Select Budget Committee Session 7/22/20

Good morning, everyone.

Today is July 22nd, 2020. The Select Budget Committee will come to order.

The time is 2.03 p.m.

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

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Here.

Nine present.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Madam Clerk.

Good afternoon, everyone.

Thank you again for joining the Select Budget Committee.

Today we will be reviewing members' proposed amendments on all topics other than those that would affect the SPD budget.

We will start with public comment, and public comment is welcome on any topic that relates to Seattle City Council's rebalancing budget discussion.

You do not have to compartmentalize your public comment today specific to the amendments that are going to be considered.

You are welcome to speak to any aspect of the 2020 rebalancing budget discussion.

We will then have central staff read through each amendment after public comment and summarize the effects of the public comments of the amendments in front of us.

Amendment sponsors will be given a chance to speak to those amendments.

And then if there are individuals who would like to add their names as co-sponsors, you will be welcome to do so before we talk about the next amendment.

There are about 18 amendments for our consideration today.

So we are going to do our work to get through as many as possible today with a hard stop at 5 p.m.

We do have a public comment sign and sign up period for tomorrow morning as well.

You can sign up starting at 8 a.m.

public comment will be at 10 a.m and whatever we don't finish today we will conclude on our calendar for tomorrow.

Regardless of how many amendments we get through today we will still plan to have public comment tomorrow so if you don't get a chance to speak today you are welcome to have an opportunity to speak tomorrow at public comment.

Council colleagues, my intent is that we would then vote on July 29th, next Wednesday, on all of our amendments that will be in front of us at that point, and we will also review the SPD amendments at that point.

If we need additional time, we will, of course, ask for your flexibility, and with the Council President's guidance, we will consider if we need additional time, but thanks to our incredible team at Central Staff, I think we have a good path laid out for us over the next two weeks here.

That's our agenda for today, for tomorrow, and for next Wednesday.

If there's no objection, today's agenda will be approved.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is approved and adopted.

Now, at this time, we will open public comment.

Our remote public comment, we're asking folks to be patient as we continue to operate in this new system in real time.

We're continuously looking for ways to fine tune and operate the program, operate public comment as we go through.

We have the opportunity in front of us today to have 30 minutes of public comment, and we're trying to get through as many folks as we can.

I will keep public comment to one minute, and if we need to extend, we will.

Again, just a reminder for folks, given the large number of people who have signed up for public comment, We will also have public comment tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.

Sign-up begins at 8 a.m.

I'm going to call on three speakers at a time in the order in which they've registered on today's sign-up.

And I'll be giving preference to Seattle residents first, and then if time permits, going to the other remaining speakers.

If you have not yet registered to speak but you would like to, you can still go and sign up for public comment on the council's website at seattle.gov backslash council.

The public comment link is also on today's agenda.

Once I call on the speaker's name, you will be given the prompt to unmute yourself or that you are also unmuted by us.

And please introduce yourself and reminder that you will have a minute.

You will hear a chime at 50 seconds, which gives you 10 seconds to wrap up your comment.

Please do send in your remaining comments to the council at Seattle or at council at seattle.gov if you don't get a chance to get all of your comments in.

Once you've completed your public comment, we ask you to disconnect from the line, and if you plan to continue to follow today's meeting, please do so via Seattle Channel or the other listening options that are listed on the agenda.

Public comment period is now open, and we will start with our first three speakers that are present.

Today, I see with us Carly Gary, Maya Garfinkel, and Peter Shalitno.

Carly, welcome.

Hi my name is Carly Gray.

I'm a renter in the East Lake neighborhood in Alex Peterson's District 4. I'm speaking today in support of defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50 percent.

Policing is working more or less as it was designed.

Policing is a system that's inherently racist born out of slave patrols and meant to protect the property of the wealthy owning class.

Police are not here to protect our communities.

They introduce violence by arriving armed with guns and armed with impunity.

We've seen this in SPD's abhorrent response to protesters over the past two months.

Reform does not work.

It's long past time to dismantle the racist violent policing system.

What does it say about our city that the police budget is bigger than our school budget than our housing budget.

The remainder of the 2020 SPD budget must be cut by 50 percent and the 2021 budget must be determined through participatory budgeting.

I support decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now's four-point plan to reallocate funds from SPD into community-based solutions.

City Council members especially Alex Peterson I urge you to vote to defund the Seattle Police Department.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Maya, welcome.

I'm Maya Garfinkel, a tenant organizer with Be Seattle.

I'm calling in support of the demands outlined by King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle to reallocate 50% of SPD's remaining 2020 budget and reinvest in community.

In order to fight for a more just Seattle, we have to follow the visionary work these groups are doing by investing in permanently affordable housing, replacing 911 operators with civilian-led dispatch, and giving the necessary funds for those most affected to lead the solution.

Please fund housing and tenant organizing.

Defund SPD.

I appreciate all those who have committed to defunding SPD.

We'll be here every step of the way to hold you accountable.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Peter, welcome.

Hi.

Hi, my name is Peter Shelito and I live in Wallingford District 4. Alex Peterson is my district's council member.

We cannot continue to ignore the advantage that redlining gave to Northside residents here in Seattle.

The racist exclusionary practice perpetuated by the FHA allowed wealth to accumulate in my neighborhood only for white Seattleites.

Defunding the Seattle Police Department by at least 50% is not only good policy and anti-racist in itself, but also investing that money in black and brown communities begins the long process of addressing and rectifying associated racist processes, practices in our city, such as redlining.

I'd like my city council members to support participatory budgeting as the best way to reinvest the $85 million that we will divest from SPD this year.

participatory budgeting explicitly works to restore equity and justice to our city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Don Blakely, Joseph Robinson and Tom Rasmussen.

Welcome, Don.

Thank you, council members.

My name is Don Blakely and I'm with the downtown Seattle association.

I'm here to say that we agree with the call to rethink Seattle's investments in public safety and in the police department and how we truly and to work together to truly envision a safe community in which all people, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation and income level can safely work, pursue their lives and visit our city.

However, I'm also here to express concerns that we've heard from our residents, organizations and businesses in downtown about growing public safety issues that we're facing, as well as the speed with which the council is moving forward to dismantle core functions of city government that pertain to public safety.

However, any serious process that is going to do this and achieve the goals that we outlined is going to need to be more than a budget exercise and must involve a process that engages all communities.

And unfortunately, we've been working for years to articulate and find solutions to chronic public safety issues and social issues that have so far been escalating and that we, as we work to recover from COVID-19, public safety must be front and center.

So we hope that we can have that conversation with you in the weeks ahead.

Thank you very much Don.

Joseph welcome.

Speaking on behalf of.

Hello my name is Joe Robinson.

I live in District 7 and I am speaking on behalf of the folks in King County Equity Now and in decriminalized Seattle in support of the defunding of SPD.

I acknowledge and appreciate the 7 out of 9 of you who have committed to defunding SPD by 50 percent.

However I must.

exemplify that this is just the first start.

It is very very important that we amplify or that we amplify the voices of Black folk within Seattle and make sure that these funds are going back into Black communities.

It is important that that is the main focus of these funds.

It is that is what is required for equity work to happen.

That is what is required for reparations to happen and what that is what is required for us to actually reach true equality within our city.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Welcome former Council Member Rasmussen.

I'm Tom Rasmussen, a volunteer working with other community members to create the AIDS Memorial Pathway.

We have recorded over 80 hours of stories of our diverse community, including LGBTQ, African-American, Latinx, Native American, and Asian-Americans who have shown great love and courage.

have experienced great losses and who have fought and in fact some are still fighting the AIDS epidemic and stigma and discrimination.

I respectfully request the council to approve the amendment to restore $65,000 for the AIDS Memorial Pathway into the revised 2020 budget of the Office of Arts and Culture.

Please help us make sure that these profound stories of Seattle's rich political and diverse cultural history are widely available to inform and inspire people today and in the future.

Thank you council members.

Thank you, Councilmember, and thank you for your past service as well.

The next three speakers are Monisha Sai, John Thoreau, and Brent Haberman.

Monisha, welcome.

Hello, my name is Monisha Singh.

Hello, my name is Monisha Singh, and I'm the Executive Director of the Chinatown International District Business Improvement Area.

I'm speaking today to urge Council to take community input regarding defunding SPD.

Chinatown ID has a unique, fraught, and complicated relationship with policing over several decades, but once again, have not been part of the process on how these changes will affect this community.

Many in the CID encourage systematic and impactful changes, but have been left out of the conversation.

We need detailed and thoughtful information on how council will design alternatives to the existing systems and how these changes will be implemented in our communities.

A responsible public safety plan includes an honest community engagement process and a detailed proposal to create or enhance supplemental services that can take the place of critical duties currently performed by the SPD.

This is a time for council to be clear and concise on how budget changes will affect the most vulnerable community members of the CID and Seattle as a whole.

Thank you.

Thank you.

John, welcome.

My name is John.

Hi, my name is John Thoreau, and I'm here in support of defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50%.

There is an undeniable culture of lying, racism, and transphobia that has perpetuated itself within the SPD and also within the civilian support of the department.

They're a corrupt organization.

SPD is armed to defend against an army and trained to commit violence.

We have seen time and time again the misuse of this firepower and the massive damage it has had, especially on our Black and Indigenous neighbors.

People have been and are dying at the hands of the police.

Defunding SPD and investing in our communities will save Black and Indigenous lives, and it will make Seattle safer.

We have a choice between fear and love.

The police want you to choose fear.

Please choose love.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Brent, welcome.

And I wanted to...

Hello, this is Brent Haberman.

I'm a resident of the 7th.

And I wanted the council to know that I am adamantly against this council's plan for a 50% reduction of SPD.

The mayor and chief of police came forward with a more reasonable plan to examine 10% of SPD cuts immediately while establishing a formal process this fall to explore other opportunities to restructure the department and social services along with key public safety functions.

This council has turned a blind eye at controlling violence and destruction happening in downtown and Capitol Hill.

I feel like you'll be held accountable for allowing anarchists to destroy and riot around public and private property.

The police need to be able to protect the citizens of Seattle.

And by your inaction, lack of statements against these anarchists, you're responsible for this destruction.

We ask and we want you to immediately give back the authority of our police to protect this downtown ourselves, our safety and security.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And the next three will be Donyell Sims, Uma Ravana and Terry Cole.

Donyell, welcome.

Welcome.

Thank you for your.

Thank you for your time.

My name is Donyell Sims.

I'm in the 8th District.

However, I grew up in a very diverse population of West Seattle.

Your actions speak so loudly I cannot hear what you are saying.

Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Defund police.

Defund SPD by 50 percent.

You did a roll call at the beginning of your meeting.

You were able to answer.

The following names will never be able to answer again.

Ahmaud Arbery.

Sandra Bland.

Mike Brown.

Philando Castile.

George Floyd.

Eric Garner.

Botham Jean.

Trayvon Martin.

Tamir Rice.

Breonna Taylor.

Still silent.

because they have they don't have breath to answer.

Alton Sterling.

Elijah McLean.

Charlena Lyle.

Terrence Franklin.

Sean Reed.

William Green.

I concede my time.

Thank you and thank you for saying their names.

Uma welcome.

Hello.

Yes.

Good afternoon Council Members.

My name is Umar Raghavan.

I'm a tech entrepreneur not representing the boards of the companies I advise and I'll be a tenant starting tomorrow in District 7. I'm following the leadership of King County Equity Now and decriminalize Seattle Coalition groups in making this comment.

I want Seattle City Council to urgently legislate and defund SPD by 50 percent as was presented to you by the above groups on July 15th.

quote, the city must take a 180-degree turn away from its long-standing pattern of increasing the police budget and instead immediately cut the budget to generate real public safety and health, unquote.

Additionally, hundreds of organizations and thousands of individuals have signed the decriminalizeseattle.com to defund SPD.

Specifically, I'm asking City Council to cut the budget for the remainder of 2020 by at least 50%, remove $8,500 million from the remaining 2020 police budget to invest in Black and Brown working-class communities.

Please fund renter organizing and eviction defense.

And please make a commitment to deeper cuts to SPD's budget to come in the 2021 budget cycle and Black Lives Matter.

Thank you.

Terry, welcome.

You are unmuted.

Thank you.

My name is Terry Cole and I'm calling on behalf of Wallingford Indivisible with members from across North Seattle.

We believe in equity and justice for all.

We believe that all of us deserve the same public safety outcomes.

Seattle has a long history of racist policies from redlining to neighborhood covenants.

We have a taxpayer funded system that is fundamentally flawed as documented recently by the DOJ findings.

Longford Indivisible supports the King County Equity Now Coalition four-point phased plan.

and the reallocation of at least 50% of the SPD budget towards community-based solutions that actually result in public safety.

We acknowledge this will be a hard fight against power and their disinformation campaigns, especially from our mayor, who has shown that she does not feel accountable to implement the council's budget as approved.

Stand strong.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three people are Aaron Mendel, Rosemary Kim, and Naomi True.

Aaron, welcome.

Hi, my name is Aaron Mendel.

I'm a lifelong resident of District 6 and a member of the Sunrise Movement Seattle.

I'm calling in to support the movement to defund FPD by at least 50% this budgetary session.

and i just want to amplify the amazing work that king county equity now and decriminalize seattle has done and want to encourage actually demand that all city council people um go ahead along with their four-point plan that they introduced at the meeting last week um i think it's it doesn't the conversation does not end at uh 50 percent start that cutting the budget by 50 percent Thank you.

Thank you.

Rosemary, welcome.

Standing with Seattle and King County Equity now in their plans to reallocate the remaining 50 percent of the SPD budget and reallocate to invest in community-led public safety research, scale up community-based organizations, replace all 911 operations with civilian-led dispatch and invest in affordable housing for all and access to crisis solutions without referral by law enforcement.

As a young person, this matters to me a lot and I want my community to be safe rather than threatened by the violent armed forces that the police department has placed upon our community.

Thank you.

I cede my time.

Thank you.

Naomi, welcome.

My name is Naomi True.

I'm a high school social studies teacher and a Garfield High alum.

To the majority who've pledged to defund SPD by 50 percent, thank you for taking step one.

Next, I urge you to implement a participatory budgeting process and to support decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now's four point plan for community reinvestment.

The first point is to take 9-1-1 out of SPD's hands so that police are no longer the default.

The second point is to scale up community-based organizations with years of experience in violence interruption and prevention.

We must not shift funds between dysfunctional institutions that also reproduce white supremacy.

The third point is to fund a community-led research process to give those most impacted by policing, including black and brown youth, the time and space to create a roadmap to life without policing.

The fourth point is to invest in housing for all, because chronically houseless people need immediate assistance, not criminalization.

Yesterday, rapper, activist, and educator Jerrell Davis asked, who do you do it for?

My answer is, I do it for the youth.

I ask you to do the same.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next three people are Lauren Owen, Mark Crawford, and Enrique Confi.

Lauren, welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Lauren Owen, and I'm a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and a Seattle District 7 resident.

Our mission is to prevent gun violence.

We think it's critical that cities rethink and reimagine public safety at this historic moment in Seattle.

As members of this community, we know how important this step is for our city.

While we are not here to comment on the nature of any potential, we and our 6,000 supporters in Seattle are here to testify in support of funding several critical efforts.

These include number one, funding violence intervention and prevention VIP programs, including scaling up community-based responses to crisis that rebuild health and safety, funding a community-led research process to develop a roadmap for public safety, making investments in housing to support immediate survival needs for the community.

Number two, development of a civilian-controlled 911 system that would provide alternative responders and build a modern dispatch system, putting clinicians and credible messengers like those in VIP programs on the front lines when an arrest is not required.

Thank you.

Please send the remainder of your comments in via email if you could.

Mark, welcome.

Hi, my name is Mark Crawford.

I'm the Executive Director of the U District Partnership.

I share the sense of urgency to respond to calls for change at the local and national level.

However, I worry you are moving too far forward before clearly sharing with the community what public safety outcomes you hope to achieve and more specificity about the plans you would put in place to ensure community safety as the model changes.

I have concerns over the speed with which you are moving to dismantle core functions of city government without having built replacement strategies.

We want clarity on how the council will design alternatives to the existing system and how these new systems will be implemented in our communities.

We want to know how you will hold the system accountable for the results.

So, yes?

take initial appropriate steps within this rebalancing process to begin your process.

Steps that will clearly make a difference and have mechanisms that lead to success.

Work with the mayor, work with the leadership of our police and fire departments, and commit to clearly articulating a vision and a process of reimagining public safety that can drive your fall budgeting process constructively and effectively.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Enrique, welcome.

Thank you.

If you look back at the last six decades you'll see that whenever the police mess up they always promise reform but nothing ever improves because the unions walk back and changes.

We still see them abuse power whether it's beating people or violating the rights of peaceful protesters whose message they don't agree with which is what the Seattle police have recently done.

Don't let history repeat itself.

Don't be fooled by promises for reform.

Reform is no longer the right answer.

The right answer is to be bold.

The right answer is to defund the police.

Defunding forces reform.

With fewer resources they will be forced to prioritize the real crimes and not the abusive practices.

The fairest way is to lay off officers with the most complaints.

Other than this don't wade too much into the details of what to cut.

It's the chief's job to decide how best to distribute whatever money that you allocate to her.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate your time.

And I'm not sure if you cut yourself short because you heard the chime, but do send in the rest of your comments if so.

The next three people are Kelsey McGrath, Ingrid Archibald, and Indu Nair.

Kelsey, welcome.

Hi, my name is Kelsey McGrath.

I live in District 3 and I'm a teacher.

I'm urging the City Council to stay firm in their allegiance to voting on defunding SPD by 50% and executing the four-point plan put forth by decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now.

Police protect property and the ruling class.

Police do not prevent crime, do not keep us safe, and actively commit harm against citizens.

Full stop.

I support the four-point plan because it has both immediate and long-term goals.

The pandemic has exacerbated racial inequities in our city.

and we must act with urgency to ensure housing for all as well as immediate real allocation of funds to organizations and systems to truly support community safety and wellness.

We must also invest in a sustained and community-centered process to work toward total abolition of the police and carceral state.

The four-point plan ensures that we are centering the most marginalized community voices in the imagination and creation of systems beyond policing that dismantle white supremacy and create a more equitable future for all.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Ingrid, welcome.

Hi, counselors.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify today.

My name is Ingrid Archibald and I live in District 6. I want to echo everybody before me who has urged you all to defund SBB by 50% this budgetary session.

I trust you all to stick to your word and to vote to defund them by 50% this year and to then, of course, continue to reform our police system and how we ensure public safety and justice as we move forward.

Our entire system is deeply rooted in white supremacy.

The fact that white colonizers are still stealing land from the Duwamish people is the basis of where all of this injustice comes from, and we need to think bigger than just taking money from some programs and moving them to others.

But an incredibly important first step is listening to the voices of Black-led organizations and Indigenous and people of color-led organizations.

And following through with a four-point plan as proposed by King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle.

Thank you so much.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Indu welcome.

Hi my name is Indu Nair and I'm with the Coalition of Seattle Indian-Americans.

I demand that the council defund the Seattle Police Department by at least 50 percent and reallocate those funds to community-led health and safety systems.

The anarchists that wreaked havoc in the streets of Seattle were the officers of SPD.

These white supremacists attacked the citizens that they had sworn to protect.

I demand that the council initiate whatever steps needed to correct the wrongs committed by the SPD and release the protesters arrested during this uprising without charges.

Finally, I demand the resignation of Mayor Durkin and Chief Best.

They have failed abysmally.

They should step down.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Madison Walker followed by Tiara Dearborn and Barbara Laramere.

Madison, welcome.

Hi, my name is Madison Walker.

I'm a resident and small business owner downtown Seattle.

I have always had a relationship with the Seattle Police Department and a lot of them are fellow residents of our city.

We have spoken many times about the frustrations with the city council and their disregard for public safety.

The police want to help me.

They want the community to feel safe, but they feel like their hands are tied.

These policies are rewarding and enabling negative behavior, and this is why we are where we are today.

It's the city council's fault and not the police.

The SPD have served the city well.

In my opinion, we are in need of more police and more funding so that we can help them help us and bring on social workers to help them in the communities who are suffering with mental illness and addiction.

This has nothing to do with the movement.

It's about the right thing to do.

It's about finding real solutions to our city's problems instead of being reckless and reactionary in a time of chaos.

We need to think about the real repercussions of this.

If you don't know, if you don't know how you can take away money from purchases and sleep at night, look at the spike in gun violence currently taking place.

If you pass this bill, the encampments will continue to grow, public safety will continue to decline, good police officers will leave and residents will leave downtown.

Thank you.

Tiara, welcome.

Hi, my name is Tiara Dearbone, here to address the LEAD police gatekeeping proviso as project manager for the LEAD program in Seattle's West and South precincts.

I have spent the past few months convening with several neighborhood groups, organizations, and businesses across the city about their desire for public order response to low-level crime related to poverty and behavioral health that is not traditional enforcement.

LEAD has been and can provide an evidence-based response to these problems, and these groups support this approach.

However, neighborhoods have been left waiting while law enforcement is unavailable to approve referrals into the program.

Please support the proviso offered by council members Herbold and Morales that removes the requirement that SPD approve all referrals into LEAD.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Barbara.

Welcome.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Barb Larimer.

I have lived in Seattle for nearly 40 years, have worked downtown nearly all of my career.

and I've been a downtown resident for more than 10 years.

We are keenly aware this is a pivotal time in the stability and economic viability of the largest neighborhood in our city and our regional center.

I've spoken with numerous friends and neighbors who have concerns over the haste and speed with which you may be moving to dismantle core functions of our city government.

We recognize and share the urgency to respond to all the impassioned calls for change at local and national level.

However, we worry that the council is moving forward before sharing with the community important outcomes that we hope to achieve or plans you put into place to ensure our safety.

Many of us have participated in peaceful protests, but we aren't the crowd protesting every night or damaging property or loudly speaking to you on your doorsteps or social media.

We represent a significant number of people in Seattle that want the council to work together with the mayor and the chief.

We agree we need to rethink our police department and we appreciate calls to reduce the budget, but we hope you'll do so safely and calmly.

Thank you very much, Barb.

Please send the rest of your comments in if you'd like to.

And the next three people are Evelyn Caldwell, Brandy Flood, and Jessica Skoslow.

Evelyn, welcome.

Hi, my name is Evelyn Caldwell, and I'm a homeowner in District 5. I would like to urge City Council to reallocate Seattle PD's remaining 2020 budget by 50% or more, as outlined by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now.

Instead allocate funds for housing and scale up community alternatives that are suited to fostering public safety and preventing future crimes of need.

And this includes a mental health emergency response team such as CAHOOTS in Portland to help people experiencing mental crises and the LEAD program which somebody spoke about which helps people with low level drug or property charges get housing counseling and jobs.

Giving people what they need to live with dignity makes us all safer.

And thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Brandy, welcome.

Hello.

Thank you, council members, for having us, giving us a space to testify.

My name is Brandy Flood.

I'm a lifelong resident, Black resident from District 2, homeowner, and Rainier Beach alum and University of Washington alum.

I'm also the program manager in the REACH program for the case management partnership with the LEAD program.

I want to, first of all, support the platform to defund SPD by 50 percent and stand in solidarity with decriminalize Seattle and Equity Nile and their efforts.

I also want to ask the council to consider Morales' and Herbroke's proviso to stop law enforcement as the gatekeepers into the LEAD program.

It'll provide us with community alternatives to really serve the community the way it should be.

We support a lot of people in the community who have a lot of mental health issues, who are drug users, who are chronically homeless.

And as long as drugs are a crime and poverty is a crime.

Thank you for your time.

Colleagues, that has been 30 minutes of public testimony.

I'd like to at least get the first 50 people in.

So if there's no objection, the public testimony will continue.

I'll extend it for another 20 minutes.

hearing no objection, let's try and get as many folks in as possible.

And for the folks on the line, if you have a number that is higher than a 50, it is possible that we will not get to you today.

We do have public testimony again tomorrow starting, sign up at 8 a.m., 10 a.m.

public testimony, and we will try to go twice as long tomorrow for public comment.

The next three speakers are Jessica Skoslo, Susan Schutzel, and Tusika Blessing.

Jessica, welcome.

Hi, my name is Jessica Scalzo.

I live in District 3. Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I am calling again to say that I fully support defunding SPD by 50% and investing in Black and Brown community-led solutions, specifically the four-point plan put forth to you by King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle.

I think it's important because History has taught us that the police are here to protect wealth and property.

And also, I really appreciate what one of the earlier callers said about the inequity that redlining created and the equity and wealth it created in North Seattle, and that this is an opportunity to undo some of that.

So let's move forward and undo some of that and create equity.

Thank you for the time.

Thank you.

Susan, welcome.

Just check in.

Susan, do we got you on the line here?

Yep, I'm here.

My name is Susan Schultz.

I'm a resident of Madison Park and a business owner in the University District.

I agree.

We need to rethink how much we ask police to do.

They're asked to do way too much.

But police, as we need them, are to protect citizens from bad actors.

So at some point, you've got to keep that piece there.

I don't agree with defunding police immediately by 50%.

I think we need to have a conversation on how we move things around, but don't ask the police to just not be there for us.

There are violent people out there, there's violent crime, and we've seen some of that.

Police weren't up in shop, a lot of shootings, couple people died, there've been shootings around the city.

We need the police for that, and right now we can't give up on them immediately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tusquena welcome.

Hi I'm Tusquena Blessing.

I live in District 5 and I'm a 50 year plus resident of Seattle.

I want to speak to the topic of sweeps and congregate shelters, which spread coronavirus indiscriminately.

So we must stop sweeps and defund the navigation team, fund street outreach, continue and increase funding for COVID hotels.

Also, it's important that we free the LEAD program from police control and increase their funds, that we fund the CAHOOTS-style program.

We've had programs like this in Seattle funded before, so we can do this again.

Also, I'd like to point out that less than 5% of the time of police officers is spent on violent crime.

This has been proven through the New York Times study recently.

We don't need people getting violent on our homeless people, our brown and black youth.

This is about class as much as it is about race.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Brian Deng, followed by Terina James and Malika Lamont.

Brian, welcome.

Hi, my name is Brian.

I'm asking that the City Council approve a 50% cut to the rest of the SPD's budget for this year, in addition to cutting 50% next year with accompanying reinvestment in real community safety through the four-point plan created by Decriminalize Seattle and King County Equity Now.

I'm only 22, and I have seen Seattle declare homelessness a crisis.

instead of housing or gentrification, continue to displace communities through policy over police and punish communities, and continue to overfund SPD way beyond city programs that actually enrich us.

The budget reflects the city's values.

My friends and family want a future in this city.

Now is an opportunity to invest in community and address the actual issues at the root.

For example, we should de-police the navigation team, stop homeless sweeps, especially during a pandemic, and invest in housing.

As COVID-19 continues to get worse, it is clear that we do not need better methods of policing punishment.

We need community infrastructure immediately.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Tarina, welcome.

Hello, council members.

My name is Tarina James.

I'm a LEAD alumni and a member of local Washington.

I'm here to ask that you pass the LEAD police gatekeeping provision It allows us to do the work even when police capacity is reduced.

Referrals are about one-tenth or less what they were projected.

With everything going on today, realistically, we cannot have much impact if we continue to rely on the handful of police approvals we are receiving.

Removing the requirement of the police approval is the best way for us to support the movement to radically reimagine police safety and move away from an inappropriate response or police response to what our actual issues of health and poverty.

The provision would require us to be open to other referral sources without police approval.

If the person referred is good fit or needs services it's believed to be engaged in law violations related to behavioral health issues or poverty.

We have capacity and the referral is consistent with racial equity.

We can still take any police referrals or social contact referrals that come

And apologies for the timing.

If you would like to send in the rest of your comments, that would be very much welcome.

Malika, welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Malika Lamont.

I'm the director of Vocal Washington.

We're based in downtown Seattle and we're in alignment with the King County Equity Now demands as well as the decriminalized Seattle demands.

And we're asking that you pass the lead gatekeeping proviso.

Law enforcement should not be the only way that people could, or the predominant way that people with profound behavioral health issues are able to build power, recover from their trauma, and engage in trauma responsive services in order to build their lives back and move in self-determination.

We're asking that you remove the gatekeeping, police gatekeeping requirement, so that people can engage in treatment.

and engage in the services that are relevant to them and be restored back to their community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Ethan Manns followed by Hassan Khan and Benjamin Last.

Ethan, welcome.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Ethan Manns.

I am a District 2 resident.

I wanted to echo some of the concerns that other callers have had on violent crime.

I also would love for us to rethink violent crime, public safety when it comes to reducing violent crime.

And to me, that means defunding the SPD, who are constantly perpetrators of violent crime against black and brown people, including myself.

I just want to echo concerns about, as we define SPD, creating other solutions that offload the work that SPD is currently asked to be doing.

And that's why I also endorse King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle's four-point plan The second point talks about defunding SPD to scale up and fund community-led solutions.

There are many groups in Seattle already doing this work, and many more have given the chance in the funding.

The city must invest in Seattle community-based solutions to keep us safe so we can grow our future without SPD.

I also want to hit on the concerns about community input, and the third point of the plan also involves funding a process to get community input.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Hassan, welcome.

Good afternoon, this is Khan.

Good afternoon, this is Khan Hassan.

I'm calling to urge the city council members to defund SPD by at least 50% and redirect the money to community-led health and safety systems.

Impeach Mayor Durkan and fire police chief Best.

City of Seattle will know no peace or progress until they are prevented from lying to the people who they were hired to serve and who terrorize our citizens on a daily basis.

Finally, no more SPD training in Israel.

Thank you.

Have a nice day.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Benjamin, welcome.

Hi, my name is Benjamin Last.

I'm a Ballard resident and I support defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50% in King County Equity Now.

and decriminalize Seattle's plan to invest in community-led solutions because police reforms have failed.

The consent decree, the hours of officer training, the CPD, the OAP, de-escalation training, body cameras, they've all failed.

In the last few weeks alone, SPD has pepper-sprayed an eight-year-old, shot a protester in the chest with a blast ball, repeatedly tear-gassed people in their homes, arrested a journalist, lied to the public about protesters setting up armed checkpoints in Capitol Hill, then set up armed SPD checkpoints in Capitol Hill, put their knees on people's necks and those are just a few of the items I can name off the top of my head.

So we need to defund SPD because we cannot fix an institution that is so fundamentally broken and perpetuating so much violence on the citizens of Seattle.

Thank you for thank you and I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next three people are Howard Gale Richa Duby and Erin Ettinger.

Howard welcome.

Hi, this is Howard Gale from Lower Queen Anne District 7. Yes, we definitely need to defund the police, but obviously make clear that this is not about defunding public safety, but rather about finding new ways to make our communities safer.

We also need to recognize this is not just the police that have created a dysfunctional system.

We also need to defund our current police accountability system.

in order to develop real civilian oversight and police accountability as they have in Newark, New Jersey and Nashville, Tennessee.

We have spent over $9 million last year on our current police accountability system and have failed to hold our police accountable for 28 murders in the last nine years.

That $9 million, not including many more millions spent on the federal court consent decree, We have witnessed horrifying police abuse over the last two months.

So again, not just defund the police, but totally defund and reorganize policing accountability.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Richa, welcome.

Good afternoon.

My name is Richa Dube.

I'm a small business owner in Seattle and a volunteer with the Coalition of Seattle Indian Americans.

Our group follows the leadership of King County Equity Now and Decriminalize Seattle.

I ask that the council defund SPD by at least $85 million and reallocate that money to food security for working class people.

SPD plans to spend $176,000 plus on late night recreation alone in 2020. At $2.3, this is equal to 76,526 school lunches.

Currently, 2.2 million Washingtonians face the prospect of food insecurity as unemployment figures rise.

How many of them are in Seattle?

What are we going to feed them?

Dark boards?

This is just one aspect of the budget and the unfairness of money that should be going to bare essentials like housing, food, and health, instead funding the oppression of people who are already struggling.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Erin, welcome.

Hi Council.

My name is Erin Ettinger and I'm a resident of District 6. Thank you for letting us give testimonies today.

I'm attending today's City Council budget hearing in support of defunding the Seattle Police Department by 50 percent and reinvesting in community-led solutions.

In addition to defunding SPD by 50 percent I urge council members to support decriminalized Seattle and King County Equities Now's four-point plan for community reinvestment of those funds to replace current 911 operations with a civilian-controlled system scale up community-led solutions, fund a community-created roadmap to life without policing, and invest in housing for all.

Please support defunding SPD and community reinvestment in today's meeting.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Emma Helther, Sue Mary Ng, and Rodolfo Cruz.

Emma, welcome.

Hi, my name is Emma Helphaller.

I am a resident and business owner in District 7, and I am in support of defunding the police if it ends the militarization and stops the violent racial bias that they exert.

Terms such as high barrier individuals makes me feel like there is still erroneous stereotyping taking place amongst our police.

There's no information on how they are determined or the number of whom are people of color.

And I suggest dismantling the high barrier individual working group to begin the end of stereotyping among law enforcement.

Therefore points of focus are better handled without guns or jail time even in your exclusive West Wing.

Thank you very much for your time.

I do believe that the 1.6 million originally proposed to recruit new officers should go to social workers.

Wonderful.

Thank you so much for your time.

I'm sorry you got cut off.

Thanks for sending any additional comments.

Sue May welcome.

Hello my name is Sue May Ng of the Chinatown International District.

I'm speaking on the proposed defunding of SPD by 50 percent.

Neighborhoods are unique.

A majority of the CID residents are elderly.

The residents and business owners English is limited.

They are less able to defend themselves or speak up for help against danger and crime.

Public safety-wise, CID has been historically neglected, tragically losing Donnie Chin in 2015 left more gaps.

Since then, we've been working action plans with the city and SPD, including dedicated city and SPD communication, new programs, increased officer presence, diverse culturally competent officer new hires, and more in the works.

Surveys indicate residents and businesses and visitors feel the CID is safer now, proposing a 50% budget cut.

What will this cut do to all the progress?

I urge you to slow down, consult neighborhoods, seriously understand their unique needs, what's working, what's in the works, and determine what will be lost with a random 50% cut.

Please provide proven alternate plans and work to prevent negative consequences.

Thank you very much Sumay.

Rodolfo welcome.

Good afternoon.

My name is Rodolfo Cruz.

I lived at Sherwood Tent City 3 for two years.

It saved my life.

If it wasn't for the COVID pandemic I'd have left camp by now.

But the shutdown of everything has set me back.

I want to make some points about the budget changes you are looking at.

First share opposite sweeps of homeless encampments.

Sweeps are cruel.

Secondly.

We support amendment for by council members strays, large mass indoor shelters, especially at a jail.

I've always been hard places to sleep at COVID also makes them deadly.

Tensity three has been tested twice for COVID.

No one here has got it yet.

Compare that to all the cases of COVID.

Thank you so much for your comments and we appreciate your time.

If you would like to send in the remainder of your

Hi there.

I'm calling to publicly report the defunding of SVD by 50%.

Great, please go ahead.

Are you able to hear me?

Yeah, there's a little bit of background noise, but we'll restart your time.

Appreciate it.

I am calling in support of defunding SVD by 50%.

Sorry, I'm not really prepared to speak at the moment, but I do want to say I do not believe that our current police system is designed to protect us in the way that our society functions at the moment.

It is not designed to protect everyone that we have living in our city.

And I believe that our city council should look into what total abolition of our current police system would look like and how we can reimagine our public safety in a way that prevents crime instead of having an outdated and corrupt police system that simply looks for crime.

I want to thank our city council members that have publicly supported the fund.

I know that not everyone is for it, so please hold that pledge.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Erika, welcome.

Hello, my name is Erica Jacobson and I'm a hairdresser and renter who lives in District 2. I'm calling about the current 2020 budget and future city budgets to urge the City Council to defund SBD by at least 50%.

This means investing this money in programs to help all cities homeless population and organizations such as King County Equity Now to help the black and brown communities that are being affected by police violence and displacement right now.

I also urge you guys to take action for Seattle's homeless community.

Please stop the encampment sweeps.

The money redistributed from SPD could be used in building community low income housing mental health emergency response drug addiction counseling and many other programs meant to help and provide healing and not violence.

Lastly COVID-19 is still raging throughout our country and tenants and renters need help with organizing a defense against evictions.

I personally have friends and co-workers who are facing this reality.

Please continue the eviction moratorium through this pandemic to support the working classes.

As a hairdresser who works in downtown Seattle, I hear the stories from my clients who are from the homeless community and black and brown working class.

None of their stories of policing are positive or helpful.

We must listen to those who are oppressed in these situations of uplifting equity.

Thank you so much for your time.

Thank you.

Barbara, welcome.

Hello, I'm Barbara Finney from District 5, a delegate to the MLK Labor Council and member of the People's Budget Movement.

Firstly, Council, defund the SPD budget for the remainder of 2020 by at least 50%.

A month ago, MLK Labor's affiliated unions voted to expel SPOG from the County Labor Federation.

Now, Council, it's time that you take back critically needed resources from the overfunded SPD budget.

Remove $85 million from the remaining 2020 police budget and invest in Black and Brown working-class communities.

Also, please stop the sweeps of our homeless neighbors.

Sweeps are contraindicated by the CDC.

They worsen the public health crisis in Seattle.

And finally, fund renter organizing and eviction defense.

Fund the infrastructure that supports renters, especially during this pandemic economic crisis.

Thank you.

The next three speakers are Samuel LeBlanc, Ellie Bondi, and Monique Maciel.

And colleagues, I believe that will be the end of our public testimony today.

I want to just flag those next three, Samuel, Ellie, and Monique.

And folks, if you have not got a chance to speak today, again, we will have public comment tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.

Thank you.

Samuel, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Samuel Wonk and I'm a resident of District 7. First, I wanted to thank all of the seven city council members who have already committed to defending the police.

I thank you and the whole city thanks you.

To the other members of the council and to Mayor Durkan, I urge you to keep an open mind and not discount these viewpoints just because they're new to you and you don't understand them.

I also urge you to support the essential work being done by King County Equity Now and to decriminalize Seattle.

Specifically, I urge you to implement the four-point plan put forth by the King County Equity Now, which is to one, replace 9-1-1 operations with civilian-controlled systems, two, scale up community-led solutions, three, fund a community roadmap to life beyond policing, and four, invest in housing for all.

Again, I want to thank the seven community council members for their commitment to reallocating police funds to more deserving services.

The city is watching you, so please do not go back on your word.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ellie.

Welcome.

First, I cannot believe in the year 2020 a person has to ask for help in living in at a safe and secure place.

There are several of us that are employed yet unable to find affordable housing.

I have a feeling this number is only going to increase as the months go on during the COVID pandemic.

I reside at Nicholsville North Lake Tiny House Village.

I feel safe here.

In fact, this is the safest place for me during a pandemic that seems to continue and rise.

We have had two different COVID tests done here.

The results of both come back negative.

If you continuously during this pandemic, that may change.

Many of our residents are considered vulnerable beyond the normal homeless vulnerabilities.

We are easily targeted for crimes against us.

Here we are safe.

We have consistently asked the mayor's office for support on our August 1st eviction date.

It seems the rules change every time we respond.

I am asking the council to support the proviso disallowing the funding to sweep my village also to consider Nicholsville when planning the budget.

Thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Thank you for calling in.

And our last speaker is Monique.

Welcome, Monique.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Monique Moshio.

I live and I work in downtown Seattle in District 7 and have been for the last 34 years.

My family and friends and community are small business owners and residents also of downtown Seattle.

I'm deeply concerned about the current state and the future outlook of our city We know the issues too well.

Downtown Seattle has reached a tipping point with the explosion of crime drugs violence sanitation as well as property destruction and homeless encampments.

The situation feels dire for residents.

We don't feel safe living here going out on the streets.

Businesses don't feel safe operating.

We're living in fear and feeling incredibly helpless.

I encourage the city council to propose a comprehensive plan that balances equity in defunding the SPD's budget with taking a strong stance on public safety and sanitation to create a space that people love to live and visit.

The health and the recovery of downtown Seattle is dependent on it.

We need to invigorate the local and regional visitor to downtown to revitalize the businesses and survive.

Thank you.

And thank you for your time.

Again, folks who didn't get the chance to comment, please do send in your public comment to council at seattle.gov and or please feel free to comment publicly again tomorrow morning.

public comment sign up starts at 8 a.m.

for public comment at 10 a.m.

we will have an extra long time tomorrow at least an hour and a half to get through more individuals who may not have had the chance to publicly speak today or in previous meetings.

We hope that is a helpful time for us to be able to reconvene.

to hear from you.

Again, central staff, thank you so much for all of the materials that you've made available for us, and the folks from IIT and communications for helping to make sure that public comment is available.

We endeavor to have this at all of our public meetings, which we have done at every day, because our meetings are often divided into sections one and two.

We try to have it at both, but we've definitely had it at session one in every single meeting, and we'll continue to do so.

Again, as a reminder, I'm looking forward to hearing from folks tomorrow at 10 a.m.

Moving on, that concludes our public comment for today.

Moving on to the first item of business, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, review of proposed amendments to the 2020 proposed rebalancing package for briefing and discussion.

Okay.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk.

Council colleagues, we have with us a handful of our team members from central staff.

And as we tee up the discussion today, I'd encourage them to take their, get their materials ready.

So we're ready to go.

I see you, Lisa.

Thank you.

And Tracy, I want to say thank you to all of our central staff for all of your time.

We know that you have been working day and night in anticipation of these conversations, and we're eagerly awaiting the mayor's proposed 2020 rebalancing package.

Given the delay in sending it down, I know you've been scrambling to help us both dissect what is in the 2020 rebalancing package and also respond to both community and council members in our questions and teeing up possible amendments to that rebalancing package.

So just a quick note of appreciation for all of the work that you do.

We know that council members also are counsel office legislative assistants, our comm staff, and the clerk's office, and IT.

Many of you have been working around the clock to make sure that we have all of the materials that we need.

So we just wanted to say thank you for all of the work that you've done.

And we know that this process is unique.

We do not often go through a rebalancing process in the middle of the summer, particularly in the middle of a deadly pandemic.

while we work from home.

So it's all a unique and new situation.

And it makes these moving targets on our numbers that we're trying to adjust for the rebalancing package even harder.

So especially want to thank you for all of the work that you do to help identify possible amendments and to try to work with the information that we've been given from the executive, which we'll talk about in just a little bit.

Here, we know that this is quite a challenge.

Colleagues, again, just a reminder for the process today, in terms of the presentation, we will be reviewing members' proposed amendments on all topics other than those that directly relate to the Seattle Police Department's budget.

We will have ample amount of time allocated specifically to SPD amendments next Wednesday.

So today, central staff will read each amendment into the record that will summarize the effect of the amendments, and the sponsors will have the chance to speak to those amendments and give us your pitch, if you will.

For folks who haven't been through this before, this is your chance to explain the why.

I would encourage you to be brief, given that we have 18 amendments to go through.

to sign on to amendments if you like.

It is definitely not required.

council chambers, which I think is a pretty challenging process for the clerks and for central staff to see.

So today, because we're working remotely, we're going to ask folks at the end of the summary of the amendments and the discussion and possible debate, before we move on to the next amendment, I'm going to ask you to unmute, say your name, and I will repeat it to make sure that we have all heard it.

so that we have a better sense of who's signing on.

I want to remind folks that this is not a signal of final support for all amendments, so if a council member decides not to sign on as a co-sponsor, that should not signal that there is not support necessarily.

It's just co-sponsorship, so I want that to be explicitly clear as we talk about co-sponsorship.

Again, my intent is that we would vote on amendments on the 29th, and we look forward to the conversation today.

Again, thanks to central staff.

You have three packets that each have been lumped together by departments, and I'm going to turn it over to Lisa to walk us through our first packet and possible amendments for consideration here.

Thanks again, Lisa.

Thank you, Budget Chair Mosqueda.

Can you hear me okay?

We can.

Great, okay.

So fellow committee members, as Budget Chair Mosqueda mentioned, today you will be sharing amendments on items that do not affect the Seattle Police Department's budget.

As she mentioned, those amendments will be considered next Wednesday and are due to central staff this week by 10 o'clock on Friday.

Today's amendments address three of the council bills transmitted as part of the mayor's proposed 2020 rebalancing measures.

the Second Quarter Supplemental Budget Ordinance, the Coronavirus Relief Fund Ordinance, and the 2020 Revisions Ordinance.

The amendments to each bill will be discussed in the order shown in your agenda materials, and they will be projected on the screen as we proceed.

Each of the proposed amendments is balanced against current appropriations through the end of the year.

I will note that four of today's amendments make assumptions about salary savings through the end of the year, which have not been formally presented as part of the mayor's proposed balancing package.

CBO has advised us that they are looking at these savings as one way to address future shortfalls or unanticipated expenses.

But we have not received any formal proposal or legislation to this effect.

And so we are considering them, these four amendments, as self-balancing.

With that then, I would move to the first bill.

So turning first to Council Bill 119818. This is the second quarter supplemental ordinance.

We have received three proposed amendments.

Calvin chow from central staff will speak to the first two.

2025 capital improvement plan for the West Seattle High Bridge.

This would establish the sort of budget and accounting structure for the project.

The project costs are not currently known, so this is a placeholder in the CIP.

Thanks, Kelvin.

I know I just had a birthday, but I'm having to squint here.

Could you please zoom in just a little bit more so that the margins are closer to the edge?

Yeah, that looks great.

Okay, so let's get started.

Council Member Herbold, this is your amendment.

Would you like to speak to it?

Thank you.

As Calvin explained, this is a placeholder CIP page.

It's an important signal to the West Seattle community that the project is being incorporated into the SDOT capital planning process, even though the decision of whether to repair or replace the bridge has not yet been made.

We understand that SDOT will be making a proposal for the 2021 budget that will include some recommended funding.

but I want to, again, move forward with this placeholder amendment.

And just a couple questions.

The bridge in West Seattle is referred to, as we all know, the West Seattle Bridge, and the SDOT website says the West Seattle High Rise Bridge Safety Project.

And the other bridge is usually referred to as the lower bridge or the Spokane Street Bridge.

Is there any issue, Calvin, with the need to sort of standardize the terminology that we use for purposes of clarity?

I will confirm with the project staff to figure out what the correct term of art should be.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, any questions or comments on this proposed amendment?

Again, just for discussion today.

Councilmember Peterson, please.

I just want to add my support to this amendment as Transportation Chair.

Thank you.

Okay, Councilmember Peterson as a co-sponsor.

Any other questions or comments?

Council President Gonzalez.

I also want to thank Council Member Herbold for bringing this forward.

I think it's important for transparency and for making sure that we can continue to track the progress of this amidst a lot of other competing interests.

So I'd also like to be listed as a co-sponsor on this particular addition.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you for that summary.

I will also be adding my name as a co-sponsor to this amendment, especially the impacts on budget in the long-term.

Very interested to work with you and Transportation Chair and our colleagues as we continue to track this.

So thank you for bringing it forward.

Madam Clerk, I heard in addition to Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Peterson, Councilmember Gonzalez, and Councilmember Mosqueda.

Okay.

Thank you, Lisa.

Let's move on to amendment number two.

Amendment number two is sponsored by Council Member Peterson.

It would add $2.45 million of transportation fund balance to restore funding in 2020 for three Safe Routes to Schools projects along Sandpoint Way near Northeast 70th Street and Northeast 77th Street.

The projects include sidewalks on Sandpoint Way, intersection reconfiguration at Sandpoint Way and Northeast 74th, and a crossing improvements at Northeast 77th and Northeast 70th.

The funds would be included in two CIP projects, the Pedestrian Master Plan New Sidewalks Project and the Pedestrian Master Plan School Safeties Project.

Thank you, Calvin.

Council Member Peterson, as sponsor of this amendment, would you like to speak to it?

I would like to make a motion to approve the amendment.

These sidewalks and crosswalks are needed now to meet the goals of three city government initiatives, Vision Zero, our Pedestrian Master Plan, and our Safe Routes to School Program, helping to safely connect dozens of children to Sandpoint Elementary School.

It would also help connect the scores of cyclists biking from the Burke-Gilman Trail to our regional asset of Magnuson Park.

I would like to make a motion to approve this amendment.

This is really about the safety for pedestrians, cyclists, connecting 1,000 low-income residents at Magnuson Park to their neighbors, and enhancing this regional asset that is Magnuson Park.

These projects are community-driven.

They started from the community and have been asked we have been pushing for this for years.

It was finally going to happen and then the plug was pulled on it.

I want to unpause that with this amendment and to help these groups that have been pushing for these pedestrian improvements.

Thank you.

I will ask a question.

Councilmember Strauss.

The safe routes to school, these three safe routes to school projects draw from the unreserved balance.

Is that correct?

And can central staff describe for us what source of funding was originally allotted for that we're using?

Council members, these projects could be funded through the safe routes to schools program, which comes from the traffic cameras, the school traffic camera funding.

However, that funding is actually going to be is significantly reduced this year due to the COVID response and schools not being in session.

So the that fund is not expected to have sufficient unspent revenue for this for this expenditure.

The 2020 budget would have approximately $20.5 million remaining after this amendment.

Okay.

Thank you.

I did have a question as well.

Councilmember Peterson is the sponsor.

Any, obviously, I'm supportive of Safe Routes, have worked on it in the past, including at my time at Department of Health.

I'm wondering about the equity analysis here, though.

Have we had conversations with folks about how this fits in with the comprehensive pedestrian master plan to make sure that we're adding funding to restore projects and doing so in an equitable way, especially as we think about neighborhoods that have historically not had sidewalks or as much infrastructure as some of our districts.

So very supportive of the overall effort to ensure that there are safe routes to schools, but just wondering about that equity analysis.

Yeah, so Madam Chair, if I can, I'm sorry.

Go ahead.

I apologize.

I was trying not to interrupt.

Councilmember Juarez?

Magnuson Park has, as you know, we built, it already has a solid ground housing there.

And then thanks to the city government, we put in the Mercy Magnuson project.

So through city government policy, we basically, we have created a low-income community there at Magnuson Park.

That's a high concentration of folks who are low income right there.

And if you've ever tried to cross the street there, tried to get around there, it's very unsafe.

There are no sidewalks there on that section.

There's no way to get across the street safely except down at 65th.

And so it also is, it's Sandpoint Way Elementary School also is right there on the east side.

And so this is a Safe Routes to School program.

It's part of the Vision Zero program and it's part of the Pedestrian Master Plan.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Juarez.

Yes, I apologize.

I didn't, I'm trying to manage the phone and text you and I I think my staff has sent you a list of where I would like to be a co-sponsor instead of me just interrupting.

I do want to just go back quickly.

I do support Councilmember Herbold's new West Seattle Bridge project as a co-sponsor, and I certainly support Councilmember Peterson in the Sandpoint way.

As you know, we've been working in this neighborhood since 2014 and 15, and besides what Councilmember Peterson just shared, This has been a real area where we have a food desert.

There are no grocery stores.

There's just a 7-Eleven and there's no sidewalk.

This has been an issue with the school district, with the Madison Park folks, with the people that we work with at Seattle School on their board about the safe routes for the children.

And we have that one transit spine coming up sampling going up north.

And with the cuts that we're now having to the school, which is another separate issue, I can only say that I fully support and would like to be a co-sponsor with Council Member Peterson on the Sandpoint Way pedestrian improvement.

Thank you.

And, oh, Madam Chair, the list is coming to you now.

You should be getting it any minute.

Thank you.

I received it.

Thank you and thanks to your staff.

And I won't, yeah, I'm listening, I just won't interrupt.

Thank you.

No problem.

Just to reiterate, for our clerks, we do have an additional co-sponsor to amendment number one, which is Council Member Juarez.

On amendment number two that we're talking about here, I saw Council Member Herbold's hand go up.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So I appreciate that the funding to restore this project would change SDOT's unreserved fund balance to go from about $23 million, which is where it is now, to about I would like to get a sense of what the implications are I am inclined to want to support this, but that's sort of a

Council Member, I've tried to get an update from CBO on what the condition of the transportation fund balance is currently, but they are updating those numbers right now as they try to figure out how to put together a proposal for the 2021 budget.

Any funds that are available here would be, or that are remaining in fund balance would be available to help support a budget proposal for next year.

So to some extent, It is, this is based on what the 2020 adopted budget anticipated at the end of this year, and then incorporated the mayor's proposed rebalancing package, the spending cuts that were highlighted, as well as the revenue adjustments that were included in that package.

There may be additional adjustments to what that financial position looks like based on CBO and SDOT's work on the 2021 budget that I'm not privy to.

We have typically reserved some funding here for large items that we know we have to preserve money for.

We actually tend to hold money in reserve.

It can be complicated by this particular source of funds that goes into the transportation fund, which is a accumulation of many different funds, but I can Perhaps I could go back and get a history of how much unreserved fund balance we've carried in past years to help give you context for what we've done in the past.

Thank you.

Was there additional comments or questions?

Okay.

Councilmember Peterson, I appreciate the answer and also the historical context that Councilmember Juarez provided.

I would be interested in continuing to learn a little bit more about how this dovetails with other priorities that may be on the chopping block across the city.

As we look at areas like South Park and Georgetown that we know are also in food deserts with limited safe areas for exercise and walking just as I would be interested in us doing a little bit of analysis between now and next Wednesday about how this Just flagging that for you, and perhaps I can work with central staff offline to talk about some of the other areas that might be similarly located next to schools as Council Member Peterson called out.

I think that's a really important piece to see if there's any additional parallels that we can draw there.

Councilmember Pedersen, please go ahead.

As I understand, I think this was the only project like this that was cut.

So it wasn't as if there were others cut, and this is the only one being restored.

I think SDOT and CBO, frankly, didn't do that racial social justice analysis.

When they were making these cuts, they used other principle, like just simple budgeting I don't think they cut other sidewalk projects like this.

That is very helpful.

what projects have not yet entered construction because that offered the biggest opportunity to forego spending.

If they had to stop a project that had already been let out for construction and had already mobilized, you wouldn't necessarily get the same amount of savings.

So I think they went mostly from what projects could be put on pause that could create the greatest savings and not necessarily from any broader policy screen.

That's what we are trying to correct here.

Because we understand the neighborhood more precisely and we are trying to restore that equity.

Very helpful.

Thank you Councilmember Peterson for that context.

It sounds like you are trying to reintegrate a racial equity lens here.

I am looking for anybody who would like to co-sponsor this.

Councilmember Juarez has suggested that she would like to co-sponsor along with Councilmember Strauss already.

Before we move on, Councilmember Herbold?

Councilmember Herbold would like to co-sponsor?

Okay.

Got you, Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you.

Okay.

We have Strauss, Juarez, and Herbold.

Thank you so much.

moving on.

Let's go on to item number 3 in this first packet, sponsored by Councilmember Morales.

Councilmembers, good afternoon.

Tracy Ratzliff, Council of Central Staff.

This proposed amendment would amend the second quarter supplemental on the 2020 and 2025 Capital Improvement Program to add $250,000 in general fund for a shoreline restoration project at Bearsheba Park in Rainier Beach.

This proposed ad would be funded with a $250,000 general fund cut from the Department of Finance and Administrative Services.

administration's leadership and administration budget summary level.

This would be supported by the anticipated salary savings from vacant positions that Lisa Kay alluded to earlier in our session today.

This project, the community does estimate would cost approximately $634,000.

They have reportedly secured a $215,000 grant fund from King County Watershed Management Program.

and is fundraising to try to secure the remaining $169,000 needed to fully fund this project.

Council Member Morales, as the current sponsor of this amendment, would you like to speak to it?

Sure, thank you.

Well, first I do want to thank Tracy Ratliff for helping us and for helping the community and sort of guiding our office through what can be a pretty complex system of parks funding.

As I've mentioned many times before, the city has historically underinvested in black and brown communities and this underinvestment is evident in our lack of sidewalks, green space, urban conservation, And it's really been incredible to watch the Rainier Beach community come together to pull this project together, get the grant funding that they needed to do the design work, and really fundraise to restore the shoreline at Beersheba Park.

This is a phased project.

There is also a plan for restoring salmon habitat and park beautification, but what they are trying to to get funding to finish first is this first phase of shoreline restoration.

And so that is what we are trying to do here.

Because of the COVID emergency, the possibility of the city's investment through the Parks District is stalled for at least two years.

And this amendment provides an opportunity for the community to continue the work that they've done, matching our investment with the grant from King County, And it'll really help us partner with King County for the waterfront restoration project.

So we are advocating for supporting the work so that they can finish that first phase.

And honestly, just to have some more equitable distribution of resources for the kind of park beautification and park access, beach access that the neighborhood has been looking for.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

I have two quick questions as we open up for questions and comments.

The first question is for Councilmember Morales as the sponsor.

You mentioned the phasing.

Could you describe a little bit more about the restoration project and what, if any, impact it would have if there was a delay in funding?

And then I'll just ask this question of central staff, too, so you can tee it up after Councilmember Morales.

We know that there are several amendments that propose to draw from FAS salary savings.

So it'd be helpful, I think, for us to hear a description of the total effect of these amendments on the amount of available funds to this source.

Council Member Morales.

Sure.

So as I mentioned, there are a couple of phases of this project.

The first phase, if you've never been to Beersheba Park, it is the beach part of Rainier Beach.

It is abutting a marina.

And so the actual beach access is really limited.

This first phase of the project would be to restore beach access.

We have a lot of young people who are looking for opportunities like going kayaking, learning how, you know, water safety.

And so there had been a demonstration project a couple summers ago as the design element was completed about, you know, helping people understand that there is actually a beach there if we could get better access to it.

So phase one would be completing that piece of the project.

Phase two is more inland parts of the park.

There's a creek that runs through it.

Um, that is where, uh, some salmon habitat restoration work needs to happen.

And then the rest is just sort of, you know, um, playground improvements and, and the bathroom and doing some other kind of, um, you know, providing some, uh, Furniture park furniture in the facility so that people can, uh, use it as a real community gathering space.

Um, so the first phase of the work would be to get the speech access completed.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Silva?

Utilize all that $450,000.

My sense is that it might get pretty close, but I think as we move through, you're gonna start to hear what the other potential access to this funding source might be.

But this will- Okay, Council Member, this is $7.

Okay, I see.

The four amendments total $462,000.

All right, Lisa, can you speak up just a little?

I'm sorry, the four amendments that have been proposed would use $462,000.

So that is close to the $450,000.

I wouldn't be too concerned yet about it being an overspend, because the delta is not known yet.

We just don't know.

I mean, frankly, $12,000 isn't going to be a huge issue, but we really don't have the exact numbers yet.

But I would see whether Keil has any additional comments on that.

My one remark would be that the amount of salary savings that may remain at FAS for the duration of the year is a little bit uncertain at this point.

The mayor's proposed budget assumes approximately $475,000 in salary savings, general fund salary savings, from March through October.

We have a question into FAS that will help us understand what may remain there.

So that is just one note of caution about the FAS-funded I think that is the best approach as proposed by the council.

I can see it, and perhaps the folks online are not questioning.

If I can't see it, then we'll know it's you.

So Councilmember Peterson, I saw your hand go up.

Councilmember Sawant, I saw your hand go up.

Okay.

Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales, Councilmember Peterson, Councilmember Sawant, as co-sponsors.

I think that has concluded our first packet.

Lisa, Tracy, Calvin, Ketel, thank you for walking us through that.

And Council Colleagues, that moves us on to packet number two.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

So we will be turning now to Council Bill 119824. This is the Coronavirus Relief Fund Ordinance.

This ordinance would accept $131.5 million from the Federal Coronavirus Relief Fund to support the city's response to the COVID-19 emergency.

Council Member Herbold has pulled Amendment Number 3, so we have in fact three amendments proposed to this ordinance now.

Not all of these can be adopted.

Each of these three amendments would use all or some of the underspend from the funds in the finance and administrative services budget designated for the hotel for essential workers.

The first two of them, number one and two, would use all or some of the underspend from the funds and in different ways.

So they're mutually exclusive.

But if either one of those passes, then amendment number four can't pass because that would use a small portion of that money.

So I would turn to Jeff Sims, who is staffing the first two proposed amendments, and Amy Gore will speak to amendment four.

Thank you, Lisa.

Jeff Sims, council central staff.

I'm going to speak about amendments one and two at the same time because they are very, very similar.

And then as I conclude my remarks, I'll highlight how they're different.

But the council will remember that in the spring, the mayor acquired the released the Executive Pacific Hotel, all 155 rooms for 90 days, in order to make those available for first responders and essential workers who could not, who needed to have a place that they could isolate away from their homes due to exposure to COVID-19.

And that cost not only included, the projected cost at that time, not only included the cost of the hotel to obtain access to the hotel rooms, but also assumed providing meals for the people that would be utilizing the hotel rooms.

The utilization of those rooms was very low, and as a result of that, although the cost for the hotel were established from the get-go, all 155 rooms for 90 days, the cost for providing food for the people that were staying there was dramatically lower than initially projected.

And that's the savings that both of these bills are therefore utilizing.

It's approximately a $1.1 million underspend.

At the time that the executive or the mayor transmitted the Coronavirus Relief Fund Ordinance to the council, that amount of underspend was not finalized or known, which is why it was provided to the council as the full 3.2 million rather than the reduced amount.

So looking first at amendment number one from Council Member Mosqueda, the proposal would be to amend the, to take the $1.1 million in underspend and use it for non-congregate shelter that is utilizing hotel rooms.

I'll note that the difference here is that whereas the Executive Pacific Hotel was not made available to everyone that was potentially at high risk for experiencing COVID-19, the proposal here would need to do precisely that.

For example, with people who are in congregate shelter, homelessness shelters, and are at high risk for COVID-19 and would benefit from having a place they could be more isolated in order to protect themselves.

The second amendment from Council Member Strauss, again, takes the same funding source but in this case, it would provide those funds for non-congregate shelter that is either tiny home villages or enhanced shelter that I know that he wants to speak to some of the potential uses that are envisioned with his amendment.

Council Member Strauss, please.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

As Jeff just eloquently, like myself, described, this amendment would reallocate the $1.1 million of unspent funds to the hotel from the hotel for essential workers, similar to your amendment.

My goal was to shift the dollars to non-congregate shelters.

And while I called out specifically tiny home villages or 24 seven year round enhanced shelters, I am more interested in working in a collaborative fashion with you to identify the proper language to ensure these dollars are used most effectively.

And so I would like to pull my amendment and work with you to I would like to make a motion to include some of the language from my amendment into yours and cosponsor your amendment.

Thank you very much for flagging that.

We will look forward to working with you in the next few days here on that effort.

Jeff, did you have anything else to I think we have all expressed support for getting more of our in light of COVID.

We've heard report after report about how COVID lingers in the air inside.

And while there are efforts underway to de-intensify congregate shelter settings, putting folks six feet apart to sleep does not prevent the spread of COVID.

We've heard from hotel operators that they have space and they are ready to lease out that space now.

More importantly, we've heard from homeless service providers that if they had access to dollars to pay for additional hotel rooms, they could put people into hotel rooms tonight.

We have seen from the region's effort to move folks into hotel settings.

that there is more willingness to take that shelter option if it's a single room, such as a hotel or motel setting, and that folks can get stabilized and out of harm's way for COVID.

So I had heard conversations leading up to the sweep in Ballard that if they had just had an extra week and had the authority to pay for those hotel rooms, that more folks would have been able to move there.

I heard from folks who are working with folks who were sleeping and sheltered in the CID prior to that sweep, that if the city had authorized additional use of dollars for hotel rooms and worked in partnership to get folks into those hotel rooms, that more of the individuals who were in the CID in that encampment would have been able to be moved.

So we are really, I think, a strong council on wanting to help make sure that there's all types of shelter options, including tiny house villages.

appreciate the colleagues who have supported the $3.6 million that we just passed in the Jump Start COVID emergency relief funding.

Let's remember that 3.6 is allocated specifically for tiny houses there.

This would be our attempt to put the 1.1 into the hands of homeless service providers, which would then allow them to get folks out of congregate settings and into safer and healthier I think we need to make sure that the money is spent in the way that we are directing.

I think that will be the follow-up conversation because this has been ongoing for four months as we have been trying to get folks into hotels and motels.

I think we have a couple of questions.

I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about the wording that Jeff has prepared.

I know that King County has used that strategy to great effect to get folks off the street and inside.

Our partners over at co-lead have used the strategy to great effect.

I'm wondering if it would be, and maybe this is a question for Jeff, maybe it's for the sponsor, how broad the applicability would be.

Like, could this be money that CoLEAD could potentially access as well for some of their criminal justice diversion hoteling strategies?

or would it exclusively be for folks that have been identified in congregate or semi-congregate shelters who are showing symptoms or have tested positively for COVID to get them immediately into a hotel to make sure it doesn't spread further in that congregate setting?

Just want a little more clarity on the scope.

And then, of course, I similarly had the question about the appetite within HSD to engage in a hotelling strategy, just given that I know there's been a lot of resistance from the executive on using hotelling as a broader strategy.

And we'd just be curious if you've had any of those discussions.

Perhaps I can speak to the legislative intent here real quick, and then Jeff, you can tell me if We got it right.

So the folks that I have been in conversations with would include folks like Khalid, LEAD, REACH, DESC, Catholic Community Services.

So it would be the former.

We know that King County has isolation and quarantine options available to them for hotels.

right now, and I believe they have funding to continue to have INQ.

This would be sort of the former to the question you asked about really trying to identify people proactively that would be at potentially higher risk, so our elderly population, people with underlying health conditions, those who are currently in congregate settings, and really trying to provide them with individual rooms prior to symptoms occurring.

So in my conversations with folks, I believe that this would be a complimentary effort to the isolation and quarantine rooms that King County is currently offering.

And I believe that this is on the preventative or proactive side with those community partners that are seeking individual rooms before people get exposed and potentially sick.

Jeff, did I get the language right, if that's the legislative intent?

You did, Council Member.

You're correct also in your description of the use of isolation and quarantine sites by the county.

A lot of hotels would not be suitable for an isolation and quarantine site with someone who has an active symptomatic case of COVID.

They would be, for example, if you had a closed hallway, passing down that hallway, aerosolized particles could still be present in the hallway.

So the county, for example, where it's utilized hotel rooms or that type of approach has used only hotels that have outwardly exterior hallways where the doors do not adjoin each other, things like that.

This would be, as Council Member Mosqueda described, a proactive strategy.

to, similar to what has already been done with, in other locations like the Red Lion Inn, or you could also look at like Lakefront House, for example, where individuals that are at risk for COVID-19, especially high risk, would therefore, would be able to proactively isolate themselves, or I shouldn't use the term isolate since that has, it's a term of art as well, but move to a place where they have lower risk and are less likely to contract COVID-19.

I also want to highlight, per your comments, Council Member Lewis, that this is the coronavirus relief fund.

So although COLEAD could certainly, to the degree that it is connecting people that are at high risk for COVID-19 to these hotel rooms, as Council Member Muscata discussed, all of these expenses must be necessary to respond to COVID-19.

So it could not be a general criminal justice strategy.

It has to be specifically targeted to individuals that are in need of that type of an intervention in order to protect

I think that is a good point.

And just one follow-up, Madam Chair, Jeff, just on that last point, does that mean that anything we do with this particular piece of money would have to nexus back to a connection to immediate COVID relief?

Like, if a village funded by this was intended to perpetuate itself in operation, would that at that point violate the use of the money?

Not to my understanding, at least.

For example, if you look at the Spirit Village, the expansion of Lake Union Village and Lakefront House, all of which are also non congregate shelter as defined by FEMA.

Those are, again, and you saw the intervention with those expansions, we refer to them as emergency shelters.

But in fact, when those were open, they were given priority access to individuals that were especially high risk for COVID-19.

So taking a similar approach with other new shelter beds or another new tiny home village space would also presumably allow for the same use.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis and Jeff.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So first of all, for sort of big picture clarity sake, I just want to say again, and I'm not at all, please don't interpret what I'm saying to suggest that I believe that we are doing enough.

But there is this narrative out there that the city isn't participating in supporting hoteling and the county is That's not true.

We just we have different lanes The county is buying the rooms and the city is providing the services for the people in those rooms that the county has purchased and so for my conversations with Director Johnson, that is the sort of arrangement they want to continue moving forward.

As the county purchases more rooms, the city then will provide funding for the services for the people who are using those rooms.

And so my first question, I have two questions.

One, I believe in the Jump Start 2020 funding plan, we included funding for this purpose and so would help to know how much we just voted to support for this purpose so we can get a sense of adding this additional 1.1 million, how much that all comes to for 2020 alone.

And then secondly, I want to just make sure that given my understanding of the the city's arrangement with the county that these dollars can be used for the services associated with people, with the needs of people who are staying in hotel rooms that maybe we aren't buying, but perhaps the county's buying.

I'll defer to Ally Panucci, who I think will turn on her camera in just a moment, to talk about the borrowing of funds for COVID relief in 2020. That was part of the jumpstart discussions.

believe it's $3.6 million, but I'm not positive on that number.

So that would put us around $4.7 million.

To what we were able to engage, I was hoping that the dramatic tax relief, that wasn't the case.

I can't speak for the executive and what they would be willing to expend these funds on or the nature that they would be willing to take and do in moving forward with this type of a purpose.

These funds, for example, if you looked at utilizing them for hotel rooms, we'd be talking about approximately, you could support approximately 75 hotel rooms for about two months.

Obviously, you would hope that someone wouldn't require it for that whole period of time, but potentially.

And so I can't speak to the exact nature of how that would occur.

I'm not aware of facilities right now, other than the Red Lion Inn, where a hotel has been acquired.

I could be mistaken in that by the county.

I'm not tracking all of their spending exceptionally closely.

Let's just assume for argument's sake, because I'm not suggesting that we get in the head of the executive to see what they're willing to do or not willing to do.

for sake of argument, they don't want to purchase hotels or lease hotels or rooms in hotels for this purpose.

Does this funding as proposed allow us to pay for the service element if, for instance, somebody else, like the county, was purchasing or leasing those rooms?

Sure.

Both of the proposals, but I'll focus on Council Member Mesquita's proposal since it appears that is the one that will be the base for whatever moves forward.

It talks about the use of hotel rooms to lease and acquire those, but in the context of being non-congregate shelter.

And so that term, I would assume, would entail service dollars with it, just as was initially assumed with the Executive Pacific for providing meals.

It would be permissible to assume that shelter would entail some kind of case management services, and that's included in the proviso language as well as in the effect state.

Okay, that's helpful.

Thank you.

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shelter de-intensification activities that includes hotel rooms and it's not specific.

It could also include services.

So it is, that is a little bit broader.

And it could include tiny homes as well.

It could also, yes, it could include just the 3.6 is specifically for tiny homes and the remainder could be used for anything else in the entirety could be used for tiny homes or, you know, a variety of activities.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for that question.

I think it is important to lift up from the answers that were provided that the language as written could be used for services as well as individual rooms.

And one piece that I wanted to offer for clarification from at least my understanding of what is currently being purchased by King County in terms of rooms, based on your conversation with Director Johnson that you just spoke to, Yes, King County is purchasing rooms and yes, the city is offering the services element that go with it.

That's really important to note that partnership.

Where I think that we are trying to fill a gap right now is what providers have said is a need for that proactive room.

If King County is focused on truly the isolation and quarantine sites, we're trying to also offer individual rooms to do the preventative de-intensification on the front end so that people don't have to end up in isolation and quarantine.

And then one other piece that I would offer as I'm trying to pitch you all on this idea is we have an understanding from many of the folks who are working with the unsheltered population that they have additional dollars that could be used to provide services to correspond with the rooms.

I think we did a lot of really good work earlier this week with the spend plan.

The amount of money that Allie just mentioned could go to staffing, cleaning, meals, et cetera.

But we also know that there's a handful of non-profit homeless service providers who really just need additional assistance with getting the rooms, and then they have additional support to provide that services that correspond with it.

So I think it's a nice way to braid possible philanthropic work that's already out there with our nonprofits with what they really need right now, which is the preventative rooms.

Councilmember Morales?

Additional comments or questions?

Seeing none, I know Councilmember Juarez would like to add her name as a cosponsor to this.

Thank you, Councilmember Juarez for signaling that.

Are there any other folks who would like to add their name as a cosponsor right now?

In addition to Councilmember Strauss, which I believe you mentioned earlier.

Okay, let me just make sure I got everyone.

Co-sponsors include Council Member Juarez, Strauss, Morales, and so on.

Thank you, council colleagues.

Let's move on to item number two in packet number two.

Item number two would have been the Council Member Strauss' amendment.

So I'll actually send it to Amy Gore on central staff, and she's going to discuss what is amendment number four, that which amendment number three from Council Member Herbold was withdrawn from your packet.

And thank you Council Member Herbold for that clarification as well.

Council Members, we are on amendment number four in packet number two.

Thank you, Amy Gore.

Thank you, Council Member.

I'm Amy Gore with Council Central staff, and I'm discussing amendment number four to Council Bill 119824. This amendment is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, and it would decrease funding for the Hotel for Essential Workers in the Department of Finance and Administrative Services by $100,000.

As discussed previously by Jeff, the cost of providing this service is $1.1 million lower than was anticipated when developing the balancing package.

This amendment would leave $1 million of the underspend in the FAS budget.

The amendment would increase funding to HSD by $100,000 to develop programs to respond to senior isolation that is occurring due to the COVID-19 response.

It includes $50,000 to develop a plan to safely reopen senior centers in 2021 and $50,000 to provide Wi-Fi at 30 senior housing communities and senior centers.

the amendment also imposes a proviso stating that $100,000 may be used solely for these purposes.

With that, I will turn it over to the sponsor for additional details, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have.

Thank you very much, Amy.

And Council Member Herbold, as prime sponsor, please take it away.

Thank you so much.

So as the Human Services Committee Chair I've been really keenly aware that the impacts of COVID-19 are really severely felt by Seattle seniors.

Seniors are uniquely vulnerable to the worst effects of the coronavirus and seniors have been and continue to be especially isolated.

in the best of times, senior isolation is a real public health concern and now it's a quiet emergency.

I'm sure all of us with beloved elders in our lives understand how their lives are fundamentally altered by COVID and the impact to their mental and physical health and their resiliency.

I think I mentioned last week my regrets that I did not move quickly enough to propose amendments to the jumpstart 2020 spending plan because I felt that services specifically to senior populations is something that we should be focusing on.

The human services department has reacted with a lot of creativity and commitment to addressing the concerns about these unmet needs.

I've talked about some of them in the past.

For instance, they've called 14,000 seniors in April to check on their health and welfare and triage special needs.

They're broadcasting monthly civic coffee hours, special Seattle Channel programming, and webinars for seniors with captioning in multiple language.

They're pushing out information about Friendly Voices, a national volunteer hotline for seniors, and distributing digital tablets to foster connectivity and telehealth.

The amendment before us would propose a modest amount of funding for two additional efforts.

The first relates to convening senior centers, pulling together stakeholders to develop a plan so that they can safely reopen.

We know our schools are convening stakeholder discussions around how schools can uniformly adopt practices.

We know our parks and community center facilities are having a planning approach that is applied equally across locations.

There's nothing like that happening for senior centers right now.

Their closures have been keenly felt.

And reopening is really uncertain.

These funds would allow for a well-thought-out plan that keeps seniors and employees safe while also balancing the need for services and opportunities that these centers uniquely provide.

And then the second part of the amendment would provide Wi-Fi hotspots at 30 locations around the city where seniors can make use of Wi-Fi safely to access online opportunities for socializing, reading, gathering information, and using telehealth.

As Amy explained, the amendment is funded using a modest $100,000 in savings from the Executive Pacific Hotel contract.

I think it's a great idea.

I look forward to working with the sponsors of the deintensification shelter proposal to see if we can do both.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And Council Member Herbold, thank you for bringing this forward.

I completely agree with everything you said about how we need to be doing a lot more for vulnerable seniors during COVID.

I am particularly impressed by the The relatively modest ask.

In this ad, and I just want to echo your comments that it seems like there, there is enough money in this line item to to have a robust.

I think it is important that we have a deintensification bill that could also accommodate this fairly modest $100,000 investment that is critical and important.

I would be interested in potentially sponsoring both of these amendments with this incorporated into this particular fund.

I want to signal my support for an approach like that.

I would like to thank you for that.

That conversation would be welcome.

Thank you for flagging that and your support.

Are there additional comments?

Councilmember Peterson, did you have anything to say?

I saw you off mute.

Please go ahead.

One of the main purposes of that resolution is to get our Seattle Department of Information Technology to come to us and tell us what they can do, how we can work with our partners throughout the region to increase Internet access and adoption, the so-called Internet for All approach.

I think it is important for us to understand that in the long-term we don't need to be doing a patchwork like this.

There should be something that is more sustainable.

Thank you for seeing the need right now to do this.

I appreciate it.

councilmembers.

Thank you.

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Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Lewis, and Council Member Strauss.

Excellent.

Seeing or hearing no additional, we will go ahead and move on.

Thank you.

To all of our central staff, that brings us through packet number two.

I believe, and we are on to the more lengthy one, which is packet number three.

Thanks again to all the folks who just provided feedback, Jeff, Amy, Ali.

And if I missed anybody, I think you chime in on that one again, too.

So thank you for your presentation on packet number two.

Packet number three is in front of us.

Lisa, do you want to do a quick intro to what we're doing here?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this last set of amendments would modify proposed Council Bill 119825, which is the 2020 budget revisions ordinance.

This ordinance would adjust and increase appropriations to several projects and or funds to offset decreased revenues to the city from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Members have proposed 12 amendments to modify this ordinance.

Asha will proceed with the first amendment, and we will hand off as we go down the next 11. I think that's all I have to say.

Thank you very much.

I do want us to have a hard stop at 530 today with the intent to make sure that people have time to be with their family or take a breather as we try to work on work-life balance and we recognize we have another meeting tomorrow at 10 a.m.

as well.

Good afternoon, councilmembers.

Proposed amendment number one would add $65,000 to the budget of the office of arts and culture to support the AIDS memorial pathway project, specifically the the audio component of that project.

The funds backing this would come from the FAS salary savings that we discussed previously.

It comes from that same pot of money.

Originally, this was $65,000 that was in the Department of Neighborhoods, but was proposed for a cut to address the general fund shortfall.

Instead, these funds would be redirected to the Office of Arts and Culture.

this is a amendment sponsored by councilmembers Morales and Sawant, and I will turn it over to them for further comments.

Thank you.

Councilmembers Sawant and Morales, thank you for bringing this forward.

Councilmember Morales, I see yourself off of mute.

Please go ahead and then I'll see if Councilmember Sawant, if you'd like to add anything, that'd be great.

Thank you.

Sorry, colleagues, I think I have a hairball.

Um, okay.

Uh, so way back in February, uh, which feels like a thousand years ago now, uh, colleagues will remember that we passed council bill 1 1 9 7 3 9, uh, to allow the city to accept $750,000 for the design and installation of an AIDS memorial at Cal Anderson park.

The city portion is necessary to complete the project.

We know that community arts projects are critical, especially in times like this, to remind us of the consequences of layers of oppression.

History and art are important to remind us that when people are marginalized, denied access to health care, and then face a global pandemic, the results are devastating.

And when we passed this bill in February, we really didn't know how relevant these issues would become.

But here we are.

And once again, we understand how important it is to keep telling the stories of access to the kinds of things that keep our communities safe.

And I think right now we need art to remind us that there are stories like this that we need to keep telling.

And this project is one that honors people who died during the AIDS crisis and does so by telling some really important stories that we need to keep hearing.

So I am trying to make sure that this project stays on track with this amendment.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Council Member Sawant, did you have anything else you'd like to add to that?

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

Yes, it's really just so apt that we are going to be doing this during the middle of a pandemic, which is probably the first pandemic most of us have lived through.

The AIDS Memorial Pathway is an important community project.

that will commemorate the sacrifices and the community building that happened at that time at such a crucial period.

It's a project stretching from Cal Anderson Park to the Capitol Hill light rail station in District 3, and it commemorates the valiant LGBTQ activists who battled discrimination and persecution and ill health to fight for the basic right to health care for LGBTQ people.

And they really spearheaded a movement that continues to guide us to this day.

Many organizers we know and many community members, so many of them just silently unknown, tragically lost their lives to AIDS while continuing to fight for their communities.

The veterans of the political struggle against the impact of AIDS need to be honored, not only for their sacrifices, but also for what they achieved.

Just like we've seen with COVID-19, it's a disease, and it's a medical issue, it's a clinical issue, but the impacts of the disease are in no way equal, and they're very much a political and a socioeconomic issue, and raises the question, are the resources of society dedicated to I'm not sure if they are dedicated to health, safety, clinical research and a good standard of living or are they dedicated to the profits of insurance companies and other corporations that do not benefit society.

Thank you.

As the prime sponsor for this very funding in last year's budget process, I just want to thank Councilmembers Morales and Sawant for championing this, the restoration of the funding that we won in the budget, in Council's budget last year.

So I really, really appreciate you bringing this forward.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Peterson, and then Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you, Councilmembers Morales, Salon and Herbold.

Also heard from former Councilmember Tom Rasmussen about this issue and would like to sign on as a co-sponsor.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Peterson.

of the memorial project.

And we were able to see a similar presentation earlier this year in council member Morales' committee.

And this is just a great example of the kind of powerful public art that really enhances the public spaces in our city.

I'm really will be proud to vote for this and would also I would like to thank councilmember Lewis for his leadership on this as well.

And would like to be added as a cosponsor.

on amendment number one in packet three.

Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Lewis.

Anybody else?

Councilmember Strauss.

Okay.

Hearing and seeing no additional ads here.

Thank you for that overview on amendment, no, Councilmember Herbold.

Got you in there.

That's okay.

Councilmember Herbold, Strauss, Lewis, Peterson, and Juarez as co-sponsors.

Thank you very much.

Moving on, let's look at amendment number two in packet three here.

Thank you.

I'll put it over to Lisa.

Council Chair.

I'm sorry, Committee Chair.

I keep promoting you.

My apologies.

So this is Lisa Kaye on central staff.

Amendment 2 to Council Bill 119825 is sponsored by Council Member Sawant and would enact a $150,000 cap on salaries for non-represented executive and management positions.

If applied to all departments, savings for the last four months of 2020 could total about $2.5 million.

but much of this total would be restricted to specific uses corresponding to the fund out of which the salaries are paid.

If restricted just to general fund departments, savings for the last four months of 2020 could total about $687,000 and the funds would not be restricted as to use.

Research is ongoing with staffers looking into whether the city has the legal ability to make these salary changes as proposed.

One potentially unintended consequence is that the amendment could provide an incentive for non-represented staff earning over $150,000 to form collective bargaining units.

That completes my summary, and I would turn it over to Council Member Solano.

Thank you very much, Lisa.

Council Member Solano is prime sponsor.

Would you like to speak to this?

Thank you.

This is a budget amendment that my office and the people's budget campaign has proposed every year during budget deliberations.

And of course, every year we do the budget deliberations in the autumn, but this year we are also having a summer budget vote.

And so we have brought this forward.

It caps the salaries of city of Seattle executives at no more than $150,000 a year.

as Lisa mentioned, which is a good salary that people can live comfortably on, and we know many households here are not able to live on, do not have access to anything like that kind of income, and that salary is also far more than most workers make.

Some argue that if the city of Seattle does not pay its executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and we have heard this argument again and again when the city council was voting on appointments for directors or executives for each of the departments.

We have heard this argument again and again.

The argument is that the city of Seattle does not pay its executives hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

the city will not attract the best talent, but that's not actually borne out by statistics.

In reality, the best city leadership comes from people who are motivated to serve the public, have a lot of creativity, and are really interested in doing the work that they're doing and the people that they're serving, not for personal enrichment.

We believe everybody should have an adequate salary, but it's a question of how do we make sure that the resources are allocated fairly and how can we fight for a zero-cuts budget, and a zero-cuts budget also means no mandatory furloughs, no layoffs of working people from the city of Seattle, and that needs to include this type of measure as well.

It's not going to raise a whole lot of money.

It's $2.5 million estimate.

There are also restrictions on what it can be used for, but there are very constructive, socially constructive uses for this money.

For example, it could be used to expand UDP call service, you know, utility discount program to make sure that the funds that the city has are used for the most marginalized and vulnerable community members rather than for bloated salaries, particularly at this time when the mayor is freezing hiring of essential workers, especially for very important departments like labor standards and civil rights and threatening layoffs.

There's no excuse for continuing to dedicate resources to bloated salaries among city executives.

Thank you.

I'm going to ask you and Lisa just to speak up a little bit more when you take yourself off of mute as we move forward.

I did hear everything and I didn't see anybody else straining.

I think it was just me.

So thank you, Council Member Sawant.

And council colleagues, are there questions or comments on amendment to executive pay cut as outlined by Council Member Sawant?

Councilmember Pedersen, question please go ahead.

Yes, thank you Councilmember Swamp for bringing this forward.

This is my first chance to sort of look at this as a council member.

I do want to signal my support for looking at salaries as part of the 2021 budget discussion in the fall and and looking particularly at salary increases.

that might have already been approved for 2021. This isn't exactly what you're saying here.

What you're saying here is a lot stronger.

And I just want to signal my interest in discussing salary, salary increases, that type of thing in the 2021 budget.

So thank you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Any additional questions or comments?

that.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawant, I don't see any additional questions or comments.

I would be interested as well in particular looking at how we could potentially be providing an incentive for greater unionization across our city departments when we look at trying to address this pay gap.

I know this is an area we looked into quite a bit as well.

I'll follow up with you on some potential questions just on policy, maybe impacts going forward.

Council Member Swatt.

I'm just going to say happy to answer any questions.

Okay.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

And I don't want to suggest that sort of being on the vanguard of public policy is a bad thing.

And this information that I'm about to ask for is not, I think, a determining factor.

But I am interested to know whether or not any other municipal or county or state, for that matter, governments have a cap on executive pay.

So I don't know, Lisa, if that research is something that's easily attainable, but it would be welcomed by me and I think would I think it's important for us to have a conversation about this.

I think it's important for us to have a conversation about this.

I think it's important for us to have a conversation about this.

I don't disagree that $150,000 is the target I would want to set.

we're going to continue to do that.

And we're going to continue to make sure that other public employers have created this sort of a cap on executive pay.

Thank you.

I will turn it back over to you.

finance administrative services in spending any more funds on our jail contract.

We're currently in an interlocal agreement with King County for King County to provide jail services to those individuals coming out of Seattle Municipal Court.

And this would proviso those funds until King County and the city agreed to reenter into negotiations, excuse me, enter into renegotiations of the contract.

And the proviso would be lifted when CBO submitted a certification to the city clerk stating as much.

With that, I'll turn it over to the council member for further comments.

Thank you.

Yes.

Thank you.

Um, so I want to let my colleagues know that this is offered.

Um, this amendment is offered in the spirit of kind of heating some of the recommendations that were made by the city's re-entry work group.

Um, the city, as Asha said, currently is in contract and spends about $18.6 million a year, um, uh, through a contract with King County jail.

Um, and the contracts don't include any means to ensure that, uh, the folks who are incarcerated have their basic needs met.

There's no standard of care requirements, um, uh, built into the contract, no measures for performance in that way, protecting the health and safety of the folks who are there.

Um, and, uh, nor that they receive any resources for successful reentry into the community upon exiting the jail.

Really, the contract includes a minimum bed number.

So the number of beds where people are being detained and it does and requires the city to pay a minimum amount regardless of whether those beds are actually being used.

So there's really no financial incentive for the city to examine its use of incarceration for low level crimes or to try to reduce incarceration rates.

This proviso, as Asha said, would ensure that the mayor and the King County executive come together to renegotiate a more humane contract.

The language as we have it right now doesn't fully reflect what we are trying to do there.

And so I will say that we are still working with the law department.

We may have some revised language ready next week, but wanted to give you a little bit more background about what we are trying to do here.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Additional questions?

Council Member Herbold and Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Yes, a question for Asha.

I remember in response to the recommendations of the reentry work group, the council did a, during budget process, did a sly on the jail contract.

And I remember receiving a response to the sly on the jail contract that said something to the effect of we can't reduce funding now, but we are with you and aligned that we need to renegotiate the contract for fewer beds.

Was that pretty much the contours of that sly response to your recollection, a commitment to the concept of renegotiating the jail contract for fewer beds?

I believe that it was the general intent the city was in agreement that there, um, that we should readjust the parameters of the contract.

I don't believe there was any, um, commitment necessarily to renegotiate and that I'm not sure if that is on the part of the city or, um, King County.

Um, but it was also, um, I think either last year or the year before in a different political climate.

So, um, there, that may be the, that may be a potential change at this point.

Thank you.

councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

And this might be a question for central staff as well.

Um, Asha, do you know how recently the contract, um, uh, was, uh, renegotiated with the jail or have any information on, on if it is anticipated to be up soon?

So this interlocal agreement is, um, is, um, the city has the ability to ask 187 beds, which is where we are right now is the absolute minimum bed floor and we aren't allowed to go under that.

So there's no opportunity for us to request that even fewer that the floor be lowered even further.

I believe the last time that was renegotiated, I'd have to double check and get back to you, but I believe it was the last couple of years.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is a really prescient project that Councilmember Morales is bringing forward based on a couple of things.

I mean, one, I mean, lost in the news about the youth jail being closed with the date of 2025 is that there's going to be a considerable scaling down and repurposing of the King County Jail.

that didn't make the Seattle Times article for some reason, but that definitely caught my attention.

So I would think there'd be a lot of scope here for King County to revise the interlocal agreement if there's gonna be some broader project of scaling down the King County Jail.

So especially given that we only use it to house, to jail misdemeanor offenders, so low-level offenders, it would seem that if King County is gonna be scaling it down for.

you know, people being held on felonies, that we would have a lot of scope to revise that agreement on our end.

So I don't know what the exact lever would be, if it would be this proviso or something else, but I just want to signal to my colleagues that I'm very interested in locking in a lot of the savings that we've been realizing from the jail de-intensification from COVID, and also just leading to CoLEAD being able to innovate with better ways to house people in a pretrial I think this is definitely an area that I'm interested in supporting and I want to thank Councilmember Morales for bringing this forward.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and wanted to just go in the way way back machine to last budget process, which literally feels like a thousand years ago at this point.

But this particular amendment related to the jail contract brought forward by Council Member Morales really does build on the previous council's of the city budget office.

We did a lot of budget work related to the proviso that the city council at the time supported in order to have an evaluation of and put pressure on the city budget office to trigger the provision related to the jail contract and how we contract for jail services.

If you all recall, there was also another contract that we identified where we were buying jail beds for a just-in-case moment in Snohomish County as well.

And part of this live work that we did resulted in ending the contract with Snohomish County, which was great news.

Unfortunately, we did not have as good news as it relates to how we contract jail services with King County.

And in large part, that is due to the fact that we are buttering the bread of King County by buying way more jail services, i.e. beds, than the city of Seattle has actually ever used.

And the contract is such that it creates a perverse financial incentive for King County to not renegotiate that contract and to continue to hold us under the binding terms of that contract because we are effectively subsidizing their jail bed services line of business.

And so I just want to be really blunt about that reality.

For those of you who may be on the fence about whether or not it's appropriate to move this forward, I appreciate the law department bringing forward potential legal risks or concerns about this particular proviso.

But frankly, I'm not sure what other tool is available to us.

And I am very displeased about the fact that we continue to pay for these jail services at any level, but in particular at the level that we're paying.

And honestly, we're not, the city of Seattle is not using most of these services.

And so we are literally cutting King County a check.

for services that we just aren't using as a city.

And so there's a question to me about whether this is an effective use of taxpayer dollars and a responsible use of taxpayer dollars.

I don't believe that it is.

And I think that this may be our only lever available to us to scale down the commitments that the city of Seattle has made by virtue of entering into this contract which I understand was entered into during the McGinn administration.

That's how far back this goes.

And my recollection is also that it's about a 30 to 35-year-long contract, which is atrocious in my mind, considering that at the same period of time this contract and this ILA was being negotiated, the council at the time was also passing a resolution committing itself to zero youth detention.

So I guess what the left hand does, the right hand doesn't know.

And this is an example of that phenomena playing out in terms of how we look at our budget and how we advance.

I think it's important for us to be able to address these issues while passing resolutions that are contrary.

I say all of that as sort of a historical context and for the benefit of those councilmembers who are newer to this body of work and who may and also just to signal my support for this proviso and the concerns really to the law, that the law department has raised are concerns that I take seriously, but I think they are appreciable calculated risks that we should be willing to take given where we're at in this moment in time and some of that historical work I've just described.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

I'll also just take this opportunity to express my support as the sponsor of those provisos that were just mentioned regarding Snohomish County and also here in King County.

I appreciate our past council's effort to get to the bottom of this additional black box that was presenting itself.

And as the council president said, we've learned a lot.

And that information, I think from a fiscal perspective, shows that it doesn't make any sense to keep paying for services that we're actively disinvesting from.

When you couple that with the diversion work that we're doing at the city through the city's attorney's office and our community partners are doing, we know that the number of people who are going into King County jails have been much lower than we're paying for.

and from a public health perspective, we know that incarceration just doesn't work.

And it doesn't work outside of COVID and it especially doesn't work in as deadly in COVID.

So I appreciate this provision that has been put forward and we'll also be adding my name as a co-sponsor.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I did go back and find those old slide reports and see that in 2020, we apparently are, as I think Ash explained, we got the county to accept sort of the new lowest floor that we're allowed to under the contract.

And I'm just interested, how many more beds are we paying for than we're using even under this new floor?

Do we have that information?

I'd have to go back and double check what the average daily population has been for the past couple of years.

But I know at least for this year, there was a graph in the King County jail issue paper that specifically points out how many beds.

And I think it's closer to it's been closer to 60 ish.

If I had to guess off the top of my head.

OK, thank you.

Appreciate it.

Council President, did you have something

I was just going to say that would be a good piece of information.

I also think that there has been some de-intensification efforts related to the King County Jail that will likely impact the number of beds that we are actually using even further.

So I think that delta between what is actually being utilized and for what period of time is probably even more significant now in this period of COVID, though I would have to rely on Asha to confirm if the data bears that theory out and would appreciate that.

But I sort of We get into this debate about like, you know, are we are we.

Paying for more beds than what we need and, um, and that's sort of a.

I guess the fiscal reason or justification for moving the provides a forward, but it, but it.

But it's a bit of a distraction from the overall issue which is, which is, do we want to be investing in jail services at all from a policy perspective given the direction that we are hoping to go in which is much more rooted and restorative justice and community based interventions and so I just want to be mindful of the fact that we're making some fiscal policy arguments and I don't want the public to read those arguments as though we are not, as though it's a distraction or a desire to move in a direction that's different than our stated intent to pursue restorative justice and diversion from jail and therefore not need jail services.

we are not going to be able to do that at all and funnel these dollars into community-based organizations which I think are a better use of our dollars.

of the moment here to look, because I requested this information recently, actually, from the municipal court on average.

And my recollection is similar to Asha's, that over the last couple of years, it's been in the 60s.

And to your comment, Council President Gonzalez, I believe that the COVID era de-intensified number has been in the mid-20s of folks that the court and the city attorney's office have opted to seek to maintain bail on.

I'm totally supportive, based on my past work and experience and interacting with the city attorney's office as a former prosecutor, in how low, based on the success of a lot of diversion alternatives, our utilization of the jail space has been and how we really are paying for a lot more spots.

I do think that we will need to be cognizant in doing this work going forward that there are certain offenses that even in the letter from the Department of Public Defense we received a few months ago that they stipulate to their being a policy basis to potentially need to have some level of that service.

There are also certain state laws that would require that in the case of certain mandatory minimums as relates to DUIs, for example, where we would have an obligation to fund some kind of service.

And so if it's not with King County, you know, we would probably have to find some other way to do it.

But I'm just flagging those as some potential additional hurdles just based on my anecdotal experience.

But I don't think it's anything that we can't strategize a way around and figure something out that is far different from this current huge mismatch.

And I think there is a huge opening in trying to figure out a little more, and I think we'll know more tomorrow when the executive gives his update, the scope and extent to which the county's changes in the jail could inform our next step too, because it sounds like they'll be quite dramatic.

I think this is certainly a very ripe area for how we can make much better use of nearly $20 million a year.

put this forward, we of course had no idea that the King County Executive would make the announcement that he made yesterday.

But I think it points even more to the fact that we need to really reevaluate what's going on here and do what we need to do, not just for the fiscal reasons, but because we do have some much broader community goals and some new community standards that we want to set about how we are shifting toward more restorative justice principles and practices.

As I said, there's a little more work to do here, clearly.

And after the announcement tomorrow, we'll have a little more information.

So I will be working with central staff and with the law department.

And if other council members are interested in joining me on those conversations, I would be happy to have your assistance.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Good segue.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Seeing no additional questions or comments, colleagues, I invite folks who want to cosponsor this to please unmute, say your name, raise your hand.

I did Councilmember Sawant, thank you.

Councilmember Gonzales, thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you.

I have heard Councilmember Sawant, Council President Gonzalez, Councilmember Herbold, and Councilmember Mosqueda.

Okay.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

Let's move on to Amendment Number 4. Councilmember Strauss, this is yours, and we will turn it back over to Central Staff to walk us through this.

Thank you, Chair.

This is Jeff Sims again, Council Central Staff.

Amendment utilizes a funding source that actually takes us back 15 months to a time when there was a television episode decrying how handle Seattle was handling its homelessness crisis and there was a report focused on a group of individuals variously referred to as prolific offenders or high barrier individuals and a the mayor subsequently convened a task force to look at a response to that and then proposed in the 2020 budget a package of investments, some of which were just discussed in the earlier conversation.

But this one in particular was to open a second shelter.

There is a shelter already, an enhanced shelter already in the King County Correctional Facility on a space that was not used.

This would be another one.

It provided $2 million to start up or open operations and do the renovations necessary to create that new shelter.

And then also $400,000 for operations that were about six months was the intention, assuming the renovations could be completed in that time.

And this was a partnership that was going to be done in collaboration with King County.

So the other part of operational costs and the corresponding amount of startup or renovation dollars were going to be provided by the county.

At this time, none of those funds have been accessed.

That's the latest information I've been given is that none of the funds on the Seattle side have been utilized.

Instead, The information I've been given that we are still awaiting more confirmation from the county and from CDO and HSD is that the county is, instead of utilizing that space for an emergency enhanced shelter, that instead of they're utilizing it for their COVID response or in the process of making the renovations and changes to the space to be able to use it for a COVID response.

And so at this time, it's not clear that those funds will ever be used or ever be necessary, I should say, renovating this facility or for at least the short term, using it as operations for an enhanced shelter.

So that is the funding source that this amendment looks at.

And then it proposes to, if this facility is not viable for whatever reason, or these funds are not necessary for whatever reason, in order to achieve the initial goal, utilizing those same funds for a similar purpose, for either tiny home villages or an enhanced shelter at a different location.

I will turn it over to the sponsor for further comments.

Thank you.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thank you, Jeff, again for some amazing briefing on this.

I will just briefly say I'm not going to bring this amendment forward and want to discuss it still.

The budget that currently allocates $2.4 million to HSD for the establishment of the shelter in the West Wing was projected to open July 1st.

It is behind schedule and I haven't received an update about when it will come online.

My intention with this amendment was to provide that $2.4 million proviso such that if HSD doesn't open the shelter in a timely manner, the funds would be redirected to new tiny home villages or enhanced shelters instead.

We can't continue waiting for these investments to be made in a time that we so desperately need these services.

So this change would send a clear message that we need to open the shelter now.

And if it can't happen, then we need to find something else that can work.

Because this proviso would not be able to extend into 2021 and new tiny home villages or enhanced shelter would take months to start up, I will not be moving this amendment forward at this time.

And I will be watching very closely and may bring a similar proposal when we begin the 2021 budget deliberations.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Jeff.

I'm going to turn it back over to you.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Thanks for sharing your intent to potentially withdraw this at this point.

I believe that if you were to bring this forward in the 2021 deliberations, there would be a lot of support.

Because there is similar frustration that you just expressed.

I want to thank you for flagging it for the purposes of our are there any comments or questions for Councilmember Strauss before we move on then?

Okay, hearing none, let's move on to amendment number five.

Hello, my name is Eric McConaughey, and I hope that I am audible to you all.

I work for you all.

I'm on the Council Central staff.

So I'll just wait for a quick nod that tech is working.

Tech is working.

And Eric, thank you for the reminder.

I know we don't get to see your face enough.

So appreciate seeing you.

We appreciate you working for the Council Central staff as well.

It's good to be here.

Okay, excellent.

Please go ahead.

Yeah.

So this amendment is sponsored by Council Members Herbold and Morales.

The effect of this amendment would to put a proviso on spending of funds of the 2020 budget on the Human Services Department for Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion.

It's also known by the acronym LEAD.

LEAD is a Pre-Arrest Diversion Program for people involved in low-level criminal activity.

The city has contracted with the Public Defender Association for LEAD services.

And that contract for lead services requires the prior approval of referrals of clients to the program by law enforcement personnel.

Excuse me. and it expires at the end of December of this year.

The proviso itself would require that the service provider contracted for LEAD commit in writing to accept referrals of eligible individuals for the services from community services and non-law enforcement agencies without prior approval of law enforcement personnel.

The services, so for these people that are referred in this fashion, would be paid for with sources that are other than City of Seattle sources.

And we know that PDA, Public Defender Association, has previously declared willingness to accept referrals without approval from law enforcement personnel.

And with that, I'll just let the sponsors take it away.

Please go ahead.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold and Council Member Morales as lead sponsors on this.

Council Member Herbold, I see you off mute.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

So you have heard me talk about this amendment before.

For the viewing public, though, I'll just recap.

The amendment, sponsored by myself and Councilmember Morales, as Eric described, will remove Seattle Police Department from its gatekeeping function as it relates to having to approve referrals to lead.

This is at the request of the Public Defenders Association, which operates lead and co-lead.

Currently, all referrals must be reviewed and approved by SPD, and the problem stems from SPD's current lack of capacity to provide this function.

The result is that CoLEAD is essentially unable to act on any new referrals right now, and their unique and scarce resources, including specialized case management and hotel rooms, are going unused, even though we all know they're clearly and desperately needed.

We have received support for this move from a broad group of the ballot community task force on homelessness and hunger, the interfaith task force on homelessness reach, um, and of course the public defenders association.

I want to thank council member Morales for joining me and co-sponsoring this proviso.

Thank you very much.

Council member Morales, would you like to add anything?

Sure.

Um, well, I just do want to thank, uh, council member Herbold.

I'm excited to be co-sponsoring this with her.

Um, and I just wanted to share, we all received this email today, but I just wanted to, um, read an email we got from a lead outreach coordinator this afternoon, who says that yesterday, um, an individual had been previously referred to lead came to our office seeking services.

Their lead referral had expired.

And since law enforcement are currently the gatekeepers for all referrals, our staff was forced to seek out a referral extension from law enforcement instead of just enrolling them in a program right then.

So this sort of police gatekeeping can interrupt our ability to clinically engage with folks and address their immediate needs.

We've seen in South King County that this program works well.

We know that the COVID response there, the COLEAD program in South King County was a really nimble and effective way to keep unsheltered people safe and socially distanced.

And when we contrast that with the challenges that the COLEAD program has had here, waiting weeks for approval from SPD and consequently putting people at risk, we just know that this is an important step for us to take so that the outreach workers who are doing the really critical work of keeping our community safe can do that well.

So I want to thank Councilmember Herbold for allowing me to co-sponsor this and look forward to making some change.

Agreed.

Thank you very much.

Are there comments or questions on this I will be adding my name as a co-sponsor.

I have been very supportive of removing barriers to lead and it makes a lot of sense that we should be able to this is a great example of where we do not need police officers making these types of referrals, and this is, I think, a great way for us to streamline this direct service.

So, I'll be adding my name.

Additional co-sponsors, Councilmember Sawant, I see your hand, Councilmember Lewis, Councilmember Strauss.

Okay.

Great.

Pausing.

Wonderful.

I'm sorry, I'd like to be added as a cosponsor.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Okay, so for item number five, amendment number five from Herbold and Morales, we have council members Sawant, Lewis, Straus, Mosqueda, and President Gonzalez.

Excellent.

Okay, thank you.

Moving on, amendment number six.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Again, I am Amy Gore with Council Central staff.

The next amendment, Amendment 6 to Council Bill 119825, is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

This amendment would reduce 2020 funding to the Legislative Department by $120,000.

These funds were appropriated for a consultant contract for a study of the LEAD program, which has not yet been executed.

The consulting study was funded through Council Budget Action Ledge 7A1 and was intended to examine the relationship between Seattle's criminal justice system and the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion Program, which you just discussed with Eric.

The contract was delayed initially to better understand the scope of a lead study by the mayor's office.

The goal was that the council study be additive to the work undertaken by the mayor.

So we were waiting until that scope was finalized before moving forward with the council led study.

When the public health crisis began, the study was deprioritized as lead staff was focused on revamping their service delivery model and there were questions about the ability for a consultant to fully engage with stakeholders in a remote working environment.

The amendment would increase funding to HSD with the intent that HSD would partner with the University of Washington Alacrity Center to expand the Get Connected pilot program.

This program developed in response to COVID-19 teaches senior housing and service providers to better identify seniors who are experiencing increased stress, depression, and anxiety due to social isolation and to provide additional support services to those seniors.

The amendment also imposes a proviso stating that $120,000 may be used solely for this purpose.

With that, I'll turn it over to the sponsor for additional details, and then I'm happy to answer any questions that you have.

Thank you.

Thank you.

different fund source that we're proposing.

But in short, this is a different program.

The other two, one was the Wi-Fi project, as mentioned earlier, just to refresh folks' memory.

And the other was funding HSD to pull together all the senior centers to come up with a standard set of protocols for reopening.

This particular program is to build off of something called the Stay Connected pilot that is currently funded through the University of Washington.

And it builds on established evidence for this kind of approach and specifically case managers and volunteers to assess seniors who are struggling with social isolation and providing targeted interventions that can address symptoms of mild depression.

The intent is, again, to provide remote outreach during the COVID era when seniors are experiencing increased levels of social isolation, distress, health anxiety, and safety concerns.

The Stay Connected pilot provides training that allows people performing check-ins to do two things.

Identify seniors who are at increased risk of depression or already experiencing mild depression, estimated to be about 20% of seniors, and deliver evidence-based interventions to address their depression.

The second intervention is to identify seniors who are experiencing more serious symptoms of depression or other mental health disorder and link them with a higher level of care that they need.

The additional funding would expand the pilot to assess and serve a larger number of seniors while providing training and ongoing support to the senior centers.

The approach gets critical mental health services to seniors who need them in a cost-effective way.

we have a number of senior based centers in the city.

currently we have four senior based centers at west Seattle, Pike market, Greenwood, and north Seattle.

and then also Jen pride is participating also in a stay connected pilot program as well.

Councilmember Herbold, I have a question for you and perhaps feel free to divert this to central staff if you prefer.

So am I reading this correct?

Obviously, I'm a huge supporter of the efforts that you're trying to fund here.

I guess my question is, am I reading this correct that this would be a reduction to the lead funds?

It would be a reduction to legislative department funds for a LEAD consultant survey.

I'm sorry, a LEAD consultant to do an evaluation of LEAD.

There is another evaluation that is pending that is funded through the executive.

The interest was to determine whether or not the survey or the evaluation that the council was going to fund would be duplicative of what the executive was intending, because obviously nobody wants that.

The council president reached out to my office a couple months ago, and I checked with LEAD as well to determine whether or not, given the fact that the executive evaluation both stalled, is still moving forward, the needs in 2020 for this council funded evaluation was necessary.

And came to the conclusion both from talking to LEAD and sharing that information with the council president's office that it was no longer necessary for this year.

Amy, can I ask you to expand the screen a little?

I'm having a hard time.

I'm just trying to see how much we're talking about.

I see the $120,000.

Is there a second?

It says also $120,000, so I'm just trying to see if there's an additional line item or if that is the contract amount that we're talking about shifting.

The contract amount was for $120,000.

That would be completely reduced by this amendment.

And all of those funds, the $120,000, would go towards the Stay Connected pilot program.

And do we have any RFP or Q underway for this yet?

No.

Right now, it is not.

funded through the City of Seattle.

It is funded through the UW the University of Washington internally.

And though they are working with the city and Seattle Housing Authority to identify sites for the program they are currently working on an application to get federal funding for an expanded program.

but that won't, if they get that, wouldn't be available until April.

So this funding would be for this time period between what they have funded now and what could be an expanded program next year in April.

Can I make one more comment, Chair?

this is a nationally recognized program.

So I've always been a little troubled by why we feel like we need repeated studies to demonstrate its effectiveness anyway.

Um, and so, um, you know, understanding that we might be putting a consultant contract at risk and their work in jeopardy.

Um, I, I really, um, think it's important that we, um, that we support, especially right now when we know that there are so many people who are, um, I would like to say to the seniors who are isolated and probably very scared about COVID that we do what we can to support them.

So I would be interested in supporting this.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm just a quick question.

Oh, please, Amy, go ahead.

I was just going to expand very quickly on your comments Councilmember Morales, we were at the point that the scope of this study was going was being finalized.

No one had been selected yet.

So there isn't a consultant out there who was expecting to do this work necessarily.

And this would change that fact, um, just to be clearer about where we were in the process of this study.

So, okay.

Thank you very much, Amy.

And I was just going to ask council member herbal.

Did you have anything else that you wanted to add, make any conversations that you've had with folks at lead that would be illuminating for this?

I have consulted with Lee and I'm actually texting with Lisa Dugard right now who says she's glad they're able to create additional money for this purpose by relinquishing their feelings around the need for this consultant contract.

I see Councilmember Strauss, Councilmember Sawant.

OK, and OK, wonderful.

I see Councilmember Strauss and Sawant as co-sponsors.

Appreciate it.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Council Colleagues, I would like to move us on to amendment number seven, which is from Council Member Sawant.

I will also note that it's 5.02.

I feel like it would be helpful, I think at the beginning of the meeting I said we're going to have a hard stop at 5 and then I said 5.30 for the health and safety of us all.

Let's try to keep that at five.

We will go through Council Member Sawant's amendment here, and then we will hold items eight through 12 for tomorrow's discussion.

Again, as a reminder to anybody who is viewing and wanting to engage in conversation with us through public testimony, we will have about an hour and a half of public testimony, and then we will get through the remaining amendments that are included here on packet number three.

Just for the purposes of planning later, I wanted to flag that for central staff as well.

Okay, we are on item number seven, Council Member Sawant's amendment.

So let's turn over to Central Staff and then Council Member Sawant, I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you, Chair.

Jeff Sims, Council Central Staff.

This amendment would impose a proviso prohibiting the use of funds to remove either tiny homes or individuals from North Lake Village.

Council Members will recall that last year, sorry, during the time, last December of 2019, North Lake Village was facing having being removed by the mayor's office.

And then that removal was delayed until March at which point in time Seattle was facing the outbreak of COVID-19.

And a letter was sent to North Lake Village residents where they were offered the opportunity to stay until June 1st at the location in as long as they agreed to a certain number of conditions one of which included a writing a written affirmation that they would vacate the property on June 1st.

At that time, there was not an expectation that the COVID pandemic would be extending to that length of time.

My understanding is that since June, as June 1st approached, that has continually been extended for the residents of Northlake Village, but not on a permanent basis and not on a long-term basis.

It's closer to a few months at a time.

And so at this time, they are permitted to be there, but are still going to be expected to move.

And this proviso would limit funds in the Department of Parks and Recreation and FAS and HSD and the Seattle Police Department all the departments that are currently associated with the navigation team from utilizing any funds to remove North Lake Village.

And I'll note that it's not only the funds that are actually the navigation team funds but also this proviso is imposed on the BSL the account for let you speak that contains the funds for those activities.

So if you looked, for example, at HSD, it would be anything, any intervention that's associated with homelessness, that all of those funds are prohibited on the patrol operations line in SBD and so on and so forth at the department.

With that, I'll turn it over to Council Member Sawant for her comments.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

This budget amendment would impose a proviso to say no funds may be used to remove the north lake tiny house village.

I really thank Jeff for going over a very good summary of all of what has happened.

Just to reiterate they are under threat of being swept by the mayor's office for perhaps the fourth time this year after massive public support for the tiny house village and despite the dangers and absurdity of eliminating a tiny house village during COVID and the homeless emergencies, the mayor continues to only give them extensions of a couple of months at a time, as was mentioned.

Imagine spending years being told you would be evicted in a month or two.

The latest eviction date is August 1, and this is totally unacceptable, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

This budget amendment would prohibit any funds being used to remove the village unless they democratically vote that they want to be moved to another location.

And this tiny house village is part of Nicholsville, which means that the residents themselves democratically decide on the policies and organizing of the village.

Democratic self-management is one of the things that have made Tiny House Village is so successful.

And if you talk to the residents of these villages, our homeless neighbors, they will tell you with pride how much it has worked well for them.

And I really congratulate Nicholsville and Lehigh, both among the prominent organizations that have done incredible work in enabling Tiny House Villages for our homeless neighbors.

We have tiny house villages today in part because of these activists spending years fighting for the rights of encampments themselves.

First of all, nothing more than tents at one time, but now with tiny houses, privacy, hygiene, running water, kitchen facilities, and other services.

The encampments were initially named after former Mayor Nichols, not as an honor, but instead to draw attention to his failure to follow through with campaign promises to address homelessness.

Even if the homeless members and residents of Nicholsville had not played such an important role in fighting for and establishing tiny house villages, it would still, of course, from a policy standpoint, be foolish and cruel to evict the village in the middle of the triple emergency of COVID, unaffordable housing and homelessness.

Thank you.

I will make some comments.

Councilmember Sawant, I appreciate you bringing this forward.

I have been supportive of your efforts in the past, and I say your because I think you've been the prime sponsor on these efforts in past budget years as well.

It is absolutely shocking that we're still in a situation where we're having to ask for the folks who have been residing in this tiny home to continue to get the ability to live there.

The alternative is we're in a congregate setting again with greater exposure to COVID.

I will be supporting this amendment and I want to thank you for bringing it forward.

I want to emphasize as well all of the comments we have been making as a Council in this time of COVID that we should not be removing folks when we do not have the capacity to put them into settings, which would allow people to be free from exposure to COVID, and tiny homes offer that type of non-congregate shelters that we have all been lifting up and using as examples of where we should be housing folks instead of inside these dense shelter facilities, even though I will again thank our folks who have been running these that we are having to make the same request again.

Thank you to the shelter facilities for all of the work they have done.

It is because of the incredible folks on the front line and them doing everything they can with very limited funding that there have been so few COVID cases and very few infections.

Very much appreciate you putting this forward and emphasize or underscore your frustration that we are having to make the same request sign up as a co-sponsor.

I see Council Member Morales.

I see Council Member Herbal.

I see Council Member Strauss.

And I'm going to add myself, Mosqueda.

Okay, so co-sponsors on Amendment Number 7 include Morales, Herbal, Strauss, Mosqueda to Council Member Solange.

councilmember Morales did want to be a cosponsor of amendment number six that was put forward by councilmember Herbold for the expanded stay connected pilot project.

Okay.

And before we wrap up, we again will continue with the amendment discussion tomorrow.

We will have an hour and a half of public testimony tomorrow.

So do note that for your planning purposes.

We will begin again at 1130 for our discussion after public comment, which again begins at 10 a.m.

Once we reconvene, we will start with amendment number eight and we will get through the remaining amendments here.

Lisa, thank you for walking us through this robust presentation and for all of the folks who presented today.

If I haven't had a chance to say your name, thank you.

I know we heard from Amy and Asha.

and Jeff in this last go-around.

If there's anyone I'm missing as I look at your names on there, I just want to say thank you.

Also, Patty from Central Staff, you have once again provided us with comprehensive packet of information that we were able to toggle through, which makes these remote budget meetings very much easy to follow along.

So we really appreciate that and the immense amount of work that has gone into this presentation from Central Staff.

We are at our ending point for today and we will reconvene tomorrow, Thursday, July 23 at 10 a.m.

Public comment again at the beginning for an hour and a half and then we will go through the remaining amendments and identify co-sponsorship.

If there's no further questions or anything further, go to the order.

Have a great evening.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Stay safe, everyone.

Thank you, everybody.

Happy birthday, Councilmember Juarez.

God, Councilmember Juarez, happy birthday.

You all missed our singing to her this morning from Councilmember Strauss.

It was amazing.

It was a great sing-along.

Thank you.

Have a good evening.

Happy birthday.

Good night.

Bye.