Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 9/30/2020

Good morning, everyone.

Today is Wednesday, September 30th, 2020, and the Select Budget Committee will come to order.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Here.

Council Member Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Council Colleagues, good morning and thank you all for all of your time.

We have a full Council colleague attendance today for our first meeting of the Select Budget Committee for the 2021 Budget Conversations.

I want to thank all of you in advance, all of your teams.

for your incredible work that's ahead of us, and a special thanks to our central staff and the work that our budget team is doing for us, led by Ali Panucci, including Dan Eder, Tom and Lisa, Patty, so many others working diligently to help bring us the information that we need in real time to understand, dissect, and amend the proposed budget that has been transmitted from the mayor's office.

So just a huge amount of appreciation for your time and all of your teams for the work that's ahead of us.

I will open with a few public comments here and then we will see if there's public comment.

I want to note for the viewing audience, if you are interested in providing public comment, there is still the opportunity to do so.

I understand that we have a few people who had put in their email address in all caps and it was rejected.

So if you do have the chance and you're still interested in signing up, please do go back online.

Try to use lower cap to include your email.

I believe all of those glitches have been fixed, but I will make a few comments and then we'll see if there's folks who are signed up for public comment at that time.

Colleagues, I wanted to start by referencing a letter that I sent out this morning.

It's an open letter to members of the public regarding the upcoming budget deliberations in front of us.

This is a recognition that we have compounding crises, incredible responsibility at this time.

At the end of 2020, it's a recognition that the year 2020 is not exactly what we signed up for, and our responsibilities as elected officials We're great before COVID, we're great before the civil rights uprising, and continue to be incredibly important now as we try to address compounding crises that are not only present in our country, but right here in our city.

The open letter to the residents of Seattle on the budget process and responsibility talks about what we have in front of us.

I wanted to acknowledge that this is a letter that shapes what I hope to be the process for our 2020 one deliberations and sort of an expectation about the ways in which we hope to engage the public.

2020 has not shaped up the way that many of us anticipated.

When I stepped up to serve as budget chair, it was because I had these great plans of a process that would be a participatory budgeting process with public forums throughout the year that allowed for community engagement starting in the spring of this year, that would allow for us to have a transparent, collaborative, and inclusive space to identify ways to bring people to the table that have been historically left out of policymaking.

And to do so with sufficient times to really digest hard questions in front of us, to work issues out and to come together around a budget for the next year.

It was because we envisioned a public process where we were going to be digging into the details collectively, but this would not be a budget where we worked around the edges or that we received a budget that was mostly baked.

It was going to be a process where we had the opportunity to truly dig into the details with community.

But because of the issues that presented itself in 2020 in the spring and summer, we are now in a process that we need to begin really engaging in robust discussion with community over the next two months for our 2021 budget.

I think this is an opportunity, an opportunity for us to adapt, an opportunity for us to be creative as we come together to reflect on the city's values for a 2021 budget.

Values of an equitable economic recovery, values of promoting health, housing, and safety for all in our city.

throughout the next two months, the city council budget deliberations will be driven by a process, even though we have a shorter amount of time than we anticipated, that not only balances the city's budget for the following year, but also one that underscores our commitment to making sure that we invest in policies that align with our shared values.

As budget chair, it's both a privilege and an incredible responsibility to steward this process with you.

My commitment is to ensure that as the city council considers the mayor's proposed budget, We listen to members of the public.

We elevate those issues and we propose changes that are deliberated by the entire council after robust community stakeholder engagement.

This fall's budget process will be different in many ways because this moment demands as elected leaders that we step up and address the multitude of overlapping crises that are presenting themselves at the same moment.

Really, there's five crises that are in front of us, and that includes making sure that we're addressing the public health crisis that's presented itself due to COVID, the crisis of the public health emergency demands that we step up and support families who are experiencing exposure to COVID at higher rates, including our black and brown communities.

We also must make sure that we're stepping up and recognizing that our local economy has had incredible downturn caused by the pandemic, but not only by the pandemic.

We had incredible disproportionate wage earnings prior to the pandemic.

And we know that this pandemic has only exacerbated the situation for small businesses, for lower wage workers, for those who need childcare, childcare that is increasingly disappearing across the city and this country.

We want to step up and think about our opportunities to reimagine what the economy should look like and how to make our economy stronger for all Seattleites.

And after centuries of inequity and decades of fighting for reform, the movement for Black Lives Matter along with Black Americans and Black organizers and allies across the country are demanding that we invest in systems that not hurt communities of color, but help communities of color and invest in true community safety along with systemic change.

And let's also realize we're doing this in the context of our country and the world being on fire.

Weeks of the skies filled with smoke and our inability to breathe is a reminder that we must address climate change and that we can act locally for this global crisis.

And if there's things that we can do in this budget, we must do them with urgency to create greener economy for everyone so that we do not have a situation continuing to get worse, but we act with urgency at the local level to address climate change.

And we are still in the midst of a five-year-long affordable housing crisis and homelessness crisis, a visible crisis that plays out on our street every day.

During this public health crisis, as we've seen folks sleep outside with smoky skies, and now as winter sets in and the rain comes, we must do better by our homeless neighbors.

This is the budget season.

This is our chance for the council to make new, different, and meaningful investments to address all of these five pressing crises at the same time.

And regardless of this complicated chapter in our community and in our country, the council must ensure that our shared values are reflected in the 2021 budget, which will include working towards building true equity in our city's policies, investing in community safety, creating an economic recovery plan that considers all families, including small businesses and low-income workers, and we must expand access to affordable and accessible child care.

As the budget chair, my guiding principles in this budget season are to ensure that every Seattle resident can be healthy, housed, and safe, and that we create a process that is transparent and inclusive as we develop the budget.

We know that to be healthy, we must have public health, we must have investments in public safety, and those are paramount in all of our conversations right now.

This means equitable investments in black and historically marginalized communities, and considering and centering our discussions on the fact that black and brown communities have been disproportionately affected by COVID.

Through true investments in public health, largely made possible by all of our votes in the Jump Start Seattle progressive revenue proposal, we can invest in affordable, accessible public safety measures to make sure that folks not only have access to tests, but have the true supports that they need to be healthy.

And that includes housing and childcare, a living wage job, the ability to speak up when something is happening in your workplace or in your community and know that you'll be safe.

Seattle needs to invest in affordable housing and stable resources to keep our family and our communities safely housed during this pandemic.

Investments mean creating more affordable housing and the pipeline to get into housing.

We will work to ensure that we're building housing and that we're supporting those who provide those core services at housing as well.

This means permanent supportive housing and paying enough so that our service workers are not ending up qualifying for the same services that they're helping their clients with.

While we prioritize investments in community safety, we also must invest in safe infrastructure.

I'm looking forward to working with all of you who've been focused on the infrastructure, whether it's from our bridges, to our parks, to our piers.

We must ensure that the system, the fabric of our community, including sidewalks, are safe for our community to get around, whether you're with a stroller, you're using a walker, you're in a wheelchair, or you're just walking in your community, we want everybody to be safe.

This is a vision not just for the short term, but it requires us to think about the long-term capital projects that can center on equity, improve the environment, and work with a broad coalition of labor unions, small businesses, and residents as well as other government entities to create the infrastructure that our local community needs, that our local economy needs to have our city planners design the best and most inclusive Seattle for everyone.

I am committed to a transparent budget process that engages all Seattle residents.

And to start, my staff has worked alongside of the council president's office and central staff to ensure that the committee materials are out in time well before the meeting starts.

Today is day one of our fall budget process.

which we know is being kicked off by a presentation from the mayor's office on the proposed 2021 budget.

I look forward to hearing all of your questions and your comments.

Your inquiries help us guide our future conversations throughout the next two months.

So I'll be looking forward to each person having a chance to ask those questions and we'll make sure to go through the roll call to see if anybody has questions at each of the presentations throughout the next three days.

We know that this is often a cumbersome process to get through these binders and materials that are usually presented to us in person.

And we are going to endeavor to make sure that this process is streamlined for folks who are following along electronically as we scroll through the online versions of the materials that we've all received.

We will be highlighting ways for us to engage in each public comment process.

Again, there will be public comment at the beginning of each meeting.

30 minutes at least and then we will have a robust public hearing on October 6th and then two weeks after that on October 27th starting at 5 30 p.m.

As council members are holding town halls or meetings in their district, we will also be looking forward to getting your feedback and knowing how we can get that information that you are collecting in your districts plugged into the city budget process.

I really appreciate the conversations I've had with each one of you.

I know that you have a long list of priorities that we all would want to see, especially in good times.

And now that we're facing an economic downturn, we know that those programs and services are even more important.

So looking forward to working with all of you as we hear from the community, engage with the community, and really take the opportunity to build a 2021 budget that reflects all of our values and inclusive of our community.

I hope that that gave folks time to sign up for public comment.

If you hadn't yet had an opportunity to sign up for public comment, we very much want to hear from you and look forward to engaging with you again each morning at 9.30.

public testimony will be taken for sign up starting at 7.30 a.m.

But people may be waiting for the 5.30 p.m.

sign up on Tuesday next week.

At this point, colleagues, I'm opening it up for public comment, and I just want to confirm that there are no folks signed up this morning for public comment.

Is that correct, folks from affirmative?

There are no public commenters.

Thank you very much.

Well, With that, we are going to move forward with our agenda.

If there's no objection, the agenda for today will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, we are going to go into the first item of business.

Madam Clerk, will you please read into the record item number one?

Agenda item one, the introduction and budget process overview.

Wonderful, thank you so much.

And the presenters that we have in front of us, I believe, Dan Eater, Interim Director, Ali Panucci, Central Staff, and...

We have folks I know that will be coming shortly from the CDO office.

But let me just first say how much we appreciate you, Ali and Dan, for all of your work in advance.

It seems like just a few weeks ago we were working on the budget with you because we were.

And you have been incredibly busy this entire year.

Prior to the summer 2020 rebalancing effort, you were also heavily engaged in working with I'm Dan Eater, interim director of your central staff.

And as the budget chair noted in her opening remarks, there is even more uncertainty than usual about how events will unfold in the coming year.

Nonetheless, as required by state law, all spending in the mayor's proposed budget is balanced by the city's current projections of next year's revenues.

And the council's final adopted budget will also need to be similarly balanced.

The mayor's proposed budget serves as always as a starting place for council's deliberations.

The council may adopt a city budget that is similar to or the same as the mayor has proposed, but the city charter vests power in the council to adopt an annual budget that may include a range of different spending priorities.

The city's general fund, as you all know, is the heart of the city's budget.

Broadly speaking, the general fund is how the city pays for salaries of staff who in turn provide public facing services such as community centers and parks programming, human services, public safety, libraries, transportation, and a lot more.

As the budget chair noted, the council's decision earlier this year to impose a new jumpstart payroll tax was a game changer for the general fund.

Given the actual and anticipated ongoing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on other city tax revenues, the new payroll tax revenues mean that we can expect the general fund to be in substantially better shape during 2021 than might otherwise have been the case.

Ali Panucci, I'm very happy to introduce, will serve as this year's central staff budget manager.

She'll be the public facing support leading the staff of your entire central staff team.

As she will describe momentarily, the central staff team has worked under the leadership of both Budget Chair Mosqueda and Council President Gonzalez to establish an orderly process for this year's budget deliberations.

We stand ready to support each council member in understanding the mayor's proposal and then ultimately adopting a final city budget.

With that, I'll turn it over to Ali, who will walk you through a high-level overview of this year's council budget adoption process.

Wonderful.

Thank you very much, Dan.

Hi, Ali.

Good morning.

Thank you, Director Eder, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, council members.

I'm Ali Panucci of your central staff.

Today, I'm just going to briefly describe the council's eight-week process that really begins today.

The committee's budget process is predicated on state law that establishes the roles for the mayor and the council in adopting an annual budget.

The mayor and the executive departments have about nine months to put together a proposed budget that must be transmitted to the council 90 days prior to the next fiscal year.

As Director Eder just described, this becomes the starting point for the council's budget deliberations.

The council then has only about eight weeks to hold public meetings and committee deliberations and take final action to adopt a balanced budget not later than 30 days prior to the end of the year.

Next slide, please.

The budget process this year is comprised of six main steps and two public hearings, as highlighted on the budget timeline presented on this slide.

The process is designed, as Director Eder mentioned, in collaboration with Chair Mosqueda and Council President Gonzalez to provide time for the committee to hear from the public and to engage in discussion and debate about the proposed budget, individual council member proposals, and the chair's balancing package.

Next slide, please.

Over the next three days, the committee will hear presentations from the city budget office and executive staff and ask questions of the mayor's proposed budget submitted for the council's consideration.

This will complete step one of the budget process.

After hearing from the executive staff, we have about two weeks for the committee and staff to digest, research, and analyze the proposed budget before moving on to step two in the process.

The committee will also hold the first of two public hearings during this time on October 5th.

Next slide, please.

The committee following step one will hold issue identification discussions on October 15th, 16th, 20th, and 21st.

These committee sessions provide council members an opportunity to review key changes in the proposed budget and issues identified through central staff's independent analysis and those flagged by council members and their staff, as well as preliminary budget proposals submitted by council members.

Council members wishing to have proposals included in the central staff memos must submit a form A by 5 p.m.

on Thursday, October 8th, and I look forward to all supporting us in meeting those deadlines so we can meet the goal of having materials out earlier to all of you and to the public.

Next slide, please.

As described by Chair Mosqueda and Interim Director Eder, the city is facing historic levels of uncertainty, and this one-year budget exercise cannot solve for all of that.

But it's an important piece of this broader work.

And we on central staff look forward to supporting the council's budget deliberations and completing step six of this process when you all adopt a balanced 2021 city budget.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda and members of the Select Budget Committee.

I'm happy to answer any questions about the process.

Well, thank you very much again, Allie and Dan, and to your entire teams at Central Staff for working on not just the budget in front of us, but really working with each office to include feedback on how the process can be streamlined internally so that it's more transparent externally and that people have the time to get the information in front of them.

Again, thanks to Council President for your memo as well, underscoring the importance of sticking with those timelines.

That's very much appreciated.

Are there any questions, colleagues, for our Central Staff?

Okay, I am not seeing any questions.

I think it would be wonderful if we could have our office and along with any other offices continue to push out those slides for the fall timeline on our social media and in our newsletters.

If folks are interested in doing that, that would be extremely helpful as we really try to deconstruct the process for the members of the public to follow along.

So happy to share those with you so that you can also get those out.

Again, thanks to our folks at the communications office and the communications team, Dana, Stephanie, and Joseph for all of your work to help provide helpful tools to get the information out to our community.

We'll be sending that around to you all shortly.

With that, thank you very much.

Madam Clerk, could you please read into the record item number two?

You may be on mute.

Madam Clerk, you may be on mute.

Thank you.

Agenda item 2, City Budget Office Proposed Budget Overview.

Thank you very much.

We are on item number 2 and I want to welcome to the table, our virtual table here, Director of the CBO, Ben Noble, David Haynes, Jan Duras, George Emerson, and Joel Russell, all from CBO.

I believe we have Deputy Mayor Raganathan with us as well from the mayor's office.

Director Noble, I will turn it over to you.

I see you.

Good morning.

And thank you for all of your work as well.

I know you have been burning the midnight oil, as they say, to get us a document today.

And just want to note our appreciation for your work and your team's work as well.

Director Noble, we'll turn it back over to you.

Thank you very much.

And the Deputy Mayor will be joining us shortly.

You're a little bit ahead of schedule, which is never a bad thing, but I'm in contact with her to let her know that we're getting started a little early.

So we have an overall presentation to you that has two major components.

As has been described this morning, the city's budget is balanced to a revenue forecast.

So we thought it was important to start with giving you an update on that revenue forecast.

The mayor's proposed budget is balanced to a forecast that was developed in August with data that was available to us then.

And Dave Hennis and his team will present that to you just in a moment here.

I'll then switch gears and I'll spend some time talking at a high level about the mayor's proposed expenditure, essentially, of the resources that are in that forecast.

The forecast focus significantly on the general fund, but not exclusively the budget obviously covers a range of resources.

And again, I'll do this at a high level as you saw on the schedule that was shown earlier.

There are then a series of department presentations and subject matter presentations from executive staff that will follow over the next few days.

And I'll obviously be happy to try to answer questions, but I may defer and suggest that you hold some of those to the more detailed briefings that will follow with the experts in those areas.

So, with that, I'm going to turn it over to Dave Hennis and the economist team at the Budget Office to give you a summary of our revenue forecast.

Go ahead, Dave.

Great.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, everybody.

I am Dave Hennis.

I'm the leader of the economics and revenue team within CBO.

And I would just want to take a moment to acknowledge the work of my colleagues, Jan Duras, George Emerson, and Joe Russell for helping develop the forecast and the presentation.

And they'll all be doing the presentation here today.

They are online here and will be available to answer questions based on their area of expertise if we have questions.

So if we go to the first slide.

Purpose today is somewhat of a reminder that we sent down this forecast to you via memo, Ben's signature, Director Noble's signature on August 10th.

So if these numbers look familiar later on, that's a good thing because we presented them earlier to you.

Uh, and I think what's important is, is that this is, uh, this is the basis for the 2021 proposed budget, uh, as the mayor has just presented.

Uh, and so it is a bit of a time artifact and that this was based on work we did, um, in July and early August, uh, based on July information through July.

Um, We will be providing you with an updated forecast in about three weeks that we'll look again at the national forecast, our regional forecast, and existing data as we know it and can see it.

And that should provide some changes to this.

But this is what was the basis of the 21 proposed budget.

Just real quick on the proposed revenue forecast update.

That is the week of, sorry, November 2nd, correct?

I don't know a specific date.

I believe, Ben, we were looking at the third week of October to provide something.

We will start developing it in that time frame, so it's ready for you early November or whenever is convenient and helpful for you.

In general, there's additional information that we receive on a weekly basis, but we know you need it certainly by early November in order to complete your deliberations.

that we can work towards certain dates to be baked in, that would be ideal.

But thank you, Director Noble, for the offer to potentially get it earlier than November 2nd.

That would be helpful.

Excuse me for the interruption.

Thank you.

That's no problem.

So with that, some economic context here.

This is a chart that basically shows that we've gone through about almost 11 years of nice revenue growth.

But that came to an end with this pandemic.

And as you can see, the red line, what we have in this chart are the job losses.

based in previous recessions.

And we're showing a 1990 recession, the 2001 recession, the 2007 recession to 2009, that's the Great Recession.

And then this in the red is the 2020 recession.

And across the top, you have years to recovery, to pre-recession levels of employment.

And so what down the left-hand side, you have percentage change numbers of how much employment changed relative to the peak prior to the recession.

Let me get this thing out of the way here, sorry.

So what you can see is that if you look at the red line, you see the precipitous drop off, and that this is unprecedented.

And it shows, now this is not the unemployment rate, this is the change of employment.

But at this time, the unemployment rate dropped from three, was at 3%, and it increased to 16.3% in April of this year.

So the Seattle Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is essentially Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, an area, so a Puget Sound metropolitan area.

You see the red line then increase back up to about a minus eight percent drop, and you see how much this differs from previous recessions, whereas in 1990, the blue line, you see it quite shallow and quite rapid in terms of recovery back to pre-recession levels.

2001 was a much stronger recession here in the Seattle metropolitan area, And it took four and a half years, as you see the line reach back to the 0% level before we got back to pre-recession levels of employment.

And then the Great Recession in the yellow line took five and a half years.

So what the big question here is that we're all trying to figure out is what happens to that red line as we go forward?

Will it be gradual or will it be a bit steeper?

And I think there's some estimates out there, the IHS market forecast, which is what we use as our national forecast in developing our forecast, their pessimistic scenario suggests that this could take almost four years for this recession, for employment to get back to its pre-recession levels.

Next slide.

Continuing with the labor market, we're showing in the slide the change in employment by industry.

And so we all know that the pandemic has affected different industries differently.

And this chart is attempting to show some of that.

The top bar is total nonfarm employment.

And you see that's dropped about 9%.

And that's all employment in Seattle Metropolitan Statistical Area.

And then below that, you see a variety of categories of sectors of the economy, construction, manufacturing, retail, trade, information.

And you get to the big one, which is leisure and hospitality, which is an over 30% drop in employment levels.

These are things like restaurants and hotels and a variety of services like that.

Um, what's interesting is it perhaps is, is that, um, Leisure and hospitality.

Uh, And the construction sectors combined.

Uh, they account for about 16% of all jobs.

But 40% of the jobs lost.

And so with each of these goes a sort of a, um, uh, an assessment of how big of a share of employment in the area these sectors hold and then therefore what the effect is on overall employment in the area.

I think significantly, we still have a strong technology sector and online commerce are driving things.

And we have a very diverse economy, which is a blessing.

And so hopefully, as we move through into recovery more and more, that those sectors help lift everyone else up, particularly construction and the leisure and hospitality industry.

But that is largely dependent on the path of the virus.

Next slide.

Looking at construction, this chart is showing the value of building permits issued by Seattle's Department of Construction Inspections.

And what we have is monthly bars or columns, and you see how volatile those are, one month, the next, up and down and up and down across.

And the light gray bars are through 2019. And then the dark gray bars on the right-hand side are this year, 2020. And what you see sort of a bit more clearly based on the dark blue line running across, which is a six-month moving average, is that through 2019, we had about $370, $380 million a month of building permits issued.

And that number is dropping precipitously down to about 200 million, maybe a little bit below for 2020. And so these construction revenues are hugely important to the city's revenue base.

They account for 27% of sales tax revenue and 11% of B&O tax revenue.

They're a large part of the annual increase in property tax revenues because we get to count new construction value into our levy amount.

And then construction of new homes, new condominiums, et cetera, drives a lot of other expenditures afterwards.

People buying new appliances, new furniture, et cetera, purchasing services, what have you.

So as construction goes, so goes our revenues.

And so we want to watch this very carefully.

Next slide.

So moving to the regional forecast that we produced in July for the August forecast.

This was based again on IHS markets pessimistic scenario and it's July US economic forecast.

And I think what's important here is the shape of this red line in terms of unemployment rate on the top and personal outlays on the bottom, personal outlays per capita.

What earlier discussions had been was that perhaps we would recover quite quickly in what people refer to as a V-shaped recovery.

And that has not happened, though we have seen a dramatic increase in employment.

We're seeing other indicators that are showing that, well, this is not going to bounce back super quickly.

And here we are in September, and we're still So we're moving a little bit sideways and upward, but not as dramatically as one might have hoped early in the year.

And we're not in a U-shaped recovery either, because we are not bouncing around the bottom of a U before it goes up again and so what most people are believing we're in is what referred to as a swoosh which is so drops quickly here is what we did and now we're going to climb back gradually and then in the name of the game is how quickly can we recover and you know so At what rate and what this chart shows the top unemployment rate is Is is the dramatic drop off and these are this is showing by quarter so 2019 quarter four on the left hand side is where it starts and it runs out 2020 2021 2022 showing quarterly growth or change in the unemployment rate and for our region.

And as you can see, it's quite extended and we don't reach to the pre-recession levels, even in 20 to 24 Q4, we're sort of just reaching it there where unemployment rate gets back to where it was prior to the recession starting.

The personal outlays on the bottom chart per capita is interesting in that this is showing not per capita income, which is increasing, but the outlays that people make as they spend in the economy.

And we thought this was a more relevant display.

I would like to make a comment.

Describing that not everyone is affected the same way.

And I think Councilmember Muscat you are making the point there is a big divide.

Those who have kept their jobs and keeping their income are living in one set of circumstances.

And those who have lost their jobs or lower income are working in another set of circumstances.

And those with income, and higher income in particular, are saving now more than ever.

And so personal outlays here, as you can see, drops down in 2020 Q4 down there, about 8.5% lower by year end than pre-COVID forecast.

And then it sort of climbs very gradually and is according to the forecast we made, it doesn't get back anywhere near really to 2024 Q4 levels.

Because the notion is that the virus is keeping people from getting out and doing their normal economic activity or pre-recession activities, pre-COVID activities.

And it's just going to take some time for that trust to come back, for the safety to return, and people to start having income again because of leisure and hospitality jobs and et cetera returning.

So that's what this picture is attempting to show.

Next slide.

Jumping to the next couple slides, one is for sales tax and the other for B&O tax.

The real intent of this is to, there's some information about the sales tax on the left-hand side in the bullets, but the real intent is to show that we are not bouncing back to pre-levels, pre-COVID and pre-recession levels in this forecast, as you see by the numbers in the red, the columns in the red on the right-hand side.

One of the things that's affecting sales tax revenues is, which I think I'll address a little bit later, is that there's a bit of a delay because people are deferring some payments and it makes it difficult to know what our actual position is, but this is the forecast.

Next slide.

Remind us as well where on that previous slide, where we would see the online sales tax capture.

Will we see it here or is that captured in another place?

No, that's captured here.

Thank you.

B&O, it's a very similar picture, a little bit higher level.

The B&O is a little bit larger tax.

But again, we're not getting back to the pre-recession levels of 2019. And as you can see by the bullets, tax revenues in 2020, it's expected to decline $58.9 million, a 19.5% drop.

And so far, what we're seeing is that tax revenue receipts are about almost 13% lower than in 2019, and a bit lower than that from the adopted budget.

Next slide.

So this is the chart that we, although it's modified just a little bit, but basically the chart we sent to you in early August.

It's showing 2020 adopted in the left hand column, our 2020 revised, which is the August forecast.

the change between that revised and the adopted forecast in the next column, 2020 change.

And then we're showing also the 2021 proposed and the change of the 2021 proposed budget to the 2020 adopted budget.

That latter column is, I think, the best way to understand the effects of COVID on 2021 compared to what would have otherwise been.

We had not developed a 21 2021 forecast pre-COVID, so we don't have a simple pre-COVID, post-COVID comparison for 2021. But by comparing 2021 to the 2020 adopted forecast, that 2020 adopted forecast was a pre-COVID forecast.

So that's intended to give you a sense of the revenues in 2021 relative to what they might have been without COVID as best we can.

Yes.

And just speak to this just just to a moment.

I mean, you can see in 2020 we piloted these figures before significant drops in sales and B&O, utility taxes, parking taxes, property taxes are relatively smaller reduction.

Those are less economically less economically dependent.

To date, folks have been making property tax payments.

We've assumed a slightly higher delinquency rate consistent with previous recessions.

But the net in 2020 is a $200 million reduction, a $210 million reduction in general fund resources.

Again, this is consistent with figures we presented before.

As a technical matter, we've included the admissions tax here before we made it.

We might have excluded it previously.

It is technically part of the general fund.

But the overall reduction in that tax being the same.

For 2021, you'll see, again, Growth, again, in the property tax, that's consistent with the state law that allows us to collect 1% more.

I mean, there's some other factors that change there as voter approved.

Here's general fund, so that's largely the 1% and some other factors.

Sales, B&O, utility taxes, you see modest growth, again, consistent with what Dave has described.

2021, we're into recovery, but modest recovery.

Similarly, for parking, parking, there's largely parking meters, and we have begun to turn those back on.

We're anticipating as demand increases that will increase rates again for policy to try to ensure turnover.

But there are a couple of big differences in 2021 that really drive the net effect.

One of those is the payroll tax.

So it is an introduction of $214 million additional dollars into the general fund.

So in no small part, that helps to offset the $210 million reduction that we're seeing in 2020. So that is a very significant impact on the general fund.

There is some uncertainty associated with that tax.

I'll say a little bit, Dave might say more.

We don't have any experience collecting it, so we don't really know the tax base well.

These other revenue streams we have collected for decades, many, and we really understand understand the well i have a sense of how they reacted changes in the economy that not so the payroll tax in addition uh...

uh...

the nature of where of employment is is uh...

very different on this i speak to you from my home uh...

and and many uh...

as many as half the people in seattle are working from home the payment of the payroll tax is related to where the work occurs and it's actually similar to the BNO tax as well one of the factors there that determines how much revenue is attributed to Seattle is where employees are located.

So that induces, creates an additional uncertainty about that, about that revenue stream.

Tried to be conservative in those forecasts, but nonetheless this place where there's more uncertainty than otherwise.

But what you see in 2021 overall is that, thanks in no small part to the payroll taxes, we end up with a total revenues of 1.475 billion, which is quite comparable to what we had expected in 2020 before COVID hit.

So that is a significant part of the story about what is in this budget and what is not, if you will, and why, in fact, we haven't had to make deeper cuts in more drastic reductions.

That said, and I think let Dave move to the next slide, if he doesn't have further comments.

You'll see on the next slide,

I do want to note that we have a question from Councilmember Lewis, and perhaps I can just double check with you, Director Noble.

Do you want to summarize these next two slides, because I assume they go together before the question is asked, or do you want to pause for a question right here?

I'm happy to take a question now.

Okay.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So, Director Noble, I just want to ask about the B&O tax line in particular here.

Do we know in sort of the anticipated kind of recovery of BNO tax and maybe that situation stabilizing a little bit?

I'm curious what the category of businesses that would fall under our micro-business definition for the small business grants, the $10,000 grants that we have been giving as part of our COVID relief, what portion of B&O tax receipts do businesses of that size contribute to the city?

I'm just curious about getting that granular for small businesses.

I think it is important to think about and consider some kind of B&O tax relief potentially related to COVID.

I know it is something Councilmember Strauss and I have talked about.

I am curious how something like that would have a broader impact on the recovery of those revenues if those businesses are significant contributors to that line item.

I'll leave Dave to comment on that scenario.

We've done some work in the past.

Sure, I mean, I don't know, don't have the exact statistics.

I don't know, Jan, if you can, if you're on, you can also chime in here.

I think we, yeah, I think we would have to look this up, but in general, the smaller businesses don't generate significant, you know, share of the total, but it's not zero by any stretch.

So I think, I don't know, Jan, do you have any actual data in your mind that would help answer this question?

CCCCO, Rm 630 – Jack Scott Conference Room, Stage 4 Moderator John Gerstle, CCCCO, Rm 630 – Jack Scott Conference Room, Stage 4

I think it is, but if your goal is significant assistance to businesses, this may not be the best approach because the B&O taxes are relatively small in terms of its impacts to individual businesses.

Collectively, it's obviously a very significant revenue stream to the city.

Moving on to the next slide, it highlights the fact that- Chair Mosqueda, I had a question.

Yeah, thank you.

Council Member Sawant, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So just for members of the public that might be watching, I just wanted to highlight that what's referred to as the payroll tax on the slide is the Amazon tax that was won by the tax Amazon movement.

And I wanted to recognize, I mean, Ben Noble, Director Noble talked about this, but just In terms of how working people's lives are affected, I just wanted to recognize how terrible the proposed budget, how much more terrible it would have been if the tax Amazon movement had not defeated Mayor Durkan's opposition to the tax, which she's now relying on, because it generates additional progressive revenues that didn't exist before.

Because without the Amazon tax, there would have been an additional $214 million in budget cuts.

I have a question as to how you have come up with the estimate of $214 million.

And specifically, does it include an analysis of the businesses larger than a billion dollars?

Because my recollection is that when the city council central staff were making those estimates that the mayor's office did not release that information to them at that time.

So if you could just go over that quickly, thank you.

Yeah, I'd be happy to do that.

$214 million number is actually central status numbers.

And you're correct, it doesn't include a specific estimate of the impact for employers at the highest tier.

That's not because of information we did not provide.

That's because that level of information, all that information comes from the Employment Securities Department of the state, all of the payroll information that we, Collectively, as proud technocrats between central staff and the budget office have relied upon for these estimates, they don't provide that data because it would be too easy to identify which specific employer is considered proprietary.

It's one of the key reasons that I...

That's a very specific question.

I'm happy to answer it.

One of the reasons we think that there's still a potentially conservative estimate, given how much has been changing in the economy, and particularly around this issue about where people are working.

That has created a good deal of uncertainty about what this revenue stream really will produce.

The employment security data relates to, and it's historic data, so the most recent set is probably for all of 2019, pre-COVID, relates to the people working in the city borders physically.

Obviously, that's a different number now.

It's, in theory, different in both ways.

That is to say, people who used to work out of the city are now working from home in the city and vice versa.

Our ability to capture taxes on folks who are working for businesses outside the city, though, while they're at home is questionable, even if they are technically due to us.

Again, this is a pretty technical part of this description, but bottom line to answer your question is no, and that's one of the reasons I relatively, we're more comfortable about the conservative nature of the tax itself, these revenue estimates.

But they were, these are estimates that were developed by central staff, we have reviewed them, and the methodology isn't particularly different than we would have taken.

Dan, did you have something you wanted to add?

Yeah, I just wanted to underscore something that Ben was pointing out, that the forecast is consistent with the methodology that central staff developed for the council when it was deliberating and considering passing the payroll tax, which it ultimately did pass.

But I guess I wanna also point out that the city's revenue forecast team is a more robust and expert resource for the city.

And I think they are, at this point, owning the revenue forecast and really confirming that they agree with the methodology that central staff proposed.

The city needs to balance, as Director Noble pointed out, to the revenue forecast overall.

This is part of the general fund's mix of revenues.

And if the city budget office believes that it is a reasonable forecast, I'm glad to hear that.

But this is the city budget offices forecast at this point and the mayor's proposed budget is balanced to that forecast.

And I'll just to just emphasize the point that I made when we started this, we as a city are not familiar with this tax base.

Wouldn't have been familiar pre-COVID.

So that doesn't change now, but the level of uncertainty about it has.

And that's just, I think it's important to understand this.

I will later talk about the fiscal reserves that we have to address potential errors or in the revenue forecast.

And they are not as strong as they have been in the past, given overall circumstances.

So in addition to this uncertainty, we don't also have the resources that we ideally would to address potential differences in reality versus forecast, if you will.

Right.

Thank you.

And I appreciate the answers there and the reminder, especially that this was generated by central staff.

Also, you know, I'm not going to continue to go back and forth about the name of the payroll tax.

It was called the jumpstart payroll tax with a large coalition.

As the prime sponsor of that bill, I think it's important that we remember that this is built on years of advocacy, and Council Member Swann, I appreciate that we have already had the conversation about how this was built on years of advocacy, including folks who were working on the tax Amazon proposal.

But just for the record, it is the jumpstart payroll tax, and it was a large coalition that brought it together.

different model in terms of how the taxes apply, not a flat tax, and scaled up based on different sizes of six-figure salaries.

Regardless, the point is still very important to bring up that what was said by Director Noble and I think what is reiterated here in the presentation, is that it is but for this payroll tax that we are seeing revenues come in and I believe Director Noble, you said about the same amount that we anticipated prior to COVID.

This is a really important thing for us to elevate because people did ask at the beginning of this year and throughout the last few years, why would we do this?

We did this to be prepared to be realistic about the type of investments that are needed when we don't have an equitable tax system, when we have a tax system that is allowing for large corporations to not pay into the very fabric of the infrastructure and the systems that we need to have.

healthy families and to have a robust functioning local economy.

This is exactly why we did it.

So I'm really proud of the work that we all did together, including appreciating the years of advocacy that it took to get to the passage of this.

I'm not negating that, but I do want to recognize the hard work that it took to pass the jumpstart payroll tax building on previous proposals and movements.

But this is really important that the council that we continue to uplift the importance of where those dollars are supposed to be going for future slides.

Thank you.

So the next slide highlights that the general fund isn't the only place where we've suffered significant revenue declines.

And this is not all the other revenue streams into the city.

Just for instance, it does not include the utility revenues.

What's highlighted here are a set of revenue streams that support many of the same activities as the general fund, essentially the city's core general government functions.

And again, the format here is the same.

So the 2020 revised column and the change are figures we've communicated before.

They show you, again, relative to what the original budget for 2020 had been, original revenue forecast, the changes we are seeing.

So both Seattle Center and Parks and Recreation are not collecting the fees and charges that they normally would because they don't have the customers that they normally did.

The short-term rental tax, the soda tax, the real estate excise tax, which is a tax on real estate transactions, you can read the list, all have seen significantly lower revenues.

For 2021, forecasts shows a recovery in many of those.

I won't go through details.

You can see the figures.

The right-hand column, again, the far right, is designed to capture the difference relative to what we might have otherwise reasonably forecast for 2021 pre-COVID.

And what you see here is that on the general fund side, again, where the previous slide, we're about even to what we might have otherwise expected.

Here, we're still down significantly, and we don't have the means to offset these revenues.

And they're part of what will be driving some of the cuts and some of the priority shifting that I'll describe later.

So it was important to highlight this aspect as well, because this is an element of the revenue side of the story, the revenue challenge that we're facing.

Turn it back to you, Dave, for a wrap-up.

Great.

So we would be remiss if we didn't talk about some of the forecast risks.

And in this case, again, this is all relative to that August forecast.

And there are some upside risks that some of our economic indicators are performing better than the July-based forecast.

I think particularly if you want to look at the unemployment rates, in July we were looking at a 10.2% unemployment rate.

Now it's at, Washington State is at 8.5%.

So we will be factoring that into the update that we bring you in about three weeks.

And then there's a big question about additional fiscal stimulus from the U.S.

Congress.

That could definitely have a positive impact, but we're waiting to see if that materializes.

the previous stimulus had a strong effect.

You could see the effect in the data of people getting those stimulus checks.

So that would be something.

On the downside, it's all about the virus and how we handle it and how it handles us.

There's significant uncertainty Again, talking about the leisure, tourism, conventions, hospitality, that whole industry category, it's entirely dependent on people feeling safe to go travel again, to attend conventions, et cetera.

So we need to figure out how that's going to go.

Aerospace, if you all have not seen, there is a report that Boeing will be consolidating its production of the 787 in South Carolina.

Boeing is saying no comment at the moment, but that's what the Wall Street Journal is reporting.

We will be factoring that in.

And that, again, it's not just the jobs here for the line workers, it's the suppliers and everything else.

We don't know what it means for the whole chain of supply and so forth.

And on top of that, of course, people aren't traveling, the demand for aircraft are down, et cetera.

construction.

I think Ben touched on this a little bit, I think maybe about Their industry will be rethinking office space and in-city housing construction based on COVID and employers' response.

Will we all go back to offices or not?

If not, then that takes some pressure off of in-city housing as people can essentially move farther away, longer commute.

But if they're not commuting, then maybe that works.

And then as Ben mentioned, I won't go into this, but the location of work, it's adding new uncertainty for our B&O taxes and the new payroll tax.

So I think that's what we have.

Again, we will be coming to you in about three weeks time with an update that will factor in the latest data.

And we believe it'll be some positive change, but I don't know how much.

And I think if some of you saw the state forecast, there were some large changes there.

I don't want to get into it too much, but I wouldn't expect that our increases would match the magnitudes of the states, just to create a safe expectation for a variety of reasons.

Can you say more about that?

One of the questions that I had was, obviously, this presentation has the September 30th date on it for today's presentation, but I was assuming that you had put this presentation together quite a while ago and wondered how the news from the state that the decrease in revenue is not as bad as anticipated has affected your calculations here.

Can you tell us more about what you mean when you say you don't think it's going to have as much of a positive impact or less negative of an impact in Seattle as what we're seeing at the state level?

Sure.

I think one of the main issues is just timing of when we did our forecasts and we have, we have done more forecasts over the summer than we typically do and that's made the change intervals, different from the state forecast.

They also use IHS market, but they also add in a blue chip forecast for their consensus GDP forecast.

And so there will be some differences there.

I can't really describe necessarily the base from which the state was working.

In terms of how that compares to the base that we are starting from.

So when they took when the state is talking about a change measure, we can't necessarily compare apples to apples.

our change should match their change.

We have different revenue streams in terms of the proportion of our total revenues that it makes up.

But there's also a timing difference in terms of what they're measuring change from with their September forecast.

I think a little further explanation, and maybe David's being a little humble.

I think in the end, we were not as pessimistic in our initial forecasting as the state was.

And that may be for good reasons.

I'm not trying to suggest that we're more technically apt or not.

So the state is talking about a correction to or an adjustment to its initial forecast.

And it's good news for all.

It's a positive correction of significant magnitude.

relative terms to where they stand, they had forecast a deeper and a longer sort of scenario potentially.

And so we continue to monitor, I mean, we generally monitor the data as they come in monthly basis, quarterly for some revenue streams.

This year, we're doing that ever more diligent, ever more diligence and vigilance, if you will, because the uncertainty and stakes are both so high.

We do have another section of the presentation that Director Noble is going to walk us through.

We have about an hour and a half left in this morning's time frame.

So before we get to that and before we let Dave go, could we please take a few more questions?

Council Member Strauss, you have the floor.

And please let us know if you would like the PowerPoint to be scrolled back to any slide.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, I have been just taking the practice of holding my questions to the end as I know that a lot of the questions that I have are answered in slides that come after when that question is generated.

So my question is on slide six today.

And just also want to confirm that that is the practice you would prefer rather than taking questions along the way.

We are happy to do both.

So if there's something pressing, please feel free to raise your hand.

I want this to be iterative as well because your questions may trigger other people to ask other questions.

So at the end of each presentation, I will be asking for anybody to ask additional questions, but please feel free to raise your hand during the middle of the presentation as well.

Thank you for asking Council Member.

Great, thank you.

And so my question stems with this slide as well as the slide, I think, one previous where you demonstrate how many, yep, exactly, how many jobs have been, or how each sector is impacted separately.

Noting here construction and leisure and hospitality, did you say that this makes up 30% of jobs, these two sectors, or can you give me that number one more time?

16% of all jobs.

16%.

Great.

40% of the jobs lost.

40% of the jobs lost.

Thank you.

And so looking at the construction line with that, it looks like about negative 9%.

Yep.

And then that flows into this slide where we are basing this information off of building permits that have been issued.

Is that correct?

Yes.

Great.

Do we have, and is there a way to include data into this projection that includes building permit applications?

Sure, we have that data as well.

You're referring to what we call intake.

And so intake has been interesting this year.

There are some rule changes that were scheduled to take effect in, I believe, November or perhaps a bit earlier than that, which was leading to an increase in applications.

And that deadline was moved back to February or March, I believe.

And so they have been experiencing a high level of intake and not just a high number of permits, but also a high dollar volume of permits.

And so there's beginning to be a disconnect because people, the builders are trying to get their permits in under the existing rules rather than the future rules.

And so we could definitely provide you a chart with intake as well as issues.

to see what that looks like.

Yeah, thank you.

Go for it.

These patterns where we get sort of a rush of permit applications is really what we're seeing, are not unusual.

When there are significant systemic changes in the building regulations, you regularly get a set of folks trying to grandfather in the previous, because often we're imposing additional regulations that are potentially less flexible.

It does make it a little tricky to read the data, if you will, and forecast from them, but obviously happy to provide all of that.

Excuse me, in particular, all permits taken in do not lead to permits issued.

And so that's one of the things in a recession is you may have quite a difference.

Yeah, that's a standard kind of thing that we see is that, you know, that even permits issued are not necessarily projects built, although the correlation gets tighter as you move through the permitting, move through the permitting process.

But often what happens is, you know, a lot of projects that were on were being developed on paper, if you will, and then they don't come to fruition.

I think also you have potentially a pattern where folks are finishing out work that they'd started pre-COVID.

And if there isn't a demand behind, then you'll, you know, so we, folks have been busy in their offices at home or otherwise completing the kind of application process.

But whether they move forward from that will depend, ultimately it will depend on the demand.

So really, you know, is there a demand for office space?

Is there a demand for residential space?

Those are, I mean, the construction sector is ultimately, I mean, it becomes a little bit of an engine itself because of the level of spending in it, but in the end it's being driven by the fundamentals in the economy.

Thank you, that's very helpful information.

Yes, understanding that before mandatory housing affordability was put into place, we did see a spike in building permit applications then, and understanding that time is a limited resource, and that only so many projects can be built at one time.

Further information would be helpful, and we can follow up offline if that's easier for you.

Thank you, Dave, and thank you, Ben.

Excellent presentation.

I see a few more council members that may have questions.

Council Member Strauss, just before we move off this point, because I think it will come up later as it relates to investments in housing, is part of your message that the more that we can invest in housing, the more potential revenue we can receive if we are expediting and allowing even funding some of these housing efforts?

Housing, yes, I would say that that is also a point that is well taken.

Also a point that I was making is that we, while these are building permits that have been issued at this time, understanding that the intake also is a metric that should be looked at to understand while leisure may be down, construction may start to pick up again.

Excellent point, thank you.

Council members, are there other folks who have questions?

Council Member Morales and then Council Member Peterson, did you have a comment as well?

Okay, wonderful.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I'm looking at slide 11 and seeing that the REIT tax is taking a hit.

I'm wondering if you could just explain that a little bit more, is that from commercial sales or can you unpack that a little bit?

George, you want to take that?

Sure.

Hello, Council Member.

Yes, almost all of the reduction from what we had expected in 2020 and for 2021 is due to the expectation of reduced commercial sales.

We have seen some large apartment buildings transact this summer, which were over and above what we had expected, and that's represented in this forecast for 2020. Going forward, we will see increased growth from commercial activity, but we don't expect to get back to 2019 REIT levels until about 2023, 2024.

Okay, so that was my next question, if you had a projection for how long this might be the case, and I'm thinking about how it would affect the Office of Housing especially, so.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

Any additional follow-up Councilmember Morales?

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson, please.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And I wanted to thank the Durkin administration, all the folks who've worked hard over the last few months putting together this budget for us to jump into.

And of course we have limited time to review it.

So we're just, we're jumping in right into our questions, which we should.

I just would want to pause and thank the city budget office and others and the department heads who work to put this together.

I note that on page, the last slide of the PowerPoint, there is a focus on transportation.

As the transportation chair, I'm going to wait to ask my transportation questions until Friday afternoon when we have a fuller discussion from the whole Department of Transportation.

So we'll just listen intently in the meantime.

Thank you.

Understood.

Thank you.

And I'm sure Director Noble appreciates that as well.

We will look forward to hearing more from you as well.

And just as a reminder, Council colleagues, When we do get to the portion of presentations where we have each department coming forward, I will be looking to the chair of those departments to either provide any opening comments that they'd like to for context or to frame issues or questions that they have.

And then also I'll turn to you first in the lineup of questions at the end of those presentations.

Okay.

Colleagues, any additional questions for Dave or his team before we move on to the 2021 proposed budget presentation?

Okay, seeing none, let's thank you.

Thank Dave and your team.

I know we didn't get a chance to hear from the others who had joined us today at the virtual table, but I want to thank you for this walkthrough of the presentation.

I appreciate that you are busy working on your late October revenue forecast.

And to the extent that we're able to get that prior to November, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for walking us through this presentation today and all your work.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Director Noble, let's turn it back over to you to walk us through some of the key components in the 2021 proposed budget as transmitted and described by the mayor in her presentation and release yesterday.

Thank you very much.

A pleasure to do.

So we move forward.

I'll just I'll walk you through again at a high level, focusing on the general priorities that are some that are reflected in the budget strategies we took to balancing and then talk a little bit about some of the, you know, in a general sort of thematic way, how the priorities were fulfilled.

And then a little bit more in detail about a couple departments.

But I am really going to hold department specific information to the individual briefings that you have scheduled.

I think that's a better forum.

You can learn more from the department directors about the impact and their own individual approaches.

So with that, I'll move forward.

So the mayor approached the 2021 budget with a series of priorities.

I'm gonna try to summarize those here.

One of which was obviously, and again, consistent with the discussions we've had today, the need to sustain the city's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

I'll talk more about this going forward, but we're not anticipating the same level of federal support and assistance that we received in 2020. We hope that that might change, but we recognize the need to find resources to sustain to the extent possible the relief and the intervention efforts that we've undertaken.

As described by the mayor in a number of forums, And actually, Deputy Mayor McDonaghan will provide some additional detail.

The budget includes $100 million for BIPOC communities and calls for an inclusive process to determine how to allocate those resources.

So they are set aside, but purposely unallocated in the proposed budget.

But I do want to emphasize that this is really additional funding.

We're not supplanting additional efforts that provide similar investments.

As an example, the equitable development initiative, which is really all about city support for building community wealth.

The funding levels for that are maintained, and actually that's required an infusion of general fund resource because the short-term rental tax, which had been assigned and dedicated as the revenue source to support BDI activities, is not coming in as robust as we had hoped.

In terms of Seattle Police Department and public safety, the budget takes a number of steps, and I have a slide highlighting these in terms of shifting resources, reducing resources to SPD and shifting functions and resources out of SPD.

At the same time, the mayor is calling for an establishing interdepartmental team and potentially an interbranch team to take deep analytic look at SPD's functions and also community safety more broadly, and has set aside some resources in the HSD budget to implement potential recommendations from that work.

At the same time, we have done and consistent with the goals of the council in the Jumpstart proposal, using available resources to sustain our existing investments that support those in greatest need.

That includes those that are experiencing homelessness and who are burdened in terms of housing, but not exclusively, really all of HSDs and other departments.

Human service focused efforts, we have tried to maintain and sustain service.

We try to do all of that while minimizing the impact to the city's workforce.

Two points on that.

One is, and I'll touch this on again, the executive has imposed a higher, excuse me, a wage freeze for its non-represented strategic advisors, managers, and executives.

But the overall budget does include some layoffs.

We provided notice to 33 employees yesterday of them being at risk of layoff.

There are potentially some additional impacts at Seattle Libraries.

They function somewhat independently on the human resources front, so we don't have final impact estimates from them.

Of that 33, 13 are represented employees.

15, so almost half, are themselves strategic advisors, managers, or executives.

So to give you a sense that a relatively small number of individuals, obviously for each of them, a very significant impact.

Less than half are represented employees, and about half are strategic advisor, manager, executive level.

Director Bobby Humes from the Department of Human Resources can add additional information about this going forward, but the city will be conducting a setup.

It's a program designed to find opportunities to place those individuals into other roles in the city.

We do have a hiring freeze, but we are still hiring.

It's a hiring freeze with a waiver process to ensure that essential functions in the city still continue.

So there are opportunities.

for folks to land in other roles.

Okay, Director Neville, does that conclude your remarks for this page?

For this page, yes.

Before we move on, I do have a number of questions in terms of what you just laid out here, a number of concerns, and I want to just note again my appreciation for you specifically, for your CBO team, As I mentioned at the beginning, you've been working around the clock.

There's no doubt about that.

You have made some magic happen here with some promises that were made by the executive.

So I appreciate that your team was in a tough position.

And when I ask questions, it's not to put you personally on the spot or your team, but I must ask these questions for the record and for us to have a better sense of the budget that we're looking at.

It is important to note that as recently as yesterday, the mayor has criticized the council several times, specifically criticizing our work around jumpstart, something that began earlier in the spring.

And I'd like to walk through several of these criticisms as they address to the creation of the $100 million equity initiative that's laid out in front of us.

I know we have limited time and a number of my colleagues probably have questions as well.

So feel free to say yes or no, or if you need to follow up with us, that is fine.

It doesn't require a ton of elaboration.

So yes or no question or a simple number is sufficient.

citing the quote from the mayor's video yesterday.

In essence, she said that the SPD cuts have to be founded in, quote, facts and a real plan.

And I think it's important that we all emphasize that that is what council believes in, too, facts and a real plan.

In fact, that is what the council has been working on for a number of months.

But I think it's important for us to ask the question about this $100 million investment.

What sort of facts and real plan drove the total dollar amount here for 100 million?

Were there any background documents that you were provided to indicate what 100 million would potentially go into and what facts led to that dollar amount that was given to the CBO office?

Deputy Mayor may have more to provide.

In the end, I think this is represents from the mayor's perspective the most we thought we could afford to do, but not necessarily enough, certainly not enough to address the underlying issues in the historic inequities so it was less.

documentation that 100 was a magic number, if you will, but rather a sense of what could be possible.

And as part of the task force, she's actually looking for recommendations about potential revenue sources that could sustain funding going forward, recognizing that this amount can't, no amount of money can be sufficient, to be clear, but that given the overall goals of community wealth development and interesting historic impacts that we need a significant and ongoing commitment, ideally.

Seeing nobody coming off of mute here.

Um, my other question relates.

I mean, the fact that the mayor has criticized the council for writing a check we couldn't cash.

It appears clear that this $100 million commitment is a check that she could not cash and thus looked to the jumpstart revenue to fund this promise.

I want to make sure that we're clear that it's no secret that the $100 million investment here while it comes from general fund, this is directly coming from the additional dollars that the jumpstart investment was allocating to the general fund.

And it's important for us to note where these dollars go according to the city council's plan that the mayor did not veto.

We do have the jumpstart plan going into effect and the funding from jumpstart was to go to things like feeding hungry families, rental assistance, keeping people housed and off the street, cash assistance for undocumented folks in our city who aren't receiving federal and state unemployment insurance, relief for small businesses, and importantly, child care.

As the headlines continue to talk about, if we don't have investments in child care, we know that our economy cannot come back.

It cannot keep afoot and it cannot stay alive.

These are critical city services, including libraries that was mentioned.

Just so we're on the same page about the choices that were made in front of us.

These are the type of choices that were made when the commitment for $100 million was taken from the jumpstart revenue.

It's from funding for food and black and brown communities who rely on child care and small business support and libraries and community centers.

And to get to my question, I want to make sure that we're not minimizing that this was a choice.

We are supplanting the use of these dollars that would otherwise go to largely serving black and brown communities for some of these key city services.

So I just want to be clear.

You mentioned minimizing the impacts of the layoffs.

So could you remind me what the total amount of the mayor's budget contemplates in terms of the amount of people being laid off in the proposed budget?

Again, as I indicated, a total of 33 with the number will be likely somewhat higher once we hear from the Seattle Public Libraries, although maybe opportunities to work with them to mitigate on that side as well.

They have not reported back to us specifically about those potential impacts.

Again, of those 33, 13 represented, And with the I remember the name project tires, the system that HR generally sets up when we're in a layoff mode.

So the opportunity to place those individuals in other roles, but I don't want to minimize that.

I'm not promising, just to be clear, I would say, and I'm.

that for 2020, as I understood it, the jumpstart priorities were sustaining city services.

We have, I'm not saying we have done that completely for this conversation about layoffs, but substantially so.

The city has more than 11,000 employees overall.

The other key emphasis, so that was a continuity of service was an important element.

Another was COVID relief, and we are, Demonstrate that we are providing significant investment in coven relief again, recognizing.

recognizing the federal government is not gonna be there in the way that we hoped.

It is certainly true that $100 million of flexible general fund resource can be invested in numerous different ways to provide benefits and services to a variety of Seattle residents or Seattle businesses.

And as you have noted, that is the council's purview in considering the budget.

Deputy Mayor, I see you are also off mute.

I will come back to you in just a few minutes here.

A few follow-up questions.

The amount of money that the budget assumes in terms of cost savings for these 33 FTEs, can you remind me of what that total dollar amount is?

Is it less than the $100 million?

Yes, it's approximately $5 million.

So, 5Million dollars could potentially prevent against city employees from being laid off from these critical services they're providing.

I would note that a number of the layoffs are actually programmatically driven rather than financially driven.

So I don't think that's, you know, it's not.

It's not a dollar for dollars, if you will.

Comparison specific example, a couple of specific examples of the municipal court has brought forward a proposal to reduce the staffing and its probation function as it shifts to a community court model.

They're going to come in and present.

I can't do justice to their proposal, but there are, I recall, I think.

I think it's about seven layoffs associated with that.

Again, those are not, the savings from those are ones that they use to meet the targets that we had provided, but they are policy driven.

Similarly, there are a couple of positions at FAS that are policy rather than budgetary driven.

So your underlying point is still there, and I'm not arguing, I just do want to emphasize that not all of these are budgetarily driven decisions.

Okay, I appreciate that.

And you mentioned, I think specific to other future layoffs, that there may be more, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the timeline for 2021. I know we have more FTEs being added to the total number of individuals that might need to be laid off for 2021. You specifically mentioned libraries.

What is the process or what is the time frame that the council would be made aware of any additional proposed layoffs?

And can you distinguish that timeline for us today?

that.

So Marcellus Turner is the director of Seattle Public Libraries, is working through his budgetary and personnel decisions.

He has, he has a, he needs to consult with the library board.

The library is governed by the board of the library more directly than by the city council or by the mayor.

In some ways it's a somewhat complicated charter arrangement, and I'm not doing it justice, but that is the sense to which they are somewhat independent.

With respect to programmatic versus budgetary, Court has made a decision about its probation functions that are not necessarily driven by its financial situation, but rather by its own perceptions.

And again, this is really for them to describe to you rather than I.

But their perceptions about what's an appropriate way, if you will, to administer justice, not to be too high polluting, if you will.

But it produces some financial savings.

But they were shifting away from the current model of probation as a policy matter rather than as a budgetary matter.

And I think we would have seen a proposal to do that without the financial pressures that we are seeing currently.

appreciate that.

And I had the chance to meet with the judge and their team.

It's really important programmatic work that they're moving forward there and just want to underscore appreciation for that conversation and the policy changes there.

But in terms of the programmatic layoffs versus the financial layoffs, do you have a total number for us that would be financial layoffs?

Out of that 33, that's currently.

Yeah, on the representative side, I believe it's it's 7 of the 13 on the non representative side.

I need to review that.

So totally fair question, but I want to be thoughtful in the answer.

Okay.

I appreciate that.

And if you could follow up with us on that number and those distinctions, that would be helpful.

Deputy Mayor, I will turn it over to you.

I think my final question is probably best directed at you and the executive.

Anyways, I believe the fundamental question that we're asking here, given the tradeoffs and the swiping of the $100 million, that would have gone into Jumpstart Investments that largely serves BIPOC communities.

We don't want to be in a position where funding that does disproportionately serve our working families and BIPOC communities is being now swept for new investments.

It is, I think, It's fair to say that we are supplanting what would have been otherwise investments in jumpstart.

So I guess the biggest question that's in front of us is, are we meeting the needs of Seattle residents in terms of food, housing, child care and small business support?

Yes or no would be helpful.

So thank you, council member.

And I just want to reiterate when council approved the Jumpstart spending plan, the envisioned use in 2021 included COVID spending.

As you know, in agreement with the Executive and the Council, we will be continuing that spending into 2021, including grocery vouchers that the Executive developed that program in 2020, rental assistance, small business assistance, as well as the other things that you highlighted.

And that was an agreement that both the council and the mayor jointly reached related to the spending on that.

The second component was related to sustaining existing city investments.

As Director Noble has reiterated earlier and will continue to lean into, the focus has really been on protecting the safety net and ensuring that services that are impacting and benefiting Our our most vulnerable residents continue and our most basic services continue and then the final component was related to the restoring of the rainy day fund and the.

And the emergency fund to ensure the overall balancing of the 2021 budget and really, I think what you're seeing in sort of this overall.

spend plan is, and the budget for 21, is that not only have we achieved those goals, in addition, I think, and you would agree, responsive to the urgent call from Black, Indigenous, and people of color communities to make those investments.

I do not believe that those investments pit one against the other.

The mayor's been very clear that starting in 2022, where the Jumpstart Plan contemplates additional investments, that there is an intention to seek additional progressive revenue to continue the ongoing funding of this $100 million.

And finally, I'll end with the what we are seeing and what we have heard clearly as a call from Black and Brown communities is the opportunity to be able to shape those investments.

And this is the first time in the history of Seattle's budget that this revenue, this $100 million allocation is completely unobligated.

and a community-led process will determine the priorities for those investments, whether it's community wealth building or wellness or whatever else the community sees as priorities to make now and into the future.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I appreciate the comments that you made.

And I wanted to also offer some clarification.

Yes, there was an agreement reached with the executive on COVID relief spending for Jumpstart for 2020, for the year 2020, recognizing that the agreement that we reached spanned into 2021, 45 million over those two years, which was ideally going to be spent in 2020. However, the original plan for 2021 was a different conversation.

The 2021 conversation envisioned 80% of the funds going to shore up existing core government services so that there would not be A, an impact in the community in terms of reductions for libraries, community centers, child care, et cetera, and B, that we would not have to lay folks off if we were able to keep people on.

The rest of the 20% was supposed to go to ongoing COVID support.

So I think that that is a distinction between what was agreed upon for the 2020 spend versus 2021 spend.

My last question for you, or not my last question, but one last question, then I'll turn over to see if others have comments or questions, is regarding the $100 million investment.

From the executive side, could you give us an indication of how early the CBO's office was given a heads up about the need to allocate $100 million from existing funds.

How and when did that decision get made?

Specifically, when was the CEO given the timeframe to work that out?

I'd have to go back and review.

I mean, it was early, I mean, as just in the context of George Floyd's murder and the awareness, growing awareness of what, again, is not anything new.

The mayor identified that the need to address and increase investments was going to be a very significant priority for 2021. I need to go back and look at the calendar and remind myself when that was.

At the same time, COVID was rolling and roiling.

So some of this is a bit of a blur, but I can go back and do that.

But it was clear in that context that it was going to be a significant challenge that needed to be met from a financial and budgetary sense.

I appreciate that.

Anything to add, Deputy Mayor?

I think that's consistent with it.

I saw you off mute.

I thought maybe you had something else.

None.

Okay.

Thank you to both of you for answering that question.

I think that the answer to that question is important for understanding where the decision comes from to reach 100 million.

Council Member Herbold, I see your hand, and then other council members.

Council Member Sawant afterwards.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Um, I do, I'm sorry, still need a little bit of clarity about how, how we got from, uh, the commitments in the jumpstart 2021 spend plan to where, um, we are now, um, my, um, uh, reviewing of, of that let's let spend plan in the, the resolution, the council pass for, for, um, our, and our intents for spending in 2021 included about half of the funds going to pay back the emergency funds.

So that's, you know, around $100 million going right there.

And then the other half works out to be about $80 million going for continuity of programs and services.

These are, you know, again, our traditional core services that the city provides.

Staffing, $80 million to avoid having to make cuts in those areas.

And then it also goes on to include 42% of the half, or about $11 million for emergency housing and support.

About $5.5 million for immigrant support.

About $4.2 million for food support.

and about $4.7 million for small business support.

This is continuing the programs that the council and the mayor worked together to start to respond to COVID-19.

So I just need to understand, did that is that resolution just put aside altogether by the mayor and not being considered at all?

Or is it true that half of the funds have not been used to replenish the emergency funds and that the other half is being used 75% for continuation of continuity, I'm sorry, of programs and services and about, 25% of what's remaining for eviction prevention, immigrant support, food support, and small business.

We just throw that resolution away altogether?

Is that basically what happened?

If I might, no, I might take a couple pieces of that.

The $86 million, the resolution was adopted in the context that it was adopted.

So for instance, the $86 million repayment was going to be necessary because under the plan, the resources in the general, in the Rainy Day Fund would have been all but fully drained in 2020. And what I had explained in some briefings is that that wasn't gonna work at the time from our planning perspective because we were going to rely on the Rainy Day Fund very significantly in 2021 to balance.

What I explained is that we were only gonna use about 30 million of the Rainy Day Funds with the original intent in 2020 so that we could save 100 million.

And I was explaining, I need that 100 million, we need that 100 million to balance in 2021. The council's perspective was that we need to spend money now in respect to context and the desire.

And so the spending plan in response, and I appreciated the response, was, well, Mayor, Director Noble, whoever to whom, you know, the public most specifically, we're comfortable draining the rainy day fund in 2020 to make the fund because we have a plan to refill it in 2021 so that we can then drain it in 2021 to balance and consistent with that overall arc.

I will show you shortly that we're counting on about $80 million of one-time resource to balance, most of it from the rainy day fund, to balance in 2021. So we could refill it and then drain it, but the point is that we are using, consistent with what had been planned, there are those resources needed.

So the jumpstart plan would not have left us with significant fund balance in those fiscal reserves, the rainy day fund and the, emergency fund at the end of 2021 and the proposed budget doesn't either.

So again, it's entirely consistent and consistent from my perspective with the intent of the resolution.

I appreciate that.

I didn't mean to interrupt you.

Did you want to say something?

I was going to say a little bit more about the spending, the support spending.

Can we hold on that for a second, Director Noble, just on the spend down side?

You used the term completely drain out in 2021, and I want to make sure that we're clear about what actually was passed by the council.

Ali Panucci from central staff, it would be helpful if you gave a reminder of what was actually in the jumpstart proposal.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So I just want to clarify a couple of things here.

When we're talking about jumpstart spending plans, I think we might be confusing terms here.

There was the jumpstart COVID relief plan for 2020 that depended on use of reserves to get COVID relief out the door as quickly as possible.

And then separately, there is a jumpstart spending plan adopted through resolution for the payroll tax.

So the 2020 plan originally was to spend $86 million from the reserves to provide COVID relief.

That was through negotiations with the council, that was reduced to by about half, a little bit less than a half reduction.

And so, so they we were spending less of the reserves in 2020 and 2021 combined.

So the jumpstart the payroll tax spending plan would have put back the $86 million into reserve understanding that as.

Director Noble was explaining that they have been saying all along that they are going to need to depend on those reserves to balance in 2021. However, we only, you know, in 2020, we're only spending about $23 million.

So there's more reserves left in balance already.

The payroll tax should be providing, backfilling any 2020 spending out of the reserves for the COVID relief, as well as 2021 spending out of the reserves for the relief.

But in addition to paying back the 2020 COVID spending, the plan includes $26 million for extending or expanding COVID relief programs in 2021 and $96 million for continuity of services.

So theoretically, there would be $96 million plus $86 million for continuity of services and $26 million for COVID relief in the plan, plus $6 million for ongoing administration.

I think, and correct me if I'm wrong, Director Noble, what we're hearing is that for COVID relief spending in 2020, it is just depending on, it is just, we're just, not just, but it is primarily depending on the spending that was in the 2020 jumpstart plan.

and isn't adding significantly to that.

And that the $96 million for continuity of services and the $86 million that was supposed to replenish the funds is being used to both balance 2021, including needed to balance the proposed $100 million of new investments in BIPOC communities.

Thank you, Allie.

And Council Member Herbold, I just want to underscore the importance of your question.

Thank you for asking that.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And before we turn it back over to Director Noble for follow-up on your question, Councilmember Herbold, did you have anything to add to your question?

No, I just appreciated Allie getting on and confirming the numbers.

I was a little bit off, I think, about $10 million, but the question, I think, still stands

making between the distinction between our 2020 COVID relief and the 2021 spend plan.

Director Noble, I'm sorry I interrupted you.

I thought that that clarification was important regarding what was actually being proposed, 96 million for continuity of services and 86 million for replenishing the reserve funds.

Did you have something else to say before I turn over to the next council member?

The only thing I wanted to add, and I think we may be losing public as we send the numbers back and forth is it but that they're funding for COVID relief.

Um, in 2021 is not limited to the roughly 22Million dollars.

Um, that was part of the 2 year agreement with, um, with the mayor.

Um, there, there is additional resource.

Um, from a variety of sources, including the general fund to support a number of covert related activities.

Um, I don't have a.

A dollar amount summary to show you today.

I did did have a slide that was highlighting many of the, um, many of those efforts that included.

Include those that are in that.

if you will, year two of the $45 million COVID relief compromise, if you will, arrangement struck between the mayor and the council, but not limited to that.

Thank you, Dr. Numbul.

And I do think that the public is following along with us closely and fully understanding that we were talking about wanting to know where the $96 million for continuity of services is and how that compares to the $100 million that's being proposed.

So I'm sure folks are following along closely with us and comprehending this conversation.

Councilmembers Sawant, you are up next.

And if there's other councilmembers, please let me know.

I presume this question is more for the Deputy Mayor Ranganathan rather than Mr. Noble, but I would welcome responses from both.

You said that there would be a community-led process for deciding how to invest the $100 million.

I was wondering if you could go into what that community-led process would actually be.

Thank you.

Yes, Council Member, and I believe this is a few slides where I will talk about this in a few slides from now, but I'm happy to go into that now if that's the preference of the Council.

No, no.

It's fine for you to go in order.

That's totally fine.

Okay.

Deputy Mayor, you're referencing slide 18, is that correct?

I believe so, yes.

Okay.

We'll make sure to have Council Member Sawant tee up her question, but thank you for noting that this is forthcoming.

Other questions on this overview before we get into the next slide?

I'm seeing no additional hands.

Director Noble, please go ahead.

I almost called you council member.

No, thank you.

So at a high level, I wanted to show you what kind of, again, high level balancing of the general fund.

This may or may not provide any clarity in terms of the previous discussion.

Again, high level, the resources that we're proposing to expand in the general fund in 2021. The overall projected general fund revenues, these are consistent with the tables above, just short of 1.5 billion.

We have some starting fund balance.

We have some reserves that are set aside for outstanding and unnegotiated labor agreements.

That's what that fund balance is for.

That's why we would be leaving 2020 with any resource at all, given the high demand for services in our stressed financial situation.

We're then calling upon $73 million of the rainy day emergency funds to leave us a total of 1.55 billion in available resource.

The table, the second part of the table, the lower part of the table then describes, again, at a very high level, how it's expended.

And then there's some notes that follow on the next page I think are important.

It may be worth getting to the notes on the second, on the page following the four questions.

But leave me back there.

It's finished.

Thank you.

So our base budget in rough terms is $1.46 billion.

So this is, you know, if we had taken the activities we had planned to do in 2020, essentially pre-COVID, and inflated them and adjusted for one-time expenditures, that's what our base budget would have been.

From that, in order to reach balance, we've made a number of reductions, roughly 65 million dollars, rounding up slightly.

I've called out specifically the COVID relief package.

So this is the second half of the $45 million agreement.

As I explained, as I just mentioned, and I'll reference as we go down here, that's not exclusively the money that's being spent in COVID relief, but I thought it would be helpful to show you specifically that those resources are part of the balancing approach.

The equity initiative.

There's a range of additional human services spending, some of which is specifically COVID relief, others, which is different things and we'll talk more about that.

But just as an example, there's $6 million of general fund to continue the mobile shower services and handwashing station and hygiene facilities that we are operating now, but given expectations about federal funding for next year, we think we need to identify an additional resource.

And then there are other spending additions.

There are other demands on the city's resources that are new.

And a couple of examples, there's $4 million proposed to enhance the fire service in West Seattle.

We're staging It's actually started this year staging an additional ladder truck and an aid car in West Seattle, because there's reduced ability to provide backup.

Because the West Seattle bridge, a ladder is important because the increased density in the past decade or more in West Seattle means that there are a number of structures above 3 stories.

I think is the magic number for when a ladder is required.

But again.

an important and necessary addition to our expenditures at this point.

In addition, and I was prepared to say this before the discussion we've had, there's about $3 million allocated to set up and begin collection of the payroll tax itself.

So that leads you again to this total of about, well, not about, of exactly 1.556.

That gives you a sense of how the general fund was balanced.

But the next slide, I want to hit a couple of points on that, and then I'm happy to take questions.

If we can move on, thank you.

So one point is that that's only the general fund.

The city has multiple funds.

The budget is really made up of the accumulation of balancing all of those funds.

So SDOT maintains its own balancing fund, Parks and Recreation, Seattle Center, the two utilities.

So the reductions I showed you are related to the general fund, but they're not all.

They're not reflective of everything that's in the budget.

In addition, the general fund isn't the whole story in terms of the resources we are applying to many of the priorities that that you've discussed that that we're certainly centering the mayor.

So, as an example, there is an additional, although we aren't expecting.

the federal government to announce new resources, because we hope, but there are some that are on the table that are unexpended.

So there is $26 million in emergency service grants.

So this is essentially funding that can be used for homelessness.

And in particular, obviously in the context of COVID, the number of folks living without shelter has increased and the needs of those and the housing arrangements that are appropriate are very different.

So there is $26 million we had proposed and still will propose $3 million of that to be expended in 2020 so we can move immediately to increase shelter opportunities.

An additional $23 million in 2021. There's presentation upcoming around our approach around homelessness and housing, and I think that would be a great place for you to learn more about that.

Again, and this is a point I prepared this bullet before the discussion this morning, our, our efforts around COVID are not are not limited to the to that 22 million cited above.

We're not assuming additional FEMA reimbursements going into 2021, and that seems like a good approach because as of mid-September, we've gotten additional guidance from the federal government that is beginning to restrict the number of eligible uses for our FEMA dollars.

So we have also looked in part of the budget process, as part of the budget rather, to shift some of what have been FEMA costs towards other federal eligible funding.

some other ESG money, some commerce money as well, as I recall.

So we're being thoughtful about that and recognizing that the support that we received this year from the federal government is likely to wane again.

And if not, then opportunities to either expand or extend our overall efforts.

Again, I mentioned the Rainy Day Fund.

The third quarter supplemental includes a request for some additional emergency funds to balance out the emergency or rainy day to balance out the remainder of 2020. As we indicated when we updated the forecast in August, there's an additional revenue hit of roughly $25 million for 2020. And we're work to balance all of that, but will require some additional Additional reserve of the fiscal reserves.

The net of that is to leave us with about 5Million.

The good news, if there is any, and there's not much is that.

We can sustain going forward.

We could sustain the level of expenditure that's represented here.

and in fact grow out of it over time.

I mean, it's important that we would be able to grow out of it over time because we are, as part of this, we are shifting significant resources from planned capital to operating.

And the longer we defer those capital expenditures, the more difficult it is to come back to those projects and potentially they will increase in cost.

Without, yeah.

So among other things, this means that there's 100 million, And that includes the fact that there's $100 million in 2022 that potentially is available to direct towards other purposes.

It is not seen as appropriate to continue it or necessary because there's an alternative source to continue it.

It's used to support ongoing BIPOC investments.

So happy to take questions about the approach there on the general fund or that summary of the resources and uses.

What follows then is some more detail about some of what's in the actual expenditure proposal.

Dr. Noble, in conversations with some of the homeless advocates and folks speaking up and serving the unsheltered population, there was some concern about the $26.5 million in new CARES Act funding and concern that there might not be feedback or inclusion of those who provide direct services in how those dollars are being allocated.

Can you identify for us if the 26.5 is reflected services.

I wanted to see if you could address that specifically for them.

Yeah, at the risk of frustrating you, I'm going to, I'm going to defer that and suggest that it's best covered in the homelessness briefings.

I just, I don't want to give you misinformation and I think there's better context there.

I'm voting the question and we'll come prepared to deliver that.

Sorry.

I'm not trying to dodge you.

I do think that's a better informative way to do it.

No problem.

We will follow up on that shortly with the HSD presentation.

I'm seeing no additional questions.

Okay, I'll move on then.

Next slide talks about sustaining response.

So, again, detailing the particular elements of the, of the remaining.

And there's a agreement about spending 45Million dollars over 2 years.

These are specifically the resources that were allocated.

To to for expenditure in 2021 so you can read this as well as I rental assistance.

Shelter providers, grocery vouchers, et cetera, including just last 1, 5M dollars for sustaining our, our testing sites.

Again, this is an area that ideally this would not be a city expenditure.

We do think it's.

appropriately cautious and thoughtful to set aside resource for that because it's such a critical element of actually managing the public health crisis.

But in addition, we're going to continue the providing resources to operate the homeless system as we do now, including that's both shelter and the food programs with appropriate social distancing and managing those risks.

As I mentioned previously, there is additional funding to sustain the hygiene facilities and the mobile showers.

And the next item is one that's sometimes hard to quantify financially, Seattle Parks and Recreation is continuing to operate the community centers, but under a new model that is targeting supports to childcare, particularly elementary aged and younger children, but also providing resources for older children.

I believe Department of Education Early Learning is gonna be up for presentation.

They'll be able to describe some more of that as well.

Some of that is in partnership, Parks is primary provider here, but some of that is in partnership with DEEL.

I just mentioned that there's some work that they have done.

We don't talk a lot about the utilities, but in the context of the economic impacts of COVID, providing the financial relief to individuals, both by opportunities for deferment of payments, and then also getting folks whose incomes have dropped enrolled in our utility discount program, which does have an income qualification.

So and then s.

is doing a good deal of work I think we've probably all seen this in various ways, in terms of streets that are now dedicated more towards recreation as one year me that I walk and run a fair amount.

But then also in our commercial cores, the use of rights of way for outdoor eating and entertainment to help both provide those much needed relief to those of all of us, but also to the businesses there.

trying to sustain themselves and their employees.

So this is not a comprehensive list, but it's trying to give you a sense that all of that is reflected in the budget.

And as individual departments come forward, we suggested that that's information that you'd be interested in, and they will be able to say more about that.

Thank you, Director Noble.

This may be more appropriate for the upcoming conversations, but I think would be super helpful at this point, since you mentioned the support that we're offering to small businesses through partnership with SDOT and the work that has been done to support.

a restaurant's ability to have outdoor dining on sidewalks, in parking spots, in alleyways.

I know that this has been very much appreciated.

I know that there's some concern that it came late in the year, but nevertheless, support and excitement that those options have been given to small businesses.

And obviously, innovation and collaboration is the only way we're gonna see our way out of this economic crisis that COVID is making worse.

So could you talk a little bit about any anticipated plans that folks have for the winter and fall and how that may impact the budget?

Are we allocating certain dollars to provide covers, awnings, heating space, any additional support to protect patrons from nearby traffic?

Just wondering how that affects our budget and if we're pre-planning for what's needed for the fall and winter to allow for these restaurants and small businesses to be able to continue to operate in an outdoor-like setting.

I think we would be fortunate in having Deputy Mayor Antonia on here because she has been working with Esad on some of those issues.

I think there are, because of funding restrictions, our ability to directly assist businesses can be limited, but there's a good deal we can do on the regulatory side and our And ESDOT has a number of steps underway to expand those opportunities, recognizing that as the weather changes, the format of outdoor dining would need to change.

But Deputy Mayor, maybe you have more.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member.

And yes, this is actually top of mind for ESDOT as we work through kind of the plans for winter dining.

We are working on several pieces that I think Director Zimbabwe would be able to talk to, but also both related to coverings.

elements and standardizing some of these things for business owners so that they are easily able to adopt them, extending the permits, and really working closely with public health on many of these design considerations as we look at outdoor covering and outdoor heating.

How does public health make sure that we have that input up front as we design these programs so that they are consistent with our public health guidelines and are also able to continually evolve as our situation with COVID continues to change over the fall and winter this year.

Okay, thank you.

And we'll look forward to that presentation as well to see where we can see those land items so that it's reflected in the budget.

Appreciate that.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I want to just confirm a couple things that these dollar amounts identified here as sustaining COVID-19 response.

that these are allocations above what a non-COVID time baseline would be.

So for instance, 8 million for continued rental assistance.

Is that $8 million above what we budgeted for in 2020?

prior, well, in 2019 for 2020, in order to call this COVID-19 response, it needs to be a higher allocation of funds than I think what we consider our baseline.

And I'm asking that question not only for the immediate housing and support elements, and the food support elements and the small business support elements.

I'm also wondering, one of the council's elements for COVID-19 response as it relates to Jump Start, again, is immigrant support.

And I don't see that here.

It might be on another page.

We are taking a cue from Councilmember Strauss in biting your tongue until you see the rest of the presentation.

But we are, with the executive's support, working together using Jump Start funds, intended to use Jump Start funds, a new immigrant and refugee support program that is part of our COVID-19 response.

And don't see that mentioned here.

Thank you.

I want to confirm before I respond, and that would require just a little bit of research, certainly with respect to the grocery vouchers, mortgage counseling, small business, and obviously our testing sites, that's all, none of that was anticipated otherwise.

I need to remind myself about rental assistance and what base programs we had in that space in the levels of funding.

With respect to immigrant and refugees, there is not additional allocation in 2021 as part of the arrangement around the $45 million.

The funding for immigrant refugees was focused in 2020. We're doing all that we can to get those resources, if you will.

out the door in 2020. We're also working to identify the best ways to coordinate with the state funding that's now available for those same communities.

Those resources had not been identified at the time the original proposal was developed, but we can get you all the detail on where we stand on the use of those resources.

And also, it's a really good question that I don't have an answer to right now, the coordination we've been able to achieve with the state on the allocation or deployment of those resources, and in particular, to residents of Seattle.

Thank you.

Again, looking at the Jump Start 2021 plan, immigrant and refugee support is identified as one of the programs, COVID-19 response programs, the council anticipated we would continue funding into 2021 with jumpstart revenue.

Thanks.

That is accurate.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, for making that point.

Additional comments on slide 17?

Seeing none, let's move on to the anticipated slide 18.

Thank you.

Slide 18, and I will turn this over to the Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Director Noble.

So expounding a little bit on just the process that is anticipated behind the allocation of the $100 million.

This is currently in the budget as unobligated.

We anticipate that there will be a community group that will convene in anticipation of making recommendations that would go into early 2021, I would say probably March of 2021, on where those investments should be prioritized.

This community group is basically a group of individuals.

This is about between 30 to 40 individuals.

The group is completely BIPOC and represent a variety of professional and lived experiences as it relates to economic development, youth empowerment, environmental justice, priority hire, community wealth building, housing, and related services, as well as community wellness and climate justice.

This group is basically we have drawn from many community members who represent a variety of boards and commissions and participate in these boards and commissions, including the Equitable Development Initiative Advisory Board, the Environmental Justice Committee, the Priority Hire Committee, the Our Best Advisory Council, to name a few.

And the goal being, again, is to be able to have this group of individuals then work with the broader community to determine how these dollars would be prioritized, the investment areas that would be prioritized, and then make recommended investments.

Uh, this group alone will not make specific recommendations to fund specific organizations, because many of them do represent organizations that would would eventually be eligible to to receive these funds and also consistent with the charter with the charter and how the mayor and council determine and appropriate resources.

It is anticipated that this process will begin in October.

It will go through the end of the year with continuous community engagement.

The group of community members would be supported both with facilitators, but also support with both technical assistance and any data they may need from a variety of city departments.

They will engage and determine both the priority areas, how they will plan to engage with the community, how they will make those recommendations and the timeline for those recommendations.

But it is anticipated that those recommendations will come to the city early next year and will be then submitted in a, in probably a supplemental budget.

And, you know, Ben can speak to the timing of that potentially, but it would be submitted for appropriation in a supplemental budget with the related requests for proposals that the departments can then develop.

and then get those dollars out into community as soon as possible, sort of middle of next year.

And then the final piece I want to add is, like I said before, we have identified funding for 2021's investment.

In 2022 and beyond, the mayor will be working in partnership, hopefully with council and with the community members, to determine a sustainable and progressive of ongoing funding source for this $100 million.

Chair, question?

Yes, Council Member Herbold.

Very briefly, if I might, before you ask your question, Council Member Sawant, you had asked a question previous to this slide.

Could you reiterate your question so that we can have that for the record as well?

Yes, thank you.

I was just asking what the community led process will be.

So obviously part of that is who will be in this.

community, I'm not sure what terminology the deputy mayor used, but a committee or something like that.

And I know the deputy mayor said a little bit about that, but I'll be honest, the reason, I mean, obviously I would want to know the answer to this question in general, but we're also asking this question because We've heard many concerns in the community that the representatives of the mayor's office often engages with are not the are not what a large, large are not what large sections of the communities.

accept as speaking for them.

And so I think, and I know the mayor's office is aware of that.

So in that context, what effort is the mayor's office going to make to have this body be as representative as possible of as much of the community as possible?

Obviously not everybody can speak for everybody.

Obviously all of that is true.

However, I think there are very clear, broad strokes of who I think will be representative and all of that.

So if you could go a little bit more into who you're talking about.

And when you say priority hire, do you also mean that the group will include representation from the labor movement as well?

I mean, which I would welcome, but I just wanted to know if you can say that more explicitly.

Let me speak more broadly to kind of how this initial group would be formed.

And like I mentioned earlier, the goal is to draw from community where we know folks either represent a lived perspective or bring a professional experience, either in the organization they serve, serving BIPOC communities, But also, in terms of individuals who who participate in many of our city convened committees, you know, I highlighted the environmental justice committee as 1, the transportation equity committee is another.

where these are community members who are working already in the city, you know, around city programs and bring that lens of both community, but also an understanding of that the group will continue.

The community.

Committee has the ability to invite further representation to your point to make sure that it's inclusive and holistic.

There will be multiple representatives from labor.

both in terms of, you know, with an eye towards you know, green jobs and clean jobs, and also with the eye of making sure that we know many of our labor members are also service providers, providing services to communities who are incredibly vulnerable and making sure that those perspectives are brought to the table.

And then finally, you know, like I said, this group is meant to be largely independent in terms of how they are able to make decisions, How they operate and sort of the how they set out their own priorities and scope, and that includes the expansion of the community group with with the additional members, and they have the ability and flexibility to do that.

We welcome council participation in sort of an ex officio role, because I think it's important.

Uh, for counsel to have a perspective from the beginning, and I'm happy to follow up after this, you know, in terms of next steps and then finally, like I said, you know, our goal is to, you know, I.

We fully recognize that no group of.

40 people can fully represent the broader community and it is very much the hope of the mayor that this can be complimentary to other processes that we know that the council has already resourced, including the.

the Black Brilliance Project related to community research that is happening this fall that ideally can help inform the priority area of investments for this work.

And there's also flexibility for this group to work in concert with participatory budgeting and to identify some potential areas of funding that could be determined through a participatory budgeting process.

Yes, go ahead.

If I might just ask a follow-up question.

I mean, I have lots of questions in the sense that I would be eager to hear who the appointees are, I guess, of the group.

You said that the mayor will be announcing that sometimes soon.

I mean, as you said, October, I'm assuming it's going to be earlier in October.

So I look forward to that.

But a couple of questions.

I mean, one is, will the meetings of this group be open to the public?

Will the mayor have sole appointing powers?

I mean, you said that you welcome council input, but I'm not clear in what form you will have that happen.

And just in general, I mean, it's not clear to me.

I mean, you said that the group will be independent, but how is that going to be accomplished if it's mayor appointed?

So these are just generally thoughts that I have.

So in terms of your first question around transparency, it is the hope of the mayor that we make this process transparent from start to finish and that there is a high degree of insight and information sharing so that the broader community has awareness of how that's happening.

We are basically deferring to community on what that could look like in terms of how They want to set this this this work up and how they want to make sure that there's transparency and ability to be able to have the public have clear insight into that work.

So, again, we are deferring to the group of community members on how best to do that.

Your 2nd question around sort of appointments again, I think that it is anticipated and.

That council members could serve in in ex officio roles as part of this work again, this is this the mayor, the intents for this group of individuals to be able to function quite independently of both the mayor and the city council and to be able to do the work and the charge that they've been placed with.

in terms of prioritizing areas of investment based on community input and then making recommendations based on those community priorities.

And so, you know, that again is we are going to the group will have broad latitude on how best to do that.

And again, like I said before, the community group will have the latitude to invite additional representatives to join the committee to make sure that it is holistic and inclusive in its approach.

Thank you.

Are there additional questions?

Okay, I am seeing none.

Council President, please go ahead.

Thank you for that and good morning.

I just wanted to I just get a little bit more clarity around how this is going to work.

And of course, Deputy Mayor, my office and you have been having ongoing conversations over the last four weeks about what this $100 million investment strategy could look like in terms of process.

Didn't really sort of settle on anything in particular, but I do wanna get just a clearer sense of Um, the, the mayor's intent here.

So of course we have a $3 million investment, uh, in a participatory budget process that will be going out to community through, um, the legislative department and, um, and just want to, um, hear a little bit from you about how you envision the relationship between the councils.

a participatory budget process that is community-led, and this $100 million investment effort?

I'm so happy to answer that, Council President.

So first, I think that, you know, as I understand it, the initial work that is planned for that $3 million investment that will go out for for an RFP is related to community-based research, that is actually really strongly in alignment with kind of the work that this group will do in the fall.

Because again, like I said, the first priority is to determine the high-level sort of areas of investment as they were.

And it is our hope that this community research work can inform that, both in terms of kind of, I think, both Sort of the types of investment, but also sort of again areas of investment.

So that's sort of 1 step where I see there's opportunity for strong intersection.

You know, it is our hope that there would be some representatives who have been proponents of the participatory budget approach.

Uh, to participate in this work too, so that there is close coordination so far that hasn't materialized.

We have extended invitations to community members that that is an open invitation and we hope that we can work particularly with King County equity now, and they criminalize Seattle to figure out kind of what a shared path forward is that is both complimentary and holistic and not meant to be competing to each other.

So.

Ultimately, as I understand it from the participatory budget proponents and folks who are experts in this area, a participatory budget timeline is likely to extend into sort of most of next year.

And as I had indicated earlier to the council, the goal to get recommendations from the community to be able to come back to you all in terms of a subsequent appropriation would be earlier next year.

Now, it is quite possible and plausible that this community process may result in some type of allocation of resource towards a participatory budgeting process that will allow its sort of completion in the time anticipated by community members.

But again, I don't want to presuppose that.

I think there are ongoing conversations.

And, you know, I'm just, again, the goal here is to be complimentary and to how do we sort of build upon these various elements of the board, the council is funded and the priorities for mayor to really result in a very robust process that results in very meaningful investments in community over the next year and beyond.

So I appreciate that additional detail.

And unfortunately, I'm not seeing where the alignment, Currently exists and I think that part of the work for the council and the mayor's office and a request that I'm making to you here on the record is that.

We come up with the alignment that you state that the mayor is committed to as it relates to timing of the work and as it relates to how the council's $3 million funded and supported participatory budget process will actually have an opportunity to influence and inform, as you mentioned, the decisions that might be made by this community task force.

And so I just, I'm not seeing, I'm hearing a lot of intent language from you about wanting to align, but I'm not seeing a lot of details or any details about how that alignment will happen, particularly given since our timelines at this point seem to be completely contradictory to each other.

So I am concerned that we are headed towards a path of parallel processes that will inherently create division amongst members of the BIPOC community who are all interested in being able to have an opportunity to meaningfully engage in the conversations about how dollars will be spent and on what in those respective communities throughout the city of Seattle.

And I just think it's really important for us to find that alignment and to memorialize that alignment and to ensure that we're not perpetuating division amongst community members who want to be able to have a meaningful role in the decision-making process around how investments will be made in their communities.

Yeah, I really appreciate that sentiment, Council President.

And I'm happy to sort of maybe go into further detail and hopefully provide some clarity.

And this is partly based on what I have seen in terms of Kind of an outline timeline for both this initial community research work that was recently announced and then sort of, I think there needs to be a little more clarity.

I agree more broadly around kind of what the timeline overall is for participatory budgeting, because in my conversations, I was led to understand that that in order to do it well, you need.

Between 9 to 12 months to actually get that right.

The 2nd component that I think has shifted over time is this.

The work has initially been focused the participatory budgeting were focused as it relates to the budget.

You know, obviously, that has become a more broad scope now.

And so, you know, wanting to make sure that there is alignment on those pieces and then I think finally, you know, I.

My hope is that we can do both of those things, right?

Because as we've seen, as we are all starting to learn much more detail around participatory budgeting, there are many models that have worked successfully.

And I think that there are ways to achieve both the alignment that you've talked about, but also clarity on how these things are sequenced, so that we are able to both achieve what I think is a shared goal, to get community investment out into community as quickly as possible, but also to honor a desire that we have heard from community to lead those process, to be part of those process, and to be able to determine those outcomes.

So I'm happy to continue to have those conversations with you and your office on how best to align those two things.

Any additional comments?

Thank you.

We've been having lots of conversations with you all, Deputy Mayor, around, you know, our biggest goal here is to, again, create clear alignment, including sequencing of these bodies of work.

I just think that that is absolutely important.

There are, you know, members of our community who are working on both the divestment related questions related to the Seattle Police Department, but also in the same breath working on investment questions related to those issues.

And I just, I worry that the proposal that we are seeing from the mayor's office divorces the investment issues from the realities of divestment.

And I've communicated this to you directly and to the mayor directly that these investments are important.

I support the mayor's goal to effectively earmark $100 million to BIPOC communities who have been underinvested in for centuries.

I support that effort in principle.

What I'm concerned about is investment decisions being made in a vacuum in which we don't acknowledge ongoing investment in carceral and law enforcement systems at the historical pace that we've seen.

If we do not take seriously the divestment calls in this space, we will negate much of the investment work that we are committing to through this $100 million equitable communities fund and through other efforts as well as we've been discussing this morning.

And again, I think that's really important, right?

We have to acknowledge that these are systems, carceral systems that have created harm and trauma in BIPOC communities.

And we have to take seriously the call to deeply and strategically analyze those systems and to reduce our investment in those areas in order to really allow for these significant investments of $100 million and more to actually have a meaningful impact in changing the lives of BIPOC members in our community.

And so I just, I just am expressing some worry about that publicly here, and I've expressed that worry to you and the mayor directly, and it will be issues and questions that I think that the council needs to really focus on as we dig into our evaluation of both the assumptions that underlie the $100 million Equitable Communities Fund proposal and as it relates to when we would be willing to exercise our budget appropriation authority in a way that would allow the mayor to deploy the $100 million.

And so I think we will all be better served if we come up with a plan and it is shared and we have alignment in both sequencing and scope of work.

And I think it's important for us to do that as quickly as possible in order to avoid what could be a very heated public debate.

I would like to very much avoid that and really just roll up our sleeves and come up with a mutual agreement on how we are going to invest in BIPOC communities in a way that reflects council's priorities and in a way that reflects the mayor's priorities, and more importantly, in a way that really feels like it is community-driven and community-led.

And so I appreciate the opportunity to continue having those conversations with you, Deputy Mayor, and of course, directly with the Mayor.

Thank you, Council President.

Madam Chair, if I may?

Council Member Juarez and then Council Member Morales, did you have your hand up as well?

Okay.

Council Member Juarez, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I think that Council Member Gonzalez hit the nail on the head about the alignment issue.

and us being practical and on the ground and how does this get done and how are we aligned so we don't have this narrative out there that BIPOC communities are going to be pitted against each other.

I think what Council Member Gonzalez said about the investment decisions that she's correct, obviously, that they cannot be made in a vacuum and we need that transparency.

And also, the point being made, which I agree with as well, is we still also have to look at reducing investments in other areas, such as the Seattle Police Department, which I think is what some of us are getting at.

My other point that I believe we can do both is a little bit more philosophical before I get a little wonky, is from my understanding and also talking to the executive offline about what this committee would look like and certain people that have been asked to perhaps be on this committee, what it would do, what does 100 million do, I think for me, from a higher level about how I want to play the long game here, is $100 million over 10 years to equal a billion dollars, it's not about funding social services.

It's about building equity in communities to create sustainable economic and social wealth.

Again, it's about building equity in communities to create sustainable economic and social wealth.

So we are doing more than just divesting from the police department and putting money upstream, but we're actually for the first time, we will be a city that says this money belongs in these communities so they can invest it for that and to close that wealth gap.

So another point where I kind of govern from is that by doing this, We are saying, and however we do it, whether it's 30 people or 40 people or everybody who wants to join in to make this right and do right and fix these past wrongs, I truly believe that this is about fully developing the human potential.

In order to develop that type of human potential, quite frankly and candidly and almost maybe crassly, you have to create it, you have to build it, and you have to fund it.

You have to recognize that, yes, there's been racism across every spectrum, particularly in the commercial sector.

But you're going to want those people, not only with lived experience, but also those professional experiences that have done things, that have built things, that have managed people, that can make this type of investment sustainable.

So our people, BIPOC people, are not yoked around their neck to a city budget, a city budget cycle, a state budget cycle, or a federal budget cycle.

And that's what I've experienced in my lived and my other professional capacity.

So I want to get back to what some comments and concerns I heard from some other people over the week about what this means.

And I want to disabuse people of the notion that $100 million, it isn't a gift to a certain group of people based on race.

and not a payment of other people's tax dollars.

This money belongs to BIPOC.

This money belongs in this community because it's their money, too, just like when we give money to other groups and organizations to do good things, whether it's Pre-K, whether it's the Renter's Commission, whether it's, you know, any group you can think of that we've given money to where there's been a community process and they've come to City Council, we've created a commission, we've provided technical support, We give them money, and then they tell us what to do with it.

I'm seeing that same model, which we already have in place, just on a grander, more bold, more passionate, and more humanity-driven, that there's one thing we can do right now as a city to come together.

So I am glad that Council Member Gonzalez said we don't want to look at this internal fighting, or that there's this narrative that people are going to be trying to take each other out for a certain amount of money.

This is probably, and I may be stepping on a limb here, I think we may be the first city to do something like this.

And I also just want to correct something about the comment that I made a long time ago about writing a check you can't cash.

That had something to do with something else.

That didn't have to do with this $100 million over 10 years, which would equal a billion dollars.

This is a check that we can cash and we can do that because we're finally doing the right thing that a lot of us have talked about personally and professionally and ran to be elected for.

To go back to quote unquote community and give them the resources and tell them and let them tell us what needs to get built and we get it done but they tell us how it's got to get done and that it's sustainable.

I don't like to spend a lot of time talking about the past, I like to talk about the humanity and the gift and the intellectual capacity and the human capacity that's already in these communities that know how to get this done.

And so I, for one, philosophically, pragmatically want to see this happen.

I don't care who's on it, that it gets done.

that all those voices are in there, all of those groups that have been out there on the street, have sacrificed themselves to their own personal harm, to their own professional harm, they've gotten hurt, including my colleagues that were out there.

So with that, I'm looking forward to finding out how the executive can work better and more positively with the Seattle City Council in pulling this together and us funding it putting this group together of community and getting the money out the door.

So I stand with my colleagues here on Seattle City Council, and I will take a pledge to commit to work with the executive and this community group to get this done.

So maybe one year now, two years from now, BIPOC communities can actually look at things like brick and mortar and point at it and say, I built that.

I employed 50 people here.

I got banks to invest capital here.

I broke down barriers so my people could buy a home.

My people could transfer wealth.

I could pay my mortgage.

I can put my kids through school.

Because that's the root of what hurts our people, is not having access for a system that wasn't built for us.

So now we have an opportunity to build a system that looks like us, that works for us.

and not to the exclusion of other people.

That's where I am proud of the BIPOC community, what we've done.

So I will leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Well, I think Council Member Juarez and Council President Gonzalez pretty much said what I wanted to say.

So I will be brief.

I do have a couple questions, but I do think, again, that I appreciate the comment, Deputy Mayor, about wanting to make sure that these processes all align.

And I will say that we have been attempting to understand what that alignment might be for several weeks now.

So it would be great to get more clarity about what the scope of this commission or task force is, when the members will be finalized and made public.

Is this a time-limited group that you're thinking about, or what is the vision for how long this group is in place?

But I really think that, as folks have said already, the important thing here is that it appears that the executive branch and the legislative branch are committed to building wealth in our black and brown communities.

And that's a really important step for us to be taking, to publicly acknowledge that there has been years of divestment and that there is a need to make sure that we are closing the racial wealth gap.

And to Council Member Wattis's point, you know, it is very important that our different communities of color not be pitted against one another.

And I think there is a strong unified voice coming from communities of color, folks are talking about a solidarity budget that acknowledges that, you know, we've got four or five hundred years of investment due to black and indigenous neighbors.

So so this is important.

And I think speaking personally, we will know that we are on the right track, that we're making the kind of deep structural systems changes we need to we need to make.

when the median income of a Black family isn't $25,000 or $30,000 or $40,000, when it is $100,000, like white families in Seattle.

We have a long way to go before we get there.

So we do need to invest in Black-owned businesses and more Black bankers and developers and, you know, everybody.

who has been missing out on the generational wealth that other people have had the privilege of earning.

So this is important.

We owe our communities.

big.

And I am hopeful that we can reach alignment, that we are not going to be working at cross purposes, and that we avoid any perception of an attempt to divide our neighbors, because that is not how we get this done.

We're going to have to work together to make sure that we are serving community best and that we are building the capacity of our Black and Brown neighbors for self-determination.

Thank you very much.

Council colleagues.

I don't see additional hands up.

I will note there are a handful of slides still we did talk about yesterday having a hard stop at one closer to noon if possible.

I do want us to get through these slides as they tee up.

some of the conversation to come over the next two and a half days here.

And so it won't be as robust.

I understand this is sort of a high-level overview over these next few slides.

Thank you, Director Nobles, for staying with us.

I'll just sort of reiterate and offer as well any concluding comments to the Deputy Mayor.

I'm not sure if you're staying on for other comments and other slides, but we know that you are here to present on this slide.

Thank you for the time that you've taken to walk us through this.

You mentioned a few things that other council members have lifted up about the need to make sure that we're not either doing siloed efforts or pitting populations against each other.

And I think that it is really important for us to lift that point up as my council colleagues have done.

Separate processes at the end of the day really do harm community.

When we have folks who are stepping up, providing time, and offering their expertise, Um, to ask them to do this over and over or through repeated processes really does ask more than we should be asking of communities.

And it's really our responsibility to step away from processes that pit populations against each other or.

process is that are overlapping because we want to respect the time and expertise of our community partners.

So I appreciate the words that you mentioned about that.

As it relates to the $3 million, I appreciate the conversation that we're having here.

I think some of the words that were used was that this $3 million really invests in the community research, which will inform priority areas for the mayor's task force and research, and that again, quote, this is in strong alignment for the work that the mayor's office is envisioning this fall.

I think that message is important to correct the narrative that was out there just a few weeks ago, where the $3 million was framed and stated to the press as part of the rationale for the veto, that the mayor was vetoing the $3 million because it was a 17% increase in the legislative department's budget.

which it was not.

As you noted, this is money that goes directly into community partners' hands to help do the important research that you highlighted.

And so as we talk about moving forward and getting away from the division that's created or contradictory messages, I think it's important to note the true importance of that $3 million.

Again, this is not a question of whether or not the $100 million check should be cashed.

It should be cashed.

The question I think that we have in front of us over the next few weeks is the choice of which fund sources it comes from.

And as noted by my other colleagues, the question about how we can couple the divestment conversation with the investment conversation I think it's important for us to be clear on what we're doing.

I think council president and my other colleagues alluded to this very well and spoke to this eloquently as did Mr. Good in the South Seattle emerald equating the need for us to couple divestment and investment just as we would with harm reduction strategies that aim to the budget.

I think it is important that we continue to recognize that we all want to cash this check.

It is truly a matter of the choices we are putting in front of us on where the funds should come from.

That is what we will get into more into the budget.

Any additional comments?

I am seeing none.

as well as potentially other items as well.

Deputy Mayor and Director Noble, please continue.

Thank you.

We'll move on to the next slide and further discussion in some of the same space.

So I wanted to highlight again, you have a separate briefing coming up both on the Seattle Police Department's budget and on community safety, but I did want to highlight some of the things that are in the budget overall.

So with respect to SPD's budget, a number of changes in the total, about $60 million worth.

So reduction in sworn officers, support of civilian roles over time.

So for a cumulative reduction of just over $22 million.

As I think I mentioned earlier, transfer of the parking enforcement officer function to SDOT.

It's a total of 120 FTE, almost $15 million.

The 911 call center would be in the proposed budget would be established as an independent communication emergency communication center.

Again, more than $18 million and a significant number of staff.

Office of emergency management, which again currently is located within SPD, although physically actually in a separate building, they would become an independent office, reflective of the fact that they're coordinating activities across all elements of the city and do so regularly.

So it's a relatively small office, but.

One that punches the budget above its weight in terms of the coordination functions it serves.

We've seen that in just this year alone in the context of snow and smoke and most specifically COVID.

And then council moved to transfer the victim advocate functions at SPD to HSD this year.

So the budget continues that.

So those are all changes that are in the base budget that has been delivered.

In terms of investment in community safety, so mayor is we're setting up and have an interdepartmental team, ideally interest.

branch team, so looking for council staff involvement if there's willingness.

The work of that team is to do a detailed analysis of 911 calls, obviously a lot of interest in different responses to different types of emergencies and what's the right staffing approach, but also more generally SPD's other functions.

Again, from the Mayor sees this as an opportunity to develop an overall plan for the future of SPD and as importantly to the city's overall approach to community safety.

Again, the notion of looking to non-uniformed personnel to help address a variety of emergent situations.

Is $2 million provided in HSD's budget to implement the potential recommendations of the IDT so that that money is appropriated but, if you will, not allocated to specific purposes awaiting those recommendations.

I mentioned previously that Municipal Court has a proposal to restructure its probation services and also to establish essentially as an alternative, but again I defer to them to really present this to you, an enhanced and renewed community court model The budget does include $100,000 to help support implementation of that community court model, in particular, some support of some case management services that the court sought.

A number of other things that we're doing in this space, if you will, are continuing efforts that were established this year.

The Crisis Connections service, which provides first responders a single place to call to try to identify resources to help individuals in some level of distress, not necessarily medical distress, but rather emotional or psychological or some other.

So referral service, but a centralized one that has proven successful, something that our first responders have appreciated.

So that continues.

If I might just interrupt real quick, customer Herbold has a quick question.

Yeah.

Sorry about that.

Thank you.

As it relates to the...

I just want to thank the executive and the mayor and CBO in taking to heart some of the recommendations that the council made in the 2020 summer We heard then that the mayor agreed with the council on many of those elements.

I would say in some cases it could be said that there was more agreement than disagreement.

But one point I want to just ask about relates to a request that was contained in the what I call the big bill that was vetoed by the mayor that the council overrode, related specifically to the question around civilianization.

There was a request that the council receive by, I believe it was September 30th.

a report from the executive to identify which functions of SPD could be fully civilianized and or removed from SPD, including but not limited to an analysis of staffing and funding needs to support those functions, both for 2020 and 2021. And again, this request was designed to align with consideration of the 2021 budget.

beginning today.

So just want to confirm that we are still going to receive that report, or maybe we already have.

I haven't seen it.

And then my other, why don't we, Chair, if I could just get an answer to that question first, and then I have a separate question.

Absolutely.

I think what you're seeing proposed here is that this interdepartmental team is going to engage in that work.

That would be a piece of this.

I don't think it is realistic to deliver that kind of assessment in the timeframe that was set out.

But there is an interest in the underlying issue and understanding and learning what is the best approach to the mix of uniform and civilian functions in SPD and outside of SPD.

So recognition that the ones identified here in the first set of bullets could be realistically and appropriately shifted out immediately, but that there is more work to be done in identifying what's the model moving forward.

That's not intended to be disagreement, but rather agreement.

And again, looking for a partnership in doing that work.

I've had, at staff level I know, good relationships between central staff, SPD staff, and CBO staff, as well as mayor's office staff, in working through the issues to date around staffing levels and various pieces of civilian versus uniform.

So that's the intent here.

It's not trying to filibuster, but rather to engage in the complex and important work of sorting through all of this, both from a, in some sense, less from a budgetary sense and really much more from the policy sense.

Director Noble, you know, this legislation was passed by the council over the summer.

It was then vetoed.

The council overrode it.

I understand that, you know, perhaps by the time the council voted to override it, the September 30th date was a date that was was a hard mark to hit.

I would suggest that the date where the council originally passed the legislation had, again, this is an area I think that there's a lot of agreement.

Had the executive started working on this exercise, perhaps we would be in a different position.

We'd have more information.

We will be in budget deliberations through the end of November.

Are you saying that if we put this question into SharePoint, the council's process for getting questions answered once we're in the budget process, that it is not possible to get a report on what functions of SPD could be civilianized and removed from SPD, including an analysis of staffing and funding needs to support the positions for 2021. That we will not, that there is no way that we are going, we could get that question answered in time for, to complete our deliberations on the 2021 budget.

I don't think it's realistic, but I will, but I will confirm before making that, you know, communicating that as a final answer.

And I'm not trying to be difficult.

Actually, I appreciate the acknowledgement of the steps we have taken to move various functions out.

But I want to say that I don't estimate the amount of work that has gone in already to developing SPD's budget.

I manage the staff who are well past exhaustion, and I don't invoke that lightly here, and I'm not trying to minimize your request.

I totally appreciate that.

Yeah, it's on top of a lot that's been going on, particularly in SBD space, if you will, on innumerable fronts.

So I will get back to you to confirm what we think is a realistic timeline.

And again, Invitation is very real to have you all bring steps just to engage in it.

We recognize that nothing is going to be implemented without your role in it.

And that is a real desire.

We've had that good working relationship at a staff level and look forward to that going forward.

Thank you.

And then my other question on the SPD side, the top part of this slide, is I don't see reference either in this slide or in my pretty cursory review thus far of the SPD.

budget narrative in the budget book, any reference to the officer reductions passed by the council for the 2020 summer rebalancing package that we all realize we are unlikely to be able to actualize in 2020, but that in the council's passage of that package, we expressed our intent that we expect the executive to work with us to begin the process to negotiate those reductions.

I don't see that reflected anywhere in the 2021 budget.

Can you help me out here?

Yeah, the 2020, excuse me, the 2021 budget is built on an assumption of 1,400 funded officers.

The, sorry, my phones are buzzing at me.

I'll try to put them away so they stop that.

We are, I think, communicated some, and there's actually additional communication to come shortly from the mayor's office about the desire to move forward on the process to establish whether that could be out of order layoffs to achieve some reduction in force size.

But again, referencing again to the IDT, the mayor's perspective is that she wants to complete this analysis to determine what's an appropriate staffing level at SPD in terms of uniforms versus civilians and the like before making additional reductions in officers.

I would also say that when we built the budget, we were in a difficult window of uncertainty about the status of the budgetary changes that were reflected in the bill that was ultimately overridden.

We were in limbo, if you will, at that point.

So we're forced to make some assumptions about what might or might not happen, if you will.

But in any case, the budget is built at $1,400, and the funding for SBD reflects that.

Yeah, and I guess my recollection of the number of vacancies, when we voted on the rebalancing package, it wasn't that much different than 1400, and we were still recommending a reduction of another 100. It just seems like there's a little bit of lack of alignment there, but this is a new budget and a new year, so I suppose we can have those conversations again.

And I think that's exactly right.

I was about to say that the budget is a reflection of priorities.

You're seeing those of the mayor.

She did act to veto the bill.

I'm not just in terms of explaining what we built and why we built it, right?

So, but yes.

Council's deliberations moving forward, there continue to be developments in terms of current staffing levels at SPD, and we'll continue to update you on those as well.

And those could be informative in the space overall, both in terms of appropriate staffing levels and the tactics or strategies to achieve those staffing levels, if you will.

And I acknowledge that this is a new proposed budget for a new year.

And so I'm not necessarily surprised that I don't see the same things that the council identified as priorities in the budget for 2020. But I do wanna say that for the council's 2020 decisions, I am still committed to working with the executive to realize the reductions and begin the process and begin it in 2020 because we did vote for a 2020 rebalanced budget for those reductions.

So I fully expect that the executive will that we are going to work towards making the budget that the council passed actualized and begin that work regardless of what we vote for in the 2021 budget.

and to do so promptly and for the executive recognizing that they control that process.

I really don't want it to be slow rolled until we get into next year.

Councilmember Herbold, I just want to support your comments here as chair of public safety.

I really appreciate you putting that message forward strongly and unequivocally.

I also think it's important for us to recognize that this was part of what the council passed to make that request for negotiations to begin now.

Also with the language that was included to pursue out of order layoffs and to offer in the negotiations retirement and health care incentives as well for some of our personnel who may be interested in that option.

So I appreciate you lifting that up.

And I think what I'd love to do is follow your leadership, if you could be the liaison back to the council on how that conversation is going.

Obviously, there's members of LRPC here and council president chairs that effort.

We know it's a much broader conversation, but I think it is important that we not lose sight of that request that was included in the language that the council passed and is still a living document as part of the package that we pass into statute.

So thank you for pulling that up and look forward to the follow-up conversations on that piece.

Councilmember Morales and then Councilmember Peterson, did you have something?

Okay, wonderful.

Councilmember Morales and Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you.

This is a quick question, hopefully.

As we're talking about the IDT, I do have a question about who's on it, if that's already been established, and how does that entity relate to the community task force, if at all?

Just trying to understand, it feels like now there is a third something beginning, and I'm trying to figure out how these all connect.

I'm not going to be able to do justice to the list of departments that we're planning to pull together for the IDT.

Many of the staff involved include folks from my office, also obviously SPD, the mayor's office, believe potentially human services and civil rights as well.

I would say I owe you a better answer.

In terms of Communication, the expectation here is that the IDT would be, it's more of a technical group, but that they'd be working to gather input from community as well.

And I think the structure of that and how it potentially works with the task force is one of the things that Deputy Mayor, who's no longer with us, could probably help answer and is one of the things that are under development as well.

Just think it illustrates the confusion that is caused when you decouple the divestment element from the investment element.

If there are multiple things happening and it's not clear how they are connected.

This is part of the struggle that we, as a council are having trouble understanding and therefore having, you know.

getting questions from community about what these three different things are and how they relate.

So, again, I just look forward to having the opportunity to get some real clarity around what these entities will be doing and how they're connected.

Understood.

Yeah, important clarification.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I also thought for a moment that IDT, which is internally referred to as interdepartmental task force was being used, or sorry, team is what you have listed there.

I thought that was being used interchangeably with the task force.

And again, to the point that Council Member Morales made and Council President Gonzalez made about the need to couple those pieces.

It's really important because I was even transposing those and it sounds like those are completely separate at this point.

Councilmember.

More of a technical group that can, excuse me, provide support to community discussions, but we can provide you additional detail.

Appreciate that.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Misqueda, and I wanted to add on to what Councilmember Herbold was mentioning and also You know, this idea of decoupling things.

What I'm concerned about is that what's been decoupled from this conversation too much is the police union contract, the 100 page police union contract that expires at the end of this year.

It was, you know, there were some good things about that contract when it was put in place.

a couple of years ago, but now that it's expiring, it's become, you know, in this new paradigm, it's become obvious that it's a major impediment to the major changes and also budget flexibility.

So in a sense, I think the police contract has become, you know, obviously inflexible, expensive, and unjust in terms of the disciplinary system that we're all aware of the problems there, but it's also, creating problems as we try to make a change, the police contract then blocks it and supersedes our authority in a lot of cases.

Also, when we see the excessive overtime costs, when we see the reports about a small group of officers getting paid these excessive amounts, we look back and it's the contract, again, is the source of all these problems.

All roads seem to lead back to the contract.

I just wanted to flag that for the viewing public and also to, I'm not on the Labor Relations Policy Committee, but to the extent that I can be helpful in pushing for an even better, more flexible and just contract going forward, I'm happy to stand in support.

Excellent points.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Director Noble, any additional responses to that?

I think probably more appropriate for LRPC, but I mean, obviously, there are important restrictions and potentially ultimately opportunities in the contract and its terms will be important.

And actually, I've been obviously a topic of or impactful in terms of approaches, even for council about how to address staffing levels, for instance, that SPD and the options there are through layoffs or otherwise.

Customer Peterson, did you have a follow up?

OK.

Any additional comments on this slide?

Just quickly, just to quickly wrap it up, mentioned we're continuing funding for community critical incident responders pilot program.

That's a program that implemented some community passageways that was funded earlier this year.

The goal is to continue that and its work in the community.

Expanding the HealthONE pilot, I know this is an area of interest for the whole council, but I know certainly some specific council members.

So the proposal would add a second vehicle that was established this year.

HealthONE single vehicle was established as a pilot.

You would expand that to a second vehicle.

This is a program that pairs a uniform emergency response with social workers.

And I'm not going to get all the details right, but provides an alternative to a simple 9-1-1 response, but rather was something that could be more targeted towards the needs of individuals in, again, in something other than purely a medical situation or a medical crisis.

I think the data continues to roll in that this is the right approach especially for a medic team showed up with a van to make sure that it's not a rotating door at Harborview and that people are actually getting into the service they need.

This is a critical service.

I was led to believe from the video yesterday that there was two vans that were being added, one in the North End and one in the South End.

We know that this has been the long, long-stated need in the community for a North End and a South End.

Is there just one van included here?

Well, there's an expansion of one so that there are then two vehicles, I think.

So there's not three, one north, one south, one central.

It's two vans.

That's not my understanding.

If I'm wrong, I'll correct.

And I know this is an area of interest for Council Member Lewis who's had some consultations with the fire chief and some staff on our side as well.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that it's an area that he's been engaged in as well.

Council Member Lewis, did you have something to add to that?

Sure.

Thank you, Council Member Skidde.

My understanding is that it will be two vehicles, but that that will provide the flexibility to expand the service area to Ballard University District while maintaining the current service in the core of the city and sort of downtown Pioneer Square.

So I just wanted to, now, I mean, you know, that said, totally willing to work with the fire department and folks on the council throughout the budget process to potentially see if there's more scalability built in.

I know that, you know, the ultimate, Strategy would be to have one of these vehicles for every ladder company in the city, which would be an excellent, you know, scaled HealthONE system, but obviously we'd want to talk to the fire department about their ability to scale like that in 2021 and whether the single vehicle increases is sort of what they're kind of, you know, prepared to bite off.

So, but my understanding is it would be two vehicles from my conversations with Chief Scoggins.

Okay, great.

And my discussion, my conversations with IFF 27, our local firefighters union, there's been a long standing request for both a new van in the North End and the South End.

So Council Member Lewis and again, Council Member Herbold, recognizing this dovetails into public safety as well.

Look forward to working with you both and the full council as well as Chief Scoggins about the possibility or better understanding the need for both North End and South End.

I would like to make a comment based on my discussions with local 27. Please go ahead.

focus in on the nature of the expansion.

In the narrative, it reads, initially Health One focused on serving people in the downtown core, Pioneer Square, Belltown, and Capitol Hill.

As part of COVID response, service was expanded to Soto, Mount Baker, Rainier Valley, the University District, Ballard, and West Seattle.

Citywide, any Seattle fire unit can refer a client experiencing secondary impacts of the virus or quarantine That reads to me like the expansion to other parts of the city is limited to kovat response and for for health one and I I need to understand that because that is that is not my understanding from from briefings that I've received from Chief Scoggins on HealthONE.

So really want to understand sort of what the citywide availability of this really important critical services, especially as we are proposing in this budget cycle to continue to expand it.

Thank you.

And thank you, Council Member Herbold, and thank you, Council Member Lewis, as well, for your ongoing work on this.

Director Neville, sorry to cut you off.

Please go ahead.

No, no, sorry to interrupt that.

That's not my understanding either, and we'll confirm and get back.

Thank you.

Conscious of time, just to wrap up this slide, I didn't know where else to put it.

So there's a reference here.

There's some modest increased funding for the three elements, three offices that have a role in oversight of SPD as well.

Officer Inspector General, Office of Professional Accountability, and the Community Police Commission.

Given the events of the year and just also the priorities overall, recognize that the demand of their services and the importance of their role, and all had staffing requests.

And again, in the context of even the very, very limited resources we are facing this year, I thought it was appropriate to address some of those requests to the extent feasible.

And I'm ready for next slide.

Just again, thinking of time here.

So again, I wanted to talk about preserving, I think we skipped a slide, maybe.

Thank you.

Yep, that's it.

Perfect.

So again, just to highlight, to agree with the budget makes an effort to sustain services.

So again, as I mentioned, HSD, ongoing funding for programs are maintained.

There is some streamlining of staff.

So there are some proposed staff reductions and vacancies that we would continue to hold.

There is the funding that council has previously directed to provide inflationary increases to HSD's contracted providers.

So I just wanted to emphasize that point.

And the point being that the inflationary adjustments will be applied?

Yes, yes.

I was just highlighting that funding is there.

Thank you for that.

And I know there was a concern about that.

Is there also an assumption that the inflationary adjustments will be applied to any of the services that are being transferred to the regional body?

I believe the answer is yes, but I mean, certainly for 2021, those are in there.

It's for 2021 that money is in their budget.

So if that transfer happens in 2021, the answer is absolutely yes.

Thank you for that clarification.

So just to emphasize the degree to well.

Council made a number of ads last year in the human services space, particularly around homelessness, but not exclusively around homelessness.

The budget provides more detail about these.

Again, although we are facing limited resources, we wanted you to know that we have identified some continued funding for sources, continued funding for a number of those ads, recognizing that they address very real needs on the ground, and it made sense to continue that work.

There's additional funding to support some ongoing, excuse me, to support ongoing funding for expanding some shelter.

So we're working now to expand shelter offerings this fall to about, again, as indicated here, about 125 units.

That will require some ongoing funding to support, so that's included.

I mentioned the emergency service grant money.

We're continuing to move forward on implementing the Regional Homelessness Authority.

And then this is, Just a particular ad that I wanted to highlight.

The SOTA TAC advisory committee has suggested the investment of $1.5 million to implement a new pre-enabled to three-year-old grant program that would get dollars to community-based organizations to help improve health and welfare of that cohort of youth.

respecting the role of the advisory board and their recommendation.

The budget identifies funding from the soda tax to implement that program.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, did you have a question?

I'm off mute.

Thank you.

I just have a sort of a, I have a couple of specific questions, but I first want to ask a broad question about this presentation.

I see the things that are supported in the budget.

And maybe this isn't the place to talk about it, maybe when we get more into the details.

But I would expect some sort of a high-level overview of the reductions.

And I don't see any mention.

I was getting there.

Oh, you are?

OK.

All right.

I went forward in the PowerPoint

There's not tremendous detail, but let me just highlight a few things to give you a sense of that.

So the overall strategies that we've used for balancing and reductions are comparable to the ones we've implemented this year.

I highlighted earlier neighborhood of 65 to $70 million of overall reductions.

Highlighted a previous slide, there's a $20 million reduction in SPD.

There's approximately $10 million reduction in general fund to both parks and ESCOT.

Those reductions, and I have a couple of slides we may not get to this morning, those reductions are mitigated by transferring some capital dollars from other sources to maintain some of the operations.

But that's $40 million in total right there in terms of the overall reductions that were highlighted.

The other reductions become a little more diffuse after that.

There are a number of vacancies being held in departments.

We've implemented the wage freeze that I described previously.

But as you get into individual department presentations, you will hear more about some of those specific reductions and how we approached departments and gave them cut targets.

This was early in the year of 5% to 10%.

and that brought us towards some options to consider ways to reduce, and not all departments took the same percentage reductions by any means, but they did provide us alternatives so we could assess what impacts would be of different arrangements.

So, for instance, at HSD, I have a reference here to some streamlines, so I don't know off the top of my head the overall reductions and savings there, but there are some there.

whether some of the support staff and the like, which is not ideal.

And I think in the case of HSD mainly being done, actually no, mainly being done by holding vacancies, but more detail on that is provided in the individual department briefings to come.

Thank you.

And then my two specific questions are, relate to the identified the mayor's speech yesterday, there was a reference to, I think, 300 new shelter units.

Is that a distinction between what this narrative says about 2020 and what the mayor is describing is in the 2021 in the big budget book, but look forward to learning more about that.

And then, you know, during the efforts to negotiate a compromise to jumpstart, there was, I had conversations with Director Johnson, I had conversations with Deputy Mayor Skiller, about the executive's new vision for outreach and engagement with unsheltered homeless people.

You know, something where the navigation team is less a navigation team and more an entity that works to coordinate external partners.

Is that vision represented in this proposed budget?

I believe it is and again I'm considering both time and the expertise that I can bring versus others.

What I can explain is that proposals to have a smaller number of people relative to the current navigation team who would play a critical role in coordinating both the outreach and then also placement and the like of folks who are living without shelter and who are and who we engage in public rights of way or others.

So the short answer is yes.

I think details will be provided to you on Friday as part of the overall briefing on homeless citizen housing.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Director Noble, I have a suggestion.

We are on slide 20. It looks like slide 20 and 21 go together.

I would like to ask if you could conclude slide 20 and 21, and then if we might be able to pick up with your presentation on slide 22 when we reconvene at 2 p.m.

It's a nice overview if you look at those last three slides on sort of the philosophy, the strategies that you apply to the budget reductions.

So that could be a helpful framing narrative as we then launch into specific departments.

Could we do that?

Yeah, that's exactly what I had intended in its structure.

So I think that that can work well.

And again, the latter slides become more department specific.

And I think you'll, you'll hear more.

I'll present them, but maybe opportunity to hold questions and deal, dig in deeper to the department's bring forward.

So, some other elements I just, I wanted to highlight the transportation network for the TNC fair share program.

So you all know what it's intended to do.

So the budget does include creation of two new positions at OLS and then funding for outreach.

So I just want to make it clear that the budget does have the resources to implement the TNC program.

We didn't, obviously, the final version was only adopted yesterday or the day before.

So, no, yesterday rather, not the holiday.

So there may be some tweaks to the staffing plan here that are appropriate, but we didn't know its full scope at the time we developed it.

Our revenue forecast here is quite modest for 2021. We're seeing about $5 million in revenue.

That provides sufficient resource to establish the program, to fund OLS, to fund FAS to implement, to initiate the, I forget the name of the worker program, but, and a net of maybe a million and a half dollars that we would target to SDOT, given the funding challenges that they face.

And then in terms of transit, I just get this just going to make some points about what is and what's not in the budget.

The transportation benefit district renewal is on the ballot in November.

So we've not assumed its passage, but we're prepared to bring you a set of amendments as quickly as you desire so that we can implement those.

Again, assuming it were to pass.

And then we've also not included the voter-approved BLF revenues that are currently the subject of a case at the state Supreme Court.

So those are resources that would be dedicated to transportation to SDOT.

Again, SDOT's budget reflects a large number of reductions.

And we do have proposals about essentially a backup list, if you will, if this funding were to become available over the course of the next couple months.

which is possible as I understand the court is in theory completing its deliberations.

So we have thoughts about some critical funding that could be restored and we can bring those forward to your staff as well.

And we can see how that all evolves.

So just for you to be aware of those elements.

Thank you very much.

And again, noting that there's going to be a Department of Transportation full briefing to come soon.

Director Noble, thank you for walking us through this first part of the presentation.

I'm going to conclude session one for today.

We will pick up again on slide 23 when we reconvene and then launch into the department presentations.

If there's no objection, the committee will recess until 2 p.m.

Hearing no objection, have a good lunch break.

including Bill Fortunato, and the Washington Farm Bureau.

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