Select Budget Committee Session I 10-15-2026

The October 15th, 2026 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Clerk, will you please call the roll.

All not present are excused until they arrive.

We have

four items on the agenda today.

We have central staff analysis of the Seattle Police Department, Seattle Fire Department, Care Department, and Human Services Department, as well as the Unified Care Team budget.

So the analysis on these five different groups broken apart, into a morning session and an afternoon session.

The Seattle Police Department presentation itself is 26 pages long, and so we may break directly after that to hold the remaining sessions after lunch.

If we do not get to all sessions today, we will have Friday afternoon committee.

Just with that colleagues, mindful of the time today and the amount of information that we need to get through.

I will still call for about a one hour break unless people would like to power through or they need more time.

It was nice to have an hour and 15 yesterday.

and today is the great shakeout.

So in about 45 minutes at 10.15, we will have an earthquake drill.

We had an earthquake two weeks ago while we were in committee and no one did it correctly, including myself.

So this is a good reminder on how to practice to do it correctly.

In this room in particular, there's a lot of glass and it is important that we just keep in mind that Two out of the four walls contain a lot of glass in here So just as we're thinking about that going into the great shakeout today These are the longest chairs comments that I've provided today and councilmember Kettle is going to share with us why we're wearing purple today

Thank you, Chair.

And for those who don't know, we had a great press conference yesterday on gender-based violence, of which has three parts, sexual assault, commercial sexual exploitation, and domestic violence.

And so today is domestic violence.

Wear purple today in support.

So Chair, nice job with your purple tie.

Good work.

Thank you.

And I see many of us up here are wearing purple.

And anyone else want to make comments on this, since I've opened the door?

Seeing none, we are gonna move right into presentations.

This has been the longest chair's report since we opened this section of the budget.

And so if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted with the departments that I listed out before.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We don't have verbal public comment today.

It's only on the first part of each section.

So we will move into the first item of business today.

Clerk, will you please read the first item into the record?

Agenda Item 1, Seattle Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

We are joined by Director Lish Whitson and Greg Doss of Council Central Staff.

Greg, I know you've got a meaty presentation for us today, so why don't we run through the whole thing and then if we need to come back to certain sections and walk through sections for Council Member conversation, we can.

or folks will just walk through the presentation as they want to comment on it or ask questions.

So with that, over to you.

Introduce yourself and take it away.

Good morning.

Thank you, Council Member, Chair Strauss, Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

Yes, I do have a media presentation today, so I guess I'll apologize up front.

I will be talking a little while, but we'll have plenty of chance to take your questions.

So gonna jump right into it.

The 2027-28 proposed budget for the Seattle Police Department would increase by about $68 million.

And that's 13.9% compared to the 2026 adopted budget.

And I need to put this on screen.

There we go.

That's not the way I wanted to go.

I need to go here.

Pardon me for just one moment.

You're fine.

Got it.

Thanks.

Okay, sorry for that slight delay.

So, as I said, the budget increases by about $68 million, and that's about a 13.9% increase over the 2026 adopted budget.

The most significant increase is an out of $56 million that is put into the budget to pay for sworn salaries that were bargained as part of the Seattle Police Officer Guild and Seattle Police Management Association contracts that were settled last year.

So the money to pay officers for those contract settlements is put into the 2027 budget for a first time, and it's a fairly sizable sum.

The second most significant increase in the budget is related to 12.5 million that is added for sworn salaries and this is consistent with the 1,250 funded FTE that is used to pay for SWORN and we'll be talking about that throughout the presentation.

As was pointed out by the executive during their presentation, 95% of SPD's budget is related to either staff, overtime, or central charges.

So as you look at this table in front of you, really what you're looking at is increases here that are spread out that are for wage increases for the unions that I just mentioned.

or for staffing increases.

There's not one particular change that is worth highlighting right now at this stage.

There is a significant increase for the school zone camera program.

There are some new cameras that are going to be put out into the city and those cameras, that budget is managed by SPD.

so that's a fairly significant increase.

The rest of it is pretty much all related to, as I say, either the sworn staffing or the labor increases.

There were a number of individual cuts that were made of positions and the executive went over those in detail during its presentation.

I'm not going to go over every single one of those.

I will be going over the most significant ones.

I've got eight issues up today in the issue paper so I think probably we will hit an issue or if you have a question about a position elimination, it's probably one of my issues.

If it's not, then we can discuss it at the end.

All right, so gonna go ahead and jump into this.

SPD, of course, has one of the largest workforces in the city with about 1,879 FTE.

About three quarters of those FTE are sworn officers.

I have some attachments in the issue paper that breaks that number down.

There's attachment one that shows how 498 officers are deployed to the precincts in Seattle and answer the 911 calls.

The attachment two in the issue paper shows a breakout of how all officers are distributed throughout the department, whether it be on specialty units like water harbor or criminal investigations.

and we'll also be talking about that a bit later in the presentation.

So every August, SPD submits a staffing plan that identifies the department's hiring and separation projections for the upcoming year.

And what you see in front of you is the historical hires and separations and then you see a net ads column.

That's a simple product of hires, less separations.

And you'll see that in 2026, there's a projected number, in 2027, a plan number, and in 2028, a plan number.

If the...

2027-28 proposed budget and the money that is dedicated to staffing is realized in the way that the executive has programmed it in the budget.

There will be 128 new hires in 2027 and there will be 85 separations and that will create 43 new officer adds.

In 2028, there would be 79 new hires and 79 separations.

and that year is deliberately calibrated to be sustainment hiring.

There would not be growth in the department.

Each of those years is, as you see at the very right of the table, corresponds to 1,250 FTE.

This is a number that has been discussed a little bit lately.

Important to clarify, this is not a count of officers.

1,250 funded FTE is a budget number, and it's a budget number that supports not just sworn officers, but also recruits who don't take the sworn oath until they get to the department and finish their academy training.

So when we're talking about 1,250, it will never be the total number of officers.

It also includes about, right now, 150 student officers that could not be out on the street answering calls.

It's a funded number, it's a budget number, and it supports a particular level of hiring in the staffing plan.

The way that the mayor uses those funds, again, 43 net new in 2027 and sustainment hiring only in 2028. So dive into the details a little bit.

What you see now is a bar chart that shows how hiring is going to look over the biennium.

As I mentioned earlier, the goal is for sustainment hiring in 2028. The mayor has shifted the way that police staffing is monitored and the way it is programmed.

Usually we would be talking about how many net adds the mayor's budget adds to by way of officers.

In this particular case, what the mayor has done is established a funded FTE cap, that 1250 cap that I discussed a moment ago, and that is the amount of funding that is being added to the budget, and the mayor is simply saying manage to that funding level.

I'm describing to you what that funding level buys.

And the way it works out is that in the first couple quarters of 2027, the first two bars there, you'll see the recruits are hired at a rate of about 36 per quarter.

That's about 12 recruits per month.

And then laterals are hired about two per month.

and so to meet that 1,250 cap in 2028, the department can hire at its current level, the 36 officers or 36 recruits per quarter, it can hire at that level only for about two more months and that it needs to start reducing its hiring so that when we get to 2028, they can stay within the funded FTE level.

So we're back to talking about what the funded FTE level will buy.

And if you look at 25, 26, and 27, the hiring pace that SPD has been on, the increased hiring pace, has resulted in a lot of student officers and a lot of recruits.

Right now the department has about 50 recruits and about 150 student officers.

So a big chunk of of the department's workforce right now is officers in training.

Those officers are going to move out of the training phase in the next year or two, and as that happens, you're going to see the number of both deployable officers and fully trained officers increase.

and so the blue line here on this chart is the fully trained officers and the green line is the deployable officers.

The difference is that a fully trained officer is just what it sounds like.

A deployable officer is, that number is a little bit lower because it takes out officers that are on any kind of long-term leave.

if they're on long-term disability or military leave or any other kind of leave that is over many months, then they're taken out of the equation and what we're left with is the officers that you can actually deploy and that's that green line.

One thing that is important to note about the mayor's staffing plan is that the 1250 funding level FTE that are provided in 2027 and 2028 The staffing plan does not use all of that money in 2027. In order to staff at the rate that the mayor has identified, which is for 43 net new in 2027, the department only needs to use 1,229 funded FTE.

Its plan is to take the remainder, the difference between the 1229 FTE and the 1250 FTE, and move some of that money into the Technical Services Bureau to pay for some long-term technology costs that the department has had and has had difficulty covering those costs.

In the past, they have used sworn salary savings to pay for some of those costs so that this move is not unprecedented in any way.

It is something that the department had planned to do.

So the point being that not all of the 1250 FTE is needed in 27 and there will be some funding that will go to other things.

Talk just a minute about what those other things are.

The difference is about 4.5 million between what they need for paying sworn salaries and what they've got.

And about 2.5 million of it is going to go to that Technology Services Bureau, as I mentioned.

And the remaining 2 million is going to be an amount that is characterized as a cushion for the sworn staffing plan.

That is actually a good thing to do.

The staffing plan has had some new impacts this year around separations.

Fewer officers were leaving the force and that resulted in the department needing to slow down its hiring to stay within budget.

That's the kind of force that having some extra funding available would help to make sure that you can meet your 43 net new officers.

And so that's a bit of a cushion.

So again, this four and a half million, two and a half moved out to pay for technology items, two million staying in as a cushion for the staffing plan.

So now I'm going to go over the options that central staff has identified for you all to consider.

And we've got several options here.

The first one is the $2 million that I mentioned in 2027 that would be a cushion to the staffing plan so that it can absorb any kind of impacts around sworn hiring that aren't expected.

It's a policy option if the council wished to use that to hire new sworn officers or for any other general fund matter.

So that is an amount that could be removed.

By removing it, you're simply just sinking the salary budget for SPD to the expected needs to pay officers.

Option B is to retain current recruit hiring, an average of about 12 per month through 2028. I showed you in that earlier slide how recruit hiring currently and in the beginning of 2027 is about 12 recruits per month.

That hiring will slow down to about seven, and so seven recruits per month.

So if the council wanted to keep that recruit hiring at the same level as now, essentially just not slow hiring at the department.

Then you would pick option B and that would require an add of 792,000 in 2027. And that would add about 23 net new officers in 2027. And this is above the mayor's plan.

And then an 11.6 million add in 2028 would add 69 net new officers.

One of the things that I think is important to mention, the executive has put forth a proposal, really a paradigm shift, again, in the way that police are budgeted and managed.

And it's the case that in the past, there would be a new officer target and the department would race towards that target without worrying about how much funding it needed in the future.

Given that there's a focus on this by the executive, I have put into these options, the future requirements for funding.

If you were to take option B in 2029, the council would need to add or the mayor would need to add $22 million to the city budget.

So option C is probably what I would call the full meal deal.

Option B is the value menu.

Option B is just keeping the recruit hiring at the same.

Option C keeps everything the same.

It keeps 12 recruits per month and two laterals per month and it would keep All of that hiring the same through 2028. It would require a higher investment, 2.1 million in 2027, and that would result in 38 net new officers, and it would require 17 million in 2028, and that would add 87 new officers, and it would have ongoing costs of 29.1 million in 2028. 2029, so fairly significant costs for about 125 new officers.

As you see, there are options here, either option A, taking the money and using it for either B or C is another option, and then E is no change.

Alright, I'm gonna move along.

So, the next issue is a question.

What is the right number of police officers for Seattle?

That is something that you all discussed at length during the executive presentation, and I heard several times from many of you that you were interested in seeing a comparison for Seattle to similar sized cities that would show population crime rates, the number of sworn officers and how that worked out from a mass standpoint for officers per thousand.

And so that's what I have here in front of you.

responsive to your request.

I'll go over this at a high level.

The data here is all for 2025 because that was the last full year of reporting.

It was taken from the FBI.

The FBI requires local jurisdictions to report their crime data and data about their police departments.

and that is true of all the columns until we get to the police budget column, which is the second from the right.

That one is simply taking the data from the city budget office sites for those various cities for 2025 and then the rank spending column.

That's a column I added because I anticipated that you all would want to see something like this.

All that really does is it takes the budget and divides it by the number of officers so that you all can see what kind of investment is being made, financial investment, in those officers.

I think what this shows is, this shows obviously that depending on where you're at in the country and your budget size, there are various levels of investment in the police department.

This kind of approach, this officer to population ratio, is an easy method to compare staffing, but it's not a great method.

It's problematic for a number of different ways.

One reason is that It doesn't account for geographical differences, differences in workload, call complexity.

Say, for instance, Seattle with the downtown area being quite hilly and traffic congesting the downtown area or the fact that we are surrounded by water and have our precincts divided in half.

These kinds of obstacles can make it unique and different and difficult for Seattle to respond to 911 calls.

say versus an area or a city that's completely flat.

Transient populations, places that have a lot of tourists come in during the day, places that are hubs for working or living, and then if it's work-based, people clear out at night.

A lot of these factors can make it difficult to say that Seattle should be compared to any of these cities when it comes to determining how many police officers the city should have.

It's also difficult to look at the budget and figure out whether or not more police officers should be supported by that budget.

Most people don't understand that police officers are paid very differently depending on the part of the country they're in.

It's the case that if you're on the East Coast, and I'm going to Just pause for a second.

I can't see the time, so can someone give me a heads-up when we're getting close to 10.15?

Yeah, we'll give you.

Okay, thanks.

So if you're on the East Coast, officers are paid quite a bit less than officers on the West Coast.

Just as an example, if you look at a five-and-a-half-year officer in the City of New York, that officer makes about $122,000 as their base pay.

If you look at the same officer in Seattle, actually a little less, five years, that officer makes $155,000.

So it's because officers have such varied rates of pay that when you look at some of these East Coast cities, you'll see that they have more officers per thousand than some of the West Coast cities, and the budgets reflect higher spending on officers.

It's not a great way, it's really not a great way to compare and figure out what your officer level needs to be.

It is sort of a high-level look and a good first place to start.

So what is the right way to determine how many officers you need?

Well, the best way is to take all those things into consideration that I just talked about.

Geography, historical workload, 911 response, proactive work, all those variables and put them into a model and to figure out how many staff you need to accomplish your goals.

So what SPD did to try to do just this thing was they took their patrol staff only.

So that's only the 500 or so folks that answer to the 911 calls and are in the precincts.

And they hired a consultant to come in and look at that work group to look at all the appropriate data, 911 data, workload, all of that, and figure out how many officers are needed to reach a certain goal.

In this particular goal, the goal of the consultant was to ensure that officers only spent 60% of their time answering calls for service.

This is called the rule of 60 in policing, and it is known that if an officer, through research, that if an officer spends more than 60% of their time answering 911 calls, they become completely reactive.

They will sit in the car and wait for more calls and proactive policing pretty much stops.

But if they are under that 60% threshold, then they're more likely to get out of the car and do some proactive policing with community.

So that's the particular goal that this study was trying to achieve by looking at the data and figuring out what SPD would need to be at that 60% threshold.

And what they found was that you would need to increase SPD's patrol by about 153 officers and another 16 sergeants for a total of 169 officers.

So if you added 169 officers to the patrol force, you would have a force that is a size of about 662 officers.

I looked back in the history of staffing with SPD and what I found was, it's displayed in the table right below, that SPD was at that staffing level in 2019. You see that here in the table it said 2020, That's what I would consider to be the peak of SPD staffing, at least in the last 20 years.

There were the 668 folks assigned to 911 response and a total of 694. Now, August of 2026, there's 485 patrol and a total of 498 assigned to all functions at the precincts.

So one way to think about the results of the study, if SPD got back to its prior staffing rates before the 350 folks left after the pandemic, then you would be at a 60% work hold threshold, which achieves the goal of this study.

But what is important about that study is that it had some limitations.

It was assuming a same state.

It was assuming that 911 call metrics and other police metrics were roughly held constant.

If the department wants to improve its response time, then it needs to use a different model.

It needs to use a model that can, a statistical model, that where they can plug in a desired response time and I'm gonna say like six minutes as a desired response time or five minutes as a desired response time and then the model will come back and tell SPD this how many officers you need to get to this particular metric and they are running that study right now.

They have taken this consultant study and they're building on it with their own study and trying to figure out what the ideal 911 response time would be and how many officers they would need to meet it.

The other thing that they're doing that is important to mention right now with this work is to figure out how alternative policing will play into the equation.

Given that many of the Priority 2 response calls could potentially be answered if they are nonviolent and noncriminal by our care department, if it is folks that need behavioral or mental health services, That's another thing to take into account when you're figuring out how many officers you need.

So SPD is currently looking at this, trying to figure out how many officers they would recommend, and they expect to finish this study by the end of the year.

So the next thing I want to talk about when talking about the right number of police officers for Seattle is the second part of the Rule of 60. We talked about the first part, that officers need to spend less than 60% of their...

They can't spend more than 60% of their time answering 911 calls.

The second part of that equation is that the entire sworn force should have 60% of the officers doing patrol functions, responding to 911 calls, or doing proactive work out in the community.

And so, if that is a goal that SPD seeks, they are historically behind on that one.

They typically have fewer than 50% of their officers assigned to a precinct.

Now, Seattle, as some caveats here, has some particular needs.

Seattle has a harbor patrol.

Many cities don't have harbor patrol.

The various needs of Seattle may dictate that we have fewer than 60% of our officers on our patrol force.

But if we're following the national guidelines, you would want to see close to 60%.

This particular table here shows how officers are distributed throughout the department.

And in the appendix, there's actually a historical table that shows how they have been distributed over the last many years.

So you can go back and you can look.

What I would point out here is that you have about 43% of the force right now on 911 response in the precincts.

That number will go to 50 if all of the student officers, there's about 150 of them, those officers are in operation support.

and if those student officers graduate and they get put in the patrol force and SPD doesn't move anybody out of the patrol force, they just let it build, then we're going to be closer to the 60%.

We're going to be more 50 to 57% and closer to that guideline.

The reason I bring it up is that it's important that officers aren't moved out of patrol as the new officers are moved in.

and so that's gonna get to a couple options for this particular issue.

The first is option A and that is a statement of legislative intent that would encourage SPD to do pretty much just what I said.

Use the new officers to enhance or supplement patrol only for the purpose of reducing 911 response times and increasing capacity to answer 911 calls.

The other thing, The slide I could request is that the department focus on adding more bike and proactive units to work crime hotspots, such as Third and Pike, Pine, Downtown, 12th and Jackson.

Important to note here, this is a request from the council.

The charter provides the police chief with specific powers, and it is not the council's ability to proviso or in any way dictate, but the council could say, it is our intent, we are making a statement that we want you to keep these officers that are coming out of training into patrol and don't don't move other officers out.

The second thing that is an option here is a statement of legislative intent that would request an analysis of the deployment of officers outside of patrol functions.

So, as I have been discussing, SPD has taken some time to get a consultant study done on patrol staffing, and now they're doing their own work.

And that's all on patrol, and that'll be very helpful when they identify the target response times and the other metrics they want to meet.

But what they're not doing is looking at the rest of the officers that are in investigative units or specialty units and determining whether or not we have enough officers in those units.

and so one potential option for the council is to have a slide that requires them to look at that and report back.

So, moving along, policy consideration number three is reductions that are made to the recruitment and retention budget.

As this slide says, there is $2.4 million and $3.5 million cut from SPD's budget.

That does a couple of things.

The first thing it does is it eliminates the hiring bonuses, which were $7,500 for recruits, 50,000 for laterals, and it's important to note that that program has already been discontinued.

It was discontinued by the chief in July, and it is the case that the city is no longer offering those incentives.

There's also about a $2 million cut in there for the media and marketing campaign.

It is the determination of the executive that These things are no longer needed to attract officers to the City of Seattle because it is the case that the newest contracts that made Seattle Police Department pay the highest in the state and upper ranking in the West Coast 7, that that will be enough to attract officers.

It's difficult to know at this point in time whether or not There's going to be a big change.

It's just been a month or two, so the data are not really picking up a change yet.

But what we can see is how surveys of officers have highlighted the importance of the hiring incentive or the advertising.

Surveys of officers have shown that fewer than 15% of them learned about opportunities at SPD or the hiring incentive from traditional media or social media.

The large majority of officers read or hear about the opportunities at SPD actually on SPD's website and through other means.

The data around officers on bonuses is a little bit higher.

There you have about 60 to 64% of entry level officers saying that the bonus was something that factored into their decision.

In February of 24, the Seattle Office of Innovation and Performance published a formal evaluation of the hiring bonuses, and what they found was that it was similar to what I just said with the survey.

They found that it was a factor, but that on average, incentive pay ranked below salary and benefits.

So that is more consistent with what the executive has been saying.

So, the particular options in this policy area are restore the media and marketing funding for $2 million in 2027 and $2 million in 2028. Should this not be taken, there is still a very small amount of $82,000 available to the department to do some advertising with.

Obviously, that's Nothing by comparison of scale.

And they will continue to do social media posts, posts on the webpage.

So they're not gonna stop everything altogether, but obviously the $2 million in 27 and 28 will greatly impact their ability to use outside advertising firms.

Option B is to restore the hiring incentive for laterals and recruits through 2028. That option would cost $955,000 in 2027 and $2 million in 2028. It is the case that it would make more sense to restore the hiring incentives for laterals and recruits if the council chose to continued to expand this force with either option B or C that I talked about when I'm talking about staffing.

It is the case that you're going to pay hiring bonuses to people that are planning to come to the Seattle Police Department force anyway.

It's the idea that you're trying to add incrementally, so this should theoretically work in conjunction with your options for staffing that I mentioned.

The second payment of the hiring bonus, the hiring bonus is broken into two payments.

Officers get one payment when they sign and they get another payment about a year later.

The second payment of that hiring bonus will create ongoing costs or not ongoing costs, a one-time cost of $1.4 million in the 2029-2030 buy-in.

and option C is restoring the incentive for laterals only.

So this is just the $50,000.

This one would pay for laterals coming in in the next two years with the hope that you would increase beyond the current staffing plan back to that current level of hiring which is two per month and if the council were to do that it would cost $550,000 in 2027 and $1.1 million in 2028. The total cost of that again is about $1.4 million in 2029.

And then Greg, sorry, I was waiting for you to say, D, no change.

Thank you, D, no change.

No change is there.

And I'm just, I'm going to give you a quick pause.

It's 10, 12 a.m.

So we've got a couple new participants in council chambers today at 10, 15. We are going to have an earthquake drill.

Yes, we did have an earthquake in chambers two weeks ago.

And no, we did not do it correctly.

So we are going to take it seriously today.

and for the news cameras that have come in, the most dangerous places in this room are going to be near glass.

So that was something that we didn't consider last week when we had a real earthquake.

I have a particular, we're just gonna kind of talk for a second.

I have a particular interest in having more light in this room, which is why I always ask for the back doors to be open.

And if there was an earthquake, the safest place in this room is going to be right underneath those ledges and to close those doors because the hazards in this room are going to be the can lights that are hung to the ceilings, the glass, the speaker that is hanging right above our desks, these flags, and anything that can fall or break.

So just as we're thinking through this, I haven't gone through this conversation as in-depth in past years, but we did fail at our response to an earthquake two weeks ago.

So that's why I'm kind of talking it through a little bit more.

We will hear an announcement.

We'll all go under our desks, or if you're in the public, find a safe place away from glass.

and I think that's about it.

We had council president Hollingsworth and council member Lynn join us at about slide two and we have council member Saka with us as well.

So we do have a full council with us.

When the earthquake drill goes into place, we will be at ease, which means that you can't leave.

and if you can just cut the microphone so that you're not catching all the drill noise coming through the speakers of our City Hall.

With that, Greg, you're making good time.

We're on slide 14 of 26 and just about to get into parking enforcement officers after this earthquake drill.

I guess now this is the awkward pause.

Councilmember Lin.

Just how long does the drill typically last?

Do you have any idea?

I think about three minutes.

Three minutes, okay.

I think our chamber clocks are a little fast, because last year when I said 10-15.

Yeah, it beeps at us.

So we will be at ease until the earthquake drill is over, and we'll be right back.

Well, thank you.

We are back out of ease.

I will say we did much better with the drill than we did with the actual earthquake two weeks ago.

So with that, I am gonna bring us right back to central staff analyst, Greg Doss, to continue walking us through the central staff analysis of the Seattle Police Department budget.

We have left off on page, 13, sorry, not 14, but 13 fourth policy consideration parking enforcement officers.

Back to you, Greg.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Moving along, parking enforcement officers.

As this committee has discussed in the past, SPD has about 18 long-term vacancies in this group.

The proposed budget cuts about half of these vacancies, the positions and the dollars.

and it leaves remaining the other half, which SPD says that they are going to fill.

They expect to fill these by the first quarter, although slight disclaimer, they have said that in prior years and it has not happened.

They've had some trouble hiring for these positions and they talked a bit about it during the executive presentation.

They are hoping that A recent contract settlement with the guild that represents parking enforcement officers and a pay increase there will help with this hiring issue.

Director Eder also talked about some potential solutions around backgrounding and putting more folks into backgrounding that they might expect out, some various kinds of operational adjustments that might increase the number of folks that they can get onto this group.

Unfortunately, they have a disincentive to make these hires.

It is the case that they have a rather significant civilian vacancy rate cut, and what that means is that the City Budget Office expects that there are going to be a certain amount of vacancies over the year for SPD, and so the City Budget Office has cut some of the salary that would be used to pay the civilian members of SPD.

And so what this does is it puts SPD in a position where if the natural vacancies throughout the year are not allowing them to meet the cut, they will have to hold some positions vacant purposefully to meet this cut.

And that is something that they have done with this group of PEOs in the past.

Unfortunately, they have an incentive to leave these positions vacant and to use the salary dollars to meet their cut targets.

That's a good thing for SPD, but it's not a good thing for the city.

As I have mentioned in the past, a typical PEO will cost about $115,000 of salary and benefits, and they bring in about $200,000 in revenue when they are enforcing the right-of-way.

Of course, this isn't about money.

This is about proper enforcement of the right-of-way and other activities that PEOs do.

So I asked the department if they had ever, or if they had performed what's called a violation capture rate study.

Are there more opportunities to enforce the right-of-way than our PEOs are currently using at their existing staff levels?

They have not done such a study, so I got data on the number of citations and the number of PEOs Pre-pandemic, as you see in this table, you'll see 2018 and 2019, where the number of PEOs were staffed at a higher level, 92 or 95. And there you see that the citation count, the highest was 448,000 citations.

and then you see post pandemic, 23 and 24, you have the lower count of PEOs around 77 and the high water mark there is 363,000.

So obviously there are violations that are not being captured because our PEO force is not fully staffed.

And so there is an opportunity to enforce the right of way better.

Probably as importantly is that this group of folks now under the most recent SPAWG contract has the ability to do some traffic control and some event work and can come in and take the place of what had previously been posted or staffed by a sworn officer.

So if we had more PEOs, we could deploy them to more events and take stress off of the police department to have to staff some non-safety oriented positions, some traffic control, things like that.

What we're seeing here is that there is an opportunity to better enforce the right of way, there's an opportunity to bolster events with PEOs, but the PEOs have to be hired.

So, to the policy options.

In the last couple of years, I've provided the council various policy options.

The council has added two FTEs to the training unit to try to alleviate the department's worry that they're going to hire too many PEOs and wind up overstaffed.

The council added last year $2 million and restricted it by proviso and said, SPD, if you hire these positions, then we know they'll create revenue and we'll release this proviso so it pays for their positions.

You don't have to worry about the vacancy cut.

They did not do that.

So this year...

All I'm recommending is adopting a statement of legislative intent that asks them to report by.

They obviously have not filled the training positions.

They did not fill them last year.

So this is really in the executive's hands.

So the next issue is civilian staffing in the real-time crime center.

The original ad for the Realtime Crime Center civilian staff was for 21 positions in total.

12 of these positions have been hired and are currently staffing the RTCC.

They are staffing it between 8 o'clock in the morning and 3 o'clock in the afternoon.

The executive has said that they intend to add six more positions to the 12 to bring it to a total staff of 18. And that would allow the center to be staffed 24-7 and respond to anything that happens throughout the day or week, any time.

There are three positions that were supposed to be added in the 2027 budget that are defunded and not planned to be added.

Those positions, the executive had said, are not necessary at this time, that they would become necessary if any of that existing 18 staff started to use long-term leave, or there was a vacancy problem there, or if the number of cameras expanded in the city, then there would be a need potentially to hire those additional three staffers.

So acknowledging that, the executive has left those positions in the budget.

They're unfunded.

The council could next year, if there is a need, add funding to a supplemental budget, and then SPD could hire those positions.

But as of right now, they say that it's unnecessary.

It is the case, I think, that this council is well aware of that the mayor has put some activation of cameras, particularly around Garfield and Capitol Hill, on hold.

And that the activation of those cameras is pending a couple evaluations that will be done on privacy protections and technology protections to make sure that cameras are not creating any risk from a privacy rights standpoint.

If that study comes back and the mayor decides to activate those cameras, if the mayor decides to expand the cameras, then that might be a time to add back the three, or the council could choose to add back those three now, expecting that those things will happen.

So that's essentially the options that I have for you, restoring the three FTE, restoring funding for the three FTE, would be about 511,027, the same amount in 28, and roughly the same amount in 29. Those amounts would go up by inflators, COLA inflation, et cetera, but we don't know what those are right now, so I'm just holding them constant.

So the next item, gonna be relatively short, is civilian positions in the Criminal Investigations Bureau.

In this particular issue, back in 2025 and 2026, there were 14 civilian positions that were added to this bureau, seven in 2025 and seven in 2026 to assist detectives with various kinds of investigations.

These civilians could either be prior sworn individuals, detectives who are, say, coming back from retirement, and that indeed is the way that SPD has been using this group.

Or they could be civilians that come in and assist with getting information for detectives to help the throughput on cases.

Whether that information be from criminal histories or from the court, they could serve in a support function to help detectives clear cases.

It is the case that seven of these positions were hired, former detectives largely, in 2025, and the other seven have been on hold through 2026 due to budget reasons.

SPD has cut in the, or I'm sorry, the mayor has cut in the proposed budget the other seven positions altogether.

As part of my analysis of the budget, I have asked the executive for workload indicators for this unit, particularly whether or not there's a backlog of any cases that might be better addressed through more staffing, and I am currently in the process of working with them on this issue, and I'm going to have to report back to you on it.

All right, the next issue is the diversity, equity, and inclusion DEI position and the 30 by 30 positions.

It is the case that, as the slide says, The executive has eliminated a DEI position and funding that was added last year.

That amounts to $207,000.

And the executive has also eliminated a position that would have been dedicated to the 30 by 30 work program.

The council is fairly familiar with the 30 by 30 position.

It was the council that added the unfunded position last year and added a proviso that would have restricted SPD's budget so that they had to pay for it.

And it is the case that SPD has not hired it and the money that was dedicated via proviso will just lapse into the general fund this year and be used to support the budget next year.

talk a little bit about the 30 by 30 program.

Here on this slide, SPD has made some progress in advancing some of the initiatives that they identified for that program to include childcare, advertising, changing the way it teaches defense tactics, equips women, and providing facilities for new mothers.

You may remember these are things that they had accomplished before last year.

Things that they were aiming to accomplish last year was the establishment of a mentorship program, identifying flexible shift options, or a professional development program.

Those things have not occurred this year.

I have included in the issue paper a table that goes goal by goal for the 30 by 30 program, and council members are welcome to go to that table and see what has been accomplished in the last year.

I think SBD acknowledges that the department and the 30 by 30 work group continue to work on these areas, They're difficult and complex undertaking, and particularly for the sworn on the group that have full-time jobs.

So I think the council recognized this last year and added a position.

This is something that they feel like they can do with their existing HR staff in support of this work group.

And that is also the case for the DEI position.

They feel that their existing HR staff can manage the DEI responsibilities for the department.

I have asked specifically who in the HR department and how many positions would be dedicated to this DEI function and what I was told was that there is one civilian and one sworn person working on these tasks.

The civilian also supports the CSO group, community engagement event planning and the before the badge program.

so obviously that person would be stretched.

So my options for you here, similar to prior options, add back the one FTE and the 207,000 for the DEI position, add one FTE and 207,000 for a 30 by 30 position or no change.

What's important to recognize here is that there is past practice of not hiring for these positions, and the executive is within their right to do that.

The council could add a proviso that restricts the funding, but the executive could not hire for these positions again and let the funding lapse.

So that's a consideration when looking at these options.

And the last issue is overtime.

This is always an issue, so I just saved it for the last.

SPD is budgeted for 473,000 hours of overtime in the next two years of the biennium, and you'll see that in this bar chart.

In the 2027 proposed, there's 473,000 hours.

and this year there were 473,000 hours of budget.

What we know is that over the last three years, SPD has been consistently spending about 500,000 hours of overtime.

That in the 2025 budget, they exceeded the 500 or the budget Spent 504 and there was a deficit of about 1.6 million and they were able to In that year they were able to address that deficit within their own budget They had enough vacancy savings salary savings both sworn and civilian that they could they could address that budget without additional appropriation authority That is not the case for this year, for 2026. This year, they are not able to absorb what will be a $2.1 million deficit forecast at the end of the year.

And so, I will talk about in a moment a request that they will make in the fourth quarter supplemental for $2.1 million for overtime.

that would essentially sink the hours that they've used with a higher level of budget, about 500,000 hours.

Should the same pattern happen, the way it's happened in the last two years, next year, we'd be looking at, the council would be looking at another $2 million deficit.

and I think given an analysis of SPD's budget, the vacancy rate cut that I talked about a little while ago and the tightness of the sworn staffing plan, I would expect that there would be a similar outcome that SPD would need to come back at the end of next year and ask for at least $2 million.

Unless something changes, unless overtime use is somehow reduced down to 473,000 hours.

So the option for overtime is proactively add 2.1 million for overtime to the 2027 budget.

That is something that the council could do or no change and see if SPD is able to reduce its overtime spending rather than coming back at the end of next year.

So the last thing I'm going to talk about is not an issue, but more of something to be aware of.

And I've been headed this way.

SPD is not going to be able to finish the year within its current appropriation levels.

So the year-end supplemental budget, which is transmitted along with the other budget materials, contains three items to help them meet their budgets.

The first one we just talked about, a supplemental appropriation for overtime.

The second one is a release of that $2.1 million proviso for PEOs.

So I mentioned earlier that the council added a a chunk of money and then built walls around it, restricted it and said you can have this money if you hire the PEOs and we know they're making revenue and then that'll essentially back the revenue.

They didn't hire the PEOs but they want the money anyway and they want it for balancing purposes.

There are a number of things that they would use it on.

The majority of things are technical service items that they say that they don't have funding to pay for, things like a Tableau server renewal or the ALPR costs, various technology items that they have said have lacked dedicated funding and in the past have been covered with salary savings.

and the last item is I'm calling it an item.

There's a number of things, six or so items in the supplemental budget where they're just asking for more authority to cover unexpected costs.

Those things add up to about 1.8 million and you'll see on the slide here It's everything from $634,000 for chief barn separation costs to $125,000 for design of a new evidence freezer.

These are the kinds of small items.

I say small because remembering that SPD is a $55 million budget.

or $550 million budget.

These are the kind of small items that SPD hasn't in the past come forward and asked for funding for.

I think the fact that they're coming and asking for funding for these things now is indicative of their budget being very tightly controlled through vacancy and salary saving cuts.

and I think that you see the same thing with the mayor moving some of that salary funding from the 1,250 FTE, moving some salary funding out to pay for technology items there.

The budget is under stress and they are at the point where they can't absorb some of these costs anymore.

And that is the end of my presentation.

Thank you Greg, 26 slides in 60 minutes, which is incredible.

Thank you for that very in-depth presentation.

Colleagues, there are a number of different policy considerations here, so I am gonna open it up to the floor in the usual manner.

I would appreciate if everyone takes one opportunity to speak, get through all of your issues in one go.

Granted, if you forget something, I'm not...

We will allow for additional comment, but my request here today is I'll give you the floor once and if you can just take that floor because there's a lot of content.

With that, I will recognize Council Member Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing this department to open and close.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate it.

Mr. Doss, thank you for the briefing.

Mr. Whitson, thank you for being here as well.

Colleagues, it's probably safe to say that public safety is the area of greatest contrast with the mayor and the administration in terms of policy and budget and everything else, as opposed to other policy areas.

And I think that's important to note.

And I've said before, too, from a budgetary process, I appreciate what the mayor's been doing in terms of practices within that realm.

and this shows up in many ways across the board and so I appreciate the work that CBO's been doing on that front.

Now that said, related to public safety, there is some major challenges and when I say public safety, primarily with the nine entities that report to my community but also in other areas as we saw with the unified care team.

Colleagues, in the last term of the council we passed 36 bills on public safety and Ten this year, too.

Seven federal law enforcement.

We had two related to care and public drug use and possession that the mayor signed this summer.

And obviously in highlighting the contrast, we had the resolution related to gun violence in September, which passed 7-0 with two abstentions.

And that shows it.

and our strategic framework plan for Safer Seattle and Committee is really the framework that drives what we're doing on public safety over these years across the council's terms but also administrations and key to that plan is the element of SPD staffing.

Can you have slide three up please?

We took a massive hit post the pandemic and so forth in terms of our staffing.

It changed the entire dynamic that we had related to that.

But we came in and out of those 36 bills, a number of them were related to SPD staffing.

and, might I add, the leadership that the Council's shown during that time period and continues to show.

I've talked to many officers, they said that, yes, we can talk about salaries and all these, you know, incentives and so forth, but I've talked to officers and a key piece is the leadership that we've shown.

The fact that we go to the precincts, we talk to the officers, we hear their concerns, we understand what they're going through.

That is also a key factor in terms of the major jump that we saw in terms of SPD hiring and improving our numbers.

During this entire period, our goal was a minimum 1,400 and 1,400 plus.

And you could argue based on pure cities and so forth, 1,600 would be the more appropriate number.

But for budgetary considerations, which makes total sense, you know, like last year, 1,184 was the number for a budgetary.

But the goal for the year, as I said many times, was 1,258.

1258 in terms of maintaining momentum to improve our staffing of SPD to get to that 1400 plus number.

But what we've seen now with the 1250 number is that it's not just a budget number, but the number that the administration is basically going for.

And we see this in the hiring plan, the numbers that Mr. Doss shows in terms of basically zeroing out.

as I think we see that right there at the bottom of that table.

We see this in terms of, you know, taking away the incentives, and I had no issue related to changing the incentives.

I think we should look at it, and the lateral transfers is that one area, because if we, particularly Washington State officer, if we were to have a lateral transfer, and that kind of pays for itself in a lot of ways.

but also, you know, heard from essentially what I would consider a whistleblower, talking about, hey, we can't do, on the HR front, we can't do college fairs, job fairs anymore.

Hey, we can't do this and that as it relates to the HR process to speed along what was being done in terms of trying to onboard these recruits that we've been getting, the massive increase that we had.

And there's little things like that that show that the 1,400 plus number's been abandoned.

and that's a problem because at the end of the day, if we want to really tackle our challenges, our chronic public safety challenges, each time we have a public safety challenge, North Aurora, Little Saigon, doesn't matter, everywhere, okay, 90 days, or we're gonna get more bike cops, or we're gonna get more bike cops, or we're gonna get more bike cops.

You can't keep adding more bike cops unless you raise the number of officers that we had to get to that 1400 plus number.

So when you hear that, it's a bit of an empty promise.

It's an empty kind of statement if it's not backed up with what we're doing on SPD staffing.

And by the way, we do have that singular strategic framework plan that guides us.

I think a singular plan on the executive side would also assist in this.

So up to this point, 1184-1250 was us taking off from SeaTac, SEA.

and climbing up to that 1400 number, but we're in a different place now.

It's as if we turn around and we're landing, but we're below glide slope because that 1250 number is not a 1250 number.

That number, as I think highlighted in the briefing, and I'll ask Mr. Doss, is like 11, you know, in my charts here that I have, or numbers of, you know, 27, maybe 1,088 fully trained officers, maybe in 28, 1151 trained officers.

We're like GlideSlope.

And with those numbers, we're gonna land short of the runway at SCA, at SeaTac.

and this is going to have dramatic impacts in terms of trying to adjust the issues that we have in North Aurora in District 5, over in West Seattle in District 1, you know, Little Saigon, North Beacon Hill in District 2. So we can look away from this, but I think it's important to highlight because at the end of the day, this is an unfunding of public safety, as opposed to what we had a half decade ago with the defund moment.

Basically, it's a conscious unfunding of what we're seeing here related to public safety.

And that's gonna have major impacts, colleagues.

Mr. Doss, can you speak?

I think you've pretty much addressed this, but in your council memo, great briefing, thank you very much, and also in the council memo, on page seven, it says, you know, figure four shows that without funding for additional net new hire, sworn staff will eventually plateau at 1174 fully trained officers and 1125 deployable ones.

Can you speak to that?

Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chair.

So, uh, as I mentioned, uh, the There's a bit of a paradigm shift going on with sworn staffing and budgeting, and as this chart indicates, these projections here, both in fully trained officers and deployable officers are what can be purchased for with the 1250, 1250 FTE.

And what you see with continued funding at 1250 is sort of the plateau in the last three years, 28 through 30, where you have 1174 trained officers and 1125 deployable officers.

Again, the reason we're not talking about $1,250 is because that is not a count of officers.

That is funding, and that is funding that includes money for recruits.

So when the budget is rolled out on a Tuesday after our meeting, public safety committee meeting that morning, and it's announced 1250, we're increasing.

There's a certain impression that is made, but as seen in this briefing and what you just said, 1250 is not 1250 in terms of on the ground helping us, helping our neighborhoods, helping our neighbors.

It's more of a, as used, it's more of a PR number, I would say.

It's not in terms of on the ground impact for public safety.

Another area is overtime, and thank you for speaking to that.

I believe in looking at this and in my conversations with different people, overtime impacts policing decisions.

I think we saw it in the bite of Seattle, in fact.

And how does this play in terms of the ability for the department to really affect its policing?

You know, you talk about, you know, the officer shortage, you know, that kind of interplay between, you know, the staffing and then the overtime use.

And we'll see this in fire as well.

Yeah.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

The overtime is obviously used at a department-wide level for everything under the sun you can think of, you know, whether it be a criminal investigation or extra hours tacked onto the end of a shift for an officer to take someone to the hospital or take someone to jail or fill out paperwork.

Overtime is used in a variety of different ways.

What I can say is that there are four big categories of overtime, and by far the two largest categories of overtime are use for events, which is typically the largest overtime category, and use for patrol augmentation, and so patrol augmentation is when a supervisor, a sergeant in a precinct knows the number of officers that are coming in for a given day are going to be too few to respond to 911 calls and to provide service.

They will bring in on overtime extra officers to help.

That is something that is done every single day in every single precinct at the current staffing level.

That is another big item.

At a lesser level, training is always a big item for SPD.

It's the case that officers need to be brought in on overtime to do their training because otherwise you're taking them off the street or out of doing criminal investigations or out of doing other work.

If you put them on overtime when they're doing their training, it doesn't impact workload.

And so that's always a big one.

And then the last one is just criminal investigations.

You see, a large amount of overtime used there for things like responding to violent crime, shooting, detectives going out and responding to scenes.

That obviously happening after hours and happening on overtime.

So those are sort of the four big areas that overtime's used.

In terms of pulling policy levers with events, talked a little bit about PEOs.

with augmentation, talked about adding officers to patrol and ensuring that patrol is supplemented.

Those things would help alleviate some overtime use.

Would they solve an overtime problem if we're talking about the budget to spending?

It's hard to know.

As you add more officers, an officer will need, as I say, some overtime to extend their shift.

So adding officers is not a panacea for reducing overtime.

It does help.

Hopefully I've addressed in that response your question.

Thank you.

And you highlight the events piece.

That goes to my point about BIDA Seattle and the need, by the way, for us and working with the executive to work a plan relating to major venues and major events.

This goes to gun violence but across the board.

We need to have a comprehensive approach to that and I'm looking to work with the executive on that.

Speaking of overtime, real-time crime center.

What's happened to real-time crime centers is so unfortunate because the real-time crime center helps our officers be better officers and do policing better.

But we've undermined that.

You know, the budget law from last year said those positions should have been filled.

They weren't.

And now we're, oh, we're going to cut the three, but we can go 24-7.

Mr. Doss, you said they say, they say, well, first, by the way, you said defund.

Again, this is another unfund element here that we have going on.

They say, they say from the executive, oh, we can go 24-7.

Well, the they say that I've spoken to says that, yeah, we can go 24-7, funny enough, if we use overtime.

This is just like fire and what we've seen in other areas.

So the ability to go 24-7 properly in the real-time crime center, they say, is going to require overtime.

And so this is ironic.

given how we're trying to move away from overtime and the issues of overtime and cut overtime, excuse me, unfund overtime.

And this is problematic.

And colleagues, it's really unfortunate that we haven't stood up properly our real-time crime center because it does lead to better policing and more effective policing and helps across the board.

And in partnership like with the Criminal Investigation Bureau can help us address gun violence.

But here we are, again with the unfund.

I'm going to just share, I'm just going to end on two things.

One, parking enforcement officers.

When Chief Sales was here, I told him, I go, you're my fourth police chief.

I'm only not even three years in, you're my fourth police chief.

And to be frank, the police chiefs, partly for the reasoning that you highlighted, haven't really cared about parking enforcement.

The leadership piece related to park enforcement has been lacking and for those different dynamics.

And this is another unfortunate thing from a budget perspective, as you said, the anticipation of what each parking enforcement officer would bring in.

but it's really important because, you know, if they're out there doing their job, it's kind of like getting the clean, you know, the SDOT sweeping the roads and, you know, it's about government doing the basics, which is what the people of Seattle want.

And actually, if they were given parking tickets or, you know, you didn't have updated tabs, that would view that city government's working.

But this is another area where it kind of shows that it's not.

And here's the sad thing is, last night, I'm at a community event related to Portal Park in Belltown.

and a young man comes up to me afterwards, talking about different things, and he says, you know, I tried to become a parking enforcement officer, and he struck me as a, you know, squared away person, but he didn't want to carry a gun, he wasn't, he didn't want to do that, but he wanted to contribute to our public safety element.

He goes, oh, maybe I could be a parking enforcement officer, which helps not just what I'm talking about, but also, as you noted, Mr. Doss, helping out the force to alleviate some of the, you know, the pressures that they feel.

and they told him basically, go home.

So I've asked that individual to send me an email and I'm gonna forward it to the executive and say, explain this to me, particularly given what we have in terms of the numbers of parking enforcement officers.

We have an individual who I've seen in multiple Belltown community events, squared away, smart guy, kinda quiet, but he's looking to help our city and he's told to go away and I'm just like, These are the things that we need to address, and your briefing kind of highlights that.

So colleagues, there's other areas, but I know my colleagues want to speak to DEI 30 by 30 and some of these other issues, Chair, but I just want to reiterate, when we came in 24, we changed things around.

The number of officers, number of applicants, you know, the candidates are increasing our SBD staffing was taken off.

Budgetary number wise, we're using 1184 with goals of 1258 and route to 1400 plus.

But now with this new bill, we're not taking off anymore.

We're landing and as the briefing shows, the 1250 numbers, not the 1250 number, we're gonna land short.

And that crash landing is gonna impact our public safety posture and it's unfortunate.

but here we are.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

To the committee table, anything to share at this time?

I just wanted to say, I apologize if I use the word defund.

And I also need to apologize when I say that CBO is making cuts.

These are policy decisions that are made by the executive.

CBO just implements the cuts.

So being a former CBO-er, I tend to think that way.

But I want to be clear, that is not the budget office's function.

and I agree, that's how I started off, so I just wanted to make that point.

Thank you.

That's why we really like Director Ali Panucci.

With that, colleagues, any other questions?

I see no other hands.

Maybe that's the end.

We'll be going to lunch.

If no further, oh.

Vice Chair Rivera, I see your hand.

Colleagues, if you do wanna speak, just throw your hands up now so we know what we're working with.

Thank you.

Over to you, Vice Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Greg, for your really thorough presentation.

I really always appreciate your thoughtfulness and, you know, I really appreciate your objectivity also.

It's really important to look at this, you know, in this objective manner, I believe, when you're presenting the information.

And I too understand that CBO having, I didn't work at CBO, but I've worked alongside CBO for many, many years.

I understand that these decisions are the executive's decisions.

just like central staff help support council and our decisions are ours, not central staff.

So we really appreciate having really smart, thoughtful people that help us do the work that we do.

We can't do the work with either CBO or central staff.

So I just wanna thank you publicly for all the work that CBO and central staff does in general for the city of Seattle.

OK, at a rock concert, I remember.

Thank you.

So I just wanted to make a few notes here.

First off, it's really concerning.

And again, I was in the mayor's office in 2020, and we all lived through 2020 together, no matter where you were in the city.

but the idea that this budget is getting capped at a certain amount so that 10 years later from 2020 to 2030 what we will be going from deployable officers, 1281 from in 2019 and then the most in 2030 would be 1125. So that in 10 years we haven't recouped the number of officers though we've added at least 75 1,000 more people to the city.

So I just think that's of concern because when folks, when constituents call us and they, you know, tell us, you know, we call 911, they didn't show up, and we just don't have the level of officers to be able to address our constituents' concerns writ large across the board.

So I'm not saying anything new.

I know many of us have expressed that, but it is a huge issue and one that we should be robustly addressing.

So I think we need to be more aggressive and in the hiring and retaining of our officers and not capping ourselves.

If we have the ability to staff up quicker, then we should do that because we just don't have the our response times are not what they should be.

So that is of concern.

And I feel like This administration is not listening to constituents.

They're not listening to the inability to do proper response, 911 response times on the SVD side.

We're going to talk about fire after this, I know.

So that's of concern as well.

And that is of concern to me.

We should all be on the same page.

We need to be able to respond to our constituents.

when they call 911 and we're not able to do so today.

So it's unfortunate that the staffing level has been capped so that we can't continue the level of hiring that we have seen in the last couple of years to get us back to whatever that number is.

And I understand we don't know today what the proper number is.

We're not anywhere near whatever that number possibly could be.

So I think that regardless of what that ultimate number is, we know we're not where we were pre-COVID, so we know we're not where we need to be.

And so, like I said, I am concerned that we're not giving this the level of priority or that this budget doesn't reflect the level of priority we should be giving to this.

So I'll just say that.

In terms of the PEOs, I'll also say that I'm concerned that they haven't been hired.

We did put a proviso in place last year because we want these positions hired.

We're not able to do the work if we don't have the positions hired.

And the PEOs are an important part of the service that we provide in the city.

And then I'll also mention, because it hasn't been mentioned, is that they also help respond and they work with the UCT team to ensure that we're addressing RVs across the city as well.

And so these are positions that could be helping with work and they're not because they're not being hired.

And that's why the proviso was important.

And I'm disappointed to hear that even provisoing the money did not incentivize the hiring of these positions that we obviously need.

In terms of the civilian investigators, I'm concerned and I have a question, two questions, Greg.

One is, were they not filled, those second seven not filled because of a hiring freeze or what was the reason why those, we put in for 14, seven and 25, seven and 26, the 25 got hired, 26 didn't.

that we're in 26, so I'm just wondering why we didn't hire those seven civilian positions.

Given that we are currently investigating some serious crimes like in the Bay to Seattle that we haven't arrested folks for or that folks are still outstanding somewhere, why wouldn't we have prioritized the hiring of these civilian?

And I might add civilian positions which are important to this work, I presume.

I think what we know, we've heard Director Panucci talk about, is that when the mayor came in and began assessing the fiscal situation, there was a hiring freeze put in place, and we know that SPD's civilian positions, these seven, and also the PEOs, and also the the RTCC positions, so sort of all went on hold.

Whether or not that was a result of a hiring freeze, I don't know specifically.

That's something that I would have to ask, and I will, and I'll follow up with you.

Thank you, Greg.

Really appreciate that.

And then also would like to know how the- how removal of these seven positions will impact closure rates at SVD, investigation closure rates?

I think that's an important piece to note because at the end of the day, we're not hiring people just to hire people.

We're hiring people because we need this work done.

And on the investigating of crimes piece, you know, folks need, they need closure.

Folks need to, we need to, folks, excuse me, we need to hold folks accountable.

We can't do any of those things if we don't have investigators to investigate these cases.

So this is really important.

And Again, it's just, you didn't say defund.

I'm feeling a little bit like we're going backwards here toward 2020. And that's not where we want to be.

We've made some really great progress in the last couple years.

We need to continue the momentum, not stall and not go backwards.

So I'm feeling a little bit like we don't need, if we don't want to call it defunding, I understand, but it's a deprioritizing.

it's just a de-prioritizing and that is of concern, it's of concern to our constituents because again we're the ones getting the calls when constituents call 911 and they don't get service they call us council and then we have to request to the executive You know, our constituents are feeling like they're calling 911 and they're not showing up.

Folks don't just call 911 for fun.

They need assistance.

And so we're not able to provide that service.

It's a huge concern.

So anyway, then when something does happen, we need to be able to investigate those crimes.

So those closure rates, I'd love to know, Greg, I don't expect you to know that today, but I think it is important to note in the context of this proposed a cut to those civilian investigator positions.

On the Real Time Crime Center, I know my colleague, Public Safety Chair Kettle, already spoke about the importance of being able to have this service run 24-7.

So I'm not going to add to what he said.

I agree with my colleague.

I notice on the data analysis side, there's one FTE reduction.

What are current wait times for criminal data and criminal trend analysis?

Because I believe that's what this position was doing.

Again, this goes along with the civilian investigators.

This is important information that we need, criminal data and criminal trend analysis.

And then I'll just note, and this, you know, it goes along with a number of officers, but I will note that in particular on the north end, we have the highest number of folks per population in our precinct.

We have 42% total population in districts four, five, and six, and yet our police numbers in that precinct, we only have 25% of the officers, but 42% of the population.

We're like a small city up on the north end.

So, you know, my comment there is just simply to say we need more officers.

We need more officers to provide assistance to our constituents.

And I will also say I'm really disappointed.

That's not even a strong enough word on the both the 30 by 30, because that's an ad that I made last year, supported by many of my colleagues, including my friend, Councilmember Saka here to my left.

You know, we're not gonna be doing better on hiring of women if we don't give focus to this.

So that is, it's upsetting, it's concerning.

And then along with that, the DEI, recruitment efforts.

As I've said before, I'm going to say it again, our police force to reflect should look like the folks that they're serving on the ground in this city.

And so we really should, we should be taking this seriously.

So this is the second year in a row that this 30 by 30 FTE hire has gone unfulfilled.

And it just, again, it goes to this deprioritization piece that I spoke to earlier.

So it is important for us to be recruiting women, people of color, just like it's important for us to be doing training.

We need to be doing community policing as Chief Barnes and I always talked about and he had a huge focus on community policing.

It works.

I've seen it working at Magnuson Park with the two officers there.

I am so grateful to both Chief Barnes and then Interim Chief Sales who've kept the officers there.

My folks that live at the park both at Mercy Housing and Solid Ground.

and visitors to the park are very grateful to have and know their officers by first name, Nathan being one of them.

Thank you, Nathan.

It's important and that's what we want.

And we cannot get to community policing if we don't have the number of officers to be able to have officers all across our neighborhoods.

And that's what we should be aspiring to.

So this cap is of concern.

And then also, the last thing I'll say, Chair, and thank you for giving me the time, is that we are not, this budget doesn't add to the police budget, it adds money that was related to a policing contract.

but it doesn't actually add money to really add officers in a way that we've been responding to since I've been here and many of my colleagues have been here and trying to accomplish on behalf of our constituents.

So I think it is wrong to say that the executive has added money to the police budget.

This money that was added was to cover, mostly this money was to cover the contract.

but that is not the same.

Those are not the same things.

And so to me, again, it is a deprioritization of our police department on behalf of and toward good response times for our constituents.

So this budget to me on the public safety side in general, because again, we're gonna talk about fire later.

I feel the same way about fire.

We are deprioritizing our chartered responsibilities, period, full stop.

There is no other way to say it.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Vice Chair Rivera.

Committee table, anything to add at this time?

Nothing to add.

We've got Council Member Lynn followed by Sokka, Rink, and Foster.

Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thanks to our presenters.

I'm just struggling a little bit with the presentation and some of the conversation we're having.

So I just want to kind of talk about, I feel like we're looking at different facts or stats, because I just want to confirm how much was added to last year's budget and the proposed budget.

Yeah, as I mentioned at the top, there was 68 million added.

That includes 56 million to pay for salary increases that were bargained, and there was 12 million added to the sworn staffing plan for the 1,250 FTE that would result in 43 net new in next year and sustainment in 2028.

Thank you.

Are you aware, and I know that you're focused on SPD, but are you aware of any other department that receives such a large increase in their budget?

I'm not.

Maybe for Lish.

No other department receives such a large increase.

Any other department receives such a large increase in a percentage change?

No.

Okay.

Would you call that defunding or unfunding of the police department such a large increase?

I think having staffed the council during the defund period, it's important to note that the defunding period was about taking functions or shrinking- taking functions away or shrinking the department.

and there were particular policy reasons or goals that the council had at that time for doing that.

But it is a different thing to take resources away than it is to not add.

And if I characterized anything as defund this time around, again, I apologize.

What is being done more in this budget is not adding.

but just to be clear we are adding we are adding a number of officers as I said we are we are adding or the proposal that there's a proposal we're adding thank you friends I'm gonna jump in and facilitate this morning and the reason that I jump in to facilitate is when we have crosstalk we had a little bit of it yesterday so I'm just gonna jump right in councilmember Lynn you have the floor to ask any questions and I'm gonna turn it over to the committee table thank you thank you so we are adding the budget proposal from the mayor adds officers just to

be clear so we are not defunding anything about the police department, correct?

Correct.

Mr. Doss.

Yep, back to you, Mr. Lin.

Thank you.

I just want to, from a commentary standpoint, note that there are other departments that are being unfunded, defunded, whatever you want to call it, including approximately $65 million from the Office of Housing, which threw forward commitments.

So I just want us to have a level playing field and make sure that we are characterizing what's actually happening in the proposed budget.

And from my perspective, and one I just want to make clear that I support increase hiring.

And I am thankful for all the hard work of counsel over the past few years of increasing hires.

It's a little bit interesting as part of this discussion to know that it's hard to come up with metrics about how many officers we need, what's the right ratio, what do we get for increased officers in terms of we often want to talk about and, you know, using objective metrics and outcomes, outcomes-based budgeting, it's hard to do when there's not sort of clear standards for what we need and what we're gonna get.

But, you know, that being said, I do believe we need more officers and I've said that and I continue to believe that.

And so I'm glad to see a budget with increased officers.

I would have some questions and or comments just about slide five.

Let's see and I just think that this is really helpful for me to see and I think for the budget to see in terms of the felt impact of our hiring and I guess one question I have is in terms of our hiring there are capacity constraints in terms of getting new officers deployed and right now there is sort of a constraint right in terms of new recruits so even if we had more budget there is just practically speaking constraints and how quickly we can deploy new officers.

Is that correct?

Yes, Councilmember.

There are a record high number of student officers that have entered the training program, and as my paper states, and I Probably should have mentioned earlier.

There is a backlog, so to speak, of officers who are waiting to receive training.

There are 20 student officers that haven't been assigned a trainer because there is not a trainer available.

So processing throughput of new officers has been a challenge.

It's something that was raised in the quarterly presentation that I gave back in June.

I know it's something the department's working on, but at this point we still have a small backlog.

they do.

Thank you.

And in terms of this chart, what I see here is a projection of growing deployable officers, which I'm happy to see.

And basically, what I see in this chart is sort of a lag behind when we hire versus when they become deployable.

And when I read the memo, what I read was, based on the budget, there would be a slowdown in hiring at the end of 2027. to account for potential budget authority.

And what I see in this projection is that you start to see the impacts of that slowdown in hiring in terms of sort of, it's still going up in terms of projected deployable and fully trained officers, but there's a slowdown and then a plateau.

And we see that plateau in 2029, 2030. So the felt impact, there will be a delay if we slow down hiring, but we will continue to grow in terms of both deployable and fully trained officers.

Is that correct?

That's correct, yes.

Thank you.

And I certainly understand if folks are concerned about if they want to see that continue to go up.

And it's still below where we were in 2019. And so I appreciate that concern, but I do want to highlight that this budget shows a continued growth and then a plateau at that point.

Just a couple other questions.

In terms of overtime, You know, what I see in the overtime is that overtime is largely the same, and I heard you talk about events, but also kind of staffing levels.

Is there a way where, you know, as we continue to have deployable officers that overtime can be reduced?

Is there any sort of discussion about reducing over, you know, we have this discussion with the fire department, like they would like to have more full-time folks and then cut overtime.

And, you know, I think newer generations are not as enthused about overtime as maybe older generations.

So, but is there any sort of way to reduce our overtime with increased hiring?

It's a complicated question, and it's a complicated answer.

It would be difficult to reduce overtime use, even with improved hiring.

And this is because there are different forces at work when you improve hiring.

When you improve hiring, you can take down some of the overtime that's used for patrol augmentation because you have more bodies, more police officers to put out on the street.

But I think you've also heard SPD say that they feel like they need to bolster some event staffing.

So it is entirely possible that if they had more bodies, more police officers, that they would bolster event staffing, and that would use overtime.

As I said, as you add officers, you add opportunity for that officer at the end of their shift to take someone to the hospital or jail or do paperwork, and that will add over time.

So it's difficult to say with absolute certainty that when you add more officers to the mix, that overall, over time, will go down.

It's the case that there are multiple forces acting there, and that some of that overtime use, you want.

You want to have overtime used to have officers called out to the scene in the middle of the night if there was a shooting.

And so, yes, it's difficult to say that it would go down.

Okay, thank you, and last question is just, are you aware of any sort of concerns or just, thinking around it seems like we've had record new hires in terms of just how that changes either kind of the long-term sort of staffing plan of SPD to have sort of the so many new hires and then you know are we losing with significant institutional knowledge or is it the right mix?

I don't know if there's any sort of plan on what the right mix is of new hires to experienced officers.

Just wondering if that's come up at all and if there's any sort of thoughts to what the right ratio is.

That is a question that is more appropriate to the department.

The only thing that I can tell you is what I see in the data.

And in the data, you have a focus on hiring laterals, officers that are experienced, need less training, can hit the street immediately.

But they're also focusing on recruits.

So I can't say that they're doing one at the expense of the other.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

I appreciate your questions.

Colleagues, I will not always verbally change the speaker's floor, but if I'm not looking at you, you don't have the floor.

So last year, towards the end of budget and throughout a lot of last year's budget, I was much more strict about using Robert's rules and facilitation.

I've been loose at the beginning of this budget process as we get into more intense topics and move into amendments I will be more strict with my facilitation my one ask is we don't speak over each other and so that is going to be the metric that I use when jumping in to facilitate a little bit more is when we're speaking over each other which did occur yesterday and something that I became aware of.

So appreciate your questions, Council Member Lynn, Council Member Sokka, followed by Rink, Foster, and Rivera.

Well, we're gonna ask you to go at the end since you've already spoken again.

With that, Council Member Sokka.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you, Mr. Doss, Mr. Whitson for being here.

First off, let me just start by saying that I have been impressed over the last few years at the level of central staff analysis and the effort put in to help advise us and facilitate key decision making on strategic initiatives, whatever it is.

And I've been very impressed over the course of this current budget season by the level of central staff analysis.

But Mr. Doss, let me just tell you, you set the bar even higher here today.

The depth and breadth of coverage, the attempts to simplify and explain very complex policy constructs, arguably the most solemn role for our central staff experts is objectivity and neutrality.

The appearance of objectivity and neutrality and the way you all stitch it, the way you stitch it all together, amazing.

A plus, thank you.

Thank you.

And that's, I've heard a lot of great analysis so far.

but thank you for, because there's a lot going on in the proposed budget for SPD.

So thank you.

Great job.

Let's start with slide 12. recruitment and media marketing.

So it sounds like the executive has taken the position that because of the recently approved SPOG contract, which makes Seattle police officers the highest paid in the state and maybe even among the West Coast Five, if I recall correctly.

But in any event, the executive has taken the position, hanging their hat on that contract and saying, well, because of the contract, we don't need the recruitment budget to reach more quality candidates and applicants from around the country, including HBCUs, by the way.

But we don't need this sort of robust media marketing blitz, okay?

Position number one.

And position number two is we also don't need the officer hiring incentive.

And I think, taken individually, especially given these dire budget times, that's a rational position.

Actually, even taken collectively, it's a rational position.

I actually disagree with some of it I'll talk about in a moment, but it's a rational position.

I understand the logic there.

but I'm generally less concerned about the recruitment incentive, although I am more concerned about it for the key lateral positions because we know the bottleneck in training and getting trainees off the street up to speed and we've previously talked in other forums about the field training officer backlog and the pipeline.

getting more lateral, hiring and retaining more lateral officers and recruits is mission critical to our broader efforts.

But then we take away all officer hiring incentives and marketing plan and targeted sort of media buys, and relying and said solely on earned media and our own publishing on our own...

I understand the position.

I just disagree with both of those things collectively, because we're effectively taking out two arrows in the quiver and just hanging our hat on.

Well, we got this one big arrow.

That should do it.

I fundamentally disagree with that approach.

So that's just more of a comment.

Moving on to number 15, slide 15. Parking enforcement officers.

So parking enforcement officers, what do they do?

This is the basics.

This is the nitty-gritty basics of local government.

This is how municipal government keeps people safe, gets stuff done.

This is what we should be crushing first and foremost.

And parking enforcement officers, to your point, enforce the rules in the right-of-way.

And spanning a couple years now, we're seeing significant gap between the authorized MACs and where they're actually at in terms of staffing.

And we've done various things over the years to help empower the department to boost their public parking enforcement officer staffing levels.

But they ultimately help keep people safe.

I see, I view them, it's not just their interactions with UCT or whatever it is. they help with enforced daylighting restrictions.

We talked a lot about daylighting in some of the safer streets legislation.

I had some constituents that were complaining to my office for months because right outside of a school in West Seattle, there was two big trucks, big trucks, kind of cargo delivery trucks, two of them parked at the very end of an intersection not within the 30 feet, where ideally it should have been daylighted, but the tip of the intersection, parked there for months and months and months, not moved, not ticketed, and this is right where some of our most vulnerable users or vulnerable travelers in the safer streets, adopting that framework, are regularly crossing, pedestrians, cyclists.

Dangerous, it's dangerous!

Dangerous!

And our...

ability to hire or not hire these critical PEOs impacts whether that intersection, that one particular intersection in West Seattle is gonna be, steps are gonna be taken to help make it safer.

These are mission-critical roles, and we've done a lot over the years to try and empower the department to hire more.

Unfortunately, it's not working.

It hasn't worked for a number of reasons.

You talked, Mr. Doss, about the perverse incentive or the disincentive, rather.

I think that was your terminology.

for them to maintain basically the status quo and not actually hire these mission critical backfill roles.

What, just curious, what other council options could be considered to specifically address the disincentive challenge that you mentioned earlier beyond a sly.

What other council options are available to address that disincentive?

It's not working.

Mr. Doss.

Thank you.

First of all, I need to thank you for the compliment, and I need to say that The 20-some page issue paper that I wrote that's very long and full of detail and data is only possible, and this presentation is only possible, because I get really good support from the Seattle Police Department and from the City Budget Office and from the Mayor's Office.

They recognize that we're talking today about policy decisions and that policy decisions differ depending on the elected official, but they recognize that we are all- we're all working at the same city.

We all benefit from having the right information.

And, you know, they answer questions overnight.

They answer questions in the middle of the night.

I ask them a lot of questions.

So I want to say thank you and recognize them.

To your question, Councilmember Sacca, it About the only thing I can think of, the same thing I suggested last year, you could add $2.1 million to the budget, proviso it, and say this money is available if you hire the PEOs.

I have been told that on the executive side, there might be some concern that if they hired the PEOs, the proviso wouldn't be released.

I don't know how something like that might be addressed.

It's something that I'm happy to work with your office on over the next week or so, and brainstorm options.

Council Member Sacco.

Thank you, Mr. Doss, appreciate that.

Going back to slide three, just want to clarify because I heard you appropriately mention or allude to the fact and for the reason for the significant reduction in officer staffing over the years from our 2019 or 2020 June or whatever peak high it was, and referring appropriately so to COVID, and yes, that's absolutely true, but for crystal clarity, another significant reason for that was the defund movement in the city of Seattle.

And it's not a theory, it's actually uncontroverted facts that the defund movement contributed to the significant reduction in officer staffing levels.

Sure, I suppose we can quibble around the edges around the extent of that, but it's an uncontroverted fact.

It contributed to it, and I would argue greatly contributed to it.

And it's backed by evidence in terms of exit surveys.

We famously or infamously lost our city's very first black woman police chief because of defund.

So just wanna level set and clarify the record because COVID was a global crisis and we experience impacts of that as it relates to SPD staffing, other staffing of other city departments as well, part of a broader national.

We control our controllables, and that was wrong then, it's wrong now, and I say that because context matters, facts matter, history matters, and to quote Winston Churchill, those that fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

So just wanna kinda level set on how we got to the current state, because it's more than just COVID and all these other things.

Yes, that's true.

Yes, and.

Finally, going to slide 24, just curious.

On the radio encryption line item there, so colleagues, as you know, we hear a lot of great ideas all the time from our constituents, advocacy organizations and suggestions, and one idea that I remember hearing vividly Earlier on in 2024, shortly after I took office, was from a constituent named Mr. Patrick Robinson.

He owns and operates the West Side Seattle, so he's also a journalist, and him and his family, before that, operated the story.

and very famous West Seattle Herald print edition.

But he was inquiring and giving me some ideas about radio encryption technology and whether or not that would be appropriate for Seattle Police Department and based off of what other cities were doing.

And I looked into it and had multiple conversations with This is, I guess, my fourth police chief as well, with a few of the earlier police chiefs.

And I think at the time, there's trade-offs for it and against it and all the things as there is in any investment decision or purchasing decision.

But where I landed at the time, or just learning and talking directly from prior police leadership is that wasn't needed at the moment.

Sounds like that decision has been changed.

Can you talk a little bit more about this radio encryption line item?

Would that...

would that cover end-to-end encryption of the radio communications?

Some jurisdictions have done latent radio communication whereby the comms is delayed by 30 minutes, a specified period, whether it's 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is.

Can you talk a little bit more about this radio encryption line item and how it came to be about?

Mr. Doss?

Thank you.

I'm sorry to have to disappoint you.

I feel really bad, but I don't know anything about radio encryption.

My point for this slide was to show you what was in the supplemental budget and to make the point that SPD is now at a place where they are asking for these specific things because they can't absorb them in their existing equipment budget or in their other budgets.

But I will find out and I will get you that information, Councilmember.

Thank you.

Thank you.

That would be greatly appreciated.

And shout out to Mr. Robinson in West Seattle.

Finally, I'll note that I, too, I share my colleagues' concern about the consistent lack of effort, movement, momentum to hire that critical 30 by 30 position, broader DEI efforts.

Appreciate Councilmember Rivera's consistent leadership on this.

Among other things, this department has some well-documented challenges with culture.

Well-documented.

And we think, from our perspective, it is a perspective is an important perspective.

It is not the only, the best, necessarily, perspective, in this case or in general, but it is an important perspective.

We think in the Council over the last couple of years that hiring this role can help address that.

And we've had some previous conversation around, well, maybe it's not this, then what else?

I just haven't seen the what else from the department, and so unless and until I see the what else, what alternative solutions are you employing to address some of these challenges?

I gotta continue to hang my hat on the mission-critical nature of the 30 by 30 position and the DEI roles to help improve the culture.

Again, we'll continue to have these conversations directly with the executive and SPD, but I haven't seen a workable alternative put forward to justify the, or frankly obviate the need to hire this critical role.

So I'm looking forward to continuing that work on this council together.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Saka.

Committee table, anything to add at this time?

Seeing none, we're gonna go on to Council Member Alexis Mercedes Rink, followed by Council Member Foster, and then anyone else who would like to speak, and we'll be closed out by Council Member Rivera before Council Member Kettle.

With that, Council Member Rink, welcome.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Before going into my specific questions on the proposed department budget and policy considerations, I'd like to offer a few overarching remarks related to this, and I have a few questions for our central staff director, Lish Whitson, just to place this budget, this department budget, into the broader context of the proposed executive's budget.

To be very clear, we are talking about a $68 million increase to SPD over 13%.

This would take the department budget to over half a billion dollars.

I understand that is due in large part to fulfilling the obligations for the Seattle Police Officers Guild Union contract, as well as additional funding to fulfill a staffing plan.

and I wanna also note in this and hope we can dig into discussion later about the $13 million overpayment as a part of that contract and how that affects future budgets.

But I wanted to ground in that fact that that is what has been proposed and looking across the board and building on some of the questions that Council Member Lynn raised, Director Whitson, I'd like to ask in terms of the broader proposed budget, how many departments have proposed layoffs of city employees?

Mr. Whitson?

Don't forget to use the microphone.

Thank you.

I do not have that number at hand, but can definitely get back to you.

Thank you.

Perhaps throughout the discussion today, we can find the answer to that question because I think that is important context.

I know in department presentations that we had over the past couple of weeks, we've had discussions about positions layoffs within SDCI, for example.

I think it'd be helpful to also unpack the number of positions that will be abrogated as vacant positions, but also address the reality that there are a number of city employees, people who are currently employed by the city who are being proposed to be laid off, actual people, families.

want to make sure we're grounding our discussion about this proposed budget and the $68 million increase to the Seattle Police Department when we are considering this.

But going into some of the policy considerations, I want to thank you again, Greg, for your hard work on this.

In particular, I appreciate how detailed all 78 pages of your policy considerations memo work.

I did have a few follow-up questions about some of these policy considerations that I wanted to get on the record.

For the sworn staffing plan for 2027, there is an additional 4.5 million more in sworn staffing funds than required, and there is already a plan to use 2.5 million of that surplus for technical services.

Um, could you give an overview of what-what these programs are?

Yeah, thank you.

So, um, SPD, as I say, has had some costs that when they were added to the budget, there was no dedicated funding added, and so these costs have been costs that historically they have absorbed using salary savings, either from the sworn side or of the civilian side.

they are costs for Amazon cloud service, for contracts or ongoing service agreements, for things like cellular costs for the officers and civilians that have cell phones.

They are costs for, as I said earlier, systems like Acrodot or Adobe, a lot of these things that are used by the department on a regular basis, even their analysis, their spider tech, many of these systems have grown over the years as their dependence on technology or use of technology, taking advantage of technological advances, data-driven policing.

Many of these costs have grown over the years and they have not been able to address them.

I can get you a specific list of all of them, but I can tell you that they are, for the most part, ongoing leases for technology service providers, again, like Amazon or Acrobat Adobe or cell phone costs.

And yes, you are correct.

Out of the 4.5 million that is part of the staffing plan for 2027 and is not used to support sworn staff, two and a half million is going to be taken out and added for those costs.

Councilman Roeck.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you for that response.

Building us, Director Whitson.

Apologies, Chair, I'm seeing Director Whitson would like to chime in.

Sorry.

To go back to your previous question, there are layoffs in five departments, including the police department, which is seeing three layoffs.

And just to add to that, including abrogations, it's about 14. Back to you, Councilman Roeck.

Thank you.

Important clarification.

Again, colleagues really interested in just placing this budget and our conversation about this budget in broader context of hiring and layoffs across the city.

Thank you for that response, Greg.

And taking us to I'm noting that two million was allocated to SPD for this budget as an intentional overfund.

We've talked a little bit about this cushion to cover additional salary costs in 2027. in the case that fewer officers separate than anticipated.

Could this money be used by SPD if council decides to leave it untouched?

It could be used to overtime appropriation if SPD goes over budget.

Mr. Bell.

Yes.

Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. Chair.

Yes.

Go for it.

Simple answer, thank you.

Now, later in the presentation, you talk about the fact that this year in 2026, SPD went over their overtime appropriation by 2.1 million.

and so I recall in Public Safety Committee earlier this year you had presented on SPD overtime monitoring and at the time you stated that after adjusting retroactive contract payments and anticipating revenues from FIFA and the NFL that SPD was likely to finish the year without requiring additional support from the city's general fund.

So my question is what changed?

Mr. Doss?

I should have looked at prior years where the department traditionally goes over budget.

I was being optimistic.

I was also just looking at the numbers, what changed.

In the first quarter of the year, when I made that report, SPD was doing less patrol augmentation.

Their patrol augmentation is, as I discussed earlier, for the purpose of meeting certain thresholds when responding to 911 calls.

It is also to make available proactive units that can work hotspots, 12th and Jackson or other areas.

It is the case that after I made that presentation, the mayor announced that there would be more proactive use of officers.

Those officers are on overtime.

The bike squads that this committee talked about a few minutes ago, all of that occurs on overtime.

So as that activity increased over the past few months, the department has wound up in excess of its appropriation authority.

Thank you for that response.

That's helpful clarification.

And just to be clear, even if we decide to take no action and leave the $2 million for salary cushion, could there still be a possibility that SPD goes back to ask for more in the 2027 year end supplemental?

Yes, I think depending on events next year, there is a potential that they could exceed 500,000 hours.

The last few years they've been at about 500,000 hours, so it's also possible they could stay at that same level.

It's difficult to know for sure.

Thank you.

Continuing, actually, this will be my last question just on overtime components.

I have a few other topics I'd like to cover with my time.

Could you walk us through Council's role in ensuring that SPD does not go over their yearly appropriation of overtime budget?

And additionally, are there any safeguards or considerations on making sure in the future we don't have millions of unbudgeted general fund costs to SPD even if they go over their overtime budget again?

I think that the answer to that question is, um, that there is a sly every year that asks for, uh, overtime data, staffing data, um, financial data, and that's what I present to you all in the quarterly reports that I do.

No other department has that kind of, um, I guess, financial monitoring.

Um, and I come before you, before the Public Safety Committee once a quarter to present that information so that you can so that you can monitor what the department is doing and you can know how their spending is progressing and that there are no surprises at the end of the year.

That is this council's main intervention right now, its main monitoring vehicle.

There are other uses or other tools that the council could employ.

There could be provisos on overtime.

The challenge with that is that as you get to the end of the year, if SPD needs the authority, you would just have to release the proviso anyway.

It is mostly about just bringing forward the command staff and the mayor's office and knowing how the city is using its overtime dollars and if that use is consistent with the intent of the policy makers, then that's something that will have to be paid for.

Otherwise, it's the chief's job to keep it at the budget level.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

Hearing that point, hearing that monitoring and potential proviso, but even understanding that in effect that proviso perhaps would not get the outcome that we'd be hoping for, really the main path for managing this issue is coordination with the executive.

Am I understanding that correctly?

Yeah.

That's helpful to understand and still, I'll confess, a bit frustrating.

I think any type of overspending in a department is challenging, particularly when there are unexpected costs coming here and concerned with our inability, barring, again, closer collaboration with the executive, our inability to manage that issue.

I wanted to take us to the exciting discussion about what is the right number of officers for Seattle.

And I really appreciated the notes that you had in the presentation as well as in the memo, understanding that I think for all of us this is a complex matter, understanding and scaling the right number of officers for our population.

And I wanted to note that in your memo you touch on things, officer to population ratios.

Using them alone can be somewhat problematic because it doesn't take into account things such as unique needs of a community, commuter and transient populations, whether a jurisdiction uses resources for specialized services like Harbor Patrol.

There's a lot of complexity here.

And even when we evaluate and look at departments on the West Coast versus the East Coast, in terms of staffing numbers and officer salaries.

We end up paying the third most per officer to comparable cities only behind San Jose and San Francisco.

Noting in the Maloria public safety consultant report that stated that recommended precinct staffing levels would increase patrol staffing by 153 officers, but the report itself doesn't discuss the care department.

Care and our crisis care responders were not a part of that study.

Can you walk us through why that was?

I can confirm what you're saying.

It was the consideration of alternate response was not put into the models or the calculations that the study used.

I think that it's a very long study, hundreds of pages.

I think that they probably discussed how alternative response can impact staffing, but to my recollection, they were not assuming any alternative response when they were putting that model together.

And I think it's potentially because of that that SPD received the report and said, and determined that they do need to consider alternative response.

And that's why they're running their own study, to both consider alternative response, the impact of the care department on calls, also to be able to figure out how to achieve better response times when officers are going.

So they acknowledge this and they're working on that for that.

Yeah.

Thank you.

That's helpful to understand.

Colleagues, my general orientation on this matter has been we want to be building a public safety system that has quick responses but also right responses for given public safety scenarios.

So it's been all about really calibrating how many sworn officers are needed to respond to those Tier 1 calls, looking also at how we can really make use of our crisis care responder team for responding to calls that do not need a sworn officer.

to be able to respond and really dialing in and making sure that officer time is responding to the kind of calls and situations we'd like them to.

And so for me, it's particularly important then when we're thinking about responders, who's responding that we factor in that we are growing this alternative response team.

We also don't talk too much about the crisis responder team, our dual dispatch program, which is tremendously important when we're talking about and extreme risk protection orders and other matters such as that and specific kinds of behavioral health calls where there is present danger.

And then, of course, we'll get into fire later today.

But it's important for me as we're thinking holistically about dialing in on those, on focusing in on improving response times, we also are clear on getting the right responses deployed.

And so I wanna now take us to a little bit just around civilian position abrogation, particularly interested in the impact of the abrogation of civilian positions on case backlogs.

I'm thinking about especially, specifically to domestic violence cases.

And it's my understanding, and Greg, if you could confirm this, that you're continuing to research this in cooperation with the executive, I would just ask if you could keep us informed on any additional research and findings related to what these impacts will be.

I also want to note that there is 4.2 million in state narcotics forfeiture funds and that the department will be using this to buy updated safety equipment.

My question is, would the use of this money to buy tasers as a less lethal option be viable?

Mr. Doss?

That is something that Central Staff's attorney is currently looking at.

Lauren Henry is currently looking at both the $4.2 million in state drug forfeiture funds and then also there is another 880,000 I believe in federal forfeiture funds that both of these pots are restricted for police use.

Some are restricted more than others.

The state funding is restricted potentially more.

These are monies that have in the past been accessed directly by SPD for equipment purchases or other purchases.

And we are your central staff is trying to determine how that those funds could be brought to bear on the budget process one way or another.

It is possible that that the department that the council would not be able to appropriate these funds.

That doesn't necessarily mean that the department couldn't use them in other areas.

There's usually a strict supplanting rule that you can't supplant existing funds, and as I said, there's expenditure rules, and we are looking into that.

Thank you for that response.

And building on this point, I know when we had interim chief sales at the table, I asked a question about whether or not every sworn officer is equipped with a taser or less lethal option.

Did we ever, he at the time said he did not have an answer to that question.

Did we ever receive an answer from the department on that?

What we received from the department on that question is a reference to SPD policy that every officer carry at least one form of less lethal weapon, whether it is a baton or a taser or pepper spray, and that when they come out of the academy, they are they are offered a taser and that they carry the taser, but that later on it becomes their option as to what kind of less lethal weapon they want to carry.

That was the answer that we received.

They have a choice in which kind of less lethal weapon they want to carry, but they must have one on them at all times?

Correct.

Understood.

Thank you.

Colleagues, I dig into these questions.

Of course, there's been much conversation over the years around police use of force, and we have seen far too many.

To be clear, one is too many.

People die in police custody.

And so it is important to me that we ensure that folks within the department have less lethal options, and we're also continuing to work on accountability measures.

I have just two more points I want to touch on.

One should hopefully be very quick.

I know it's already been raised challenges around the hiring of the DEI in 30 by 30 positions.

My question is very straightforward.

Do we know if the department posted those positions?

Mr. Doss?

Posted.

Is it advertised for them to be filled?

Correct.

No, I do not know that, but I don't believe that that's the case, but I will follow up and find out.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And my last question for today, could you walk us through, we haven't spent too much time talking about the policy implications and impact of the $13 million overpayment to the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

I would appreciate if you could take a moment to walk through that overpayment, the process moving forward, and understanding it is my understanding that this funding, we could have used this money to backfill year-end supplemental appropriations or fund other priorities across the city budget.

So I'm wondering if you could take a moment and talk us through a little bit more of this overpayment and what it means.

Yeah, so I think probably members are familiar with the general issue, but what we're talking about is there was an error made in the retropayment that went to SPOG officers.

earlier this year in June, and it was the result of a miscalculation in the rate adjustment, and the miscalculation resulted in 13 million more being paid to officers as part of the retropayment.

and the amount that each officer received varies.

It could be a low amount.

It could be up to 30-some thousand.

It really depends on the seniority of the officer and how much they make.

It is the case that this funding is being discussed by the city's labor relations office with the union to determine how the funding got added to paychecks and who got what funding and how that might be moved forward.

The issue that state law allows the union to bargain about how that money might be returned to the city.

and so it's the case that this particular budget, because of the lengthy bargaining process, does not assume that that money will be coming back this year or, I'm sorry, next year or the year after.

It is the case that it would have been general fund money and, yes, it could have been used for any purpose the general fund would pay.

including the $6 million overage that SPD is facing at the end of 2026. Have I left anything out or do council members have any questions?

One quick follow up to this point.

Thank you for walking us through that, Greg.

This is obviously a very unfortunate situation that we are in as a city and putting it lightly.

So I would like to know what incentives exist for the Seattle Police Officer Guild to return taxpayer dollars in a timely fashion.

That's a question for labor relations.

I will get back to you.

Thank you, Greg.

Thank you, Chair.

No further questions.

Thank you, Councilmember Rank.

Any further comments from the table before we move on?

Seeing none, we are going on to Councilmember Foster, and then anyone who has not spoke, Councilmember Rivera, and then Councilmember Kettle.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I appreciate that.

And as always, thank you to central staff and really appreciate you Greg, for your work.

Much has already been said about that already.

I have a couple different things I want to get into, some of which have already been touched on, and I appreciate Council Member Lynn's questions earlier in terms of the projected hiring.

So if we can turn to the chart in your memo that sort of shows the projected growth, I believe it's five, Oh, nope.

Yep, five.

There we go.

I just wanted to ask a question.

There's been some of the discussion today.

We've been using the word cap in terms of the number of officers.

Is there anything that actually caps the number of officers beyond budget?

And what's the difference really between using the word cap or projection?

I should clarify that there's not a cap.

It is the case that 1,250 FTE sets a limitation on the number of officers that can be hired.

It is within the mayor's purview and the council's purview to add more funding in future years and keep the to keep the officer growth happening.

This particular chart assumes that it will stay within 1,250 FTE, which again, not a cap, a limitation on the amount of money that you can use for your sworn force.

Okay.

And I'll add that the council is considering budgets for 2027, 2028, and decisions about 2029 and 30 are to come in a couple years.

Thank you, I appreciate that.

And I think the reason I wanted to turn this here is I just, I heard the cap word earlier and I just, it seemed a little stronger than my understanding of obviously our ability as a council and our determinations that we can make about future budgets.

And I sort of am just trying to bridge that alongside what my understanding is, is there's a current analysis happening inside the department that's meant to take into account with the care team and with some of the changes that this council and previous councils have been making in terms of trying to make sure we have, you know, alternative response as well as police response.

So that report is meant to come out later this year, is that correct?

Yes.

Okay.

And so we would be able to use the information in that report to maybe update our understanding of what our goals and our targets need to be as we as a council and as a city try to achieve what I believe is our shared goal, which is to make sure that we have the right response to each call.

And that's just something I care deeply about.

I don't want our constituents calling 911 and either having to wait too long to get somebody to them.

And I also don't want constituents calling 911 and having the wrong kind of response show up.

And I believe that's, and I know we're going to get into CARE later on today, but I believe that's so much of the intent of what we're trying to achieve.

And in order to do that, I think it's appropriate for us to have an understanding of how we expect the full deployment of the care team to relate back to our needs for officers.

And so it's my understanding that right now, with the study that's been done, that care was not taken into account with those future projections.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

OK.

I hope we can get a projected date from the department on those numbers.

And I will say I just appreciate some of the work that's been happening in the background.

through the Q&A doc in terms of trying to get sort of a better understanding of the impact of the care team when it comes to SPD response.

So I'm just gonna quickly just read out something, because I think it's important to read into the record.

And I know we're still gathering data, so this is just part of it.

So I'm going to the Q&A doc as I see you over there at the table.

I know it says SPD has completed 5,165 behavioral crisis reports for 2025 year to date, which was wrapped up in 8-31-25.

So that's an average of 21.38 per day and involves 3,592 uniquely identified individuals, which is a decrease of about 13.8 for 2% lower than the previous year's year to date.

So in 2025, that was an average of 21.38 per day compared to 2024, which was an average of 24.19 cases per day.

Now, we should wait for the report.

We should make sure we understand the role of care.

We should understand this trend.

And Greg, I welcome any comments, but I suppose this is more of a statement.

just for me, it's important that we're tracking what kinds of calls SPD is responding to, whether there's a lower occurrence of those calls or if we're successfully getting an alternative response deployed for those calls and ensuring that our projections for the number of officers that we need aligns with that.

So that's something I just, I will say as a council member, I really look forward to being able to dig into because I also know and I really appreciate the officers at SPD.

I had the opportunity to do a ride-along.

I know many people here do those quarterly or frequently with our officers.

And seeing the sorts of behavioral response challenges that our officers are currently responding to as well as the amount of time that it takes for folks to respond to those calls is something that I just continue to be concerned about.

particularly when I think about the calls that are coming in related to violent crime or You know, I sat with some small businesses who said they, I talked to a business owner who said he waited 15 hours to get somebody to show up.

And I think there's clearly more work to do.

I just hope that we can sort of take an approach to this that feels nuanced and sort of utilizes the data and the information that's available to us.

Having said that, and happy to take any response from the table.

Thank you for that chair if you have one, but otherwise I'll keep going through my questions.

I want to turn to page five in your report, and I've put my mic on top of my pages.

Give me one second, Mr. Doss.

One more here.

Okay, so as I'm looking at this, I'm looking at some of the commentary around the bottleneck in fully trained officers.

And so this is the section where you sort of talk about the need for us to have additional field training officers so that we can continue to speed up our pace of getting new recruits.

And just something that stuck out to me is the footnote that you have here, which is the department can't assign officers to be trainers.

the SPOG contract stipulates that officers must volunteer for this assignment.

And I just wonder if that's a commonplace, if that's a standard sort of in contracts between unions and police departments?

I don't know.

I'll get back to you on that.

Okay.

Thank you.

It just, it stuck out to me because I know that we have to have those field training officers there in order to then make the progress that we need to make on getting students through the program and that footnote just stuck out to me as I was looking at that and I look forward to learning more information and trying to figure out again what we can do to make sure that we've got more recruits coming in and successfully moving through the department.

Then I just want to turn, I guess, maybe just a little bit more globally for a second, and maybe this is a question for Lish.

Can you just remind us, and I think Councilman Berlin spoke to this a little bit earlier, but the size of our budget deficit when we were coming into this year?

I think it was $149 million.

175 million at one point, it changes as the projections change.

Yeah, sometimes I say 175, sometimes I say 149, at different points in the year we had these really large budget projections, or excuse me, budget deficit projections.

And the thing I guess I've just been struggling with, and this is more of a comment to be candid, and probably more of a comment than I usually make from the dais even, is that's a big budget deficit and is a challenging year, and I appreciate the work that so many people on this council and the staff and others have done over the years to get our hiring where it needs to be and the trend that we need to go in.

and something that has just been sitting with me as I'm looking across the budgets is that, as Councilman Berlin spoke to this earlier, we are continuing to invest in officer hiring as we should.

This budget funds the contract negotiation.

We're gonna get into the HSD budget later on today, but it's my understanding as we look at even the HSD budget and some of the previous work that's been done around ensuring we have our human services workers getting paid fairly you know, we are not in this budget making the 2% wage equity increase in those human services contracts.

So I'm looking at a lot of the difficult decisions that have had to be made, and it's just hard for me as I'm watching, you know, the changes in the Office of Housing budget, as I'm looking at the difficult decisions in HSD, it's just been challenging to hear the narrative of unfunding and defunding when it comes to SPD.

and I say that as somebody who really believes that we do need more officers than we have right now, but also somebody who I think is looking across what's happening with our city budget and seeing that we're having to make really challenging decisions, some of which are harming our ability, I would say, to make progress on goals that the city has had for a long time and other forms of wage equity.

So it just feels important for me to sort of say that into the record today.

Lastly, and I think Council Member Rink already spoke to this a little bit, but are there certain parts of the proposed SPD budget that specifically increase our investments Anything related to accountability or the recommendations that have come out of some of the various reports over the last few years regarding incidents regarding safety or critical incidents with officers?

What I would say to that council member is that the The increase in the Seattle Police Officers Guild contract reflects negotiation and bargaining with the union on a number of those issues.

And in the last contract, the last couple contracts, the city has bargained accountability changes pursuant to the 2017 accountability ordinance and other priorities of the council.

And, uh, those, uh, some of those have, uh, been incorporated, uh, into the contract and, uh, are now part of SPD policy.

So it's happening, um, outside the budget process, but the nexus is the increase for officer salaries.

Okay.

Got it.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, chair.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, any other folks who have not yet spoken that would like to speak?

Seeing none right now, so I'm gonna go through my questions very quickly and then Council Member Rivera will come back to you and then we will come back to Council Member Kettle to close us out.

I'm not gonna, we've got a wide spectrum of different conversations that we've had here on the dais and I find it all to be healthy and helpful and agree with most of what folks have said, even when they're disagreeing.

And so I wanna just check, I'm not gonna repeat the issue ID that everyone else has already raised.

I've got a couple other questions and Greg I didn't prep you for this one but I know back in pre-pandemic Harbor Patrol was not using 911 they were using their own phone number and so that meant that we couldn't quite get their data do you know if Harbor Patrol has fully partially or not at all transferred to 911?

find out Thank you and when you do find out I would love to receive their 911 data to see what types of calls they are responding to as compared to 2019 and I say that because Harbor Patrol is one of those unique types of policing that the City of Seattle has to engage in and we really didn't have any clean data for them in 2019 and I think it would be important to see them today.

I may ask you to go through, I find that this is one of the most in-depth presentations we've received from you to date.

It's really quite impressive, especially under policy consideration to slide one of four of what are the right number of officers, those comparisons between all of those different cities.

I'm not going to spend our communal time digging into this with you, but I will come and follow up and ask you some additional questions and your identification of Seattle's unique topography and land water relationship changes everything as compared to many other cities, especially when they're flat and have grids that make sense compared to Yesler and Denny fighting and having and mismatched grid, but I can tell you the difference between Pike and Pine.

Moving on, I want to ask you getting into these specific questions about civilians.

I know when Chief Sales was here, we had talked about the automobile staff member that is being laid off.

I didn't see it in this presentation.

I do want to just check in.

Is that wrapped into the civilian G General Investigations Unit reductions or?

No, Councilmember, that is not part of the civilian investigations.

The civilian investigations reduction, those seven FTE are strictly to assist detectives with investigations.

The auto records unit reduction is one position that is an administrative specialist one.

The department believes that this will not affect auto records in any way.

There still are 23 FTE after that reduction.

Okay, thank you for digging into that.

So you're hearing from the department that there'll be no impact.

I'll ask you for your analysis after, you know, dig into this a little bit more and I'll come back to you.

I'm quite concerned that if we are laying this staff person off, that the people who have had things Seattleites and visitors to Seattle who have had things stolen from them, including their cars, will have a harder time getting them back.

And so I'll follow up with you to understand your analysis of this impact, but I don't find it to be a good decision if this does have an impact on people getting the things back from them that were stolen.

I go back to the slide seven that we had up here about the right number of police officers, slide one of four there.

Just looking at Boston, they've got about 100,000 people less than us, but they have one quarter the number of property crimes, and they have about 100 less violent crimes.

You know, I just, I share that because if these types of crimes are occurring here in our city, we need to be able to be as responsive as possible after the fact.

And so that's where my concern about this automobile staff is.

So looking forward to catching up with you more.

One last question for me for right now regarding parking enforcement, it might be a similar question to what Council Member Sokka asked, but I'll ask it in maybe a slightly different way for clarity.

of the policy considerations, why just a statement of legislative intent and not re-adding the positions?

Is it because of what you reported earlier that the executive hasn't hired them in the past?

And maybe further elaborate, has it been an executive decision not to hire or have the positions been posted and they haven't been filled?

What I know of this problem is that the department hires for the positions, that they get applicants for the jobs, that they put them into backgrounding and they have to disqualify about half of them in backgrounding.

As Mr. Eder said, Director Eder said, the natural solution to that is to put more candidates into backgrounding so that if half failed out, you get a larger number coming out the back end and you can fill your vacant positions.

What I heard Director Eder say is that he is going to work on that to see if there's a way that they can improve their process and staff the positions.

I have to develop options for you as part of this policy consideration.

I did not put the add of $2.1 million in proviso on there because the council did this and the executive did not take advantage of it.

I concede that it could or should have been there and that the council can still do that this year.

Put another ad of appropriation authority, bind it up with proviso and say, we will give this to you if you hire the positions because we know that it will increase fine revenue and it'll be backed, revenue backed.

And so thank you for that clarification.

Trying the same thing repeatedly expecting different results is the definition of insanity, but it might be worth trying once more before we totally give up.

Is that- Thank you, fair.

Yeah, and I appreciate you not just giving us ideas that haven't worked in the past.

That's actually quite helpful.

The reason I ask about this is we were talking about the environment of hiring, and I believe you mentioned there is a new contract for parking enforcement officers that we just passed.

I believe we just passed that in September.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

and what I have found is it usually takes a solid six to nine months after a contract has passed before we start seeing that contract have implications on recruitment and hiring.

That's a statement for me, not a question.

I bring up this additional context just to say that it might be worth trying one more time before we're going into the land of insanity asking the mayor to hire parking enforcement officers only because we do have a slightly new environment now with an updated contract that I know it took longer than we wanted to get it done.

because parking enforcement officers do tough work.

I'm going to ask in here, who enjoys getting a parking ticket?

Okay, Council Member Juarez enjoys it, Council Member Rink doesn't have a car.

I say that because they do hard work.

We're oftentimes putting them in vehicles that don't have climate control.

We're asking them to work on our city streets and have negative interactions with our community on behalf of our city of Seattle to ensure that parking is turning over, to ensure people are meeting the regulations of our streets.

And it's really hard and difficult work and that's why it was important to get them their updated contract and I wish that we could have gotten it done sooner.

I bring all this additional context in just to say it might be worth trying one more time.

Those are all of my questions and statements for today regarding the police department.

I would have gone on much longer, but we've had three hours of conversation.

And so I'm gonna turn it over to you, Council Member Rivera, for one last comment, and then Council Member to close us out before Council Member Kettle, and we'll check in with central staff as well.

I've got a few comments to make before we go to lunch.

With that, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

So I just wanted to revisit this idea of cap versus limitation.

I called it a cap because it is true that in 27 and 28, which is the current budget that we're looking at, the number of officers that we can hire net are 43. And so if we have more applications and ability to hire more, we're not going to be able to because what's included in this budget is just funding for 43 net new over the biennium.

Correct?

Correct.

So this is why I called it a cap for this budget, because again, we can't hire more than what we're budgeted for.

But in, sorry, in 2025 we hired 95 net new, and then in this year we've hired 52 or 3 net new.

Correct?

That's correct.

So my concern is that we're, we've been hiring more, and now this budget is limiting us to the 43 over the biennium.

So that's why I called it a cap.

So just want to clarify that point.

The other thing I want to ask, Greg, is about the attrition piece.

I had heard, so if you could confirm this, that in order to maintain status quo, when we're accounting for attrition, we would need to hire, or not we, the SPD would have to hire 13 people a month, but that with this proposal, that would drop to nine a month, and you may not have that information, but I'm happy to take it if you do or confirm whether that's true.

I think hiring at 12 or 13 recruits per month, it's still at a growth rate.

Sustainment rate is more like seven recruits per month, and that's what you see in the 2028 staffing plan where hiring is taken from where it is now, 12 or 13 per month, and wrapped down to seven per month.

So that's another version of we're limited in how many we're able to hire based on what the funding is contained in the 27-28 budget.

Yes, and one thing that is important to note about that is you mentioned that in prior years there has been a ramp up in hiring.

and that ramp up in hiring has not always been funded or thought through in a way that the city is planning for the out-year costs.

Officers, once they get out of the academy and are out of being student officers, their costs go up considerably, so there is a sharp increase in costs.

In prior budgets, the focus has been around how many can we hire, and in the end, what that does in future years is create unexpected or unplanned-for costs because the police department budget goes up.

The change here is that this is more focused on the budget and the number of police officers is going to be restricted by the budget.

Instead of just full speed ahead, we'll add money later.

Yeah, thank you, Greg.

And that's my point when I'm saying we're limiting ourselves and we don't even have the staffing numbers we had pre-COVID, so we're still trying to catch up.

and that is really important because as I said earlier, this is a chartered responsibility and we need to be able to meet the demand when constituents are calling 911. We need to make sure that we're properly responding and it's hard to do so if we're not staffed up to do so.

So just wanted to clarify the cap comment because I know someone will maybe write about it and so I want to to make sure that, yes, my point is we are limiting ourselves in how many officers that we can hire, and it's a much lower number than we've hired in the last two years.

And then I, sorry, Chair.

Oh, when you said, well, I guess I'll just take this offline.

It's okay.

Thank you, Chair, for the additional time there.

Thank you.

Committee table, any closing comments for today?

We're going to go to Councilmember Kettle to close us out.

Thank you, Chair.

I too enjoyed the conversation and the various points that were raised.

I would say it's quite clear that we haven't fully recovered from the defund period, but we were on the path of recovery.

We were.

and if you look at this budget it is essentially related to the SPOG agreement and you know for those my colleagues who haven't served on SLC or LRPC it is truly the most frustrating committee to be on because we should have had a new SPOG agreement when the last one expired and imagine if we did where would we be today we wouldn't be talking about this we would be in a different place so one needs to understand the impact of not getting that deal done when it was scheduled to be done, and then the delay, and then the catch-up, and the impact that we're seeing today.

And I recognize there's some focus related to police in terms of labor, but I'll remind you, let's look at CNN today.

Wholesale U.S. inflation soared in September, its biggest jump in four years.

You know what this translates to me?

all the labor agreements.

CPI, you know, if you want to sit in these committee meetings, you know, inflation wrecks budgets.

It's going to be increased labor agreements across the board.

So this phenomenon is not just a Spock phenomenon.

There's going to be aspects of this because of inflation, what's happening at the federal level across all labor agreements.

So as we move out in the future, so these arguments that are being used related to SPD actually will be used, can be used, could be used, across the entire executive.

And so I think it's important for us to understand, A, what was going on in the labor relations world related to the SPOG agreement, and oh, by the way, related to inflation, don't think it's limited to SPOG.

and it's gonna have impacts across the board in terms of budgeting.

I appreciate people bringing up field training, because field training does have challenges we've been working at in different areas, we as a city.

Though, in terms of new hires, we should note that we had 84 new hires in 2024. We had 165 new hires in 2025. But now we have a planned 128 new hires in 27 and only 79 in 28. We are below glide slope in terms of what we need for our public safety posture.

What do we need to create a safer city for all of us, to create a safer Seattle?

And it's important to remember too, given our responsibilities, that police is a charter responsibility.

And that the current plan from the executive, as it relates to public safety, as I noted earlier, in my mind could be best described as a hope strategy or a wish strategy because it's not grounded, particularly as we see in this SPD budget and what's happening across the city in terms of all the public safety challenges that we're facing.

So essentially what we've had across public safety, and I'll add unified care teams, so it's not limited to the entities that report to my committee, is that we are today seeing a unfund budget.

It's important to say that it's an unfund budget with respect to public safety and it's going to have impacts on us in the years moving forward.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Colleagues, that does bring us to the conclusion of the Seattle Police Department central staff analysis of their budget.

Greg, some of your best work yet.

You've taken us on a three-hour journey that included an earthquake drill.

And one of the things that I've found structurally about how we do budget is that we have departments come and speak to us when we haven't fully digested the budget.

And so oftentimes, like today, you got a lot of tough questions from Councilmembers.

even though it's not your decision, it's just your analysis.

And so I just wanted to take this moment to appreciate how you've been able to navigate a pretty intense morning.

Now that it's afternoon, colleagues, I'm gonna ask a judgment question.

We can either come back at 2 or we can come back at 1.40.

2, 1.40.

I'm indifferent.

All right, two.

We're gonna go for 1.50 p.m., a little bit right in the middle.

So with that, council will be on recess until 1.50, 1.50 p.m., and we will start our Seattle Fire Department presentation at exactly 1.51 p.m.

Thank you, colleagues.

No objection.

We are in recess.