Select Budget Committee Session I 9/29/25

Good morning.

The September 29th, 2025 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order at 9.30 a.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.

Council Member Cattle?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Present.

Council Member Rink?

Present.

Council Member Rivera?

Present.

And Chair Strauss?

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you.

We have four presentations on the agenda today.

During our first session, we will have Seattle Police Department, Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department, Seattle Fire Department, and in the afternoon, we'll have the Human Services Department.

I'll make some statements later this morning about how we are going to use brakes moving forward to make it more predictable.

And at this time, I'm going to move to adopt the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It has been moved and seconded.

Colleagues this morning, our Chief of Police, Fire Chief and Care Department Chief along with the Mayor and State Attorney General are responding to the federal announcement to send troops to Portland, Oregon.

words I never thought I would say.

These actions are completely unnecessary, unwarranted, and only stoke division and chaos that does not exist today.

This has direct impact on our work here in the budget.

Because of this, I'm proposing to shift the order for this session to hear first from the Seattle Fire Department, then the Seattle Police Department, and then the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department.

To do so, I will have to move to amend the agenda to discuss items in that order.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be amended to reorder session one items in the following order.

Item three, Seattle Fire Department.

Item one, Seattle Police Department.

Then finally, item two, Seattle Fire Department.

Is there any objection?

Let's see.

Hearing, is there any objection to amending the agenda today?

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted as amended.

We're just gonna jump right in because I know folks have to step out in about 57 minutes.

And at this time, before we read the items into the record, Today is Public Safety Day across the board and so usually we have committee presentations from departments and a number of different committees.

Today is a little bit different so I'm going to turn the floor over to Council Member Kettle, Chair of the Public Safety Department and then we'll read the first Public Safety Committee and then we'll read the first third item into the record.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and colleagues.

Today is an important day.

I wanted to note that Seattle sent a clear message to City Hall that public safety needs to be a priority.

And the city has been working its basic charter responsibilities of protecting and enhancing health, safety, environment, and the general welfare of the people.

Throughout the last two years, the City Council has been working alongside the mayor's and the city attorney's work in our work that we've been doing.

Together, we've stabilized the police staffing crisis, helped reduce crime, strengthened our police accountability partners, set policy that enabled the termination of the Seattle Police Department consent decree, and created new tools for law enforcement to uphold our social contracts.

While violent crime disorder and property crime are still a challenge, we're making a clear difference.

Police hiring is going up with an increase of over 54 officers so far this year, showing a renewed interest in serving our city.

Most important, crime statistics show a welcome decrease of nearly 50% fewer homicides and an overall reduction of violent crime every month so far this year compared to last.

How did we do this?

We did this through a restoration framework plan from the executive.

We did this with a strategic framework plan from the council.

This work included strengthening our police department staffing, fixing weakened laws, creating new tools to support law enforcement's ability to uphold public safety, and enhancing our public health capabilities as they relate to public safety, among others.

However, there remains a narrative that real improvements in local public safety data can be explained by declining national trends.

Don't buy it.

The collaborative spirit between the mayor and city attorney, us here on the dais and the city council, and other city leaders, to include our department heads that we'll be seeing today, have been critical to achieving these real results.

To be clear, The chaos of the second Trump administration has monopolized much of 2025, but their antics cannot detract from the success of the city's current pragmatic approach to governance.

This is not something of the radical left lunatics.

This is about being pragmatic and being professional.

So either President Trump is ill-informed from his staff, or he's gaslighting America.

He's gaslighting our city, one or the other.

because we've been doing the job, we've been doing our work in a pragmatic approach to governance.

Our unified approach focused on shared goals and practical solutions is a major driver of our efforts.

Moving forward, it is essential that we maintain this approach and keep this momentum going.

The work isn't over and continued vigilance and collaboration are crucial to ensure Seattle remains a safe and thriving city for everyone.

Colleagues, Some of this work is also in terms of what's been happening in terms of essentially the targeting of our Seattle Police Department for federal law enforcement.

And in that, again, the gaslighting continues.

So I wanted to basically write my commercial, if you will, to the Seattle Police Department.

and I like to say, you know, from us here on the Dyson-Seattle City Council, and that is to say, attention, Seattle law enforcement.

You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city safe.

In your welcoming city, you have been asked to stand up to help us achieve our mission of creating a safe base in our city to include tackling the worst of the worst public safety challenges we face, such as drug dealers, sex traffickers, and others preying on our neighbors in need.

My call to you is to continue with the mission, the vision, and the plan.

Stay with the Seattle Police Department and fulfill your mission.

I say again, fulfill your mission.

and thank you for your service.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Will the clerk please read item number three into the record?

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

Thank you.

We'll now turn it over to Director Eder, Chief Scoggins, and Lori to walk us through this presentation.

Over to you.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I appreciate the opportunity to be back today presenting the Mayor's proposed 2026 budget.

Along with homelessness response and broadly affordability programs, public safety is one of the top strategies and levels of importance in the mayor's proposed budget.

So very happy to be joined by the three chiefs of the public safety departments.

With that, I'll just turn it over to Chief Scoggins, who will present the fire department budget.

Thank you.

Thank you, Dan.

And Lori, why don't you start off by introducing yourself also.

Hi, I'm Lori Chan.

I'm the deputy I'm Lori Chan, the Deputy Finance Director for Seattle Fire.

Thank you for having us.

Thanks.

All right, so we'll get rolling.

Good morning, Chair Strauss, Chair Kettle, Council President Nelson, and all the members of the City Council in the room with us today and on the screen.

We're gonna walk you through the 2026 Seattle Fire Department proposed budget.

And if there's questions along the way, we can take them as they come, or we can wait till the end.

But as with most of our discussions in the Seattle Fire Department, we like to get anchored in our mission.

And our mission is to save lives, protect property and the environment, and to respond immediately whenever any member of the community needs Seattle Fire Department.

that's something that we have all committed to in the Seattle Fire Department and it's something that we really focus on.

And when you think about the Fire Department of what it was 100 years ago to what it is today, I will just say we've come a long way because we do a lot of things out in the community and you're gonna hear about some of those things this morning.

and to give you an overview of the different areas we're gonna talk about today, our vision statement is at the top of the page there.

You know, being a national leader in all that we do and then doing it with excellence and we do that on so many different fronts.

But the areas I'm gonna talk about today and give you an overview of the department and how we're broken up and how we're managed is to just ground you in that.

So we basically have four lines of business in the Seattle Fire Department.

Operations is what you see.

Those are the units going out the door each and every day out of our 33 fire stations.

The engines, the ladders, the aid cars, the medic units, all the technical and specialty units.

That's one of our lines of business.

And then we have fire prevention.

Everything that comes up out of the ground in the built environment for those who live here, work here, and visit here, our fire prevention team plays a part in that, whether it's inspection, plan check, engineering, code enforcement, investigation.

And once the building is built, we're one of the few departments in the city that actually touch the building on an ongoing basis just to make sure fire and life safety still exists.

And so that's important.

And resource management is kind of a strange name because it covers a lot of things.

Our fire alarm center.

So when the care department gets the 911 call and they will say, is this a fire or medical emergency?

And if they say yes, they transition that call to our fire alarm center.

That's in our resource management All of the department training, whether it's the in-service ongoing training or new recruit training and all of those things, that's also under resource management.

Our emergency preparedness, making sure we're ready for the big event whenever the big event occurs.

You know, last week we held a series of earthquake drills in the Seattle Fire Department, so pages were going off all week long.

Our folks were practicing and exercising those skill sets.

All that's planned under our resource management division.

And then we also have an admin line of business also with our HR, our finance, our public affairs, and then all of our IT liaisons.

But since we're going to talk about MIH, Mobile Integrated Health, we thought we'd put that one on the screen.

That program was established in 2019, and it's been growing ever since.

And the folks in that program just do an amazing job for serving folks who really need help.

So thanks, Tim.

So I mentioned our fire alarm center.

And these are just, this is a tale of the tape, the numbers.

You can see these are 911 calls coming in, whether it's the phone line, the direct lines.

And you can see year after year, it continues to go up and up and up.

As we are a growing city, this is what we should probably expect.

A couple of years ago, we hit our high and maybe we've plateaued, maybe we haven't.

or maybe we become more efficient in the questions that we ask.

I'm not sure which, but it's definitely a lot more calls than were coming in probably 10 years ago.

So our fire alarm center, our dispatchers, all of our firefighter EMTs, they do an amazing job in this space, getting the call to the right place.

And with us, it can be a little tricky.

So most folks may think when the 911 call comes in, that's just gonna equal a fire engine, a ladder truck, an aid car, or a medic going out the door.

Well, that's not the case anymore.

Over the last decade or so, we've changed a little bit.

So we also have our nurse line that's in play right now, and this year we're tracking to send about 8,000 calls to our nurse line.

We have our mobile integrated health team with HealthONE and Health99, so the call may go there.

And it can also go to all of our units out in the field.

So you'll see in 2024 was the busiest year in our history.

We ran over 112,000 emergencies, calls for service.

And if we didn't have the nurse line, that would be plus another 7,000.

If we didn't have Health One and Health 99 and our case managers, that would be another bucket of calls.

Because one of the things that what you don't see is with our Health One program, with our high utilizing individuals and our high utilizing facilities, our firefighters and all of our 33 fire stations, what they can do is, if they have a high utilizer, is they will go in our system, fill out a form, if we've responded to that address over and over again, and then our Health One team will actually go out and do a follow up with the firefighters and the case managers and the nurse practitioner to try to reduce those number of calls.

So that's been a real big benefit for the department.

I think we're close to about 10 case managers now.

We have a nurse practitioner on board, so we're able to do wound care, prescriptions, and all types of other things that we weren't able to do just six or seven years ago.

But that's actually helping keep that call load down to the highest numbers in our history, actually.

So moving on to the next slide, as you can see, our 2025-2026 endorsed and proposed budget.

So the proposed budget, $348 million.

The FTEs in that count would be 1,213 FTEs.

So a lot of things happening in the Seattle Fire Department.

And I'll cover some of that in the next few slides.

And so in some of the areas in the department, what we did was we have some projected reductions and this one is tied to our unit outages.

We have about 100 vacancies currently right now in the department and oftentimes that may lead to a unit being out of service for one reason or another because we can't staff it.

so throughout the first half of the year what we're projecting is approximately a half million dollars in savings and that's pretty important to note and the reason why that's only a half year is because we are going to be starting a really large recruit class in February of 2026 and our goal is to get 80 recruits in that class so we know for the second half of the year we probably won't achieve those savings but the first half of the year we will achieve those savings.

And the next reduction area is another half million dollars, $500,000.

And in order to make the Seattle Fire Department go and move with all the different things that we have going, we have a lot of projects, programs, committees, and different groups of people that actually do all the work to keep us moving forward, keeping our policies up to date, deploying new strategies and different things like that.

So what we did in this area is we reduced all of those projects, programs and committees budgets by approximately 9% to achieve this savings right here.

And this allows us to do a number of different things.

So not one particular project program or committee, would take the whole reduction, we spread it across all of our different committees in the Seattle Fire Department.

Now, this is a big one for us, adding funding for 20 additional firefighters in 2026. In 2026, our budget gives us the permission to hire 80 new firefighters.

This would take us up to 100 new firefighters for 2026, which is sorely needed.

Our goal is to keep pushing until we can achieve full staffing, and we know this is a significant cost.

It's a little over about $100,000 to train a new firefighter, so it's pretty expensive.

There's a lot that goes into the training programs, but our goal is the second Wednesday of February to start a recruit class of 80, and then in our second recruit class of 2026, we will cover the balance of what's needed to get to 100 new firefighters in 2026. So this is significant for us in really trying to achieve as close to full staffing as possible before FIFA lands here in the City of Seattle.

And this gives you just an overview of our staffing and what we're looking at.

And all the red are the projections of what's happening right now.

By the end of 2025, we're projecting to have approximately 120 vacancies.

I'm not sure if we're going to get to 120 vacancies.

We're at about 99 or 100 right now.

Over the next three months I'm not I don't think we're gonna lose 20 people But we will generally have a few retirements towards the end of the year and we also have a recruit class that's in training right now and they have Midterms coming up in the next couple of weeks and that is generally a pretty important time for us right now Those recruits really have to perform so we may suffer some losses there But I don't think we're gonna get to 20 and if we don't that that's okay, too Because that's more help for us.

That's important This one is really important for us.

Enhance our SFD post overdose treatment team.

Health 99 and Health 98. This program has really done an amazing job in really serving people in need.

And our goal is to get this program up and running seven days a week.

and that's actually what this investment will do.

Many of you may know Fire Station 31 should be completed by the end of this year or early next year.

We plan on expanding programs into the north end of the city and also getting the programs running seven days a week.

So this adds additional positions, this adds an additional nurse practitioner, it adds additional vehicles, all the things that we need to do to keep this program moving forward to serve community.

That's really important for us.

And just a few of the stats here, more than 1,400 overdoses responded to since the launch, 727 non-duplicated clients.

So we know we have that many folks in our system that our Health 99 team has touched.

That's really important right there.

and then 15% of the patients have been given the long-acting buprenorphine, that's the 30-day injectable and that's really important for a person who's experienced this and now it gives them the time to stabilize, get connected with services and help and start to stabilize their life so they can really start to move their lives forward many of you have heard me speak to over the last couple of weeks.

We did our first pop-up in Little Saigon just a few weeks ago, and that was really received well.

We thought that we may get maybe 10 to 15 folks who took us up on our offer for buprenorphine.

We actually got 33 in four days, and our team made over 200 contacts.

And this is done in alignment with all of the partners out there, but this program really is serving the community well.

And getting it running seven days a week will be a big benefit to the community.

And our belief in the Seattle Fire Department, when one person gets the help that they need, we've already made a difference.

So we believe that we're making a difference on this front.

and some of the other positions that are allocated for the fire department in this budget are really important to the organization and growth and how we share.

And I'll just cover some of the ones on the screen.

A fire department data strategist.

Right now, I don't want to say we're winging it, but we have a lot of information that we try to put together on a regular basis, but it's just us doing it.

Having a data strategist to really help us coordinate in how we do our predictive analysis, understanding where the problems are, understanding where they're going to be in the future, help us put together future plans, that's really important for us in the fire department.

We haven't had a position like this, so we know this is really going to be important for us.

IT initiatives and resources staffing support.

That's another big one.

Many of you know that we're getting close to launching our Kronos Telesaf staffing platform in 2026, and that's going to be a really important body of work for this position right there, along with many other strategic initiatives that the department has set out for them.

and fire prevention staffing support.

We have a program right now where if there's a nuisance alarm three and a quarter, what we actually do right now is we actually bill for false alarms right now.

And so this is a pretty much a fee supported position right here.

And we are having so many nuisance alarms in the city.

We're not billing for three and a quarter.

We're actually billing for about five and a quarter.

but we could build a lot more.

And our goal is to work with the property owners to try to eliminate the next alarm.

The last thing we want is our firefighters moving around the city in our large vehicles with lights and sirens, and it's only another false alarm.

And just to give you perspective, last year we had approximately 8,000 false alarms in the city.

That is pretty significant.

So we're working through that one.

And then human resources staffing support.

That's another big one for us.

We're doing our annual testing.

I think last year I was here at the dais and Council President Nelson, you said, what does the Seattle Fire Department need to make this annual staffing work?

And we said we needed a position in our human resources department.

This is that position.

Oh, by the way, our application's open October 7th.

So if you know anyone out there who's interested in becoming a Seattle firefighter, please let us know.

We actually held a workshop at Fire Station 32 on Saturday.

We have another one on November 8th at North Seattle College.

So as you can see, I'm always recruiting, but this position is really gonna be a lot of help for us there.

and you all know that FIFA is coming and there's a lot of training and equipment and things that we need to really make that go off without a hitch, so that's a big deal.

And then support for the joint enforcement team, that's the team that goes out in community and make sure, generally on the weekend nights, and just make sure our establishments are safe, not just with fire, but with many other services on that team.

So that's pretty important for us also.

and that was my last slide there, so I'll pause and see if there's questions.

Thank you, Chief, and I'm gonna turn it over to the Chair of the Committee overseeing your department, Council Member Kettle, and then colleagues, if you wanna raise your hands now, we have 26 minutes left with the Chief at the moment, so I will ask to keep things focused.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Chief Scoggins, thank you very much and the whole team for coming.

Really appreciate it.

Obviously, this builds on our monthly meetings, and I'm sure you have your meetings with my colleagues on a regular basis, too.

So I just want to thank you, but really the department for the work that they do across the board.

and when I say across the board, thank you for mentioning emergency preparedness.

You know, oftentimes we think about fire rescue, those traditional things, Medic One.

Now we have the mobile integrated health team effort, which people are aware of now, but emergency preparedness is still a major mission set for the fire and it's something that we need to be keeping in front of mind.

I also appreciate your point about a growing city.

It's essential that our fire first responders generally capacity continues to grow with it.

So thank you for that point.

That's been echoed recently in different ways.

Thank you.

So really quickly, equipment maintenance, the state of our vehicles, particularly ladder trucks, fire engines.

Can you speak to where we are with the fire garage, which I had the great opportunity to visit, and I really recommend my colleagues to do so.

and one of the things that comes to this is like the wear and particularly on the big rigs you know the ladder trucks and the fire engines how to reduce the wear and tear and can we use because I know I seen them being responding to like these medical calls you know in terms of getting more of the cars like the health one aid cards to you know kind of take that load off of those you know those bigger rigs can you speak to the strategy or thoughts behind that?

Sure, so there's a few questions in there, but where are we with the state of our mechanics?

First, I'll lead with a thank you to the council and the mayor for hearing us over the last couple of years and our mechanic staffing is up to full staffing.

Generally, what it takes is a few years for those mechanics to get fully trained to work on the engines and the ladders with the pumps, the hydraulic systems, the electrical systems.

So generally it takes a few years for that new mechanic to get fully trained.

But we are in a better place with the staffing, so we're trending in the right direction.

Vehicles.

Thank you to the council and the mayor once again, what we saw a few years ago when the prices were climbing really fast and the wait times had increased really significantly.

We put a pretty large order in to pierce manufacturing.

That was a trip that I took back earlier in June of this year to meet with the president of the company to talk about manufacturing delays, to talk about prices, but the real large order will be coming in 27. that's 11 engines and three ladder trucks, so that'll be a significant inject into our system, so we're doing well there, and so we're holding up.

We're keeping vehicles probably maybe a little longer than we should.

You know, the average life of a fire engine or a ladder truck is probably between 15 to 20 years, depends on the use, the mileage, the maintenance and all of those things.

So we're working in that window.

We're trying to hold on to a few rigs a little bit longer because of the larger recruit classes in the training academy.

They're using the engines, they're using ladders.

So we're in a much better place than we were just a few years ago.

So we're trending in the right direction.

Okay, great.

Thank you, Chief.

And again, everybody should visit the fire garage.

And thank you for, I'm really happy to hear about those numbers in terms of the manning staffing.

Separately, you know, alternative response, and this may be more of a question for Chief Public Safety Walton Anderson, I'll start big and then come back to FIRE.

You know, we have mental health professionals in Seattle PD.

We have Health 199 in FIRE with you, and of course our care teams, which is obviously going to be a big piece with this budget session.

Part of this is the strategy overall in terms of how these pieces work together, but specifically for you in terms of are you happy where we are in terms of your capacity, in terms of your space here, like the Health 1, Health 99, in terms of the amount of capacity that you have?

First, the teams work really well together.

Our teams are always communicating, always talking, always sharing information.

That's really important.

And our team has been on a steady growth pattern over the last six years.

This November will be six years since we put that first Health One unit in place.

and now by the end of this year we'll be up to 10 case managers, multiple health one units, health 99, health 98, the nurse practitioner is on board.

What this budget also provides is a second nurse practitioner.

So our responses for our alternative response have a medical nexus to it.

So generally there's a medical nexus to that behavioral health issue, to that addiction issue, there's a medical nexus to it.

And there are, so many of those calls that there's more than enough to keep us busy.

If HealthONE goes out on 1,500 direct responses, they're going out on another 3,000 referrals with the case managers, with the nurse practitioner, and with the firefighters.

Health99, it's really important that when that person has that overdose, our goal is to try to get them into a space where they don't have eight to 10 to 12 people hovering over them.

to get them in the back of one of our units so we can actually help them through the decision-making process.

And what we have seen is since Health 1 has now been, or Health 99 has been in play, we're only taking 25% of those overdoses that Health 99 responds to, to Harborview.

The other 75% are going to the other different locations.

The Orca Center hasn't been open very long, but that's a place that we're taking folks to quite a bit.

So I can say I am pleased with how we're working.

Going to seven days a week is going to be huge for this program.

Right now we're in play Monday through Thursday and sometimes on Friday, but we know Saturday and Sunday is pretty important for us too.

So seven days a week will be a bit of a game changer, I think, for our teams.

Thank you, Chief.

You know, one of the things, too, and I can't remember if everything blurs together on the labor relations front, but, you know, Local 27, you know, the chiefs, you know, the labor agreements are in place.

which is a great thing for our fire department.

We have the things in terms of protected class, and I haven't been hearing about things being stolen off our fire trucks lately, so I think things are positive in that direction too.

Can you speak to other issues?

One of the things You know, firefighters, it's a difficult job, injuries, and can you speak to the case management system that relates to that?

Sure, but first I'll lead with, you know, being a firefighter is a pretty physical, rigorous position, profession.

So we have a lot of folks that get injured with strains and sprains and twists and all of those things.

But then we also have a number of firefighters over the course of their career, you know, they'll Cancer is a big one for us in the fire service or cardiac events.

So we have a lot of folks who utilize the disability system for illnesses and injuries, and that's a really important system for us.

We work through all the same process that all the other city employees work through.

and we work to try to get our firefighters care as quick as possible so they're not lingering.

There's studies that show that the quicker we can get firefighters treated and back to a modified duty position and being engaged with the department, there's a higher probability we're gonna get them back in a shorter amount of time working again full time.

And just to give you perspective, when a firefighter loses one shift and we cover that shift with overtime, that's probably $2,000 to $2,500 to backfill that shift in overtime.

So every time we can get a firefighter back one shift faster, we're saving some money on that end also.

So it's always our goal to try to get our firefighters back to work faster.

And we have a team that their whole focus is that.

All right, thank you, Chief Scoggins.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, and Council Member Kettle, I'll give you last word.

We currently have five Council Members with their hands raised and 27 minutes.

So if you do have questions that can just be read into the record and answered on SharePoint, that will be helpful.

I'll be doing that later on.

With that, Council President, followed by Council Member Solomon, followed by Council Member Rivera, Council Member Rink, and then myself, Council President.

Thank you very much for the presentation.

As firefighters at the department itself and especially the rank and file, you see what is happening every day in Seattle, the trauma and the tragedy of fires and people in medical distress and so on.

So I do have to say thank you very much.

The staffing at SFD has been relatively flat for several years, or at least since I've been in office.

Well, as Seattle's population has grown, the staffing levels in SFD have not grown proportionately.

And on top of that, you have been dealing with more and more complicated and complex situations on the street with the rise in unsheltered homelessness, and with the fentanyl crisis, et cetera.

So I just want to say that your needs and your staffing needs, I fully endorse the additional FTEs.

I'm glad that you are getting your needs met on the HR person.

I had a conversation with Kenny Stewart, president of Local 27, the Firefighters Union.

In January, mid-January, it was in the context of what was happening in LA.

And he was saying that, in fact, SFD was understaffed at that moment.

And when firefighters get tired, we look at what's happening on our Olympic coast right now, that's when danger sets in for everybody.

So I will be supporting that.

I also would like to say that every year since 2022, I call up Kenny and I say, what is missing from the budget?

And then we have a conversation of things that might've been overlooked.

And so I just have to mention that this year there is interest in seeing four more aid cars because those are less expensive to deploy the medical, aid cars than big engines, if that is possible.

Also, perhaps another, expand HealthONE.

This has been an allotted program since I've been here, and it seems as though there used to be more than one unit.

In any case, we are doubling CARES budget, and so I believe that it merits consideration to also expand the HealthONE.

And then finally, the the staffing needs is great, but do you also need a, I think that maybe Council Member Kettle mentioned this, but he didn't maybe be explicit, so I don't know, the case management for injuries.

I think it's called Rebound, let's see, Rebound.

Yep, we all got the same text.

Anyway, that program, so anyway.

We have to keep firefighters healthy.

They have an earlier than average retirement age because of all the pollutants that they're exposed to on the job.

So in addition to just...

Chief?

There's a few different topics in there.

So the city has grown quite a bit.

Since 2010, the city's grown by over 200,000 people.

That's over 34%.

Our call load has risen over 40% during that same time period.

So it's real.

When I had the slide up of 112,000 emergencies in 2024, most in our history.

And you can look at the climb over the last years before that.

So it's real.

And you're correct.

When the firefighters run call after call after call, burnout is real and we see a lot of trauma.

and the trauma is very, very difficult.

And we have an amazing behavioral health team, but we see a lot of trauma.

Just this past, I think, Saturday evening, we had a person in one of the elevators, in one of the high rises, and their legs were crushed.

and our folks had to go in and they had to disconnect the person so they can get them out.

An elderly person whose legs were crushed when an elevator somehow malfunctioned.

That's an example.

We're seeing about 60 overdoses every week, whether it's the cardiac events, the vehicle collisions, all the things we're seeing.

So it's real.

We're running a lot of calls.

Our aid cars, you mentioned four aid cars.

We have our downtown aid cars at 5 and 10 over here at station 10. Both of those aid cars are over 6,000 calls.

Aid 25 is over 6,000 calls.

Aid 2 at fire station 2 in Belltown, over 6,000 calls.

Our 12 hour aid car, 12 hours, over 3,000 calls.

The national average that says for unit hour utilization is about 2,500 responses a year.

And all those engines and ladders at those stations are pretty busy too.

So that's a real conversation on the units.

And then on Ready Rebound, that's a company that works around the nation with firefighters and their whole focus is on getting firefighters back to work in a timely manner.

That's their whole focus.

So we've had conversations with them over the years.

We've had conversations with other departments around the state and around the country who uses them.

So it'll be a conversation that will continue.

I know that you have more to say.

I will come back to you just once everyone has an opportunity to speak, noting we have 21 minutes and four people left.

Councilmember Salomon.

Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you, Chief and Ms. Chan.

I'm going to keep my comments brief.

One is looking at...

Well, first of all, I want to thank you for the work you're doing in Little Saigon.

Thank you for the work.

that you're doing regarding the false alarms.

I think it's important for the community to know just how many false alarms that our emergency responders are responding to, which takes them away from actual emergencies.

I would also say that, you know, looking at the capacity of Health 1, Health 99, Health 98, The increase needed for those are definitely critical.

So, yeah, ask more.

And are they, are Health 1, Health 99, Health 98, are they solely 911 dispatched or do they ever do proactive stuff.

Are they just hanging out on Rainier between McClellan and I-90?

Hint, hint.

Or are they strictly 911 dispatched?

So Health 1 and Health 99 can both be dispatched directly and they do proactive follow-up.

When I talked about the referrals that happen out of the stations, it goes into our system, Health 1 and the case manager, they will get it, they will do the door knock and they will find the person and talk to the person.

Health 98, it's sole responsibility is follow-up on overdose victims.

So they don't do any direct dispatch.

So the goal of that unit is to do the follow-up.

So that's really important.

So Health One, Health 99, they can do direct dispatch and they both do follow-up.

Okay, great, thank you.

The question you mentioned earlier, I thought I heard something in there about wellness because I think about the first responders and burnout and how you can be one email away from losing it.

Are you looking at increasing the amount of resources you have for firefighter wellness?

So a few years ago, thank you to the support of the council.

We stood up our behavioral health coordinator position that really, really lifted our program up and they're doing an amazing job.

That's not something that we had put forward in this budget, but it will probably be something that will be coming forward in the coming years, because as the calls increase, the trauma increases, then we actually see a lot of firefighters now are using our systems.

We even have an app now, so if a firefighter doesn't want to talk to a person, but there is something on their heart or on their mind, they can actually put it into the system, and then there will be a follow-up.

We have peer support individuals.

We have sent folks through the support of our foundation, our fire foundation.

We have sent folks to get training down in San Diego, so they can service even better.

So it's a program that's evolving and growing, and in the coming years, it'll probably be something that comes across to increase it.

Thank you very much, Chief.

And the last plug is actually for my colleagues.

If you have not had an opportunity to go to the Fire Alarm Center, tour it, sit in on calls, see what is coming in, see what our that firefighters and medics are being dispatched to, it's an eye-opener.

So if you haven't done it, I would encourage you to do so.

Thank you very much, Chief.

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Chief and Lori, thank you for being here.

My question is, can you remind me, I'm gonna go fast, Chief, just like saying, you know how supportive I am of the fire department in general and how grateful I am to all your team.

for the great work you do across the city.

In terms of Health 1, 99, and 98, can you remind us how many units you have for each?

Because I know Health 1, I think you used to have two, but then one got repurposed.

for the record, remind us how many you have for each.

So we were just getting ready to put our third Health 1 unit, which would have been Health 3 in service when the fentanyl crisis took off and we converted that unit to Health 99. So Health 1, Health 2 and Health 99. We've added Health 98 now.

So this budget will actually expand that team.

and when we first lifted up the program in 2019, some of you may remember one of the things I said, it would be great to have five units, you know, around our five battalions.

But that's before we knew we needed a Health 99 at that point.

In 2019, we did not know that.

So we pivoted.

So you hear about, you know, organization shifting.

We shifted because there was a need.

And so that's where Health 3 went and turned into Health 99.

But if you had Health 3, you would welcome that.

I mean, there's enough work for you to be able to warrant.

Oh, there's enough work.

Yeah, you're just like trying to do the best you can with the resources you have.

Exactly.

And our goal with all these programs is to put ourselves out of business, hopefully one day, where we get all these firefighters riding on the rigs again.

That's our ultimate goal.

You know, if we can solve the fentanyl crisis, Health 99 and Health 98, they go out of service.

That's what our goal is.

Yeah.

Thank you, Chief.

And then also, can you remind me how much staff is in each of these?

Like, so health one and health two, because they're the same two versions.

How many, you have one behavioral health or mental health social worker

It's two firefighters and a case manager.

And those two firefighters have a higher level of training.

There may be days where one of those units may have one firefighter and a case manager.

Health 99 has two firefighters and a case manager.

And our nurse practitioner she will go to wherever the highest need is.

Right now we only have one.

This budget will add a second.

And there's been some amazing stories and case studies that we now have under our belt since she's come on board and the impact that she's, I mean, she's treating wound care of individuals in their home so they don't have to go to the ER.

I mean, there's so many stories of those skill sets.

So the need for a second one, it's real.

And it's really important and it goes to the alternatives that we're talking about because a lot of these cases you guys are handling would be maybe someone would have called SPD.

We don't want that.

We want a nurse practitioner and a behavioral health person who can really help that person along with your two firefighters.

So fully support that because to me that's part of that alternative response model which is super helpful.

and you have data that, and I appreciate your data.

Let me say that too.

SFD does a great job collecting the data because it helps show why you need these things.

My last question is you mentioned that the nurse practitioner going to the highest need and then earlier in the conversation you talked about the higher utilizer areas.

Can you just give examples of where the high utilizer folks are?

Because I understood that to me.

And then you do follow up with them.

Where are these folks?

I'll start with that.

All over the city.

You know, there could be a person who falls three or four times a day.

There could be a person who hasn't gotten their medications refilled.

There could be a person who has a food need and all they know is to call 911 over and over and over again.

So that could be anywhere in the city.

So when the referrals come in from the firefighters, because they're the ones responding to the calls, that's when we go and do the investigations.

Now the high utilizing facilities, that's a different story.

We work and try to do public education at the different high utilizing facilities.

I think Councilmember Kettle knows this.

Last year, we invited in the permanent supportive housing providers and last September we invited them all in because these are locations that we go to a lot.

The Hobson, 1911, I think 22nd Avenue South, number one response location in the city.

That location has doctors, nurses, case managers, all of those things, but you have a building full of people with high needs.

So we go there a lot.

So we invited them in and we wanted to hear from them.

We wanted to talk to them about the challenges that we were seeing at these locations.

and then over the next four months, we spent doing a lot of work in the city, talking to folks.

Our folks, we were meeting with them, trying to solve problems.

And then we brought them back together earlier this year and said, hey, these are some solutions.

Some are public education.

So our public education team were going out to different locations where John Ehrenfeld was going in training their staffs.

or a fire prevention team was going in trying to help them modify their alarm systems.

So we tried to make this an interactive exchange of information to try to bring down the call load and we also offer them information on systems.

If they're building new buildings, we think they should be designed with this and this is why.

So we offer all of those things up.

So we have high utilizing individuals and we have high utilizing facilities and they both need different prescriptions.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

With 10 minutes remaining, we have Councilmember Rink and then myself.

Councilmember Rink.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Chief Scoggins.

And thank you, Lori, also for being here this morning.

I want to take a moment to extend my deep gratitude to every member of the Seattle Fire Department for the critical work you do every day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, Chair, I'm mindful with an eye towards time, so I'm just going to read all my questions into the record so we can all make sure we close out on time, just with respect to that.

I first also want to acknowledge how appreciative we are of the detailed uniform staffing data over the last eight years, including projections, graduate separations, and net vacancy rates.

I'm wondering if you could follow up to make sure we, could you let us know how the additional 2 million for 20 recruits will impact Seattle Fire's ability to respond.

We'd love to know in practice what 20 additional firefighters does for our city knowing that our city is continuing to grow and expand per all of our growth projections.

Additionally, thank you for sharing about the September pop-up clinic.

I think those numbers are really important to demonstrate the over 200 people served.

Curious about how much it would cost to expand these kind of pop-ups.

We heard from a number of community organizations about how successful this was and would like to see more of them.

So would like to also know how these costs are reflected in the budget.

A second question in relation to Health 99 as well.

What are the projected numbers of our numbers of hours of service that would be added through an additional three FTE.

I know the program adds an additional nurse practitioner and strategic advisor, but what does that look like in practice?

We also recently heard from the care department, and so hoping we can walk through the overlap between the HealthONE team and the proposed care expansion.

There are many different approaches to low acuity responses, so would like to understand how these systems work together.

Would like to also follow up and understand a bit more about the FIFA supports investments and what those will mean on the ground for the department.

And lastly, kind of building on the point that Council Member Solomon raised about the increased amount of burnout that we're seeing in the department and overtime hours.

would like to better understand some of the broader health and recovery solutions that the department has looked into.

It has come to our attention.

There's a program called Ready Rebound serving firefighter jurisdictions across Washington State and would love to know if this is something in consideration or in the mix for the department.

And with that, I yield my time.

Thank you and looking forward to the continued discussion.

Thank you.

Chief, you do have just a minute if you have anything to respond there.

Well, that was a lot.

It would be hard to pick one, but I'll just say thank you for your support.

It is appreciated.

And, you know, oftentimes when you see the firefighters working a lot in the stations, you think that's the only thing that we're doing.

But, you know, the Mariners games, the Seahawks games, the concerts the Sounders games so over 600 events also that we staff in the city and next weekend will be a big one for us with the Seahawks playing the Mariners in the playoffs and all the other things happening so thank you for your support and our firefighters really appreciate hearing that

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

It seems like all of my other colleagues received the message from Kenny Stewart, so I'm sure all of us will be following up with you.

Thank you for answering the questions just a minute ago.

Colleagues, I want to bring to our general attention, Council Member Saka, I see a new hand.

I'm going to make my comments and then I'll call on you with the time remaining.

This is a department that is all general fund supported.

This is different than many of the other departments that we're looking at.

So when you look at our six year look back, there are no other sources and there are no jumpstart funds being used here.

So this is a general fund supported.

Department.

Reading from the six year look back, I will give a positive kudos to Councilmember Saka's district.

Third paragraph, in addition, a permanent ladder truck and medic response unit and related funding were added in 2023 in West Seattle to replace the temporary services established during the closure of the West Seattle Bridge.

Just want to note that that is a good thing and Councilmember Saka's district has now received all of the new dog parks and all of the new permanent staffing there.

Want to look at just the six year look back, an average of approximately 6% the budget has increased per year.

Firefighters compromised 90% of your budget because this is a first responder department where it is the people doing the work that is how you get your job done.

Thank you very much for the administrative work and everyone down at headquarters who helped make the department function.

And we know that, as it says, 90% of the funding is in your personnel.

Just making a couple statements, your follow-up work that you've already described very clearly has demonstrated results.

The overdose data that has stabilized, it's still in a bad place, but it has stabilized is because of the work that you've done to transfer Health 1 to Health 99. And I'll be looking forward to understanding if we need to expand Health 1 as well.

Water-based response has improved, and I'll follow up with some questions there.

I will also follow up with questions about permit review, and if you do need more staffing, I know that that's been a perennial question of mine in following up about the firefighter injuries.

I do want to touch base in last year's budget.

We had the question about recruitment.

This year we have more recruit classes.

Can you remind me is this an additional class or additional slots within existing classes?

Two classes a year, additional people in those classes.

And do we need to have an additional class so that we're doing these cycles on a more frequent basis?

Well, we have the capacity to increase the size of our classes.

So a few years back, we were doing classes of 30 or 40. I just mentioned earlier, in February, we'll be doing a class of 80. The class that we started in the second Wednesday of August was 62. So we will expand the size of our classes as opposed to add a third one because our training team, they have all of the other training that we have to do on a regular basis also.

Great, thank you.

Councilmember Saka, we've got, I know that the chief needs to leave in about two minutes.

So you've got two minutes and we can keep talking as well once the chief has to leave.

Over to you, Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief, for being here today.

I always appreciate our conversations and regular syncs and our just ongoing partnership to address the many shared challenges across the city and in my own council district.

So I really appreciate the brave men and women of the Seattle Fire Department, whatever their role, whatever their function.

from the frontline responders to planners and bean counters.

They all make a tremendous impact in keeping us safe.

So really appreciate everyone.

Just as a quick aside, Chair, I really appreciate you calling out some good wins about District 1, our dog parks, and the fire stations that were made permanent.

I really appreciate your partnership in helping get those done.

As Budget Chair, I'm gonna be looking for your increased partnership in addressing some of the challenges.

For example, in District 1, we are, as we know, We have three times more represented in the number of problem RVs compared to any other council district.

We have a 27% missing sidewalk gap across our city.

Second worst council district in that regard.

First is council member Juarez and then our parks restroom audit.

The worst, most egregious restrooms are in district one.

Thank you for calling out some of the good, looking for your continued partnership as we address the continued opportunities on some of the District 1 specific needs.

I just have a question that I'll read into the record for the interest of time, and I've heard it addressed mostly obliquely in different areas, but just want to ask in one kind of full sweep here.

So as was noted earlier, Seattle has fewer firefighters per 100,000 residents than pure cities like Portland, Denver, San Francisco, and Boston.

And in certain instances, like the case of San Francisco, for example, and Boston, we have significantly lower staffing, fire staffing, than those kind of pure cities.

This among other things inevitably means our firefighters are being asked to do more with less notable impacts on morale, which has been called out.

Can you speak a little bit more to how this staffing gap is impacting response times and what specific strategies the department is pursuing to ensure we're keeping residents safe despite these challenges, also mindful of the growth that we just allowed for in our recent comp plan phase one process.

I just want to read that in the record and would appreciate some additional clarity there, but I appreciate you and all you do and, again, the entire fire department team.

Thank you, Chair.

Chief, if you've got a 10 second response, you're two minutes late already to get upstairs, so I know you gotta go.

That's smarter than a 10 second answer, but I will respond back to that because it's reflected in the high call responses at our engines, ladders, and aid cars.

So that's where it's reflected.

That's the simple answer when you see our units running, you know, very high numbers, but we'll respond back to that.

Thank you.

And Chief, thank you for coming back today.

Thank you for coming to committee.

Thank you to all the firefighters, paramedics, and everyone in the Seattle Fire Department for keeping our people safe.

All right.

Thank you.

Have a good morning.

Thank you.

And we're going to take just a minute to do just general business of the committee.

I do want to check in with Director Noble since usually at the beginning of these presentations we ask if there's anything that central staff wants to add in at this time.

I'm seeing nothing from you.

Fantastic.

Colleagues, last week we had the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department go over.

We really, on Friday, changed the way that our schedule worked with how we had our break.

As we move forward, if we get to a position at like 12.30 p.m., I'm just gonna take the break then and restart a little bit earlier.

So I just want you all to know where we're at moving forward to make it a little bit more predictable.

Granted, this morning's session was unpredictable due to the factors outside of our control If we had been during a weekday when we had found out that information, I would have just changed the schedule.

But because there was not time to notice it, that is why we just switched the presentations this morning and are gonna take a break right now.

I see Brian Maxey and Angela coming up.

We're gonna come back here at 11 a.m.

and restart with your presentation straight up at 11, if that works for everyone here.

So we're also gonna be walking into a public hearing next week.

As things have changed, colleagues, I'm just making a couple remarks about public hearings.

I was having a conversation with Council Member Juarez about how things have changed so much with public hearings from 2018, 2019 to today.

we previously never had the virtual option.

And so working in how we manage a virtual public hearing, we've been going through some growing pains.

I really want to compliment Council Member Joy Hollingsworth for how she structured it, bringing it actually down to a minute per person seemed to actually help things flow.

So next week, next Tuesday will be our first of two public hearings.

We're gonna start at 1 p.m.

with the virtual session and 5 p.m.

with the in-person session.

I'll be making the change this year to only provide one minute of public comment, period.

If it doesn't work out, we can change it.

This is a moment where we as the council are going through changes to how society does business with these virtual call-in times, opportunities that we did not necessarily have in 2019. we had them, we just didn't use them, we used them today.

So next week on Tuesday we'll have virtual public comments starting at one, in-person comments starting at five, one minute per person, and we're gonna go as late as it takes.

So please be ready to be present and attentive into the evening next Tuesday.

Colleagues, are there any other questions on the administrative side of our business right now?

I'm seeing none.

So we are going to take a pause and return here in 27 minutes.

So if there is no objection, we'll be in recess.

Hearing no objection, we are in recess until 11 a.m.

Thank you.

I can't wait until I'm ready to go .

I'm going to put it in there.

I'm going to go to the top of the top of the top you can see.

Music playing

Award-winning Seattle Channel.

Thank you.

Colleagues, we will come back to order.

The time is 11.06 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

And we have Councilmember Kettle, Rink, and Nelson excused momentarily.

Okay.

Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Saka.

Here.

Council member Solomon?

Here.

Council member Hollingsworth?

Here.

Council member Juarez?

Council member Juarez?

Oh, you did, here.

Thank you.

And Chair Strauss?

Here.

Five present.

Thank you, colleagues.

We are coming back together after recess.

We have the Seattle Police Department here to provide their presentation.

We're going to get started with Brian Maxey and Angela Sochi, and the chief will be coming down as soon as possible.

So if we get to that part in the presentation where we're at questions and answers, we'll pause again.

Everything's okay.

I want to, for the record, state why we made the changes earlier this morning.

I understood that the Seattle Fire Department presentation was probably the only presentation today that could be completed within one hour, 60 minutes.

And that is the reason that we put them forward.

I did see in person the chief and the entire Seattle Police Department team that's up here presenting.

They were here at chambers at 9.30 and I thank you all for being here in prompt.

We just knew that the Seattle Fire Department could be opened and completed by 1030 and no other department that we would speak of today could also complete that task in that time.

So with that, can you, Phil Clerk, will you please read the first item into the record?

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

Thank you, and we are joined by Brian Maxey, Chief Operating Officer, and Angela Sochi, the Chief Financial Officer of the Seattle Police Department, as always with Dan Eater, the Director of the City Budget Office.

With that, I'll turn it over to you all to walk us through the presentation.

So good morning, Chair Strauss.

Thank you for having us here to present on the proposed 2026 budget and give the overview.

And as you indicated, the Chief is in a press conference right now and will be returning to field some of the more difficult questions.

Once he is available, I will do my best to pinch hit in his absence and appreciate your flexibility.

You know, the Seattle Police Department, I think there's a general understanding of what we do and the day-to-day work.

However, the Chief definitely wanted to lean into the departmental priorities to understand how we do our work, why we do our work, and what our goals are, especially moving into 2026. The departmental priorities are crime prevention, community engagement, employee safety and wellness, continuous improvement, and retention and recruitment.

I would like to address just a few of these, just to flesh out a little bit about what these principles are and why they are so important to the Seattle Police Department.

The traditional model of crime response, 911 calls, proactivity, out there in the street, Chief Barnes is very focused on the front end of that, not just being reactive to calls for service, but getting out ahead of this, working with our communities, with other departments, having a more holistic approach to crime prevention to hopefully reduce crime before it ever happens.

Of course, we'll continue to respond.

Of course, we'll continue to investigate.

But getting out on the front end and using every strategy that we have at the city level to prevent crime is a far more productive strategy than simple response.

Community engagement is part and parcel of crime prevention, but also in terms of amplifying and solidifying the Seattle Police Department's legitimacy with community.

We cannot speak early and often enough about what we're doing and why we're doing it and try to help our community understand what we're doing and, more importantly, help the Seattle Police Department know what our community expects from us.

Employee safety and wellness, this is something that has gone off forgotten in a lot of the national police reform efforts.

If you look at pillar six of the 21st century policing plan that was proposed by the task force under President Obama, employee safety and wellness is critical because, as the report noted, hurt people hurt people.

So if you have a healthy and balanced and well-supported workforce, you achieve better outcomes.

And that is why it is a departmental priority and very important for this department.

Continuous improvement, you know, as we exit the consent decree, and I know that Chief Barnes is arriving at this moment, so I will defer to him, but just finishing my sentence.

Continuous improvement as we move into 2026 and as we exit the consent decree will be critically important for the department to move into its next phase.

The city took ownership over the accountability structures and that cannot be forgotten.

Thank you, Brian.

Thank you, chief.

We're on slide two.

So everything's running right on time.

We also have council member Rivera with us now present as well.

So perfect timing.

Yeah, I mean, feel free to jump in.

We can keep ticking through the presentation.

I'm gonna ask folks to hold questions until the end and then we'll go through one by one.

Thank you.

And thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today.

As our Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey alluded to, what you see on the board are our departmental priorities.

When I say our department, I'm talking about the community, your constituents, those in positions of leadership, such as yourself, and our department.

we are one department, we're one Seattle.

For the last eight months, I've taken time, really probably before that, to not only research, but to listen to community members, to listen to your constituents, and I've asked them What is it that you want from our department?

And that's what you see.

They want us to prevent crime, not just to respond to it.

Sometimes when police departments respond to crime, you get disparate outcomes.

But disparate outcomes do not exist if you're preventing crimes in the first place.

In my former job, we were able to reduce the number of arrests while at the same time reducing crime, meaning there is a way to reduce some of the harm or disparities that you may see in the criminal justice system and in other systems.

And that's what we're doing with crime prevention.

We're focusing on people, determining who needs help and who's not here to help.

We're focusing on places or place-based policing.

We're focusing on community engagement, but more importantly, we're focusing on problem solving.

and in order to solve a problem, we need the collective efforts of everyone in this room to include our community, to get to the underlining issues that are causing the issues that we're seeing in specific places, why are specific places traditionally areas of priority for us, to determine what services we need to tackle this problem, but more importantly, how to remain consistent and how to create a consistent response with a sense of urgency.

And I believe that in everything that you see, specifically in our budget, you're going to see crime prevention, community engagement, employee safety and wellness, continuous improvement, and community engagement.

And so with that, I will turn it over to Angela Soce, who will walk you through our presentation.

Thank you.

Angela Soce, SPD Executive Director of Budget and Finance.

Happy to be here this morning to share with you our 2026 proposed budget.

You may recall the 2025 and 2026 biennial budget funded 15 net new officers in each year.

I prepared a similar slide last year that showed the year-over-year change with those 30 net ads.

Since that last budget presentation, SPD has hired 168 officers or 93 net officers over attrition.

The city has made many programmatic investments into our recruitment and retention efforts, and we're finally seeing a return on that investment.

We just did not anticipate this level of success and are having to address the funding gap in this year's budget.

You'll see on the chart here that many of the officers that we've hired over the last year are not yet deployed, but we expect in 2026 to see a sizable increase in our in-service officers.

Current projections show us ending the year at around 960 officers on the street.

In 2026, we expect that number to rise by about 100, so ending the year with close to 1,200 in service, or 1,100 in service, sorry.

The 2026 proposed budget restores ongoing funding for these officer positions, 143 to be exact, following the year of historic hiring and also retention, while also reducing various budget accounts to help offset the city's projected revenue shortfall.

You'll notice on this slide that the 2026 endorsed budget of about $465 million increases to about $485 million, a roughly 4% increase largely attributed to that ad for sworn hiring.

In the coming slides, we'll get into the details of the change.

All right.

So I want to start off first with our SPD general fund reduction.

This slide here represents a number of reductions across various discretionary accounts that were submitted, proposed by SPD to meet a cut target to ultimately help offset the projected general fund shortfall.

The goal here was to meet our reduction target to help balance the general fund budget while also minimizing the impact to public safety services.

This reduction includes a reduction for our vehicle account.

This $305,000 was added a few years back when we expanded the CSO unit.

We are actually purchasing those vehicles this year, and so that ongoing funding is no longer needed going forward to support that vehicle purchase.

As I mentioned earlier, we're seeing a decrease in officer separations, and as a result, our separation payout amount is projected to be less in 2026 than it was, and we're seeing the same thing in 2025. That budget had been increased post 2020 when we saw a significant increase in separations.

We had to supplement that budget with an ad.

We are backing that out now that we have seen our officer separations decline.

This marketing item for $550,000, that represents the actual contract costs that we anticipate for our recruitment marketing campaign.

since hired a new third-party consultant to help with our recruitment marketing.

After running the numbers, the contract that was put forth by that consultant was $550,000 less than was budgeted.

We don't anticipate any impacts the number, quantity of ads, the quality of ads.

If you haven't visited our website, we have a number of new videos posted.

Highly recommend checking those out.

We're excited about this new partnership and are happy to say that this reduction is able to help mitigate the general fund shortfall while not having any notable impacts on our ability to recruit nationally.

professional development training, $450,000.

As many of you, I'm sure, heard, we have a department, I think all of the executive departments have reduced their training expenses and have gone through a spending freeze process in partnership with the executive.

to help balance the budget.

We plan to continue those same spending restrictions into 2026 and reduce our travel costs and training costs associated with attending conferences and other professional development training opportunities.

We We have budget to continue to send individuals to training to pursue training.

We also have a very robust training program within the city.

All of our state mandated training will continue to be met.

This is funding that is used for training above and beyond our basic officer in service training and also our recruitment training.

There's an additional cut for 395,000 for temporary and term limited employees.

Those positions specifically expired in 2025. And so that budget savings, those positions have already ended.

Those assignments have already been ended.

And we anticipate not continuing those positions into next year for a savings of 395,000.

Additionally, there's a vacancy rate for civilian positions.

This is just a standard 4% vacancy rate that captures savings from normal turnover for our civilian positions.

And then lastly, there's a $943,000 cut to our overtime budget.

Again, the goal here was to help balance the general fund budget while minimizing the impact of public safety service levels.

These items here were selected for that reason, with the exception of the overtime reduction, which we expect to absorb and spread out across the department.

We don't anticipate any of these having any sizable impact to our direct public facing services.

All right, moving to additions.

As we noted previously, there is a $26 million ad for officer hiring in 2026. This addition funds 143 positions, increasing our funded FTE level from 1,057 in the endorsed budget.

to 1,184 in the 2026 proposed.

This represents a 13% increase in the funding, a 12% increase in the funded FTE level.

I will remind that our authorized strength is 1,277 officers.

we are funding based on what we anticipate to actually fill in 2026, and also adding ongoing funding for the positions that were added over the last year that weren't anticipated in the 2026 endorsed budget.

Item two here.

want to call out the public disclosure investments.

The proposed budget adds ongoing funding and position for two additional public disclosure officers to support our high volume of public disclosure requests.

It also adds funding and removes the sunset dates for two positions that were added in the 2023 mid-year supplemental to also address the workload issues that we're facing.

Those two positions are currently set to expire on December 31, 2025. 2024, we received over 17,000 PDRs, representing an increase of more than 25% since 2020. This amount exceeds the combined totals of all other city departments across Seattle.

We currently have a completion rate of around 69%.

All that considered, the mayor's public safety team convened a work group to address that 69% completion rate specifically and put forth a handful of recommendations, some of which are addressed in this budget.

The workgroup identified several issues within the PDR workflow that contributed to the increase in processing time, including under-resourced staffing.

We've made some programmatic changes, policy changes.

This budget ad addresses specifically the number of staff in the unit available to actually process the public disclosure requests that we receive.

This represents a nearly 14% change in budget for the group, and then also it's 6% change to the FTE count for that unit.

Item three, the budget also provides $435,000 to implement CCTV in Capitol Hill.

This includes one-time and ongoing funding for that expansion.

These camera systems contribute to reducing crime by assisting and collecting evidence related to serious and or violent criminal activity.

They support investigations, holding criminals accountable, and removing deadly weapons off the street.

I know we've spent time over the last couple months discussing this particular topic with you all.

This item funds the expansion into Capitol Hill.

And these cameras have already proven to be a critical tool used primarily by our Real-Time Crime Center in support of our patrol efforts.

Item four, the proposed budget includes ongoing funding for one FTE, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer.

This position was an identified need in 2022 that we filled with a term-limited position.

That position expired in 2025, and this particular item adds an ongoing position and funding for that work to continue.

examples of duties that this person is responsible for is the development of our RSJI work plan, completion of racial equity toolkits, advising leadership on issues related to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This is a critical need for us.

especially at a time when we're working to advance the chief's priorities discussed earlier.

Item five, FIFA equipment costs.

The budget also includes $757,000 to purchase equipment in advance of the FIFA World Cup games.

Specifically, we're looking to purchase barriers, trailer packages, and also further expand the CCTV cameras in the stadium district to increase situational awareness in advance of the games.

revenue supporting this item were held in reserve in 2026 and are being appropriated to SPD in the 2026 proposed.

That's the overview.

I'm happy to field any questions.

Thank you.

Chief, any final words before we turn it over to council member questions?

As always, I kind of begin and end the same way, and that's thank you.

You know, we cannot fulfill our mission to protect the community here without the generosity of our taxpayers and without the stewardship and oversight of our city council.

I want to thank our executive director of budget and finance, Angela Sochi, for putting this together.

I learned a long time ago when I was a young captain to spend as much time in budget and finance as you possibly can if you're expected to do this at a high level.

I also want to thank our Chief Operating Officer Brian Maxey as well for your leadership and your guidance in getting us to this process.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle is the chair of the committee overseeing this department.

You are recognized for opening statements.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Thank you, Chief Barnes, for being here today and for the press conference that was just held.

It's very important.

I also want to welcome Mr. McAfee and Ms. Sochi.

This time of year to talk budget is always interesting.

Of course, we do this over the course of the year as well, but to go into specifics is nice.

Of course, Director Eder and then our own Director Noble, welcome back.

Budget people, FTEs, this is probably the center of most things.

You know, the onboarding of new officers.

I believed with our strategic framework plan, pillar one being SBD staffing, that we were gonna make progress.

And maybe not as much, but we are definitely moving in a direction as needed to achieve the goals that we have.

and so I'm really thankful to hear those numbers and I recognize from a budgetary perspective that adjustments need to be made and reflect the great work that's been done reflecting all the work that we've done as well, whether it's recruiting, retention, incentives to all the other pieces to include leadership.

I think that's really important and we need to maintain the momentum.

As I've said many times, nothing builds momentum than momentum.

And we definitely have momentum, but we need to keep that momentum going on.

And then we also need the budget support for this piece to come in as well.

On more specifically, related to their presentation, You know, there's different pieces here.

I understand World Cup's kind of a unique one-off, and so I understand those pieces.

Thank you for the DEIA piece.

Can you speak to that a little bit, somebody speak to that a little bit more in a sense of, I understand that there was somebody, Temp, then not there now.

Have we been able to step forward with this position?

We have not.

The position was a limited term employment and that term ended a few months ago.

And so this request or this addition rather is to fill it.

When I think about this position and kind of what we want from it, a couple of things come to mind.

Number one, partner with other community based organizations and advocacy groups.

to strengthen our relationship, which is part of what it is that we should be doing here.

Being able to publish an annual report on our efforts, track progress, identify challenges, and areas for improvement.

Partner with our accountability partners or our civilian oversight partners to ensure accountability is also certainly one of the responsibilities.

and implement our DEI strategies to align with our mission and our values as well.

Also to advise me and other members of the command staff on DEI issues of equity and how it impacts our responses and our community concerns.

Look at our policies and our procedures.

This was something I had disposition when I was in Madison, and as you read policy, the policies were really written in a way that did not lend itself to equity.

One example, it may seem like a small thing to some people, but I don't think it was, everything in the policy referred to police officers as he, he, and they went through and they said, you know, we can do a better job with our language, because I do believe that words matter, as well as looking at principles of DEI and of course training.

Training is really big for us and ensuring that everyone understands.

It's no secret that the department has had some bumps in the road regarding how we treat each other and I think at the center of all that could be how we value each other who are different than what you see in the mirror.

Thank you, Chief.

Obviously, the culture change really starts with you, but having somebody by your side, particularly in this position, is gonna be really important.

And something that we can look at, you may not realize, but the beginning year, January, February, we get the three chiefs together in Public Safety Committee, and this is something that as we start next year, when you're in that briefing, that we could say, hey, we're stepped out on this front.

Another thing that goes with staffing that's really important, and I don't think it was in here, and indirectly, but we're adding these officers on board and the like in the relationship with overtime.

We got to get a handle on overtime.

Chief Scoggins actually talked a little bit about this again indirectly, like bringing firefighters back because each shift early translates to dollars.

In terms of overtime, bringing officers on board, trying to manage and hopefully reduce overtime, can you speak to that topic?

Yes, I can.

I think as we bring on more police officers, there'll be less opportunity for overtime.

But because we're in a very busy city, we do have a lot of special projects and priorities that we're, quite frankly, trying to manage.

And most of them today we are managing with overtime.

and so as we bring on new officers and it does take time you're talking about at best a year before an officer or maybe two years before that officer is fully realized his or her or they potential and I think that's very very important that we know and so we're gonna chip away at this we're also will be implementing a new time management system I call it telestaff but I'm sure there's a more proper term to it, but Telestaff will help you with that.

You'll have your schedule in there and you'll be able to track where we are.

We currently have officers and commanders that are using their own spreadsheets to track people and keep up with where people are.

We need to do a better job with that.

And so that's a project that's being led by CEO Brian Maxey.

And so once we get that program up and running, it should help us at least better track where we're spending time with overtime.

And so we're certainly aware of that, but the truth of the matter is we could not do our job at this particular point without the overtime that we're using.

Thank you.

I was gonna ask about parking enforcement officer, like bringing on board, because that's an area that's needed.

Can follow up on that later.

But I also wanted to know, because it is a budget piece to this, and that's the command staff.

Obviously there's been changes.

Obviously changes were needed, let me say that up front.

And you're bringing in, you're molding your command staff team.

But there's a cost to that too.

I just wanted to raise that because it's an important topic and I think this is another area like when we have the beginning of the year briefing showing how things have settled out in terms of command staff and basically making your imprint on the department and then moving forward to accomplish the goals.

But can you speak generally, well actually more in details, your choice, regarding the command staff piece?

Sure, one of the things that I looked at during my first really month on the job is what team do I need around me to get the job done?

And there were several additions that I needed to make.

There are several people that were in positions that we needed to collapse those bureaus, and I've done that.

So we are, through attrition and through reorganization, reducing some of those.

I do intend to make additional changes until the command staff is complete.

And I feel comfortable with the team that I have to move us forward.

I want to be here for as long as you will allow me.

And I think that the community members certainly deserves that.

That's nothing against my predecessor or anyone else.

But the truth of the matter is, this is a big department.

It requires a lot of energy, a lot of time and attention, and I want to make sure to have people in the right place.

I've studied police departments, and I know for a fact at least in my mind and my training and experience that communication is important.

So it's important that I brought on someone to help us with communication.

I know that oftentimes in this season, we have to have someone that can manage special projects and communicate with counsel.

So I hired a chief of staff not to replace the work that CEO Maxi is doing with you on the legislative front, but to work with your chiefs of staff so that you don't have to call us and ask us what's going on with this, that we can produce a product for you and your staff so that you can communicate with your constituents.

So I brought on that.

I wanted to bring on another deputy chief because there really wasn't a clear line of succession in having one deputy chief really over a department this size, really doesn't make a lot of sense to me because we have an investigative support side and we have a patrol response and proactive side, which quite frankly are almost like having two separate police departments.

And so we needed to, I needed to bring in people who I thought was going to do the right job.

And we're able to do that.

We are certainly working within the parameters that were given to me by the mayor's office.

I certainly run things by them that has a budgetary impact to it and will continue to grow or expand or reduce as we think is appropriate to serve the people here in Seattle.

Thank you, Chief, and I appreciate it.

There's been some churn, so I recognize we're in a period of transition, but that will definitely be something to look at.

Hopefully things have settled out by that point as we get back into committee business in the beginning of the new year.

Can I just add one last thing, Chair?

Because CCTV was on here, and with the Real-Time Crime Center and the CCTV, I recognize it was a challenging process and its concern, and I recognize that concern.

And I just want to let everybody know that I did talk to Chief Barnes about this and the importance of doing things to the letter that cross T's dot I's and make sure everything is being done accordingly.

And I just wanted to let you know that and for the people to know and for my colleagues to know, I had that same conversation with Mayor Harrell, Deputy Mayor Burgess, Chief of Public Safety Walton Anderson, as I mentioned Chief Barnes and also Captain Britt.

And I think it's important to have that kind of engagement and so I appreciate the conversation that we had Chief on that topic and ensuring that we're doing right for the people of Seattle.

So thank you very much Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

And for the record, all Council Members have been here since about the time that the Chiefs also started presenting, just so that the record reflects, as well, everyone has their hand up.

So if all Council Members ask questions and responses for 10 minutes, we will be here until 1, 10 PM.

So, I know.

And- I'm tracking Council Member Juarez.

So I am giving everyone that awareness.

I'm requesting that folks keep their questions and responses to five minutes so that we can get through the rest of the day.

With that, I have Council President Nelson, followed by Council Member Juarez, followed by Council Member Salomon, Council Member Rink, Council Member Rivera, Council Member Saka, Council Member Hollingsworth, and myself.

In that order, Council President.

Thank you very much for this presentation, and I do say that this is good, bad news when it comes to the budget.

And by that I mean that it is great to have the challenge of how to pay for new recruits.

That has been an ongoing struggle.

And just while I'm on it, thank you very much for setting up at the CID night market yesterday, or Saturday.

I think your folks were there in a booth, and I was seeing a lot of interest from the public.

I often say that council passes the laws and the mayor's office and executive departments implement.

And so this is us both working together.

In February 15th, 2022, the Public Safety Committee received a letter from Mothers for Police Accountability founded by Reverend Harriet Walden saying There shall be maintained adequate police protection in each district of the city.

That is City Charter Article 6, Section 1. I've referenced that before.

So we have a responsibility and we're trying to fulfill it here.

The question I have is at this current, and I will continue a little bit, but at this current pace, I do believe that the goal was around 1400, and so is there an estimate for when we will attain that?

But more immediately, I do want to highlight that in January of 2024, I received an email basically that repeated some information that the mayor's office had also received, that other cities in the region, in competition with us for recruits, would call the, it says, other agencies call applicants within 48 hours to establish a relationship by discussing the process, answering any questions, and being a point of contact.

and when it was made clear to me that we were not doing that, then that is why I put forward that legislation to reform how the hiring protocols are implemented and through a staffer at HR to be able to process that.

So we are now looking at the fruits of those efforts and so just looking long-term budget, that is one of my questions that I have is let's plan for this in the future going forward so we're not trying to scramble at the last minute.

And then finally I came across an article in Publicola and there was a quote in there that mentioned score and I wanted some information on this.

I think that it mentioned that we are no longer depending on that contract.

Is that the case or are we not so we're not going to be paying for that anymore.

So have we resolved the situation at the King County Jail where medical screenings are preventing our officers from being able to just drop people off and it's taking their time because they have to go to Harborview for many hours for medical attention?

Mr. Yeah, I'll respond to that.

The answer to your first question is we're going to try to hire as many officers as we can.

I think we need to try to hire at least 200 officers a year for the next four years because there will always be attrition.

There will always be officers who do not complete the process.

There will be officers who cannot complete field training.

It's just like any other.

Not everyone who's accepted to medical school actually makes it or becomes a doctor, and it's probably a good thing.

and so we wanna make sure that we find out early.

So we are committed, I'm committed to hiring as many as I can.

They know what my number is for this year and they smile because I'm always asking, I'm always pushing because I think this is a great place to work and I believe that our recruiting team is being responsive.

I recruit myself, I actually pushed a young man to apply and followed the process unknowing to my staff and got regular updates from him.

He chose to move to Texas to be closer to his mother, so he's working down there now.

But I think the process is going well.

I'm trying to do everything I can to support the team.

Much of the process occurs in backgrounds, and I know that they've been celebrated and working together as a team and having a lot of camaraderie, and I'm giving them everything that I can to make sure that that process moves forward.

That usually takes the longest, but people are being called, and the process, I believe, is working.

To the question about SCORE, they may have some more responses to that.

I'm not familiar with that article.

I'll be clear, I do not read Publicola, so I won't respond to that.

But if you have something specific that you want, we will gladly get with you in writing.

May I clarify my question?

If you can, one more question and then we're going to need to move on to the next council member.

My question was, have we resolved the issue at King County Jail of the medical screenings?

Sure, yes.

I can't answer that question.

The mayor's office is leading that effort with Andrew Myberg.

He has put together a working group that includes Harborview.

They have taken a vested interest in the number of what's called medical referrals.

And of course, we are tracking those and we're trying to figure out where the issue lies.

I know that a contract has been signed between the mayor's office and former Interim Chief Sue Rohr to look at space within the jail that could be used as a medical facility, treatment facility that I think would really solve the problem.

And so we hope that, you know, it's in its infancy, but we hope that that program will work.

I believe it's the answer.

but it takes a lot of moving parts.

But the good news is we're all cooperating and we're all communicating and we've had several meetings and I would describe those as very productive.

I'd also like to weigh in if that's okay, Chair.

I want to thank the Council and the Mayor for collaborating with King County and adjusting the ongoing relationship that we have so that we are now confident that we have enough space allocated to the city needs to address the city's jail population requirements.

We have liquidated the finance general reserve that had been held for the potential score contract, which we have never, in fact, executed and did not end up needing.

So that money has been put to work in the Mayor's proposed budget in a variety of ways, including extra costs in SPD, but across the board for general fund purposes.

Thank you, Director Eder.

Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have two questions, but first of all, I want to thank Chief Barnes again and Angela Sochi.

Thank you for the information and, of course, Brian Maxey.

Thanks, all three of you, for the work that you've done.

As somebody who is here, as well as Councilmember Strauss, during the defund movement and also looking at the chart of trying to get our officers back online and what this city needs, and understanding that our city has grown and we need public safety.

And that's just common sense.

And so thank you so much for weathering the storm with us.

I've been through three chief of police.

And so for me, it isn't just about political ideology, it's about us taking the oath in the charter to say we would have a police department to protect and defend our residents in this great city.

So I want to thank you for that because it hasn't been easy and I know Brian's been here for the whole time and we're here today.

So let me just ask.

I have two questions.

One's budget and one's operational.

So on the significant additions, Angela, you went through all five of them.

Is there a total for all five of them?

Do you have a total?

The total add for our budget?

Yeah, the total five for the five significant additions.

If you don't have it, you can just get it to us.

That'd be fine.

Yeah, so the net...

Yeah, I can send you the exact amount.

Okay.

The net change is about...

It's from the endorse, specifically.

Right.

I believe it's about 20 million.

What, 20?

Yeah, I can...

I'll send you the...

operational.

This is a question that came up.

We just had a great presentation from Chief Scoggins from the Seattle Fire Department.

and on page 12 they talked about FIFA for equipment and then I notice with SPD on page 10 you have FIFA and equipment so I'm wondering if we're duplicative there or the equipment costs or how are you working with SPD on those costs and if they are duplicative I mean I don't know that's why I'm asking

We're coordinating across all the departments.

The mayor's office is leading that effort.

There shouldn't be any duplication.

We've partnered with SDOT and others to talk about hardening in advance of FIFA.

Our package specifically includes the mobile barriers and some other things

Right.

On page 10, you list exactly what your equipment costs are.

And I'm not trying to be...

For CL Fire Department, it just says funding for equipment costs.

And so I did have a question, but in lieu of time when the CL Fire Department was here, I didn't want to take up any more time.

I don't know what the anticipated costs were there in the equipment.

So if we can just have some clarification, just on the cost, on the equipment cost, that'd be perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

We can follow up with that.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

And three minutes, Council Member Juarez holds the record currently.

Council Member Solomon.

All right, let's see if I can beat that record.

Again, I wanna thank Director Sochi, COO Maxi, and Chief Barnes for being here.

I will just read the questions I have into the record.

Take some back and forth.

You are currently the only council member that is possibly also employed by the Seattle Police Department, once you're not a council member.

One of my questions is, am I going to have a job to come back to with this budget stuff?

You don't have to answer that.

Let's be real here.

Okay, so first of all, I want to applaud you for retaining the DEI position.

Because while we have so many folks who are running away from it, We are embracing it.

And that makes me very happy to see that.

So I wanted to acknowledge that.

Also in this weekend's paper, there was information about the Before the Badge program and how that program is really helping to, I see it as weeding out or vetting process.

Folks who are coming into that program may realize that, yeah, maybe this ain't the career for me.

At the same time, it gives our folks in training an opportunity to look at these recruits going, yeah, maybe this isn't the career for you.

So I think it's, that program is, I don't know if anybody else is doing something like that in the country.

So again, kudos to the department.

So some of the things I would like to ask about, I see in this budget, there are CCTV allocations for the stadium district and for Capitol Hill, but there's no mention in budget allocations for central district around Garfield.

Do we have a budget item for that yet?

Yes, that was allocated in 2025. So we have funding for Garfield, specifically 375 in one-time costs and 50,000 ongoing to maintain the system.

All right, great.

Thank you.

And given that You know, the president is threatening to pull FIFA funding from Seattle.

Has that figured into our calculations?

Are we even going to have a FIFA if he follows through with any of this stuff?

The other question I had regarding the federal funding is I know that we currently have JAG grant funding and wondering if we're basically making allowances or contingency plan if that funding just goes away.

I'll just jump in and take that one at least as a first step.

I know that the mayor is fully expecting that we will continue to be a FIFA location.

FIFA has given us every reason to believe that that's the case, and we are planning accordingly.

We're moving forward with acquiring equipment, training staff, making sure that we are fully prepared.

to be among the best locations for FIFA games.

With the world's eyes upon us, we should do nothing less.

All right, cool.

And a couple other things, and maybe we can, you know, have a discussion offline.

I think, you know, it's something that, Chief, you and I have talked about is the potential of reallocating dollars that are currently slated for hiring bonuses, lateral bonuses, and maybe shifting those to a retention bonus for those houses who have stuck with us for, you know, quite a while.

I would also look at the reductions in professional development.

You know, does that mean we're gonna be sending less folks to conferences, less folks to professional development training like CEPTED certification, those kind of things.

And again, that question about, you know, are we planning for possibility that JAG grant funding will just be cut completely.

So those are some of the questions I have that, again, maybe we can discuss offline, but given that others on the dais have questions for you, I will just leave mine there and see about getting some one-on-one time with y'all just to dive a little deeper into some of these.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Solomon.

Before we move on, you had some very good questions.

So especially about the retention bonus, I'd like to have the department respond on the record, because I think a number of us have that question.

Yeah, I believe the retention bonus, or if we were to do a retention bonus, it would have to be an addition.

I don't think we can move hiring bonuses to persons who are here, because there will be a lot of moving parts in that and trying to determine how that actually is supposed to work.

Does everyone get it?

Does everyone get the same amount?

Is it only for people who were here doing 2020?

There's a lot of questions I think that needs to be answered.

In one of my past lives, we had something similar to that, which was called a longevity incentive.

and so based on the number of years you were at the department, your accumulated points was translated into a longevity bonus around Christmas time.

But those are things that I think would have to be negotiated.

I think there is probably a labor union, I'm sure the executive would want to weigh in on that.

But I certainly have heard that since I've been here from people.

And then there's a little bit of misnomer that there's just scores of people who left and then came back and was able to get a hiring bonus.

And I think the number was somewhere around 10. officers that actually did that out of the 900 that we have now.

So I just wanted to clear the record up that that conversation was a little bit overinflated, but I do understand that it is a spot that officers are certainly looking at, but I don't think we could solve that today.

Thank you, Chief.

Up next is Council Member Rink, followed by Council Member Rivera, Council Member Saka, Hollingsworth, and myself.

Council Member Rink.

Thank you Chair and thank you Chief Barnes and Mr. Maxey for being here today and thank you for your work.

I'm gonna dive right in and into some of the points here.

I know we've had a little bit of discussion about the DEI position specifically and is it my understanding that in this budget we have one proposed DEI position and could you speak to any of the history behind this position?

Is this brand new or has it been in the books?

This position would be brand new as opposed to the other position that was a limited term employee who was working there.

That employee is no longer with the department.

And I will say that the position was added by the executive.

We were instructed to offer some cuts, and this was one that was naturally cut because it expired, and then the executive actually added that.

So we are appreciative of the city's just overall adherence to how important the work truly is.

And I think this is, if I may, this is one city that actually understands what the actual definition of that is.

And a little tangentially to just DEI work, I wanted to ask what plans does Seattle Police Department have to ensure the protection of our Seattle residents, noting that many members of the LGBTQIA community have had negative interactions with the department over the past few years.

And could you elaborate a little bit on how we're doing work to gain trust while also keeping in mind the expansion of surveillance technologies that are going on in historically underserved communities such as Capitol Hill?

Yeah, I think to answer that question, it really comes down with the way in which we all as a department has approached communication and how we have approached transparency.

You know, we had an issue earlier in my tenure for which, you know, our department had a misinterpretation.

It caused some problems and I apologize for that.

And then I talked about how to fix it.

And then we met with members of the community and they talked about doing a micro community policing plan led by Seattle University around this particular area and the issues that we were seeing with this area.

We still have our LGBTQIA plus liaison.

I've met with the organizers of the Pride Parade and talked about, hey, how can we closer come together?

We talked about officers who are in the department who are LGBTQIA+, wanting to participate again in the parade.

It didn't happen, but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna stop having the conversation and looking at all the things that I can do to reassure.

We have many officers who are not only a part of the community, but they have loved ones who are a part of the community.

So, you know, when we talk about those negative interactions, the idea is to make sure that everyone understands what the culture of the agency is, which is what we allow and what we do not allow.

And we do not allow people to be mistreated, no matter what the circumstances may be.

To that end, we have one of the most robust accountability processes really in the country.

that I've ever seen.

And so we have regular audits, solicited and unsolicited.

We have ways of evaluating officer performance for departmental policy violations, and those things I think will add to it.

But when it comes to trust with communities that have historically had issues, the idea is that you can't give up.

You have to continue to communicate and you have to work one day at a time.

even if the door is slamming in your face and I've had that happen before you come back and you try again and we are certainly committed to that and I really want to show the department excuse me show the city who our department is and we have officers who sometimes don't want to be vulnerable like I get that but to say I'm part of the community as well and if we can do that I think we we start to get closer to what looks like a productive relationship

Thank you for that, Chief Barnes.

And building on this point and even building on the press conference we participated in earlier this morning, I'm wondering if you can speak to how Seattle Police Department will work to differentiate themselves from federal law enforcement, knowing that there is an increased chilling effect that's happening across our community, particularly looking at the rhetoric from the federal government as well as increased concerns with rising usage of surveillance technology.

Absolutely.

Our policies require our officers to be clearly identifiable, even when they're serving search warrants and things of that nature.

I'm not aware of an opportunity where our officers cover their face.

If a community member asks for a badge or a badge number, we do that.

We give them that.

and then anyone can file a complaint against a police officer if they think they have seen something that is not in line with the values of our city and it is investigated by the Office of Police Accountability.

I want to be clear that we work with federal partners.

operations with FBI, we have operations with DEA, things of that nature.

So we do work with them, but our officers know if those partnerships turn into immigration enforcement, check off, come back to the station, and then they work from there until at which such time we can understand why that has shifted or changes.

Our law officers understand what Washington state law is, officers understand what our policies are, and we're working to ensure that we're not confused for something that we're not.

Because I know we have constituents who may be watching.

If you have a question, feel free to call 911. We can tell you if that's us, if we're there, if we're not there, and what the circumstances may be.

Because I get that question a lot from people.

What should they do?

And I always tell them to just give 911 a call.

But as we work to establish relationships, they can call police officers who they know.

And those police officers are sometimes quicker to be able to say, no, we're not over there, or I heard that we may be doing an operation, or yes, do you see a police car out with Seattle Police?

If so, that's us.

Thank you for that.

And Chair, I have one more question that I'd like a response here today, and then I'll read my last question into the record if that's all right.

Thank you.

To pivot a little bit, will the proposed additions, staffing additions, address the rising costs of sworn overtime overspending by the Seattle Police Department With the rise in hiring, I wanted to note that the initial pilot of the CCTV surveillance program was pitched as a matter to try and address our lack of officers, but now we're in a trend of hiring more officers.

So in light of this, are there any plans to reduce or scale back in expansion of surveillance?

Yeah, I don't know, at least I know I did not say that, but CCT cameras, public space cameras are used usually in investigations, which means unfortunately something has happened.

And those officers are not watching those cameras, those are analysts, and they have to submit their paperwork and their justification to the analysts, and then the analysts will go back and they will look at it.

As far as overtime, yes, hiring more officers will eventually help bring the overtime down, but it will not be an immediate fix to the problem of overtime.

Thank you for that.

And I wasn't here during those discussions related to the initial surveillance expansion, but upon going back and watching some of those presentations, it was pitched as also an effort to try and address the staffing shortage and the ability to respond.

And to read my final question, Justin, to the record for the purposes of time, Now that the consent decree has concluded, I'd like to better understand the department's plan for coming into compliance with I-940's requirement for independent investigations of deadly use of force by SPD and hope that we can continue that discussion.

If I can have one minute, we're working on that.

like now.

So, CEO Max, if you want to speak.

Yeah, we certainly did not wait until the end of the consent decree to begin those relationships.

We have been formally approved to join the IIT King County, which is a conglomerate of about 13 departments.

King County would be the primary lead agency, Washington State Patrol would be another, and they would draw resources from that investigative team to come in.

The way we are positioning that is there is a discrete type of incident that falls under that jurisdiction for the independent investigation team, we are not in any way going to curtail our own administrative investigations.

So the IAT is a criminal investigation, we do the administrative, and so both will continue.

There will be some nips and tucks about what we're allowed to do, especially around transparency and around media, and also access to the scene itself and crime scene.

information, but we're working through all of that.

Our goal is to preserve everything that we learned out of the consent decree and continue to be an exemplar for those investigations.

Thank you, Mr. Maxey.

That's a great update.

Appreciate you all.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rink.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chief and Brian and Angela for being here.

I had a lot of similar questions as my colleagues.

A couple that I have in addition is, one is in terms of being fully staffed, in 2019 I see there was a number between 1,200 and 1,400.

I'm not sure if that was even fully staffed for considering the population of our size, and you don't have to answer that now Brian.

but you may have the information on what would it be considered to be fully staffed for a population of this size.

And I'll say having information about other cities is also helpful because I know that I was looking at, at least from my cursory research on cities like Boston and Baltimore who actually look like they have less population size than we do at this point, have a sworn officer number that looks to be closer to 2,000, I again that was cursory so please don't hold me to that but would love to hear a little bit about what does fully staffed mean we're clearly not to our 2019 numbers but I am glad that we're in a better direction this year so chair if it's too much time they can answer later, your discretion.

I can make that really quick.

We're currently conducting a staffing study of patrol and patrol only looking at our response times, the number of calls that we have, the complexity of calls and how they have increased over the years.

And so I hope to have that study on my desk, hopefully sometime in October.

And to the question of how many officers You mentioned 2,000.

As I look at cities similar to us, that number seems to be in line.

But I will, of course, as a scientist, wait until the study, but I would not complain about having 2,000 police officers.

I say it more in the context of what I'm seeing other cities.

If I'm wrong, please correct me.

I'm trying to figure out what, you know, when we say fully staffed, it seems to be unclear, at least to me, what that means.

And it is a chartered responsibility of the city, so this is why I'm asking the question.

On the CCTV, because it's been brought up, I'll just say there seems to be, I've always thought of CCTV as helping with investigations.

That's the conversations you and I have had.

and also the ability to respond in real time if we're able to.

I understand there aren't officers sitting there all day just watching the cameras, but if someone calls something in, they have the ability to.

Is that correct?

Because I think there's a lot of conversation about whether officers are just sitting there all day watching people and it is a legitimate concern and question.

and then thank you for confirming that.

I'm going really fast, which I have to say is very hard for a Puerto Rican.

I mean just, and I say that with pride because we just love to talk to people and we are very, and we like to find out information.

Doesn't mean others aren't.

Just mean if you know Puerto Ricans, we're quite chatty and I certainly am one.

My last question, Chair, and then I have other questions, but I'll put them in the tracker.

On the training side, when I see that there's a reduction in professional development, I want to make sure that that does not mean required training and training, for instance, I'd love to get information about what you do in terms of community policing chief, I so appreciate the many conversations you and I have about the importance of community policing.

If officers, you know, are in the community, they are a part of that community and they will take care of that community and everyone in that community holistically.

I really appreciate hearing your background.

You served in the military, then you were a history teacher, which is and my house very regarded history.

And then you went into this community policing space and now you are a chief, so congratulations on that.

And also super appreciate this community policing piece because I often feel that part of the issues that sometimes we see with a subsection of the force is that there is that missing piece of community policing.

I'd love to hear what kind of training officers are required to do and also confirming that this professional development piece is not that, that somehow we're lacking on something that we should be doing or foregoing rather something we should be doing.

I want to make sure that's not the case.

So officers are still doing their mandatory in-service training that is required.

You know, we had to, of course, give some money back this year.

I believe that should not be the case next year.

Angela, you can correct me if I'm wrong.

but I do believe we've been creative a little bit with some of the training opportunities.

We have an opportunity to use asset forfeitures for some trainings and officers can still submit training requests for review and if approved we still send them to those trainings.

Yeah, that's correct.

We've reserved enough budget to ensure that anyone who has a required certification, you know, Councilmember Solomon mentioned the CEPTED trainings, you know, if you're in a specialized unit that requires a certification in order to perform your basic job functions, those will continue.

We had built out the budget to allow any employee to submit a request for training, even if it wasn't necessarily relevant to their day-to-day job function, just for the purpose of developing our personnel and supporting their professional goals.

We've had to scale that back some.

are submitting a request for training that's not directly related to your current job function or an anticipated job function.

We are curtailing some of that, but we have a reserved budget to continue it at a certain level.

It's just gonna require a little bit more justification and it's not as open as it was before, just given the budget constraints.

We have also reserved budget specifically for management training to make sure that we can continue to invest in our leadership and make sure that they have the tools and skills to be effective leaders.

So there was a small reduction there, but we did reserve a portion of the budget specifically for that purpose.

Which is really important that managers have the training, the necessary training to be able to manage their folks.

And Chief and Brian, I'd love to talk more about the training that's required culturally sensitive and things of that nature, which I think go along with community policing.

And I know, Chief, you and I have talked a lot about.

So I'll leave that, since we don't have time right now, we will continue that conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Sokka, followed by Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Chief Barnes.

Brian and Angela as well for being here today.

Really appreciate this insightful overview of the department's proposed budget and more importantly, all you all do every day to keep us safe in the important role that you play in implementing our broader public safety goals and strategies.

So my question pertains to an investment from last year's budget to the department.

It is obviously wise for any department if the executive department asks for new spending or new programming within a budget and we actually fund it to make sure that it actually gets implemented and also is prudent for departments we, as a council, add new investments on top of the budget to a particular apartment that you work efficiently and with urgency to implement those investments as well.

So I have a question about last year's, an item from last year's budget, so specifically related to 30 by 30. So in 2025, that adopted budget, we included budget legislation to add an FTE, and I think that was a strategic advisor three, if I recall correctly, to support the 30 by 30 initiative, which is the department's goal to add, I think 30, have at least 30% of the force represented by women, by 2030, if I'm recalling correctly.

That was actually directly in response to some very high-profile issues in the department with respect to culture and especially for women.

And so I sponsored, I was a prime sponsor of that budget investment and wanna thank Council Member Rivera as well, who's a co-sponsor along with former Council Member Moore.

champions for this cause.

But just be curious to better understand.

I know there was a DEI position funded and I think that's terrific.

And I think that is intended from a council perspective to be separate and independent of this 30 by 30 position to better support the hiring and culture of excellence for everyone, especially women.

Has that position been filled?

and question one is part of that.

Question two is what actions can this council do to better support the department to achieve a more diversified and representative police force?

I'll let CEO Max take the first part.

I'll take the second part.

Sure.

So very directly, council member, no, the position has not been filled.

It was an unfunded position and in order to achieve some of our balancing in 2025, had to lean into civilian vacancies in order to manage some of our reductions for this year.

That being said, it's not as though we have in any way stood down on that important work.

We do have a director of program development who is supervising project managers who are continuing to drive the 30 by 30. That's also in conjunction with the Women's Alliance, which is an organic group that evolved within our department to help tackle those issues.

And the RSJI change team, which will continue to be led by that DEI position, has also leaned and partnered on the 30 by 30 work.

As I'm sure you saw, we did proceed with the analysis of childcare and whether there was a viable pathway for that, we responded to the SLI on that and provided the information from our consultant on that.

So the work continues, but very directly to your question, no, that position has not yet been filled.

As far as support, you know, it takes some time, and we're gonna have to be patient.

I left a police department where 28% of the sworn officers were women, and that process started in 1977 with Chief David Cooper, who walked into the department, and we're still friends to this day, and said, why are all the women writing parking tickets or in juvenile services?

and he took a lot of backlash from a lot of people for changing the department.

He single-handedly started the department on the road to valuing people in all positions.

That took a long time.

and it's gonna take a long time for us to get there.

But we have to continue as I have done to promote women.

I have three of my command staffs are women, maybe four actually.

My strategic communications director is a woman, budget.

We're showing that this department is a place for you.

And if I could just say one last thing about that is you don't attract what you want, you attract who you are.

and so as we continue to show that Seattle Police Department and the City of Seattle is a place that's welcoming to all people and it's a place where you can come and be successful, those numbers will rise.

This position will certainly help it.

We have not hired for that position yet, but we'll talk with staff and see where we are on that and we'll keep you updated.

Thank you, Chief.

And on the one hand, I'm encouraged by some of the initial efforts the department has taken to better retain and attract women, some of which you accounted for just now, Chief.

And I think we should to celebrate some of that initial progress and at least the initial steps taken.

On the other hand, I am disappointed to hear that a specific council investment to directly address that issue head on as one tool and broader set of tools has not been spent or has not been implemented.

All right.

I'll move on to a...

My next question is about gun violence.

So reducing gun violence is an important priority for my office.

Chief, I appreciate your partnership in addressing some, better addressing some specific gun violence challenges in my district earlier this year and the continuing ongoing work that is involved in that.

And gun violence, Huge challenge all over the city, in certain areas, certain communities and neighborhoods, as we know, are more impacted than others.

And we need a comprehensive approach, comprehensive strategy.

Focuses heavily on gun violence prevention.

Prevention helps better address gun violence and actually responding to it.

And circling back to the first pillar reflected on your slide, number one, the first full slide there of the police department's kind of mission and goals, it says crime prevention.

So we need a comprehensive overarching strategy to address in this case, gun violence prevention.

Part of that is, well, proud to have written some investments in the FEP levy proposal, that's renewal, that's before voters, to include, among other things, add more after-school opportunities and investments for youth that are at risk or at opportunity.

for crime and criminal activity, including gun violence.

So it spans the gamut.

But what further investments requires a multi-department effort?

Like this.

I don't know why I did this.

In any event, it requires a multi-department effort, including yours plays a role in that.

So what further investments can we do together to try and drive down gun violence in our communities?

We have to, well, first of all, thank you for that question.

I want to be clear that we have a comprehensive plan to address gun violence.

It's called Seattle Centric Policing.

I gave the council a bit of a preview of it.

It's those things that I mentioned before is understanding place.

Every council district has a priority area.

and we're measuring our treatment and we're measuring the dosage of what it takes in those particular areas.

We're focused on the people in those areas.

And I'm going to circle back to that for a minute.

to answer your question, community engagement and communication, as well as problem solving, bringing everyone together to the table.

But when it comes to person-based, what can you do?

Think of it this way.

We did some research when I first got here of who we caught with weapons, who we know had fired that weapon.

We got a shell casing somewhere.

Later on, we find the person with that weapon.

There were about 63 people, persons on that list in the last 18 months that we knew had fire weapons in the city.

We held those accountable.

The question is, what investment could the city make in 63 families?

Could we ensure that our care team could go out and talk to them about mental health and substance abuse?

Could we ensure that our fire department can go out and talk to them about some of the services that they provide in dealing with people and their emotional and their physical shape?

Could the city provide housing jobs?

Could they help families with parenting?

It takes really a whole of government approach.

And the good news is, you know, we have people that we have identified and if we will work together, which is what we're trying to do, which is one of the things that brought me here because the city has committed to doing that.

The council has committed to doing that.

I think we're going to see gun violence being reduced.

It has gone down, certainly not as fast as everyone would want it, but this still is a big city with big city problems and I think we're doing a great job.

Are we perfect?

No.

But as I always try to remind myself from time to time, good is not the enemy of perfection.

Thank you, Chief, for that.

Final comment that I have pertains to a line of questioning and discussion from my colleagues earlier around police hiring, the appropriate number of staffing that is needed versus what we have today and the opportunity we have to better close that gap.

So I note that there's a rough goal somewhere, I don't even know the source to be honest, but there's a rough goal of hiring, you know, making sure we have roughly 1,400 deployable officers.

I note the mention there by Angela earlier of the authorized strength of 1,277.

Curious to better understand how that relates to the goal versus the information that's going to be contained in the pending study that should be on your desk later next month about the appropriate number of patrol officers.

And I don't know what the appropriate or best number is, We need plenty more than we have today.

And also, even if we have the bare minimum amount of officers from a patrol perspective to allow us to meet our response times, I think our officer recruitment, hiring, and retention efforts are gonna continue to suffer in languish unless and until we build back up fully our specialized units.

and have them maintain to their pre-pandemic levels of readiness and responsiveness, whether those specialty units are bomb units or gang units or all the type of whatever we're calling them now with the same underlying focus, all the things that make our department, the City of Seattle, a top 20 big city in America, more unique and more alluring and attractive to potential hires.

We need to rebuild those specialty units up in my view.

And again, it's good to have patrol officers.

We need them, but we need to also, in parallel, make sure we're fully restoring and making sure we have appropriate specialty units to meet the needs of today.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

and that was my last comment question, but I appreciate all the work you all do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Unless you all have- Just one response.

Thank you for that.

And I do agree with you.

Rebuilding those special teams always helps with recruitment and retention because people want to know that there's an opportunity to move around the department and to grow.

And I think when people enter any organization, they grow, they become more seasoned, they learn things, they develop their interests, and having those positions available where they can go to harbor or they can go to bomb, like you mentioned, or go to SWAT helps us retain people because they can move around.

It's one of the allures, I think, of policing.

No day is ever the same, but being able to use your specialties to help other people is certainly a recruitment and retention tool.

So thank you for mentioning that.

Thank you, Chief.

Council Member Hollingsworth, and then I've got last word.

Well, we'll have Council Member Kettle with last word.

Thank you, Chair, and I'll be fast.

I'm sure you've heard that before, but I really will be.

Thank you, Chief, for being here and for the SPD team.

One of the things that I think would make it really palatable for people in the community to understand how the investments equate to outcomes is the increased staffing that we have that is being proposed for budgeting and heard that, hey, our efforts have been I think there needs to be a little bit more front facing when it comes to SPD, to community, to answer some of those follow-up, whether it's a case, whether it's response to things, certain things that are happening in the community.

I've seen a level of more responsiveness, which is great, increase, but I think something to have that dedicated service to that would be really, really helpful to people to see this investment equates to what outcomes.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chief.

Thank you.

I agree with that.

Again, I just remind people that even though we're hiring officers now, it's going to take some time to get them through the process to where they can go out and really do some problem solving and make a difference.

But as we are able to bring people in, we can shift people to increase the number of bomb techs we have or increase the number in our Harbor Patrol or increase the number of detectives so that they can handle some of the workload and call loads that we have.

and I do think we can create a metric for tracking that.

I just don't know, you know, people will have to kind of be patient to see what those end results are and how it affects their daily lives.

Thank you, Chief.

Council Member Hollingsworth, anything else?

No, that's it.

I'll have more questions later on behind the scenes.

So thank you, Chair Strauss.

Well, you have taken the new record from Council Member Juarez with two minutes.

Thank you, Council Member Hollingsworth.

I'm up next.

Hopefully I will be somewhat similar, but as Council Member Hollingsworth says, I've heard it before, even from myself, I'll try to be brief.

I'm just going to take a moment to read from the six year look back that central staff has created about the budgets for each department.

Quoting here, between 2019 and 2025, the Seattle Police Department's budget grew by $53 million, a 13% increase.

During the six year period, several significant programs were transferred out of the police department, including the shift of 911 call center and associated staff to the city's care department.

If you exclude the reductions of SPD's budget that resulted from transferring the programs and personnel out of SPD, SPD's budget would have shown an approximately 23% increase in between 2019 and 2025. And that labor costs for officers are the most significant part of SPD's budget.

So this increase has had a substantial budgetary impact.

I note this for the record because much like the fire department, this is a general fund supported department.

We don't have any special revenues.

We don't have jumpstart.

We don't have these other things that many other departments within our city do have.

I do notice that in here and maybe, and we'll get to this, it might be one of my questions now or on SharePoint, which is that the narcotics unit was decreased with its funding, but it also looks like it was along with special victims, special investigations, violent crimes were transferred into the criminal investigations BSL.

Is it my understanding that that unit is still whole even though it's in a different BSL or what is the change with narcotics at this time?

If you need to get back to me, I'm happy to put that one on SharePoint.

I may have to, because I'm trying to remember or trying to think, if you're talking about where they are, where they sit in the department, I mean, the unit is still functioning, they still have the same supervision, they're still working the same caseloads.

Fantastic.

I'll come back with a more specific question on SharePoint.

Just want to note that the budget reform that was done with this team, Chief Rohrer and the mayor's office last year has helped us have a more transparent view into the department's budget.

And I would say that that has been something that has been beneficial for the public, for council members and anyone trying to have a better understanding of how your budget worked.

I just really appreciate it.

The overtime is a real clear example of how we're able to have a more clear conversation about what that funding is, why it's needed, what reductions or additions due to that BSL.

So I want to thank you there.

A question I did not prep you for is missing, murdered, and indigenous people.

I'm calling in from the tribal summit that we had last week.

Chief, if you wouldn't mind taking a minute or two to describe some of the conversation that we had about collaborating with tribal government police departments, the need for information sharing, the barriers that we currently have and where we're going forward on this.

And the question about budget is, do you have the budget for it?

The good news is establishing an MOU really doesn't require too much of a budget.

But the idea is that we want to make sure that as I meet with some of the tribal police departments that we have information sharing and MOU agreements or memorandums understanding in place.

so that if someone goes missing and murdered, we can get as much information about that person as possible.

And again, under my administration, we're never going to turn down help from another agency, tribal agency or another city that wants to come in and help.

Now, we are bound by law about what information we can give out to people who are not law enforcement.

But having that memorandum of understanding, that information sharing, allows us to give them information and then they could, of course, share it with the people who may be out searching or looking for that person.

And again, we just believe that information sharing and working together works.

I had an opportunity to speak with one of the nations and I really enjoyed the conversation, got an opportunity to hear about some of their concerns.

And again, this is something that I worked on in Wisconsin, missing and murdered indigenous women and women of color with a state representative there, Sheila Stubbs.

And so I can send you an article about that.

And so it's something that I've been concerned about for a very, very long time.

But the point is we want to make sure that we can bring as many resources as we can to bear when someone goes missing or someone is murdered so we can give them justice.

Thank you, Chief.

Moving on, our police hiring numbers are off the charts compared to previous years.

First, I wanna congratulate you and your team for the work you've done.

The question here, I heard you say just a moment ago, you recruit not who you want, you recruit who you are.

Can you share a little bit more about what you think has contributed to this hiring spike?

People want to, police officers, young folks, young people who want to be police officers, they want to come to a city that they can identify with.

And the reason I think the numbers are going up, not because of me, but because of my staff, but it's also because of the city.

They want to know that they're going to work for a city where they're supported from the elected officials.

You're just as much a boss as I am or as CEO Maxie is to a young recruit.

They want to know they want to come to a city where the executive, where the mayor supports their work and understands how difficult this work is.

And I think they're seeing that.

They want a community that will embrace them and help them understand some of the challenges that are ongoing challenges that have been going on for a very long time here in Seattle and that we're committed to doing better.

And I think that's what they see.

It's a big decision, I can tell you, to decide to come to a new city and become a police officer.

There's a lot of things to consider.

Livability, affordability, whether or not you're going to feel welcome if you're a little bit different, right?

And I think they find that and they will see that in Seattle.

And we have to continue.

I really mean that.

We have to continue what we're doing.

It doesn't mean that we're not going to hold each other accountable.

I'm not saying that.

But we do have to continue supporting the work at all levels of government, at all levels of the criminal justice system, cops, courts and corrections.

and understanding that the work is vitally important.

That's why people come here.

The money obviously is a big allure, but behind that, what type of city am I coming to work for?

Am I gonna be held accountable for my actions?

Are people gonna make sure that I'm supported?

And as I always say, accountability happens long before there's a disparate outcome.

And I think they see that in Seattle.

Thank you, Chief.

I've got a couple questions about Harbor Patrol and addressing drug dealing and the place-based strategies that you were referring to just a minute ago, just noting that each of our districts has a place that needs attention.

For the 1st District, it's Soto, maybe somewhere else as well.

For District 2, 12th and Jackson, District 3, Capitol Hill and First Hill, District four is Magnuson, district five is Lake City and Aurora, district six is Aurora and the Ballard Industrial Zone, and for district seven it's third in Belltown now.

So I'll follow up with you about what more we need to do to implement your place strategies.

My last question here and regarding Harbor Patrol as well, I want to make sure that we're fully funded there.

My last question for this morning's session, we're now into the afternoon, is regarding the speed cameras, red light cameras, block the box cameras.

I know that this is an inter-department team with UN SDOT and also requires a third-party vendor.

It's my understanding that the third-party vendor is taking longer than we would like.

What's the current situation report on this?

What more needs to be done?

I think the underlying question that you're getting from me is we are not very patient anymore.

We would like to get these things deployed.

So do you have any situation report at this time?

I do know that we have a meeting with SDOT this afternoon to discuss this topic.

And then I'll let CEO Max see if he has any further to talk about.

Yeah, I think there's a, as you say, it's an interdepartmental effort with a third-party vendor.

There's a lot of moving parts on this.

The complexity is that when we hold some of the administrative side and we hold the contract, SDOT does the logistics, the implementation, and some of the complexities really are around our existing infrastructure.

getting power to poles, replacing the poles if they can't actually support the additional equipment, moving other utilities off of those poles.

So each site has sort of a laundry list of logistics that takes some time and effort.

And I think that is really what is responsible for the pace of the deployment.

I'm happy to dig into this further, and I know that more comprehensive information is being provided to the chief prior to today's meeting with SDOT.

Great, thank you so much.

Just reading loud and clear from all of us on the dais, I'm gonna speak for everyone right now, is that we are pining for these traffic cameras to be deployed as fast as possible.

It's been about a year since we provided funding for it.

And so just understanding that nine out of 10 people who get a ticket from one of these red lighters speeding cameras, do not get a ticket a second time.

So that means 90% of people begin obeying societal behavior, societal norms, and with so many people still being hit and struck on the streets by vehicles and other modes, we're anxious to get this out faster.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I was not the longest, I was not the shortest.

Please, Chief.

If I could just make one final comment, I think it's just important that I thank council for their questions and for their concern and certainly for helping to guide us through this process.

I want to thank public safety staff from the Mayor's Office, Public Safety Chief Natalie Walton Anderson, Sarah and her team.

I want to thank Angela Sochi and CEO Brian Maxey for all their work.

And then finally, I do want to thank the men and women of the Seattle Police Department.

As noted in Angela's presentation, attrition is slowing down.

and I think it's slowing down because things are changing a bit.

I think people understand that they are certainly being supported by this council and wanting to do the work in the right way, most importantly the right way in a procedural justice way that's going to number one reduce crime but also add legitimacy to people and that's the work that people signed up for to do and you have supported that.

The community policing, the neighborhood oriented police and I look forward to being able to come back at another time to talk about how we're moving toward a more neighborhood oriented approach and some of the things that we're doing and some of the questions that have been asked by city council today.

So thank you so much to the men and women of the Seattle Police Department, both our sworn and our professional staff.

Thank you, Chief.

Councilmember Kettle, last word, and then I'll give us a little bit of orientation for committee for the rest of the day.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to thank, again, Chief Barnes and the team for being here.

But I also really want to thank my colleagues for all the questions and digging in the different pieces, you know, following up what we went through this process last year.

Because what it shows is that we are professional.

It shows that we're doing our job.

And it shows that we are, in fact, contrary to everything in terms of the gaslighting, as I stated at the beginning of today's meeting.

and that's important and with respect to the rest of the country in light of the president's actions.

So thank you everyone.

Thank you, Chair Kettle.

Colleagues, at this time I am going to have us break for lunch.

We had a half an hour break earlier today so we're gonna do 30 minutes at this time.

So we're gonna do, I'll give it a couple extra minutes.

So at 1.20 we're gonna restart.

We're gonna take lunch and then we'll come back and do CARE as soon as we get back.

So we're gonna do 1.20 as our return time and we'll take up CARE and Human Services Department as soon as we return.

Not at the same time, but one after another.

Yes, yes, yes.

Wonderful.

Any questions or comments at this time?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

So just to confirm, we're gonna do, left today is CARE.

On HSD, am I correct?

That's correct.

Okay, too.

And just for the record, Chair, I think 30 minutes is not very much time since we're here all day and we have emails and other things, so there's a way to expand that by a little bit.

I don't know if I'm the only one feeling that way, but would appreciate the consideration.

Thank you.

Yes, on a given day, we would have an hour lunch.

Thanks.

And because the Mayor Harrell and our departments were responding to federal overreach and unnecessary claims of coming to our region, we had to have a half an hour break earlier today.

So that's the issue of the day.

Thank you.

Seeing no further business, we are on recess until 1.20pm.

Thank you.