a warehouse the city can offer?

Are those different refrigerators for different organizations so they can accept those donations?

Whatever it is, I know there's ways that we could be creative to continue to stretch the dollar right now because the average price of food right now is about 312. Last year, before the pandemic, it was around 230. average price, it's gone up significantly, the average price.

So our dollar is not going as far as it is.

And I know that we continue to make these investments and just really appreciate the attention to the food piece.

So thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Director Kim, anything else to share?

I think the only thing I'll underscore there is it's a balance being data informed and so we can see where the food impacts are on our providers and having the reserve to respond.

But to underscore what Council Member Hollingsworth said, one thing we know is that during the pandemic, we rallied and there were a lot of partners who stepped up and we got creative.

And so we are committed to looking at, all the resources out there, whether it's financial or other.

And so I appreciate you underscoring where there's opportunity to be efficient, but also lean on our partners, too.

Thank you.

Councilmember Hollingsworth has been quiet all week, and that she could not stay quiet for.

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth, for your championship of food.

With that, we have Councilmember Rivera, Nelson, and then myself.

At this point, if we all speak for 10 minutes, we'll get out at 5 p.m.

Okay, thank you, Chair.

Hi, Director Kim.

Hi, thanks for being here, Dee.

So I will say, every time someone brings up COVID, Director Kim, we have those war wounds together.

We did do a lot and we got really creative, but I would remiss, and we would be remiss if we didn't say, we got an influx of funding for the federal government.

It's like the opposite of today, unfortunately.

is quite the opposite, to be able to respond as, well, we should have gotten that money to the global pandemic.

And so that gave us flexibility to do some things that we don't normally get to do.

And I think as we unwind COVID and we're getting you know we're five years out almost six there were some things that we we were so grateful to be able to do that we can't necessarily continue because we don't have that influx of funding and of course now we're in this situation where we're getting attacked by the feds and they are not giving and I find it particularly egregious because it's our taxpayer money that they're not giving back to us.

So that's, you know, and that's putting it mildly because of course there's the whole egregious aspect of not giving a darn.

I was going to say something else about people.

I caught myself.

But anyway, I will say I do have concerns about the sales tax and I've said this and that.

It is the most regressive tax and I feel a little bit sometimes like we're taxing poor people to help poor people and that doesn't feel awesome.

Of course the B&O tax that's a voter approved piece so that's out there in that way.

FEP is voter approved.

Next year we have libraries levy.

that we'll be in the same situation with, but that's next year's issue.

So there are some things in here that I know rely on other things lining up.

I'll say it that way.

I will say that I support the investments that are helping folks that need it the most, including these shelter beds, because I've said all along it's inhumane to leave people living on the street.

That is, I would not want my, my mother, my child, my brother, my sister living on the street, uncle and et cetera.

So I very much support while we're standing up permanent housing, more shelter beds.

So I appreciate that.

And I also appreciate that this is thoughtfully thought out in terms of it will come with case management, which is so important when folks are there, that's the opportunity to talk to them about what else they need.

and can we hook them up?

What kind of service do they need?

Addiction services, food, Council Member Hollingsworth, a plethora of services that they may need.

So I appreciate that that was thoughtfully built up that way.

Now to a question.

Just a point of clarification, Director Kim, on page 11, I see that This community solutions initiative, it's a contract with DSA and PDA for outreach, navigation, and aftercare related to individuals experiencing homelessness.

And then I got a little bit confused because on page 12, it talks about this $5 million for pre-booking diversion through LEAD.

Is LEAD the PDA?

Yes, PA is the organization, LEAD is the program.

The program.

Okay, so this is the same organization.

And then...

I was looking at this LEED piece, and I think I brought this up the other day, but since you're here, you can clarify.

So LEED's total investment, I think, is 20 million between LEED and co-LEED, and then public health's investment is how much total?

I know you have here public health somewhere.

Is 33 the total investment?

or just part of the investment?

Proposed budget.

It looks like it's a total investment.

Is that true?

Yes.

Okay.

Thank you, Dee.

So I just, again, with LEAD, and I know co-lead's been, there's, been a lot of good things to come out.

I know LEED does a diversion part.

I have more questions about that, but it is a sizable investment.

So it is, as I said last week, it's just like a small department at the city.

So just wanting to learn more about that particular contract and what you see with the additional funding, what that will help do.

I understand part of it is the state, because based on the feds taking money away, so I get that part, but just more information about how you all manage that contract with LEED.

And I want to say, as others have said, I'm very appreciative to HSE.

You have a very big department.

The bulk of what you do is contracting with other agencies to do this work.

And there's a lot of oversight that you have to do as regards that.

And so I think you've heard from us, you know, what goes into those contracts in terms of outcomes and oversight.

So we know that what we're doing is making a difference in people's lives.

So an acknowledgement there on that, but then also now with LEAD and public health for that matter, because that's an expansion and I know we're doing treatment services, which I super support and so excited about the Thunderbird Treatment Center, because I know that is very critical.

but getting more information about what these contracts will look like and how you all manage for those particularly the ones that are newer is really something that I want to have more conversation about and learn more about so putting that for the record chair and for now I'll leave it at that just more information about those particular contracts and how you all go about with oversight of those contracts is really important because I know over the years there have been different challenges and to the point other folks have made, we don't want to be in the same situation that the county is in long term.

So thank you, Director Kim.

Thanks for everything that you do and your staff does.

Thanks, Dave, for being here.

Thanks, Chair.

Thank you.

Director Kim, anything to share in response?

No, well, I want to get back to you, particularly around LEAD.

As Chief Public Safety Officer mentioned, they've been working very closely with Lisa and her team on improving outcomes, and so I want to make sure that we have a good response for you since they're leading in that sorry to use the term, but they're in the space of being critical for the strategic, you know, direction of that contract.

And so we'll get back to you.

And it is different than CoLead, which incorporates the housing and the additional supports.

So just, I know it seems like it's the totality, but they are different.

And of course, housing costs a different amount.

And so we'll respond via SharePoint.

Thank you, Director Kim.

I know lead does mostly, it's the outreach of the diversion, the outreach piece of diversion and the co-lead was set up to do wraparound.

I also know that, and I've read some of the past reports about the programs, I think over the years as expansion happens, then what does that look like and what do the outcomes look like?

Because oftentimes we have something that's working great and then we go to expand it and then What are the pinch points with the expansion?

If any, and please, again, I said this last week, I'm not trying to malign lead in any way, shape or form.

It's as expansion happens, what does that look like and what do we require with those contracts.

And I think that's an important, again, we are a body that we have to ask the questions.

So please know that's where that's coming from.

Not a place where I'm trying to criticize, but learning more so that as we're making our decisions, we feel really good about all the things that are in place, including those accountability and outcome pieces.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera, Council Member Nelson, and then myself with 25 minutes before five.

I'm not gonna make it, just kidding.

Thanks.

I'm kidding.

All right, so on that levity, I will start with the good news.

I am thrilled to see more prominent, through the prominent ads toward building a more comprehensive plan to help people get into recovery or on a path to recovery.

And I'll say again, that is broadly defined and I don't need to go on that.

So enough on that.

And I'll highlight a couple pieces of this, specifically the fact that my $300,000 pilot program to refer people directly to residential Treatment has now grown into 2.8 million and million dollars and that includes detox and in a range of different providers so Thank you very much to the the budget people in the mayor's office and also to you The existing program is saving lives and let's save a whole lot more and In addition, I'll highlight the $1.8 million for the Seattle Indian Health Board's Thunderbird Treatment Center.

A couple of us have mentioned this already, but I must correct the record.

I don't just strongly support this ad.

I asked for it.

First, last year when it was one of my priority amendments to the mayor's budget, but it was not included in the chair's package.

And then a couple of weeks ago as I was negotiating the terms I wanted The items that I wanted funded from the resolution that council passed unanimously, a whole list of treatment and housing oriented investments to have a comprehensive plan.

and some of those items have already been mentioned, but they were lead DESC's expansion of the long-acting sublocade protocol and also DESC's development of protocols to treat meth addiction with the class of drugs that includes Ozempic.

and I understand that the long-acting sublocate is wrapped into what will be offered at ORCA.

Hopefully there can be room in there for the meth treatment trials.

So that is really positive and I must say that, well, just thank you very much.

I put the legacy, this legacy, the Thunderbird Treatment Center's, you know, that legacy priority on the table and I'm pleased to see it finally funded, yay.

Now for the bad news.

According to Central Staff's five-year budget review, which was released in 2024, April, It's a budget review from 2019 to 2024. HSD's budget has grown 72% while Seattle grew by 72,000 people since before the pandemic or about 10%.

so that's a big discrepancy and I don't think there's been proportionate correlation between our growing investment and better outcomes for our community.

For a sense of scale, my sly on underspends also included an ask for ongoing contracts with service providers and Appendix C lists all of them This is Appendix C, everything under this, you know, the chartreuse highlight and onto the next page.

Anybody can see this.

It was presented in the GADE committee a couple weeks ago.

Anyway, it lists 115 HSD contracts with a total value of $292 million.

So we really do have to make sure that we are showing the outcomes of these investments.

And just to bring it back to the present, I'm most troubled by the lack of accountability in the community safety program where there's currently a live RFP for I believe 15 million that was released last week.

And I say that strong word, lack of accountability, because to my knowledge and to the knowledge of the auditor there has not been a rigorous evaluation done by HSD on the outcomes of the of these, I think they're four-year RFPs, sometimes they're about a year late, and that is unfortunate.

I recognize from my reading of the latest RFP, the success metrics are not based on outcomes, rather they focus on total number of program participants and percentages of people feel safer in their communities, and while that might be an important element, if we're spending $15 million to help, well, to improve safety, we should see what these programs statistically yield.

So that is, that's some of my comments on that, and I do recognize also that there is an evaluator component of the RFP, which is great, but I, my understanding is that it is, that it comes afterwards, not before, and that to me seems like a squandering of an opportunity.

There should be an evaluation, in my opinion, at the end of each funding cycle so you know what's working and what isn't, and then use that knowledge to inform the criteria of the next RFP.

And I've said that before.

But to my knowledge, again, HSD hasn't done that, at least as far back as 2015. And in the gun violence audit, there's a footnote on page 10, which refers to a list of requests dating back from 2016 that the auditor has asked HSD for an evaluation of the services and then the, and apparently HSD has said that's before your time, Director Kim, has said, well, we're about to issue our RFP.

And there's been different ways.

So in 2016, for a 2018 audit, and then again, that RFP went out in 2019, and then it was requested again in 2020, 21. Anyway, anybody can see this list of requests and then sort of lack of response.

and it seems like that information would be great for everybody.

It builds public trust.

It also validates our service providers' good work and it helps us, it helps the process of continuous improvement.

So that is why in 2024, in January, the mayor and I asked for an audit of all of the gun violence, not gun violence necessarily, but it was, We issued a request on January 7th, 2024. Quote, we request that your audit update your 2012 assessment of crime prevention programs funded by the city, including programs operated by the city and those run by community-based nonprofit organizations.

like the 2012 assessment, please identify the evidence-based programs, those with no evidence of effectiveness, those that may be promising, and those that may have caused harm.

We also value your opinion on what crime prevention or reduction programs the city is not using that we should consider implementing.

We'd like this assessment as soon as possible to help inform decisions for the 2025 city budget, which will be made beginning in April.

That was your request in January 2024 and I was growing curious in 2024 what was up with that and I was surprised to learn soon after the tragic Garfield shooting that the audit request had been put on pause unilaterally by the mayor's office because, quote, HSD is preparing to issue a new round of RFPs that will result in new funding opportunities Assessing these programs in the context of the RFP responses seems more prudent, which I disagree with.

In the email exchange among the auditor's office, the mayor's office, and me, I questioned the mayor's office decision to have HSD proceed with an RFP for crime prevention services.

without first knowing what's working with our existing strategies and what's not.

That would be valuable information if the department could use to inform the criteria and scope of the RFP.

I'm just now repeating myself, but what I'm trying to drive home is that for all of the reasons that I've already mentioned, trust, accountability, continuous improvement, we are also facing a deficit and the number changes all the time, but we are, as Council Member Rivera said, we are, you know, we're going to tax, we're going to increase a regressive tax to pay for some of these, thank you very much, some of these treatment investments.

but maybe there's money that we could find from programs that aren't working right now that could serve that same purpose and decrease the amount that we have to ask our constituents to pay.

So anyway, again, evaluating after the fact does not serve the highest and best purpose, and it's the same thing in the B&O tax proposal restructuring.

I understand that there will be a study on the Seattle business climate at some point when the if the voters approve this restructuring, there will be an evaluation.

But again, I think an evaluation could be a measure of how is the business climate doing right now to inform whether or not some of the impacts, pro and con, of the restructure.

I won't belabor the point going forward, but I do believe that this budget, Chair Strauss has mentioned budget reform, I think that this should be a really critical component of budget reform is to implement these practices that strengthen accountability systems going forward.

So that is what I wanted to say.

My question is, I made a stink about the $22 million that we're paying King County, Seattle Public Health, and I wondered last year, what are the outcomes that directly benefit our constituents and how closely do they track with the needs assessments that were analyzed by, well, I think the analysis was instigated by Deputy Mayor Washington.

we really want to make sure that we're paying for what is most important for the lives and well-being of our constituents.

So at some point offline, I'll ask what are the contemplated changes from last year's $22 million investment to this year's?

Unless you want to tell me.

Thank you.

Director Kim or Director Eder, anything you'd like to share in response?

Yeah, a couple things.

With regards to the Seattle Indian Health Board Thunderbird Center, I think the only thing I can say on that is I'm glad that we're aligned.

Thank you for setting the record straight of your actions to champion this.

and it's here.

So again, wanna thank the mayor for putting it in the budget.

That makes it easy for all of us.

The second that you talked about offline, in committee, again, expressing your concerns about the community and safety investments, I thank you.

I want to underscore just a couple highlights.

One, we're not repackaging our investments and asking for the same thing.

We heard from the City Auditor's Office that the work that we need to do moving forward must be evidence-based or evidence-informed.

strategies that we've selected are that we've also heard that we need prevention and that we can't invest too heavily just on when there are gun victims and gun violence.

And so again, I'll underscore the RFP, that's 14.7 million that's live right now, I encourage any organization to apply that there is a continuum of services really focusing on kind of the support services prevention.

We have the intervention and Chief Barnes was here at the table and even said earlier this morning that we know, he knows, the department knows of those families, of those individuals who are most involved in gun violence What kind of services are being geared towards those families?

Are we doing enough for them?

And ensuring that they have an opportunity to do different.

And so that's the intervention strategies that we're investing in that you'll see in the RFP.

And then also, we picked up that we need to do restoration supports, that there's place-based strategies to make sure that we're doing hotspot remediation.

And again, true to the auditor's report, one good example was Rainier Beach of Beautiful, Safe Place for Youth, and asked for these place-based strategies.

We're investing in that as well.

And so I can't go back and evaluate all of the programs that we've done.

You've heard the breadth.

We actually don't have that amount of funding to do the evaluation.

But what I can tell you is that we have picked up the strategies that have been evaluated, that have been proven to demonstrate practices, and that's what became of this RFP, so moving forward, that's the expectation.

So we're asking agencies to apply for those three strategies based off of also not only just what community has asked for, to have the coordination, to do the referrals, but also because of what the auditor's reports have said, including look at things like working formally with SPD, and we've demonstrated that, we continue to build that out.

One of the most powerful things, and I'll just say there's citations.

You're welcome to look at the research.

There is a lot of evidence in other cities that have proven increased safety.

We've picked up on that as well in our RFP.

But one of the most powerful messages that I received in the past couple weeks, it's been a busy couple weeks, is when a principal at Garfield is telling us and telling his constituents, and we've got constituents in the audience, saying, we've improved our safety, we've reduced our incidents, and it's in part because of the investments that you have provided.

And those investments are those school safety investments that are also a part of the RFP.

And so respectfully, I would say that we have listened.

we thank you and you will now see an evaluator who is going to hold us accountable to make sure that it's data informed and we pivot where we need to.

Thank you.

I will like, I'll look at the criteria.

One of the new things that I have heard a lot of community, well, not a lot of community groups is, their desire for healing for their families in their immediate circles, you know, after experiencing gun violence.

I know moms, let's see, there's, I asked you for that.

I don't know if it got in, but just really counseling to help moms recovery and families, you know, but from the death of a child and in ongoing mental health supports, yes.

So important, and that's a part of the RFP.

So we do ask for organizations who want to provide those immediate supports on the path to recovery, restoration, if you will.

That is important.

So absolutely, those are needed.

And thank you both.

Thanks.

With eight minutes left, I'm going to ask any further questions.

Do you have any other questions you want to put on the record for SharePoint?

Thank you.

Well, we have eight minutes left before 5 p.m.

I'd love to get us out of here on time.

I will shorten all of my comments very deeply.

I'll just say that when the federal government and the state government derelict their duty, I am not gonna stop making sure that we can provide for the families that need our help.

and what I mean by that is we are the most isolated city of our size in the nation.

The next closest city of our comparable size is Chicago, Denver or San Francisco.

Halfway point between here and Chicago is Sturgis, South Dakota.

Halfway point between Denver and here is Twin Falls, Idaho.

halfway point between here and San Francisco's Grants Pass, Oregon.

That is our catchment area for helping people because we're the largest city of our size.

The federal government needs to do their job.

The state government needs to do their job.

And when they derelict their duties, I'm not gonna leave the families of Seattle out to dry.

I want to start by thanking you for increasing the contractor pay by the additional 2% just to say if we structured this work any differently, these would be employees of the City of Seattle.

They would be in a different type of funding mechanism where there would be the COLAs that are bargained, etc.

And also thank you for your remarks that we need to hold the other funders accountable to do their job too.

You can kind of tell that I'm Tired of others derelict in their duties just to leave us helping the people who need our help With that I just want to double-check my understanding of the shelter discussion since it went a bunch of different places We have funding to sustain the existing shelter, correct?

No reductions.

So we have funding to sustain existing shelter.

We have funding to expand shelter.

Yes, sir.

And we have a reserve in case the feds pull additional funding from our shelter.

Those are the three different types of shelter funding.

Great summary.

Thank you very much.

With that, I'm going to put the rest of my questions on SharePoint.

I do just want to thank all of the employees in the Human Services Department, and particularly Mary, Lena, Allison, Brianna, Maggie.

I'm sure I'm going to forget a couple more.

Dee, I get to see you right now, so I don't have to say anything more.

With that, any final remarks?

And then if Council Member Juarez wants final thoughts, she can have them.

She says no.

Nothing further from me.

Thank you.

Anything further from you, Director Kim?

I think I've said it all.

Thank you.

Thank you for being with us today and your flexibility as everything got rearranged.

At this time, I'm going to go into other business.

So now I'm going to preview tomorrow, September 30th, my dad's birthday.

There we are.

We'll have Office of Housing, followed by Seattle Center, then Office of Economic Development, followed by Arts and SDCI.

We will take an hour break for lunch, no later than 1 p.m.

probably no earlier than noon.

It will be an hour unless there's problems in the morning.

So with that, Director Noble, any final thoughts?

Seeing none.

Colleagues, any other good of the order?

Council President Oldhand.

Old hand.

Thank you.

With that, seeing as we have no further business to come before the committee, we will be adjourned.

It is 4.55 p.m.

September 29th.

We will see you all bright and early at 9.30 a.m.

September 30th.

Robert's birthday.