Finance, Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee 17172024

Eric, can you give us a reminder of which camera?

On the chamber, zoom control, the computer screen on the left of Anthony.

There we go.

Ward winning Seattle Channel, we are ready to go.

Looks like we're live.

That's great.

The July 17th, 2024 Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Will the Clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council President Nelson?

Vice Chair Rivera?

Chair Strauss.

Present.

We have three present, two absent.

We have three present, and as other members join us, we will welcome them in.

One, two, three, four, five items on the agenda today.

A briefing discussion and possible vote on the office of city finance interim director, Jamie Carnell's appointment and confirmation.

Briefing discussion and possible vote on Robert Howard's appointment nomination to the Seattle Indian Services Commission.

Briefing discussion on council bill one, two, the last three are actually a briefing discussion on council bill 120815, which modifies the city's priority hire program and methodology And then we will have a briefing and discussion on three items that make up the mid-year 2024 supplemental budget.

Before we begin, if there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We will now move into the hybrid public comment period.

We will take public commenters in person first and then transfer online.

Clerk, how many speakers do we have signed up today?

We have six speakers in person and one virtual.

Wonderful.

I'll take that.

Thank you.

Each speaker will have two minutes to speak.

We will start with the in-person speakers first.

I'll now read the public comment instructions.

Public comment period will be moderated in the following manner.

Public comment period is up to 20 minutes.

Speakers will be called in the order in which they registered.

Speakers will alternate between the sets of in-person and remote speakers until the public comment period is ended.

Speakers will hear the chime when 10 seconds are left of their time.

Speakers' mics will be muted if they do not, and their comments within the allotted time.

The public comment period is now open.

We will start with Vivian Song, followed by Lisa Rivera, Oliver Misca, Jim Wilde, Mariana Hike.

And then we'll move on to the online public commenters.

Good morning, Vivian.

Welcome.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Vivian Song.

I'm the president of District 3 Seattle Public Schools.

I respectfully ask you to support the imposition of a proviso on jumpstart funds for student mental health for the Department of Education and Early Learning.

While I'm in favor of the full allocation of the $20 million that is already reflected in DEAL's 2024 adopted budget, and taxes have already been collected for this purpose, I urge you at a minimum to pass proviso to grant spending authority to DEAL.

The genesis of the $20 million in funding is years of advocacy from students and educators.

During my tenure as school board director, I had the opportunity to visit 40 of our 100 plus schools.

I visited elementary schools, middle and high schools, and alternative schools.

I visited schools in every corner of our city and all seven city council districts.

Students, educators, and principals very consistently told me that our kids are struggling.

especially coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The need to address our students' mental health crisis head on is very real.

I urge you to review the 20-page report, A Student-Led Approach to Mental Health Services.

It provides a succinct plan for how the PEP funding can be spent effectively, pulling research insights on prevention, early intervention, and treatment, and identifying specific investment strategies.

Notably, this report's recommendations include input from communities at Ingram High School, Garfield, Rainier Beach, as well as students from Denny Middle School, among others.

Why do I call this out?

These are communities directly impacted by gun violence near and at these schools.

We are beyond the point of horrible, tragic loss of life in taking action.

Addressing gun violence and youth wellbeing is not merely a school or even school district responsibility.

It is a collective community responsibility.

And I urge you as our elected city council members to lead on this.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Up next is Lisa Rivera followed by Oliver Miska and Jim Wild.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Lisa Rivera.

I am also a former school board director.

I'm a resident of district five and I'm also a parent.

Everything that Vivian just said to you is absolutely correct.

Except that our students were struggling before COVID and they're having a hard time even now.

This is a real opportunity to make a difference in so many lives.

I really encourage you to follow through on the promises that were made when that tragedy struck Ingram almost three years ago.

We all stood up, we all rose up, we all marched with them, we all spoke to them and listened to them.

And they told us what they needed and they need our support, they need our help.

Some of you campaigned on that tragedy.

So it really is a chance to see that through and make sure that we follow through with what they need from us.

The schools can only do so much.

They need funding and support from outside.

We don't make, as a school district, I still say we, As a school district, they don't make money.

They need that support from you, from the county, from the residents, from people, because our students are in dire, dire need.

We see it every day.

We see it in the classroom, in the news, in our homes.

So I beg of you to please see through on this promise you made to those students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And just let the record reflect.

We have been joined by Council Member Rivera.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Up next is Jim Wild, or Oliver Misca, followed by Jim Wild and then Mariana Hike.

And...

Jesse Cervantes, I think that might be the same line.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning, Council and everyone here.

I'm Oliver Misca.

I don't have everything quite written out so well, but I am a teacher in Seattle Public Schools, substitute teacher, moves around mostly the South End.

I've been an educator ever since and active in the Washington State Legislature on education policy.

A year ago, In 2023, there were $20 million promised for community-led solutions for youth mental health services and deals and has expressed some concerns and struggles with building capacity for a new service.

That makes total sense.

They're providing something new.

It's a new department providing a new service.

And so there's been a lot of argument that there's been a difficulty figuring out how to spend that full $20 million, you know, scaling up still.

And, you know, we get this answer a lot.

And it just is kind of mind boggling that we can't fulfill a promise of spending the full money and not and more, right?

And more than that original money from 2023, right?

especially after multiple shootings in our communities that have happened this year.

And so there's a number of ways that this money could be spent and the rest of this money and more money could be spent.

There are countless community organizations that are the boots on the ground doing this work that are the solutions that youth are asking for, that parents are asking for, that educators are asking for.

that are counselors and not cops in our schools.

And so we've been asking these community-led solutions to be invested in sustainably and not have to come here over and over and over again fighting for sustainable funds, just like what happened with the EDI funds.

So now we're here asking, you know, there's WABLOC, there's Community Passageways, there's so many of these orgs and so many of these folks that are sitting here, mental health professionals that don't have jobs because they don't have funding.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you for coming down today.

Up next is Jim Wilde and then Mariana Hike and Jess Cervantes.

Are you together or separate?

Okay, sounds great.

Good morning, council.

Good morning.

How are you?

Excellent.

My name is Jim Wilde.

I am a human resource manager for Gary Millionaire Construction and a new PHAC committee member.

And so I'm asking for the council's support today in increasing the priority higher zip codes.

A lot of the folks that have been successful in those priorities zip codes have gone on to move outside those areas into their own homes and whatnot.

And so we're asking for the council support in our bill.

With the expanding of the zip codes, we are reaching out to give other opportunities for others to succeed and create economic opportunities for others zip codes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And just for the record, PHAC is the Priority Hire Advisory Council.

Up next, we have Mariana Hike and Jess Cervantes.

Welcome.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Just to clarify, you can each have two minutes or you can share two minutes.

We probably can get it done in two minutes.

I thought I was going to come up here with only one minute like last time.

So we've got some time to spare.

Mariana Hike, I'm with the Western States Regional Council of Carpenters as a political coordinator.

And this is?

Jesse Cervantes with the Carpenters Union.

So I wanted to come up here to talk on behalf of the Priority Hire Advisory Committee and as a member of that committee, getting the support from council to expand those areas.

In my previous life, I was a pre-apprenticeship outreach retention coordinator for the apprenticeship program and having that expansion of the areas for Priority Hire really helps us because we get to get out to the community We do a lot of work in support of our schools on building those opportunities to get into the apprenticeship where they can obtain good, strong careers, wages, and benefits.

It does a lot for community-based organizations and that expansion out.

It does a lot for our members when we get to see individuals be able to not just have to commute to get to the job site, but actually be able to afford and have that opportunity to be in that area as well.

I wanted to bring Jesse up here too.

Jesse is also a member who has worked in the field and those opportunities that we get to expand on in the community.

Also, I know firsthand that the city of Seattle has done a tremendous amount of work and has kind of really pioneered the way for other areas.

to kind of adopt the priority hire kind of standard in like outside of the city and give the same type of resources out that this committee that we represent gets to be a part of.

So I just really hope that the council can adopt and support the expansion of the priority hire zip codes as well as the regional owners, because again, it does bring a lot of opportunity to our community.

I don't know if Jesse wants to say anything.

I kind of threw him in here.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to talk about the apprenticeship.

It did afford me a lot of opportunity.

Coming out of high school provided me a great career and a job that I could, and a career that I could contribute back to my community.

And we're hoping the same with the priority hire and expanding the zip code as well.

Yes.

Well, thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you for building our city.

Up next, we have our online public commenter, although showing as not present, Mark E. Mark E. Online IT, can you, we are seeing present now.

Mark E.

is present.

Mark, you have two minutes.

Once you're promoted, press star six.

I see, there you are, Mark.

You're off mute.

Take it away at your convenience.

Hi.

Good morning, council people and other attendees.

My name is Mark Epstein, and I'm a retired teacher from Rainier Beach High School where I taught for 24 years.

And I've had patient contact with shooting.

Last May, my wife and I were about a block south of Rainier Beach High School, actually.

and caught in the middle of a shootout of 30 bullets.

Fortunately, they only hit our car a couple of times and we got and kept each other safe.

So I'm very concerned about the students $20 million that were won for mental health spending.

And I see that the mayor's plan allocated specifically 2.4 for telemental health.

Telemental health can have its place.

It helped me and my wife get out of the PTSD that we experienced from that shooting experience.

But I think for the young people that the impact is greatest by having staff inside the buildings.

We heard that there was $10 million already planned.

We haven't heard about the other $10 million.

If we cut that into staff, people being paid $125,000, that would be 80 staff.

If we target those in the buildings, I have seen where organizations like WABLOC make a tremendous difference.

And not just for some, but for all.

The Metro Pass was an example where we won three Metro Passes, first for one school, and then it expanded to all the youth.

We need staff in the building that can inspire our youth.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Epstein, and thank you for the education you provided me.

It has shaped my life.

Seeing as we have no further public commenters currently present, this does conclude the public comment section of our agenda.

We're gonna move on to the next item.

The first item on our agenda is a briefing discussion and possible vote on Finance Interim Director Jamie Carnell's appointment and nomination.

Clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

Item one, appointment 02897 of Jamie Carnell as Finance Director of the Office of City Finance for briefing discussion and vote.

Thank you.

Good morning.

We are joined again by Interim Director, Office of Finance Director Jamie Carnell.

For folks who are familiar with finance and use more plain language, Director Carnell is our city's comptroller.

And I sit on many different boards with Jamie, the Debt Management Director.

Committee, as well as the Seattle City Employees Retirement Services Board.

I get to see Jamie often, and I really appreciate all of the work that you do and the insight and input that you provide at these different meetings.

Jamie, I'm going to turn it over to you, and then I've got a couple questions for you from your packet that I'd like to read on the record, but I'll turn it over to you first.

Great, thank you and good morning to all council members today.

Thank you again for taking the time to consider my appointment as city finance director.

I appreciate the time each of you has taken to meet with me and learn about the vital role of city finance, as well as provide me with the opportunity to hear from all of you.

In confirming, may you confirm a seasoned municipal executive with the unique ability to understand the needs of the city and identify the most efficient processes and appropriate systems to achieve our collective policy goals.

As we work together, I will ensure that We have conversations across the aisle that really work with all of our expectations.

And I'm excited to work and sit at the table with all of you and council central staff as we move forward.

Thank you, director Carnell.

I'm just gonna repeat some of what I said at the last meeting because you have a very unique perspective on our city's finances, seeing as you've worked here for 30 years, you started as an admin spec one, ROSE TO DEPUTY DIRECTOR AND THEN TO INTERIM DIRECTOR, I CAN TELL YOU IN MY LIFE, I HAVE DONE EVERY SINGLE JOB WITHIN A CITY COUNCIL MEMBER'S OFFICE.

AND IT HELPS ME DO MY JOB BETTER.

MAYBE MY TEAM MIGHT NOT LIKE THAT I KNOW EVERYTHING THAT THEY NEED TO DO, BUT IT REALLY HELPS OUR WHOLE TEAM MOVE FORWARD.

AND I SEE THAT WITH YOU AND YOUR TEAM AS WELL.

In your appointment packet, we did have a question about how would you, this would be question number 10, how will you navigate and advocate for policies that support Seattle's fiscal responsibility and sound administration?

Sure.

It really does start with the strong partnership that I mentioned.

It's important for both the executive and city council to have that partnership for awareness of potential policies or programmatic changes with financial impacts.

that really do require a view of my team to control the, to ensure the alignment, excuse me, of our citywide financial policies, procedures, and practices.

By doing this, we make sure that there's compliance, not only with our internal controls and regulatory compliance, but also with policy expectations.

And it is a great opportunity to sit and converse with you and Council Central staff as we move forward.

Thank you, Director.

And I'm not going to read all of question 13. It really comes down to your role on some of these other boards, especially the Seattle City Employee Retirement Systems.

How can you discuss the benefits of fiscal transparency, what you've done to improve this?

And I'll also just tag on.

We discussed this a little bit at the last committee, but there's a year-end report that's really text heavy.

And I know you've been making efforts to make it more transparent.

readable and for the general public, there's oftentimes calls that people want to see the city's budget.

The city's budget is posted publicly to the website 24-7, 365, and it's kind of hard to read.

So can you speak to fiscal transparency and work with these different committees?

Sure.

I mean, we do provide reports in multiple formats to elected officials and the public on financial affairs of the cities.

It does give that transparency.

I think with the successful initiative that we have had and are continuing with our updating of our financial standards, it really does give more transparency.

And we really want to, now that we have our financial standards in a good place and our data warehouses in a good place, we really want to look at our data and understand and rethink how that data can be presented in a more meaningful way.

So we are collaborating with CBO on developing fiscal monitoring tools.

That's the first step for developing innovative fiscal reports utilizing our citywide financial data warehouse and self service reporting tools.

These reports will be presented to council in 2025 as part of the fiscal transparency ordinance.

And I'm really looking forward to the conversations that we have as we start to roll out those reports.

It's the 30 years of being here at the city, the glasses are required.

So those reports are gonna combine key information based on a lot of information from the status of information in our fiscal system to the data that's in our retirement.

systems and our cash.

And it's really a way to look at the data across the city.

The report you're referring to is a biennium report that we provide to city council.

There is one coming up this year.

That is a culmination of, I would say, every set of fiscal data that is available publicly.

And to your point, it has been very text heavy.

And so we're looking at ways to do more data visualization and tell the story about the city's fiscal health in a better way than just a lot of texts and charts.

So that is something we're currently working on and I look forward to presenting to all of you this year.

Thank you.

And before I turn it over to colleagues, if they have questions, favorite word of the year is audit.

We have audits done every single year to our budget.

They are not performance audits.

They are fiscal audits.

We recently had our fiscal year 2023 audit completed.

Can you share those findings?

Sure, we were successful in getting our annual financial report done on time, which then allowed the state auditor's office to audit it.

And we had a very clean audit with no material findings.

And that truly is a strong effort from all city fiscal divisions within the department, as well as the citywide accounting staff who did a tremendous effort this year.

And I'm really grateful to have all of the collaboration across the city.

Job well done.

Colleagues, any questions?

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you very much for coming.

Thank you, Chair.

But thank you very much for coming.

Support your...

your nomination and you being, you know, put into position to oversee our finances or, you know, and the like.

I just wanted to highlight, you know, looking at the, you know, the Q&A, question number 11 in a lot of ways is the most important one for me.

And that is maintaining the independence of the organizations that provide us the information.

Anything you can say to that?

I just want to highlight how that's very important for us here on the council.

And you have your answer there, but if you want to like restate it in a different way or, you know, can you speak to the topic?

Sure.

I moved some questions around.

So could you remind me what question that is?

How do you intend to balance being a member of the mayor's cabinet with a vital role providing unbiased, complete and timely information to all branches of city government?

So really with OCF, we anchor the city in fulfilling our charter through providing clear and accurate information about city's financial affairs to all elected officials in a timely manner.

I want to strive to provide a common understanding of relevant fiscal information to all branches.

My vision for OCF, Office of City Finance, includes the phrase data-driven decision-making.

For this reason, I want to ensure that my team and I provide you unbiased financial data in a timely manner.

We have a fiduciary duty to ensure city's financial activities are tracked and recorded in accordance with applicable policies and regulations.

And we do this through the utilizing of a single source of truth, which is our financial system.

And that's the citywide use of our financial system and utilizing those standard citywide financial policies and procedures.

And this really does help clarify the practical consequences of potential options for your policies that you're considering and supports informed decisions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for reading that and being essentially on the record twice, on paper and here on video.

So thank you.

If it's on Seattle Channel, then it's that.

Yeah, I totally recognize that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you.

I just want to say I've had an opportunity to chat with Jamie about the work and I will be supporting your appointment today and I very much appreciate the thoughtful and critical approach that you take to the work.

This is really important.

As we've all said, this is taxpayer money, and we need to make sure that we're accountable.

And I very much appreciated our conversation on accountability, and I know it's something you take very seriously as well.

So I want to thank you for being here today.

I want to thank you for signing up to want to do this job permanently.

It's not an easy task, and I will be supporting you today.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, anything here?

No.

Satisfied with the in-depth amount of written and verbal questions.

With that, hearing no further questions, I am going to move to recommend confirmation of appointment 2897. Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded.

Do you recommend confirmation of Director Carnell under appointment number 2897?

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

Yes.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Aye.

Chair Strauss.

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

Appointment 2897 carries.

And Director Carnell, it is an honor to bring your appointment to the full city council next week.

Thank you.

It is humbling to be here for so long and have this appointment.

I really do appreciate it.

And I just, again, city employees do a tremendous effort and I've had the privilege of doing almost every job.

I can change printer cartridges if anybody needs that.

But it is important to me that employees are given the opportunity to move up the ranks.

And I hope that I'm a testament to that for those city employees.

And I will always put the city as forefront.

So thank you again for your vote today.

Thank you.

We're going to move on to the second agenda item, which is an appointment to the Seattle Indian Service Commission.

Clerk, will you please read the short title of item two into the record?

Item two, Seattle Indian Services Commission appointment for Robert Howard, briefing discussion, impossible vote.

Great.

Appointment 02920 is Robert Howard.

And since 1972, one of the city of Seattle's first public development authorities, Seattle Indian Services Commission, has worked to create, acquire, and preserve property assets for the local indigenous community to reconnect and rebuild home.

The commission is a Native-led organization determined to improve the lives of urban Native people who call Seattle home.

We are joined today by Indian Services Commission Liaison and Damaris.

If I get your name wrong, I am so sorry, but just tell me how I errored and I'll change it for the future.

Damaris Tivuk for this discussion.

Damaris, before we get into Mr. Howard's appointment, could you briefly introduce yourself and the commission to our committee?

Good morning.

Yes my name is Damaris Tavuk.

I am Inupiaq.

I was born in Nome, Alaska.

I went to high school in Neah Bay on the Macaw Reservation and I have a degree in environmental studies from the University of Washington.

So I've lived in the Seattle area for about 28 years.

I am the department liaison for the Seattle Indian Services Commission.

100 percent of the governing Governing Council members are Native American.

The Commission is among the first PDAs that were formed by the city in 1972. And the Commission owns and manages the Pearl Warren Building, which is currently being leased by the city and KCRAJ and DESC as a navigation center.

The Commission is working on redeveloping the Pearl Warren building site into the Native Village and Gateway project, which will be a mixed-use commercial and residential building.

We are pursuing a mid-rise option of six floors of up to 186 housing units of affordable housing.

Our vision is to include affordable homeownership condos and The commercial space will include an early learning childcare facility, Burning White Bear Hall of Ancestors, which will be an exhibition hall that honors the legacy of our local Native leadership and Coast Salish culture.

The venue will also be a gathering space with a commercial kitchen.

We also plan on creating an economic empowerment center which will holistically connect to all of the commercial spaces to provide economic development services for our community members from all age ranges from high school to retirement.

And I wanted to thank Councilmember Tammy Morales for a letter of support that we used.

This year we pursued funding for architectural and engineering services from Senator Patty Murray.

And I'm happy to report that out of 600 applications our application for funding congressional congressional direct directives pending was selected and moved forward.

And we also pursued funding from Congressman Adam Smith and we were also selected so We've got some really great momentum right now for the pre-development of our building.

I was also selected this year to participate in the Amazon Housing Equity Funds program called the Housing Equity Accelerator cohort, which is managed by LISC Unit Sound.

And that cohort is to uplift nonprofit and for-profit developers for affordable housing in Puget Sound.

So we've got some really great news to share, updates about the commission.

We also received a clean financial audit this year.

So I think that is everything.

If you have any questions about our vision, I'm happy to have a meeting and share where we are in the process of developing our site.

Thank you, Damaris.

I will just state for the record, it is a unique PDA, not only one of the first, but when working with urban indigenous people, there's a difference between working with indigenous people in the urban environment as compared to on reservations where there's land sovereignty or at least community showing up in a different way.

With that, we're going to turn it over to Robert Howard.

Robert, welcome.

We're excited to have you here.

I'm going to turn the floor over to you, and then I've got a couple questions for you.

Absolutely.

Good morning, council members.

Robert Howard.

I'm an enrolled member of the San Carlos Apache Tribe.

I won't tell how many years ago, but I was born up in First Hill.

I grew up on Boylston and Pike.

I went to TT Minor back in the day.

Very exciting neighborhood.

Got a chance to explore a lot.

Been here.

for a number of years before returning to Arizona, went to the East side, went to Pasco Sherman Indian School, and then also lived in Ellensburg as my dad went to Central for a while too as well.

So very familiar with the area.

Currently I serve as the tribal liaison to 29 federally recognized tribes for WellPoint Washington.

We are one of the five MCOs for managed care for Apple Health.

So really enjoy that work and connecting with our tribes and our people.

in the urban Indian setting as well as a rural setting as well.

In the capacity of my time in Arizona, I served in elected capacity.

I was the youngest elected vice chairman since 1934, worked in the administration near on 10 years and went on to run 10 of the travel enterprises as CEO for a number of years, brought back here locally about six years ago.

went on to run a couple of the local tribes as chief operating officer, general manager, and still do some work and endeavors with them.

Helping tribal communities is always my passion.

Tribal work will always be my passion throughout my whole career.

I really enjoy that work.

I went to Arizona State University.

I hold two undergrads, one in accounting, one in American studies, and as well as an MBA.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Robert.

You mentioned one of the questions I was going to ask you is, as you are our state's liaison to the 29 federally recognized tribes within the state, how does that inform your perspective and your role working with the PDA and specifically with urban Native Americans?

I think it really drains a lot of perspective.

As you know, there's 574 federally recognized tribes throughout the United States, of which about 221 of them are in Alaska.

And interesting enough, organizations like the Seattle Indian Health Board, they serve about 450, if I remember Esther's comments correctly, And Tlingit and Haida is one of the most populous portion of this particular community.

But having that overall roundabout knowledge from a rural perspective really helps accentuate what we're doing for urban Indian populations, being able to direct tribes to different types of resources and engagements that really help grow that particular part and segment of their communities.

A lot of them are urban Indians, as it is now.

You get a chance to work with Mike over at United Indians too as well.

A big powwow coming up this weekend.

So hopefully get a chance to see some of the council members there.

I'll be on the side too as well.

But that really, Mr. Chair, that really grows our perspective as individuals, even as Indian people, to really gain insight and knowledge and see what could be applicable, especially in the projects that we're working on now.

How can we be most beneficial, but also the same sentence, you know, how can our people be most successful?

That's what we want them to do.

We want to be successful.

We want them to be able to put clothes on their back, food on their table, and gain insight for longevity within our urban Indian setting.

Thank you.

You may have actually answered the question that I was about to ask.

The next question, it seems like even though we haven't met, we're on a pretty good roll together, is I've noticed that looking at your resume, you've been the general manager of many different tribes, from Sauk Seattle to...

San Carlos, Snoqualmie.

How does this perspective of being the general manager of so many different tribes influence your perspective here with urban Native Americans?

Absolutely.

As you know, Snoqualmie is just not even 30 minutes up the hill.

You know, a lot of their folks and their people live in the urban Indian setting, be the reservation lands for that particular tribe or just basically the casino itself.

You know, they chose to support their native population in the areas in which they reside, in which they grow up.

As compared to the Soxwado, which is more remote and more rural and up in 530 there, you know, they have a different perspective.

So much the same in the same sentence, though, a lot of people are in Tacoma.

A lot of people are in Seattle, a lot of people are across the sound.

So I think understanding that and gaining that perspective is unique to itself in terms of that job function.

But keep in mind though, whether you're armed and I don't, I'm not, I'm Whether you're a small tribe or whether you're a 100,000 member tribe, the same types of restrictions in terms of federal funding, the reporting requirements and disbursements are all the same.

And as you mentioned earlier, the audit function is always the same too as well.

So the execution of a tribe is almost uniformly on site other than what the council member directs in terms of, let's say, housing or other types of endeavors like that.

Other than that, All those different things, you know, all seem different, but they're really the same to some degree, depending on the different funding streams that flow into different tribes.

Thank you, Mr. Howard.

And also thank you for bringing up Bernie White Bear's legacy, currently operated by our good friend Mike Tooley over there at United Indians of All Tribes, a product of the Gang of Four.

And that one time that Deborah Juarez went for a skating field, roller skating field trip, Growing up within earshot of Daybreak Star, I've heard powwow drums there my entire life.

I'm excited to hear them this weekend as well.

And that's a very, I think what stands out for me about Daybreak Star is it is designed for urban Native Americans rather than a singular tribe.

Um, Abriel Johnny Rodriguez always, uh, puts together the crown for this, for the powwow at Daybreak Star.

So I'm excited to see what she puts together this year as well.

Um, colleagues, any questions for Mr. Howard?

Seeing none, Mr. Howard, would you, or Damaris, do you have any closing remarks?

I think we're all excited to vote for you.

Uh, hopefully I'll see you at, um, the powwow.

Council Member Strauss, I forgot to mention that my position as a staff member of the Seattle Indian Services Commission is funded by an EDI capacity building grant.

And we have been looking forward to building our capacity so that we can apply for EDI capital grant funding.

And we are also in the middle of advocating for King County to create an EDI program.

I forgot to mention that.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I didn't get my hand up quick enough, Chair.

Thank you.

I just wanted to say to Mr. Howard, thank you for volunteering to serve.

I think it's so important for members of community, whatever community it may be, to you know, stand up, you know, take the time and effort because it's a lot for those that may volunteer in whatever aspect in their community.

It takes a lot, particularly when all the other demands of life are still there.

So I just wanted to thank you for you stepping up to serve in this role.

And I really appreciate and the example that you said as well.

So thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

Just agree with with the sentiments of my colleague.

I always appreciate people's willingness to serve in these volunteer roles that are really critical in this city.

And so I really want to thank you, Mr. Howard, and I look forward to the vote.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member.

Mr. Howard, last words yours.

Otherwise, we'll go straight to the vote.

Mr. Chair, I have no further words, but I want to really thank the Council for this particular time to really introduce myself.

and really keep in the minds of all our people in our community the importance of our urban Indian population, whatever you can do to lend a hand to help grow and sustain for longevity purposes from now into the future.

Thank you.

Well said.

I move to recommend the confirmation of appointment 2920 Robert E. Howard to the Seattle Indian Services Commission.

Is there a second?

Second.

It has been moved and seconded to recommend confirmation of Robert Howard, appointment 2920. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Kettle?

Aye.

Councilmember Morales?

Yes.

Vice Chair Rivera?

Aye.

Chair Strauss?

Yes.

Four in favor, none opposed.

Thank you.

Appointment 2920, Robert Howard to the Seattle Indian Services Commission passes, and we'll move on to the full council next week.

Mr. Howard, you don't need to attend, but maybe I'll see you at the powwow this weekend.

Thank you.

We'll move on to the third item of the agenda, which is FAS legislation regarding briefing on Seattle's priority hire program.

Clerk, will you please read the short title into the record?

Council Bill 120815, FAS Priority Hire for Briefing and Discussion.

Thank you.

This is a briefing.

We're going to vote on this in September because our next meeting is a select budget committee.

And so we are joined by Kirsten Grove, the FAS Director, Presley Palmer, the Division Director of Purchasing, Janie Fulcher, Labor Equity Program Manager.

And as the team is getting set up, I'll take a moment to say, our city of Seattle's priority hire program is a community initiative effort that began over a decade ago.

At that time, South Seattle residents saw public infrastructures being built in their communities, yet had limited access to these jobs on those projects.

A coalition formed to bring a message to city leadership, Seattle's struggling communities needed good jobs and the city could HELP BY INVESTING IN ITS OWN PEOPLE WHEN IT INVESTED IN CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS.

SO, IN 2013, OUR CITY OF SEATTLE CREATED A PRIORITY HIRE PROGRAM FOR CITY PUBLIC WORKS CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS OF $5 MILLION OR MORE.

IN 2017, THE PROGRAM EXPANDED TO THE PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS WITH SIGNIFICANT CITY INVESTMENT.

SO, USING CITY-FUNDED AND PUBLIC-PRIVATE PARTNERSHIP PROJECTS, THE PRIORITY HIRE PROGRAM prioritizes the hiring of residents that live in economically distressed areas, particularly in Seattle and King County.

In addition, city projects and public private partnership projects have apprenticeship utilization requirements as we heard from Jessie who provided public comment today.

Those apprenticeship utilization requirements and women and people of color aspirational goals within those priority hire apprenticeships.

With that, I'm going to turn it over to Kirsten.

And if you'd like to introduce the table and then take it away.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for having us today.

We appreciate it.

My name is Kirsten Grove.

I'm the acting director of the Department of Finance and Administrative Services, or FAS.

I'm joined today by Presley Palmer, our division director for purchasing and contracting, and Jeanne Fulcher, the manager of our labor equity program.

We're here today to talk about priority hire program updates.

For context, FAS's purchasing and contracting division manages contracting needs across the city.

This includes work to ensure women and minority owned businesses have contracting equity as well as equity on our city construction projects.

An element of this is the priority hire program.

The proposed updates being discussed today are responsive to input and recommendations from the priority hire advisory committee.

That's PHAC.

You heard from some of the members earlier today.

PHAC is an appointed body that's composed of members representing community, labor, contractor, and training expertise whose role is to advise on priority hire success.

I'm now going to turn it over to Presley to give more detailed overview of the program and hopefully followed by Jeannie who will provide an overview of the updates being proposed today.

Our presentation is about 10 minutes long and we'll have time for questions following it.

Thank you, Presley.

Thanks, Kirsten.

Again, my name is Presley Palmer.

I'm the Division Director for Purchasing and Contracting.

The question is, what is Priority Hire?

And I know, Councilman Strauss, you kind of mentioned what that was.

So Priority Hire, in 2015, through a community-driven process, the city passed a Priority Hire Ordinance and Community Workforce Agreement.

That's what we call a CWA.

Priority Hire is a FAS program that supports workers through outreach, training, support services, and job placement assistance.

Through workforce investments, the program develops a supply of workers and sets hiring requirements for the demands of those workers.

Priority Hire puts people living in economically distressed communities, BIPOC workers, and women to work on city construction projects and special projects.

More specifically, Priority Hire ensures community members have access to construction careers, provides a diverse, trained workforce, creates financial growth in economically distressed areas, and it helps close the wage gap for BIPOC and women in our community.

Through Priority Hire, workforce requirements are set per the Community Workforce Agreement on city construction projects of $5 million or more.

For priority hire projects, contractors must hire workers living in economically distressed zip codes in Seattle and King County, as well as hire apprentices and graduates of pre-apprenticeship training programs that we work with.

I-200, just as a reminder, I-200 affirmative action at the state level prevents setting requirements within public contracting for race and gender.

Therefore, priority hire sets aspirational goals for attracting and hiring women and people of color.

Priority hire has improved income for workers.

Workers living in economically distressed areas saw a 130% increase in their share of hours from 12% to 28%, where workers of color have saw a 50% increase in their share of hours from 25% to 38%.

So what do these improved results mean for workers?

Since the program began, priority hire workers have earned over $100 million in wages plus benefits.

This is more than $46 million that they would have earned without priority hire.

Thousands of workers have benefited from our priority hire program.

For context and term of reach, from 2021 to 2023, we had over 13,000 priority hire workers come through our program.

Sorry, $1,300.

Sorry about that.

Construction careers help close the wage gap in our region by providing living wages starting at around $30 an hour, health benefits, and a retirement plan.

This advances financial equity for priority hire individuals.

So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeannie to talk about the two proposed legislative changes for our priority hire program.

The priority hire program has evolved by identifying and applying best practices and implementation, strengthening regional partnerships as other agencies began their own priority hire programs, and responding to community needs.

The priority hire program has reached a point in which continued improvements require legislative updates.

We're proposing two updates.

The first is to expand our economically distressed area methodology, and the second is to allow for the continued opportunity to work regionally with other jurisdictions that have priority hire programs.

In 2023, the Priority Hire Advisory Committee, PHAC, considered several factors for updating the list of economically distressed areas, which will be discussed on the next slide.

They support the ordinance change to maximize community impact.

PHAC has also expressed interest over the years to increase coordination and collaboration among priority hire programs, including those at King County and the Port of Seattle.

We've made inroads through joint community investments and outreach and training and anticipate that updating the economically distressed area methodology will put us in closer alignment.

The first recommendation is updating the list of economically distressed areas.

The why behind this recommendation is that it will better reflect the changing demographics of our region, reach the most people who meet our criteria, ensure inclusion of priority areas, and support Seattle area residents in accessing living wage construction jobs.

Any changes to the methodology require changing the ordinance before they can be implemented.

We're proposing to change how density is defined.

Changing the density definition from high density to high concentration will increase the number of people we reach who meet our criteria.

This happens because in addition to high density, we can add zip codes with high rates or high numbers of people who live in poverty, are unemployed, or are over 25 without a college degree.

High density, rate, and number are all facets of high concentration.

Both existing and proposed methodologies use the same criteria, living at 200% of the federal poverty level, unemployed, and those over 25 without a college degree.

Zip codes are included if two of the three criteria are met.

We'll talk in more detail on the next slide about the impact of these proposed changes, but on the whole, they will increase the number of people we're able to reach, increase the number of zip codes by 12, and increase contractor options for hiring workers.

Here's a comparison of the two maps.

In the existing list, areas with high density are skewing the list, leaving off areas that have high poverty, unemployment, and people over 25 without a college degree, but those areas have fewer people living in the area.

Updating the methodology to include high number or high rate with high density will create a level playing field for economically distressed areas by removing the preference towards small zip codes with a lot of people.

Just while I have you there, sorry to interrupt you.

You're talking about density and concentration, which I really appreciate.

Is this really as simple as Auburn, that I see is not on the current zip code map but would be added, has less density than the city of Seattle but still has a high number of people that could qualify?

Is that what we're saying here?

Yes.

Excellent.

Thank you.

An updated economically distressed area list would give us 12 new zip codes, mainly in South King County.

In the city of Seattle, the existing zip codes would remain on the list, which includes such areas as Rainier Beach, Beacon Hill, Rainier Valley, and the Central District.

We would gain three Seattle zip codes in Aurora, the University District, and the Industrial District.

We'd lose one existing zip code in East Bellevue.

Changing the ordinance to high concentration will increase the number of people we reach who meet our economically distressed area criteria, expanding priority hire opportunities to nearly 14,000 more workers.

The second recommendation is to allow potential for greater regional collaboration.

That's because we know that no one program or agency will solve inequities on their own.

our stakeholders want to experience consistency across priority hire programs, such as what economically distressed areas to hire from and what requirements they're held to.

Each priority hire program solicits input from the same stakeholders on the same topics, which causes frustration and stakeholder burnout.

The city started as the only program in the region and, following a PHAC recommendation, started the regional public owners group with Sound Transit, the Port of Seattle, King County, and WSDOT.

Since then, several agencies developed their own priority hire programs, including King County, the Port of Seattle, and Seattle Public Schools, which is administered by FAS.

So there are opportunities for future collaboration.

This graph shows the need for alignment and collaboration with other construction workforce development programs across the region.

Region-wide construction supply was projected to fall short of demand by 6,000 to 12,000 workers per year from 2022 through 2026. This projected gap is even before the federal infrastructure bill and our state's transportation budget are taken into account, which will increase the shortage.

Again, no one program or agency can solve these problems on their own.

Thank you.

That concludes our presentation for today, and we're open for additional questions.

Thank you, Jeannie.

Great presentation, Palmer.

Kirsten, amazing.

Always appreciate it.

Presley Palmer, sorry.

I should read my script, but I just try to go off the cuff.

I'll just take a moment to, I know that we have a couple more meetings set up so that we can talk between now and we plan to vote on this on September 7th.

So remember this moment, as I say on September 7th, that that, that will be the second time that it's heard before our committee.

I'm just going to take a moment to highlight, you know, you've got some really great photos throughout this presentation.

And if folks didn't read the captions, we've got Anita who worked on the second and Mercer supportive housing project.

Um, we've got Amelia who worked on climate pledge and council member, actually both of those projects are in council.

All three projects are in council member kettles, uh, with the third one being the overlook walk.

Um, Downtown is all of Seattle though.

I'll give you that one.

And then Naquel, although having worked on two projects, not necessarily listed, but that just shows the breadth and the scope of Seattle's infrastructure and how this program has helped it.

And the people who build these projects, because we can't do anything without the workers who do the work and the people who build our city.

Council Member Morales.

Yeah.

Good morning.

Thank you.

So as the chair mentioned, part of the origins of this program was that there was significant public infrastructure work happening in South Seattle and not a single Rainier Beach resident was hired to participate in that.

So I'm glad we're here now and have this program set up.

And as you mentioned, my understanding is that the worker shortage is so severe in the construction trades that we don't have enough workers to build all the housing we need.

even if we could build all the housing, there aren't sufficient workers to do that and help, let alone transportation projects and all the other infrastructure work we need.

So I appreciate having this, these relationships that are forming, particularly to support the apprenticeship program.

So my question is about that.

Can you talk a little bit about how one becomes an apprentice, how this workforce program helps get people into jobs and sort of what what recruitment and sort of education strategies you use to make sure that people are aware of these opportunities.

Thank you for the question.

Appreciate it.

I'm going to turn it to Jeannie, who can, I think, speak to the most detail on this process.

Sure.

That's a good question.

I'm glad you asked.

I'm actually going to go back a couple slides because I think a visual will help me talk through this.

The Priority Hire program I see as a supply and demand program, which makes it really unique in workforce development.

And so I'm going to walk through what we do on the supply side and then how it ends up on the demand, the demand being our construction projects.

So we have a lot of community investments, both in our programs and through our partnerships with the Port of Seattle, King County, WSDOT, and then also within other city departments, including the Office of Sustainability and Environment and the Office of Economic Development.

So this is definitely a collaborative effort.

So how people get in.

We are funding several outreach partners in our community, including Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle and Apprenticeship and Non-Traditional Employment for Women, ANEW, and Rainier Beach Action Coalition.

So we have all these programs that are doing outreach around our economically distressed areas to make sure that people are aware of construction opportunities.

Oftentimes, historically, How you get into construction is that you knew somebody who was already in there.

So if you're growing up in the city and you don't see people picking up hammers and doing that work, you probably don't know about the opportunities and you probably don't know about apprenticeship.

So that's our goal is to expand awareness and then we can help people navigate where they should land to get into construction.

So that next step past that recruitment piece is the training of the workers.

So we fund pre-apprenticeship training.

That's essentially trades awareness and basic skill building and soft skill building so people can be the most competitive apprentice applicants that they can be.

You heard from one of our PHEC members earlier, Mariana.

We do partner with the Carpenters Pre-Apprenticeship Program to make sure that there are pathways in.

We work with...

six or eight I think right now across the city of Seattle and King County to make sure that those opportunities are there for people.

And then they get into apprenticeship.

And from there we make sure that they can stay in apprenticeship and we do that through different retention strategies like mentorship, financial support services so they can get transportation, clothes, work clothes, tools, things like that.

And then we create the demand on our projects so those workers have somewhere to land.

Couple more questions if I could, Chair?

Thank you.

That's great.

And just to be clear, these are paid apprenticeships once they get in, right?

These can be $25, $30, $40 an hour.

So this is paid on-the-job training, which is really important, particularly if we're talking about young people who are trying to make sure that they have a career pathway.

Do you know what the retention rate is for priority hire?

Sure.

We actually have recently learned that all of our retention efforts in the last three years have resulted in, oh, off the top of my head, I think it was 67% retention, which is actually pretty phenomenal.

Historically, apprenticeship you could see in some trades was more like 50%.

So it's actually about a 10% increase from people who did not receive priority hire opportunities.

That's great.

Thank you.

And then my last question is, can you talk about why a community workforce agreement is a good tool for enforcement of our public works projects?

Jeannie, take it away, please.

Another good question.

Thank you for asking that.

So the community workforce agreement is essentially a pre-hire agreement that the city has with the construction unions in the region.

The biggest benefit that relates to priority hire is that through this agreement, the unions have agreed to dispatch trained workers to our projects that live in these economically distressed areas before anybody else.

That's the biggest key.

But then you're also looking at that through making sure that the job site is a quality job site.

You're looking at making sure that the pay is right.

There's all these other wraparound pieces in the community workforce agreement that we are gaining.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Council Member Rivera?

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation.

Thank you all for being here.

It's more of a comment than I want to make than a question, and that is just to say that apprenticeship programs are really important, especially for our young people.

These are really great paying jobs and great opportunities and an alternative to someone who, for whatever reason, college is not something that they're interested in or, you know, can achieve.

And so I really support these apprenticeship type programs.

And I know this is one of other programs we have in the city, apprenticeship programs.

So I'm so appreciative of Seattle for being such a leader in this space.

And I look forward to having further conversations, Chair, about how we can support, further support apprenticeship programs in the city for the reasons that I mentioned earlier.

We have Seattle Promise, and I'm looking forward to, and I've started the conversation with the Department of Education and Early Learning about how do we support apprenticeship in the space of Seattle Promise and make sure that we're doing the awareness piece to young people that this is another alternative that is equally terrific.

And I will say that I appreciate the fact that, you know, you're raising a really important piece is that we're seeing a shortage of workers in the trades across the country.

So this isn't just a Seattle-specific problem, and it's not just related to construction as other jobs in the trades.

And so I appreciate this approach.

to expand opportunity within this particular apprenticeship program by way of expanding these zip codes.

And I also, Director Grove and I discussed the fact that Seattle's getting really expensive and our residents are getting priced out and having to move to other regions of the or outside the city.

And so the fact that we're expanding some of these zip codes into King County or the King County, the 10 King County zip codes that are being added are to address that fact.

So these are folks that were one Seattle residents, some of them anyway, and they've gotten priced out of Seattle and have to move into other areas of the county.

So I very much appreciate the approach taken to acknowledge that and to capture folks in the surrounding areas into this program, particularly in light of the fact that we do have a shortage and this really does expand opportunities and particularly for people of color and women, which have not had opportunities in the past of this nature in a robust way.

And so I really appreciate all the work that's gone into this particular program.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilman Rivera.

And Jeannie, I just have to say the fact that you were able to pull those statistics and that information off the top of your head without notes is impressive.

I couldn't even get Presley's name correct.

Nor could I get the dates in September correct.

September 7th is a Saturday.

We are not having committee on a Saturday.

This will be back before committee on September 4th, which is a Wednesday.

Thank you to the good staffers in the audience who made sure that I stay on track.

I'll turn it back to the committee table for any last comments before we have you back on September 4th, which is a Wednesday.

We just thank you all for your support and for allowing us to speak with you today.

Really great job.

Look forward to having you back.

Thank you.

With that, we are going to move into the meat of the agenda today.

And this is the mid-year supplemental package made up of three different bills.

So, colleagues, as I have said multiple times over, please receive briefings before.

budget content, because if everyone asked all their questions, we'd be here until December.

As well, budget packages are made up of multiple bills.

So when we get into the fall budget session, we will have seven to 10 bills that we will be voting on.

Before us today are three bills.

Council Bill 120811, which is the AWI, or actually, which adopted the 2024 budget, including the capital improvement program.

The council bill 120812, revising, I am sorry, these notes are not correct.

And so I'm gonna return back over here to some other notes.

I'm just gonna first ask the clerk to read the short title into the record and then we'll go from there.

Short title of all three bills.

Items four through six, mid-year 2024 budget adjustment legislation package.

Council Bill 120811, annual wage increase appropriation.

Council Bill 120812, mid-year supplemental budget.

and council bill 120813, grant acceptance for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

As the clerk noted, we have the AWI, the supplemental budget, and then the grant acceptance.

And so we will be going through those three bills here.

We're gonna have a little bit of musical chairs with our committee table.

First, we're gonna hear from the executive departments and the executive's office.

And then we will be hearing from central staff.

And then again, this bill, welcome Ben Noble.

And then these bills will be voted on during the select budget committee on August 7th.

I knew I had a seven somewhere around here.

And so without further ado, I'll let the committee table introduce yourselves.

I know that we are joined by Deputy Mayor Audium Emery, whose birthday it is today.

And so council colleagues, I'd like us to all sing happy birthday.

No, I'm kidding.

Happy birthday.

Well, we'll save him.

Happy birthday, happy birthday.

Over to you, Deputy Mayor.

Sure, we'll do some quick introductions.

I'm Dan Eder, Acting Budget Director.

I'm happy to be here today.

Microphone, yeah, green button.

There you are, thank you.

Amy Smith, the Acting Chief of Seattle Care Department.

Leah Tivoli, Director of Innovation and Performance.

Ben Noble, Seattle Central Staff Director.

And I, with the chair's permission, I will kick off the presentation.

Sure.

Council Member Nelson, I see you have a hand.

We're not in colleague questions and answers right now.

Are you just noting that you're here?

I just wanted to note my presence.

Great.

Thank you.

Back to you, Mr. Eder.

Thanks.

Excellent.

Thank you, Mr. Chair, members of the committee.

Pleased to be here to present the proposed mid-year supplemental package.

As the chair noted, there are three separate bills that comprise the package.

Council Bill 120811 is the annual wage increase appropriations bill.

The second bill, Council Bill 120813, is the mid-year grant acceptance and appropriations bill.

And the third, Council Bill 120812, is the Mid-Year Supplemental Budget Ordinance, which spends money, approves positions, and does some other things that I'll walk you through.

I'm going to go one by one.

I'll be happy to answer questions during the presentation or at the end.

If we can't get you answers right away, we will gather up those questions and have them have answers to you by the next time you meet.

So the first bill is the annual wage increase appropriations bill.

Annual wage increase, AWI, is city speak for the cost of living allowance that we typically do every year for city employees.

So I may refer to it as AWI or COLA.

as it's often referred to outside of the city.

Consistent with actions that were taken by the mayor and the council earlier this year, the annual wage increase bill allows departments to fulfill past commitments to increase wages in 2023 and 2024 for most city employees.

As you are certainly aware, previous legislation ratified a number of labor agreements that covered the coalition of city employees, the Seattle Police Officers Guild, and several other labor partner agreements.

Past city actions also committed to provide an AWI for most nonrepresented employees.

So the bill before you today would provide funding to departments that is sufficient to pay for those obligations in 2023 and 2024. Again, giving employees cost of living or annual wage increase raises for 23 and 24. We expect to fully fund the obligations that are included in the mid-year supplemental through a transfer of reserves that were held for this purpose.

It is possible that we may need supplemental appropriations for the future.

The second half, if you will, of the 2024 appropriations would come through cost saving measures that are underway now.

And if those cost saving measures are not sufficient, would be additional appropriations in the year-end supplemental.

I will move to the next package, sorry, the next bill in the package, unless there are questions about that bill.

Colleagues, questions on AWI, and we've been joined by Councilmember Moore as well, as all Councilmembers are welcome to finance Native communities and tribal governments.

Seems like you don't have any questions here.

Feel free to continue.

Okay.

The next bill is the Mid-Year Grant Acceptance and Appropriations Bill.

The gist of this slide is to basically to communicate that the city's annual budget adoption process, which of course happens once a year in the fall, generally requires updates during the course of the year.

to capture the city's multiple grant cycles that evolve and we have news about throughout the year.

During the budget adoption process, we have a sense of what grants we want to get to fund our capital projects, but we don't yet know which grants we're actually gonna receive or whether the amounts will align with our planning and applications.

So as a result, the city routinely amends the budget to make adjustments based on actual progress developing the projects, actual grants that are received, and updating spending authorizations accordingly.

This typically happens at least three times a year in the first quarter as a separate standalone bill as part of the mid-year supplemental, which is what we're looking at today, and in the year-end supplemental.

Bottom line is that the mid-year supplemental ordinance package includes $74 million in a variety of grants.

We are, of course, grateful for all of the grants we've received.

This slide is intended to provide some illustrative examples of what's included in the bill, but it's not a comprehensive list.

So I'll just call out $19 million from the Washington State Department of Commerce to assist low and moderate households to reduce energy consumption.

A $19 million Federal Highway Administration grant for work on East Marginal Way and Roosevelt.

$3 million from Washington State Office of Recreation and Conservation.

This is a grant for a pedestrian bridge at Carkeek Park.

and a $2 million Federal Bureau of Justice Assistance grant for the care team expansion, which you'll hear more about later in the presentation.

Again, I will pause if there are any questions.

Otherwise, I'll move on to the next bill.

Colleagues, questions on the grant?

I see Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you all for being here.

Director Reeder, can you just, a clarifying point with these grants, acceptances, appropriations, are these grants, once we accept them, they're available to us, or is there a delay, or how does it work when we are given a grant from the federal government in terms of our being able to access those grants, the actual funding for it?

Yeah, my understanding is that these grants have all been received and committed.

They are not all necessarily in hand and ready to be spent.

So the care team grant is an example of that, where it's been included in the federal budget as an earmark.

and we are certain that we will have that money to spend, and we are working with appropriate federal agencies to have authority to begin spending, and we, through our federal lobbyists, have understood that that green light on the spending side will happen in September or October of this year.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, other questions on grants appropriations and acceptances?

Moving into the meat of, so just by way of reference, we've done AWI, we've done grants and acceptances, and now we're going to move into mid-year supplemental bill of the package.

Director Eater.

Great.

Thank you for keeping us up to speed.

While most of this bill, the mid-year supplemental appropriations bill, includes technical amendments, the appropriation bill also includes several policy proposals that I want to call to your attention, and I'll speak to one at a time.

So first, there are some limited investments in new areas.

The bill would add a total of about $1.7 million in new spending for emergency priority investments.

The bill would also add a number of new positions to accomplish the work.

And it would impose a proviso that, we'll speak to all of this one at a time, but it'll impose a proviso that frees up payroll expense tax funding to allow for investments in youth mental health and violence intervention during 2024. So I'll address those one at a time if that's all right.

So as I mentioned, there's about $1.7 million in total of new general fund spending that has been included in the proposed mid-year supplemental appropriations bill.

This would allow spending this year in four emerging priorities that the mayor has determined are too important to wait until the beginning of next year or 2026. I'll provide a little bit more information about each of these areas.

So this is the components of the 1.7 million, which is the bottom line total of all four of these bullets.

The first is recruiting for the Seattle Police Department.

This would provide an increase in advertising and marketing to attract additional new applicants for SPD's recruiting efforts.

It's flagged as one time, so decisions can be made in the future about weather and how much to fund for 2025 and beyond.

Would the chair like me to pause at the end of each of these, or should I just plow through and then we can see if there are questions at the end?

I haven't seen any hands, so I would just keep rolling, and we'll keep doing these pauses at the end of each section to say, do colleagues have questions?

Very good.

The second is investments in the sexual assault unit in the Seattle Police Department.

This would address needs that were recommended in expert reports from earlier this year concerning the Investigations Bureau and the sexual assault unit.

IT WOULD ALSO ADDRESS REFORMS THAT ARE RESULTING FROM THOSE REPORTS THAT ARE IN THE MAYOR'S EXECUTIVE ORDER 20205. THE INVESTMENTS INCLUDE DEVELOPING A TRAUMA-INFORMED TRAINING FOR ALL SPD EMPLOYEES TAILORED TO THE NEEDS OF THE DEPARTMENT, INSTITUTING ONGOING ADVOCATE-LED CASE REVIEWS AND IMPLEMENTING OTHER CHANGES TO IMPROVE THE OVERALL FUNCTIONING OF THE SYSTEM.

That's about a $250,000.

It is a $250,000 add to the budget.

Moving on, the third category is in the Seattle Fire Department, and this is regarding dangerous buildings abatement costs.

Earlier this year, council members will recall that the city passed a bill that allows the fire chief to demolish or otherwise remedy unsafe building conditions.

This allows SFD, the Seattle Fire Department, to place a lien against property titles to ensure that Seattle taxpayers are reimbursed for the city's costs.

But in the meantime, we need the authority to spend the money in the first place.

The proposal would provide the funding to support that previous legislation and it would add the budget authority again for the fire department to contract with vendors to perform the demolition or other related services.

That's again a $350,000 portion of the 1.7 million overall.

And the fourth final category is adding five paramedic trainees to the class of paramedic training that is already going to happen.

This would allow the fire department to reduce the overall paramedics vacancy rate.

There are currently 89 paramedics that are authorized in the budget, but there are on the order of 35 vacancies currently.

So this would cover the cost of training for five additional paramedic students in 2024. It would double the number of paramedic students, trainees, that are authorized in the base budget.

So it would bring the total number of funded paramedic trainees from five to 10. I would note that this is a $258,000 cost in 2024. The training begins in September of 2024, but it continues into, I think, six months of 2025. So there would be about $600,000 of costs to continue that training that we start in 24 and finish it up in 2025. the extra costs will be included in the mayor's proposed budget.

It wouldn't make sense to start this training unless we were, as a city, prepared to pay for the costs in 2025 for those trainees to finish the training.

And I'll pause you there.

Colleagues, questions on this?

Councilmember Nelson.

Seeing as council president is not coming off mute, I'm gonna move on to council member Kettle.

Yes, chair.

Thank you very much.

Thank you for this presentation.

And I just wanted to highlight how important it is to act.

It's one thing to pass a bill here in council, like with the vacant buildings abatement, but we need to act.

And the way we do that is to affect these budget changes.

And I will assure you that the need for paramedics, for example, is huge.

And so these kinds of actions are needed to basically actualize what we've been talking about and what we're trying to do.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council President Nelson.

Thank you, and thank you for your patience.

Dan, do you have any information about the actual campaign for the $800,000 and whether any of it has been spent so far this year?

What are they going to do with that?

Is it going to be

Just to clarify, you're speaking about the police recruiting aspect, and you're referring to Director Dan Eder.

Is that correct?

Yep.

Great.

Thank you.

A lot of Dans.

Council President, thank you for the question.

There has been a surge in the base funding that was authorized in the adopted budget for the purpose of police.

So we have stepped up our efforts and our associated spending in the early months of this year.

to increase the number of, to spread the word about the good news that being a police officer now pays more money than it used to, thanks to the contract that the city ratified for 2021 through 2023 wages for police officers.

That has been a very successful campaign.

Through June of this year, we have seen a near tripling in the daily number of applications that have come in to the police department and the city more generally for applicants who are interested in becoming police officers at the city of Seattle.

That's great news.

We are now receiving on the order of 15 applications per day, and it had been closer to five or six per day through all of the months of 2023. So we think that there is a combination of there's good news in terms of a more competitive salary that we're offering to police officers and also we have been increasing our outreach to spread that good word and encourage people to apply for those now better paying jobs.

We have not spent the $800,000 that we're asking for, but we have spent much of this year's outreach and recruiting budget during the first half of the year.

This $800,000 would allow us to continue spending at that elevated level.

so that we can continue the upward direction in the number of applications that we're receiving for SPD jobs.

Does that answer your question, Council President?

Yeah, it does.

Whenever there's a new expense in the mid-year supplemental, I like to try to understand whether or not it's because work has been done in this year, and so therefore it's needed immediately, or if it's for future needs.

It'll be spent, the $800,000 will be mostly spent next year, and then I can get some detail on the outreach that it will pay for, right?

Does that sum it up?

The $800,000 will be spent in the balance of this year.

That's why we're asking for it in the mid-year supplemental.

Got it.

Perfect.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Just to summarize what I heard Director Eder state is that the funding that was appropriated for this recruiting program for this year has been spent already this year, which is why they are coming requesting additional funds for the remainder of the year.

Director Eater, is that generally correct?

Yes, that's correct, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, Council Member Morales.

Can I just follow up on that?

Can you clarify the proposal for where the money comes from for that?

Yes.

The next slide identifies what I think is a perfectly reasonable question.

Where are we going to get the budget to pay for the entire $1.7 million, not just the $800,000, which is a component?

And in a nutshell, the city imposed a hiring freeze at the beginning of this year, which is still in effect, and we expect to continue through the end of this year for a number of reasons, including the upcoming need to address a projected large deficit in the general fund beginning in 2025 and beyond.

The hiring freeze alone is expected to save well more than $1.7 million.

So this effectively eats into the savings that we're getting from the hiring freeze.

We also anticipate that there will be underspend in a variety of appropriations moving forward, but we don't know at this point exactly where those will be or how much they'll add up to.

And so is there going to be a repeated request for this kind of money for recruitment?

Or at what point does recruitment hit a sufficient level that we can stop spending almost a million dollars a year in recruitment?

Fair question.

I don't have a ready answer.

All I can say at this point is that that's one of the questions that we are grappling with.

And we will have our answer in September when we propose the mayor's budget that balances a number of competing needs, including but not limited to, of course, this one.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you all for being here.

I said that earlier.

I'm super grateful, so I'm saying it again.

This portion of the midyear, most of this looks like it's just one time that you are backfilling with the 1.7 salary savings, except for the paramedic training piece.

because that will go into next year.

Is that correct?

And Director Ito, the reason I ask is because my experience from being at a city department and working with budgets every year is that typically mid-year are for technical changes and not adding new things.

And typically when we're adding new things, we wait till the budget process because then we can show what we're foregoing to add something new.

And so I just, I want to clarify, you know, the reasons, if you will, behind moving these forward.

And it looks like it's because one time, this is one time, most of this is one time, a one-time cost.

In addition to the fire department paramedic class that you pointed out in your question, that will have a tail that goes through the first half of 2025, and therefore we have to support those costs.

in the proposed budget.

The other item that I'd call out is the fire department's dangerous building abatement program.

That too is an ongoing program that was begun mid-year this year after the budget was adopted, but it'll continue beyond 2024 and therefore we'll expect to see The mayor's proposed budget include at least this amount and probably more because it'll be for a full year of spending authority.

The other items are inherently discretionary and could be one time.

They could be ongoing, and I just don't know the answer quite yet.

Okay, and on the abatement one, though, I'll just reiterate that we're hoping to get reimbursed for that by the property owners of these properties that are abated.

That's correct.

And it is also unfortunately the case that it could take more than a calendar year to collect on the liens that we put to these buildings.

So the revenues and the expenditures may not align in the same year, but eventually they do catch up.

Thank you for clarifying.

Anything further?

Council Member Rivera, anything further?

No, thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

And just tagging onto the abatement program, we are able to place a lien on these properties because of a bill that I passed last year, which changed it from being a nice request to a lien, which is a little stronger.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Otherwise, Director Eater, I think we've got a couple more subjects to jump into.

Thank you.

Yes, thank you.

So I wanted to call your attention to a number of positions that are authorized in the bill that we're discussing.

And I'll just walk through at a high level.

The slide shows where the positions are authorized.

I will describe for what purpose.

The Seattle Center has six new positions.

This is effectively for waterfront security work.

There's no new funding that's included in the mid-year supplemental, nor is there any funding needed beyond what's already included in the adopted budget, but this is the positions would be authorized.

The Overlook Walk is opening ahead of the original 2025 schedule.

That's good news.

The six positions are funded through a carry forward from the Metropolitan Park District funding.

Um, for, uh, the Human Services Department, there are, uh, 21 new positions.

Uh, again, there's no new funding included in the midyear supplemental.

Um, the, uh, this authorizes the, uh, Unified Care Team, UCT, to expand to seven day a week service.

The annual cost of the 21 new positions is about three and a half million dollars.

The cost of these positions is fully funded in the adopted budget, so the base budget.

We will be repurposing funding that had been spent through the King County Regional Homelessness Authority, and instead of spending it for those purposes, We are spending it for similar purposes on city staff.

So we have more than enough savings from the King County Regional Homelessness Authority spending savings to support the cost of the new positions.

And we're asking, therefore, for no new funding, but just the position authorization.

Thank you.

One more category, that's the care team.

There's 21 positions that will pay for one time.

I'm sorry, the $1.9 million of the federal grant that I mentioned earlier will pay for all of the one-time and ongoing staff costs in 2024. This allows the care team to expand citywide.

The ongoing cost for 2025 will be about $3 million, and there's a variety of strategies we have for how to pay for that.

And Chief Amy Smith is here to talk more about the proposed care team expansion if you have questions.

And I think there may be slides that...

Before we move off of this slide, I see Councilmember Moore has a question.

Thank you very much, Chair.

Thank you for the presentation.

I just wanted to go back to the Unified Care Team, the Human Services Department slide.

And I understand that the executive is still working to identify a specific funding source within the outreach and prevention contract transfer for that last $1 million.

So I just want to reaffirm that outside of the standard up to 10% administrative costs, that the housing levy homelessness prevention funding is not going to be utilized as the funding source for that last remaining $1 million.

I do not have a ready answer for you, but perhaps by the end of this conversation, I will have an answer from my team.

Sorry.

Okay.

I would appreciate that answer.

And also just to make it clear that I would be very much supportive of UCT and very much opposed to transferring housing levy money to do it.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Fair question.

Council Member Kettle.

THANK YOU, CHAIR.

MR. EADER, I APPRECIATE YOUR PRESENTATION.

THIS SLIDE'S A GREAT OPPORTUNITY TO HIGHLIGHT, YOU KNOW, THERE'S THREE BIG AREAS.

SEATTLE CENTER AND WHAT WE'RE DOING ON THE WATERFRONT IS VERY IMPORTANT.

And so I will take the opportunity to highlight that we have to get it right, and this goes to carrying forward the maintenance and what we do to make sure that we step forward.

And I recognize SDOT is doing great work, but there's areas of the waterfront project that should be transferred to Seattle Center instead of being piecemeal between two departments.

And so I'll just take the opportunity to highlight that point.

Appreciate what you're looking to do with the Unified Care Team.

Yesterday I walked 3rd Avenue starting down at James and kept going.

Great opportunity to run into providers that were on the street and business owners and residents.

And it is key to have a strong, properly done team that's seven days a week.

And this is where things can really make a difference because if not, we may lose another business.

I'm constantly...

being contacted on that point.

And so it's so important to support the Unified Care Team.

And of course, care as well.

And there's a lot of different pieces to that, but we need to ensure that there's a third approach, if you will, is is moving forward.

And I recognize it's complicated and there's elements that we can't speak to here.

But this is important for us to step forward and to, as I mentioned in the previous comment, to actualize and really carry out what we've been talking about.

Talk the talk is fine, but we got to walk the walk.

Thank you.

I've been asked by my team to correct one of my speaking notes.

The UCT position adds are to establish UCT outreach using city funding.

It is not to expand to seven-day.

My apologies for the misstatement.

It's okay, although you know my position that I believe that we should have seven-day coverage with the Unified Care Team.

Chair, and my point is still germane too.

Yes, thank you.

Thank you.

And if you receive the answer to Council Member Moore's question, happy to just pipe right in.

And if not, I'm sure that they'll follow up with you offline.

And if they don't, let me know.

I believe you've got a couple more subject areas to jump into with one Chief Amy Smith.

Hi.

Here we go.

It's good to be here with you today.

It's fun to be before a new committee for me, so thank you.

So I am Amy Smith, acting chief of Seattle Care Department.

And for most of my career, which was nonprofit, I had to work to stress that we should do the right thing for someone, even though it may be more expensive.

Scaling the care responder team represents probably the first moment in my career that I couldn't recommend that doing the right thing for individuals and for communities is also dramatically more financially efficient.

Every dollar we spend in first response should be considered sacred, not just because of budget scarcity, but because we are tasked to help people and to keep people safe.

Will you advance the slides for me?

Yeah.

Go forward.

Yeah, go one more, please.

Thank you.

So in 911, I'm required to dispatch a response to crisis calls.

And from the outset, I shared that I'm designing to send the best first response.

And by best, I mean not just the most appropriate professional discipline, but also the most financially prudent response.

There has been and continues to be extraordinary financial waste in public safety when we dispatch the same expensive unit again and again and again to the same person or the same location without actually getting someone help or changing the environment in some way.

Just this year, with only two care team responders generally working only downtown, I have saved police more than 1,000 service hours.

And I cannot stress enough the significance of that savings in the context of staffing shortages.

I sometimes have only 58 patrol officers to cover the entire city of Seattle on Saturday night.

Next slide, please.

So when I send care instead of police or instead of fire, if you look just at hourly wages, I'm saving a minimum of 30 cents on the dollar, and often more because I frequently do have police working overtime because of those staffing shortages.

Now, take into account tactical gear, equipment, vehicles, fringe benefits, departmental overhead, and it's closer to half the expense to send care instead of police.

And further, those care professionals are more likely to swiftly identify the behavioral health needs or issues and connect someone to services where they can actually get help.

And I don't wind up sending another unit the next day.

Now, in this country, we established proof of concept that sending alternative crisis units to appropriate crisis calls is a good strategy.

We established this back in the 90s with CAHOOTS data and metrics in Eugene.

However, you know I have patterned after Albuquerque and Durham, who have held the line on a legislated third public safety department, which works in an integrated way with fire and police.

And national experts and national funders are very excited about this, because it is a true reimagining of first response.

Next slide, please.

Albuquerque Police Chief Medina and Albuquerque Community Safety, or ACS Director Ruiz Angel, presented at a police chief's conference last year, and they were sharing their results three years into the program, having scaled at that time to 96 care team-type responders.

Chief Medina reported dramatic positive impact to police staffing, police morale, and response times.

The new department had already responded to nearly 50,000 calls for service.

Now, in these graphics on the left, you can see a precipitous drop in property crime in Albuquerque, from over 41,000 incidents at the inception of ACS to around 24,000 in year three of the program.

Call time response cumulatively has been more than cut in half.

Albuquerque leaders had the conviction and the vision to actually invest long enough to evaluate whether this is working and then to start to reap the financial rewards of patience and commitment that is more than performative.

Across the country, anywhere you look, about half the 911 calls for service fundamentally do not have anything to do with police or fire.

I imagine we should have taken this step to set up a third public safety department about 50 years ago, and I imagine the reason we didn't do that were body of work issues.

However, better late than never.

And I thank you for being the group to have both the moral conviction and the financial common sense to be committed to growing this department.

And I'm happy to take questions.

Thank you, Chief.

Just a couple.

If you could slide back, go back to that last slide.

On the bottom bracket here on the left graphic, you mentioned verbally that those are years.

Each of those, both yellow and blue, represent a full year of data.

Is that correct?

Yeah, so what you're looking at there, again, it was fascinating.

This is the police chief who was making the strong case for the third public safety department.

And he was suggesting that there is a clear corollary between the growth of the third department and a reduction in crime.

And so you can see one of them, the yellow, is representing violent crime, which is also reduced, but not as precipitously.

And then you can see property crime, dramatic reduction.

Now, their working theory is the other department, the care type department, freed police up to do police work, right?

There are many, many more responders.

And what they chose to do, they had the same staffing shortages.

APD was down about 400 officers.

They were doing everything they could to staff.

But for Mariella in the care type department in ACS, it was easy to hire, the same way it is for me.

I get inquiries every single day.

I learned a lot from her.

She level set the pay to be first responder, to be good jobs, good paying jobs so she could staff up and maintain people.

And that's what happened.

So they started with 12 and then quickly in the first, I think two and a half years scaled to 96. Right now that department has 158 people.

And again, you see positive impact across the board to every part of public safety and community.

Thank you.

And then I'm gonna verbally walk through the other graph and then I do see some council members hands.

Council members, if you have questions, please raise your hands here.

With the APD response times of call types one, two, three, four, five cumulative, red graph being a year or July 2022, blue bars are a year later, not even a year later, February of 23. Can you talk with me about why you believe that those call type or the response times were able to increase so much?

Yeah, so I'm already seeing this in 911. What had happened was we were really prioritizing everything one and two because we're not getting the calls.

And in dispatch, we're scared that we won't go if it's a priority three.

And so similar things happen everywhere.

CARE is designed primarily to go to priority three and priority four calls.

We sometimes do go to higher priority calls, which have been first dispatched to police.

They get there.

It might be a person down, too.

And they say, this is an appropriate care.

Come in and take it.

So we actually will alleviate the burden across a number of different call types.

But you can see, once ACS started to scale, they were getting to those lower priority, generally social work type calls, three and four.

I mean, look at the reduction from 180 minutes down still over an hour, because there's so many crisis calls.

cumulatively to better than cut it in half.

That response time is so significant.

We have really poor health outcomes in this city because it takes us so long to get to people or because we dispatch the inappropriate team first.

We send police to check and advise, then police sends fire, then fire calls out Health 99. So we're really working on that.

I'll hold my other questions because I see my colleagues have finally come to attention.

Although Council Member Morales had her hand up for quite a while.

Council Member.

Thank you.

Thank you for being here.

I am recalling when you were here last year and we were talking about how we set this up.

Or was that 2022?

I've lost track of time.

I was here, so it was 2022. And so I know we had a lot of conversation about whether this should be a single dispatch or dual dispatch.

And with your guidance, we decided that this was going to be a pilot program to see how it worked, how we do the dual dispatch, and at what point police can sort of step back and this really can transition to becoming a single dispatch system.

So I'm interested in understanding sort of where we are in that progress, what if there are operational challenges that prevent us from moving towards the single dispatch system.

Because as you're pointing out with these charts, it really makes a dramatic difference and frees up the police to do other work.

So that's one question.

And then I have another question just about...

You know, we've seen 19,000, thousands of responses from other departments and we've only been able to manage about 500. So I wonder if you can address those two issues and what some of the barriers might be to moving forward.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I inherited the dual dispatch design.

I initially thought it was a little bit odd.

But then I realized that because the idea really hadn't been socialized or introduced at all, you know, really the whole thing was designed in an office somewhere.

911 didn't know what was going on.

Police really didn't know what was going on.

The news represented the program in different ways.

And so in a perfect world, I would have had a year to do the community tour, to go out to neighborhoods, to introduce the brand.

This is what these people look like.

This is what their skill set is.

This is what they're going to do.

I would have trained all police officers really well to understand it.

How is it different than co-response?

Because we have that.

That's a social worker in the car with a ballistic vest with a police officer.

I would have spent a lot of time with fire.

That's not how it went.

I arrived in April.

I had this thing launched in October.

But remember, the brand and everything was really created in September.

I was shocked that police used it right away.

I shared in the press conference, I intentionally didn't primarily dispatch even when I could.

So there's really three scenarios.

From 911, I can send care.

We're on police channels.

The sergeant says, yeah, that's fine.

You just take it.

Police don't need to go.

We know that person.

We were there three hours ago.

You're fine.

So I could do that.

I always had the option to by the MOU, but I didn't because I knew in the public what I was hearing is cops are never going to use this.

They don't like it.

What the officers were telling me is we need this.

We love this.

Please do this.

And so there was this huge disconnect.

And I thought it would be more useful to just set it up for the first 500 calls to manage physical risk and threat as well.

I did not want anything to go wrong.

And so in roll calls and also with police command, I implored them, please do just send an officer You know, they can be there for 10 seconds, see that everything's okay and move on.

I want to free you up to get to calls.

But it will manage the risk for us.

And also, I need these teams to know each other.

And so it's been interesting to watch officers remain on the scene sometimes.

And honestly, I think they're getting to know the care team.

I think it's social sometimes.

It's not actually for any other reason.

So I need to, we can't do that.

You know, but I haven't minded that it happened the first six months because there's so much mutual respect.

and camaraderie now, and it's just vital.

You know, I wasn't trying to do this hastily.

I was trying to do it well and make sure that trust was forged.

The other note that I will make here about the 500 calls, you know, sometimes only doing two or three a day, my mandate to this team was to get to know every single resource downtown, to know the businesses, to know the security teams, especially to know the human service agencies that are serving people.

My objective isn't to go triage all the time.

It's to get people help.

I've got about 200 people in the city chronically in crisis, and I have seen so many unnecessary deaths in year one where I knew somebody was going to die.

But we just keep triaging.

We're not investing long enough to get someone into services and then to follow up to make sure that it takes, basically, that they remain in services.

And you see the same thing on the police side, right?

We're not really making arrests.

If we make an arrest, maybe somebody's not going to be booked.

If they are booked, they might not be prosecuted.

And my feeling about the crime side also is that I want to get people help.

Anybody can change.

We've got to interrupt cycles and make sure that people can get rehabilitated.

And so that is my caution and my recommendation to this council.

Think about it that way.

I send out the best first response, and then what?

And the care team uniquely right now is the connective tissue.

I mean, there is almost nobody providing human service that I don't know.

I know the different outreach teams.

We Deliver Care is exceptional, exceptional.

I mean, I can't walk down the street without stopping to assist because somebody is reversing an overdose.

And then the care team can come in and take the person, you know, provide the ride to the next step or Health 99. And so I sometimes hear speculation about outreach.

That role is so vital.

I think of it as an extension of my team.

Tell me the second part again, the 500 calls.

That was your question.

I think I just answered it kind of.

Well, the shift to anticipated shift to single dispatch.

Yeah, so already I'm stressing that.

The solution to going to more calls is actually not SPD buy-in.

It's me managing my own dispatch team and strengthening their discretion and their ability to act.

They should be the maestro, right?

They should be conducting the system, saying, you know, our protocols are good.

We have tested them, and we did get it right.

It's 600 calls now, more than 600 calls, and only one time were police called back.

And so that tells me a lot, you know, and we're adding additional rigorous protocols using machine learning to better predict are police going to be needed.

But that's not how dispatch has been in the past.

You know, they really were treated like a little secretarial function tucked away in the police department.

And so me driving change.

We are a learning organization.

You are smart.

You are career professionals.

You know what you're doing, and I will protect you.

You have the same liability protections and provisions everybody else does.

They've been scared.

They feel like, what if somebody has a gun and somebody dies?

That's on me.

And that's very human.

And I really do understand it.

But I am talking about dramatic cultural change.

in 911. And so that will be a solution.

It's already trending up.

On Friday, a team of two, they went to nine calls.

On Saturday, it was six calls.

And we haven't yet, we've expanded to East Precinct, but that day they were all downtown still in West.

And so I already saw a doubling.

And then the final thing that isn't really understood is that the police training video hadn't even gone out.

I mean, it went out this month, even though it was prepared in the fall.

And that was not on the part of the police department.

That was for different reasons.

But again, officers really hadn't even been trained how to use this.

Thank you.

That's helpful.

I guess what I'm really trying to get at is if we are to end the practice of sending the police out with a responder.

what will it take for us to get there?

Because my understanding is that that's, I mean, I understand that there's, you know, scope of work issues, but it seems like if the police department is supportive of this approach and other departments are very supportive of this approach, then it should be sort of an easy win for us to move in that direction here.

And I'm just trying to understand if there is some other operational challenge that we need to fix.

There's not.

It requires me to be a leader, and it requires Chief Breyer to be a leader, and that we hold people to account for our expectation.

It is ideal to have a continuum where I've got police, and then I've got police co-response in one vehicle, and then I have dual dispatch in two vehicles, and then I have just care dispatch, right?

And then it moves over to fire co-response.

That is an ideal continuum, but 911's not used to having it.

You know, I've got folks that for 30 years, it's just send the police, send the police, send the police.

It's muscle memory, you know?

But that is on me, and there's no limiting factor in my ability to do that right now, and you should hold me to account.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

I am going to do just a time check.

I gave everyone a fair warning that we would be running till noon, possibly 1230. It is 1126. We still have a pretty dense subject to get through after this.

I do welcome everyone's comments and questions now so that they're on the record.

There is time for this discussion, but if we have multiple follow-up questions, I might ask you to keep them brief.

offline.

Up next is Councilmember Moore, Councilmember Rivera, Council President Nelson.

Councilmember Moore.

Thank you, Chair.

And thank you very much, Chief Smith.

Just more of a comment, which is I had the pleasure of being at the Shoreline City Council meeting Monday and was able to talk to their chief of police.

And, you know, they have the RACER program.

And then there was also an article in the paper about the sort of North End crisis response and how they are responding.

working and it seems to me a really marvelous example of a regional approach and then a regional approach that works.

And anyway, in my discussions with the chief, she had nothing but really good things to say about how they too have a dual dispatch program, but how it has really been a game changer for public safety and that their police officers very much value that partnership.

So, I think there are other models even closer to home that show that this is successful.

But one thing that I noted that was interesting in that conversation, and I'll wrap up, was the fact that they had buy-in from their police department from the top to the bottom.

And they didn't necessarily have labor relation issues being an operational challenge.

And so just putting that out there that we do need to, you know, I always hear that the rank and file are very supportive, particularly as they begin to have those interactions and establish those relationships.

But somehow we've got to move that up the chain.

So we all recognize that this is in everyone's best interest.

It's not about taking away, it's about expanding the responsibility and the ability to work together.

Yeah, thank you for putting that on the record.

That's Brooke Bittner, who's a good friend and also one of the best leaders in the country in the space.

And it is different.

I think the way the city went about it, not perhaps consulting labor, I impact four different unions pretty dramatically, including my own Dispatchers Guild.

And I think that that is a significant pain point, you know, that there was frustration from the start that I've had to remediate.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I'm just going to ask one question and then I know Director Smith, you and I will have a meeting and I'll ask further questions so I don't take up all the time here and I really appreciate all the hard work that you've done to set up this new program.

As an alternative response, I think most of us have said anyway at one point or another how supportive we are of of an alternative response, particularly in light of the fact that we don't have enough police officers to respond to all these calls, in addition to the fact that many of these calls don't require a uniformed officer.

They require some kind of social response, crisis response.

So I appreciate all the work there.

The question I'm going to ask is about, you mentioned the dispatch.

When you're dispatching out, I'm confused about how Health One, not so much Health 99, because I know Health 99 is specific to fentanyl, but Health One, how is Health One, how is care different from the service that Health One is already providing?

And for that matter, I know that we fund other outside agencies like we deliver care and the ambassadors at the Downtown Seattle Association and other human service providers to help with this work.

And as you said, they're doing great work.

I agree.

So how, you know, how is this different?

Because I know that I've heard from people say, you know, I noticed that there was an ambassador in care and health one and SPD all to deal with one incident at the same time.

And so that seems inefficient to me, but I don't know all the details.

So will you please, or would you, are you able to, and if not, we can follow up during our meeting.

No, no, no, it's a great question to put on the record so I can remind people.

First, there is such a difference between first response, Just think of it that way.

The first responder, the primary responder should be so upskilled.

I want my care team to be received the same as police and fire and to be supported and to grow that way.

They need liability protections.

They need provisions.

And I need quality assurance.

I also need shared records management.

I need to be able to look and see, oh, fire had five encounters with this person last week.

Here's the note.

Now I can see care.

Now I can see police.

It must be integrated.

And I think people don't understand what happens when you outsource to a nonprofit or a third party.

You lose, first of all, quality assurance, right, over how that went.

You can try to do kind of like funder oversight, but it never goes well.

It's not the same thing as these are my direct reports.

But also, there's too much funding volatility and inconsistency in service delivery.

We need first responders.

Two of my top priority one calls are suicide and overdose.

And people need to understand that.

Who best to approach somebody who is on the precipice of jumping, right?

Who best to respond to overdose?

And not just overdose, but severe substance use disorder.

Health One is my, I can't say my favorite team in town because I would get in trouble, but I love that team.

They are amazing, but that is designed to be high acuity medical needs, and it should be much bigger than it is.

That's five people, I think, right now, six people, and that is just woefully inadequate.

It's the same thing with police co-response, five social workers.

it should be 10 times as big.

And so I'm always quick to say that.

But there are a lot of these calls in the middle that don't require that expensive rig and setup, that don't have the medical nexus where this is going to wind up at Harborview.

So there's hundreds of thousands of calls.

I'll get 900,000 calls this year.

About 300,000 don't require that expense.

So back to the financial case, right?

I want to design a more fiscally prudent response that is also useful for lower priority calls.

Person down one, that would be health one.

Person down two, right?

This is like somebody could die if we don't get somebody out right now.

Care is not designed to go to medical calls.

We do basic first aid.

Everybody in town right now is engaged in reversing overdose.

because we're in a state of emergency.

But that's the difference.

There's primary response, first response, and then secondary response, and then prevention teams.

And so it's that sort of before and after secondary.

That's how I think about We Deliver Care, reach, lead, co-lead.

We need all of that stuff, but they're not first responders, and they shouldn't be.

So I guess my follow-up to that, and again, we can take it offline, is how we assess, because I don't think we need all those folks there at the same time.

So how is all this working together so we're not duplicating efforts?

I hear what you're saying in terms of levels.

And also how we assess the program moving forward.

What are the assessments that are going to happen?

to make sure that then we're mitigating for these things, right?

Every program has improvements, right?

Which you mentioned earlier, actually, and I appreciate in terms of holding you accountable, but I'm interested in knowing the program evaluation so that we're mitigating for spending money in this way, if it's not for efficiencies, I guess is what I'm trying to say.

Yeah, it is really chaotic out there.

It's been very bizarre to realize how many little things have been set up.

And then even in the nonprofit sector where I'm from, I've had an advantage because I know people.

It was easier to come back and go, Mary's Place, you're still online.

How's it going?

You're still serving the same types of people.

Is this different?

It's completely disorganized.

It really is.

The county has different resources, lots of different community resources.

And so that has been, you know, I've joked that I've got a full time job and 40 hours and it's at least 30 hours a week where I'm out in community, you know, working to forge relationships so that I can coordinate who is serving this demographic, who's serving this demographic.

If I have a mom and kids, where do they go?

And then I will start proposing.

I mean, I do it organically.

I talk to people all the time.

We need to figure out where we sit and not duplicate because I've got tremendous gaps in service and then tremendous overlaps as well.

I want to know if somebody is surviving human trafficking, who serves that person?

Where do they go?

What is the network?

Do I have three options?

Who?

There's about four different populations I think about a lot who are very, very vulnerable, and we need to asset map and make sure that the right investments are being made.

Now, I personally am not of the mind that the public sector should pay for all the interventions and the prevention.

I just don't think that way.

I like community-driven design.

So I think about public safety as first response.

Late-stage diversion, kind of bumping up against criminal justice system or severe crisis, I like to sit there with taxpayer dollars and then response to that 911 call.

And then beyond that, the city shouldn't be in the case management business, in my opinion.

That's just not viable.

That needs to be nonprofit investment, venture philanthropy.

There are a lot of different ways to fund ongoing supports for somebody.

And so, you know, kind of on the side, too, as a volunteer, I work hard on that, making sure that we've got people with assets and that philanthropic intent is aligning with actual community need.

and interventions that work.

As far as whether or not care works, it just does.

It does.

We've known since 1989 that this is a better financial model.

I talked to really all the jurisdictions with big programs.

I was on the phone with STAR yesterday, the new STAR manager in Denver.

And the cities that have done, have sort of outsourced the crisis response are all struggling.

for all different reasons.

And I can tell you more about that.

The cities where it's going well are Seattle and Albuquerque and Durham because there's alignment.

We're working with police and we're working with fire and it's dramatically more efficient.

We can pass off to each other easily as well.

So it should look much better in a year if I do my job well.

It should look much less confused on these crisis corners.

Thank you, Chair.

And we can dig in more into evaluation of the program.

And when we chat, but I really wanted for the record to say, you know, these people are asking these questions.

And so I wanted to reflect it in the record.

Thank you.

I appreciate that very much.

Unless this become a public safety committee or an education committee, I will ask colleagues to keep questions focused on the financial aspects of what is before us today, since this is the Budget Committee.

Over to you, Council President.

Noting that we are 23 minutes till noon and still have another section of this panel and another panel.

Over to you, Council President.

Thank you.

This is the question for Director Eder.

My question is, the short question is, why the mid-year supplemental budget and not the 2025-2026 proposed biennial budget?

And I recognize that this proposal does identify several one-time funding sources to address the near-term startup and hiring costs of these positions, but none of those will meet ongoing costs, you know, on the long term.

And I think that uh about four million or over four million of program expansion and so there's no sustainable funding source that is identified to match those additional costs and so i'm just sort of wondering um usually in the fall budget there is a um a narrative about where the where the costs will come from i mean the where the money will come from to pay for this so i'm assuming it's going to be general fund but i'm you know that detail is usually provided in um In the, uh, in the fall budget document, so can you tell.

Can you identify what services will be cut.

To pay for the 4, 4Million, because we are in a deficit and I'm, uh.

You know, this is not going to be new money paying for this.

And so what is anticipated to cut and then, um, why, why are you, why are we doing this now before seeing that detail?

We're, um, we're.

We're approving positions, but the financial side of it is, um, is incomplete.

Or maybe you know and I don't, and I'd like that information.

Mr. Thank you for the question, Council President.

I think you're right that this is the kind of thing that would normally be included in the annual proposed budget.

And I can assure you that it will be included in the annual proposed budget.

This is the case for expanding the care team and the work of the care team has been made compellingly, convincingly by Chief Smith.

The mayor views this as a core public safety move that can't wait.

And so rather than include this only in the fall budget proposal, the mayor wants to move forward this year to do the work that was authorized, you know, an expansion of this kind of civilian force was authorized in the...

in the labor agreement that was arrived at with our labor partners that allows us to move to 24 active care team members plus the supervising staff.

The way we are paying for this, as I described earlier in the presentation, is through the savings that come from the hiring freeze that was implemented during all of 2024 and will continue through the balance.

And that provides more than enough savings to pay for not only for the four items that I've mentioned, but also together with the earmark that we got from the federal grant, we are fully paying for all of the mayor's proposed public safety investments, including but not limited to the care team expansion

May I add a note?

I'm sorry, Council President.

The way that I look at it is I have to respond to 900,000 calls.

And so I can use a unit that costs half as much to respond to a third of those calls.

So it's sort of a false narrative to say if the care team goes away in two years, it means I'm going to dispatch a unit that costs twice as much to that call.

And so that's why I work with Chief Scoggins and Chief Rahr, because we're trying to look at our budget as one, as one budget and figure out how best to deploy resources.

Thank you for that.

I'm asking a question that I often repeat because we The mid-year supplemental is supposed to be technical changes, basically, and this is 21 positions, and I'm not arguing the merits of this or the cost savings of using care team members and not uniformed officers for this work.

So I'm not getting into that.

I'm just saying if it was anticipated that The monies that you just mentioned, Director Eater, were short-term funding sources, the grant, et cetera, and the vacancy, the not hired positions.

But will that cover the ongoing cost of the 21 positions?

No, it will cover the cost for 2024 only.

Right.

Yeah, a little bit more.

I mean, I don't want to give the congressional earmark money back.

I would rather use it for its intended purpose.

But I also, in my back pocket, have a lot of funding sources right now.

So far, I have not been declined when I've requested money from any agency.

I've got lots of venture philanthropists talking about this, too.

So I would like the city to take responsibility for balancing a budget and using money well.

But I am fully committed to making sure that this is funded, and I'm happy to use other avenues.

And I'm being told at a federal level that if I can provide a blueprint for how this work is done, liability, legal provisions, all of these things, there will be money there for it.

So I know that that's vague, but that's how I think about it.

And Council President, I'll also interject here to say that I have in the past seen the supplemental budget be used in these ways for expanding teams or expanding projects, expanding programs.

I have seen multiple times where the Ballard Avenue Street Cafe was expanded through this through the supplemental budget here.

And so this is consistent with past practice, as well as I believe that the questions that you're asking are regarding the 2025 budget, which we will be taking up in the fall.

And the question has been asked about how are the funds being found to pay for the services being requested this year.

I have received a sufficient answer there, but just want to do one.

No, I'm talking about the how.

Please don't interrupt me as I was about to say.

I was just about to pass it back to you to see if you have any other questions.

Yeah, I mean, this year, different from previous years where you're talking about supplemental budgets, we have a $250 million operating fund deficit.

So that is the context that I'm asking.

And so if we create, if we approve positions now that And then we'll find out the funding source later in the proposed budget.

That is why I was asking, is there something happening now that I'm not understanding why this has to be in the mid-year supplemental instead of the fall budget when we will know where the money will come from because they don't like approving positions that we can't then pay for?

That's the gist of my question.

MR. Thank you, Council President.

I'm going to ask you to have an offline one-on-one briefing.

MS. Yeah, I'll take it offline.

Thank you very much.

I will just say in short that I believe we can't wait until next year to expand this program beyond being the right response for many 911 calls.

This program accomplishes three important things.

It focuses police time on crime, it reduces the response time for 911 calls, and it saves us money.

And I will also note for the record that This is not the first year that a structural deficit has been identified.

The identification of the structural deficit in the general fund is many years old, and I'm very happy that everyone's keen attention is paid to it today.

I will pass it back to you, Director Eder, wrap up Chief Smith, and I think we have limited time for Deputy Mayor Audie Memory's birthday presentation.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you for just, I wanted to follow up on what you said.

I'm asking these questions in the context of being asked to include positions in the mid-year.

So it's very much a financial reason why I'm asking.

Since I'm being asked to approve positions in the mid-year, I'm asking the questions about the program.

So it is related.

Thank you.

Yes.

My questions are more on the essence of time than anything else.

I appreciate that.

Back to you, Director Eater.

Okay, thank you, Chair Strauss.

So I'm just gonna tee up this conversation about mental health and violence intervention spending.

There is an unusual proviso that we are inserting in our own budget.

Usually a proviso is a spending restriction.

In this case, it is a degree of freedom The 2024 budget included $20 million in payroll expense tax funding for mental health services.

Under current law, however, mental health spending and violence intervention spending from this particular funding source isn't part of the allowable funding allocations And so a proviso is needed on a one-time basis to allow the funds to be deployed in 2024. I will turn the mic over to Deputy Mayor Emery, who can talk to you more about the substance of the planned spending.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair, for...

I'm still off, huh?

Can you hear me now?

All right.

Thank you, Chair, for inviting us and sharing this important initiative and important investment on my birthday.

And I will make this presentation tight so you can meet your timeline, all right?

So make sure that we make space for everyone.

We all understand why we're here.

Youth mental health, super important.

Studies are showing that rates of anxiety and depression is going up.

And it's important that we convene this investment to address prioritizing early intervention in the mental health and also providing resources for our children to address the issue.

So this year we'll be asking for 10 million for 2024 out of the 20 million.

Our innovation performance team led by Leah has done a great job of convening subject matter experts, parents, our partnering agencies such as SPS and students, providers to help shape the investment package.

So I'm gonna pass it on to her to quickly talk about the process that they've taken and where we've landed in the investment strategy.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

Good morning, or almost afternoon.

So why do we care about mental health?

Well, there's a concerning level of anxiety and depression among teens across the nation and locally.

We have over 26,000 teens in our Seattle public school system.

And as you can see, the levels on the chart grow from the eighth grade to the 12th grade year.

And untreated mental health results in poor grades, not attending school, substance use, and disciplinary issues.

And we know absenteeism still continues to be a problem and hasn't recovered since the pandemic.

So given all the implications my team innovation performance was requested to pull together an investment strategy for mental health that was evidence based scalable and sustainable.

My team are specialized in data science evaluation performance management we're not experts in mental health, which is why we did this work in close partnership.

with the Department of Education and Early Learning, Seattle Parks and Recreation, Human Services Department.

We talked to over 40 staff at Seattle Public Schools to glean their wisdom on what was available to students in the buildings, worked with public health, community-based organizations and others.

And what we learned is that there are real challenges students are facing.

Actually, going back one slide, I also wanna mention in that first column, we talked to over 150 students Moving into the next slide.

So what we learned is that there's truly no cure for mental health, and that we need a tiered response of treatments.

And this graph aligns very well with what's in the research, what we heard from experts at University of Washington and Children's Hospital, that what kinds of services we provide to students should follow a tiered system, including prevention, early intervention, and treatment.

And I'm going to very briefly go through our research insights, and then I'll pass it back over to the Deputy Mayor to talk about the investments.

So starting in the area of preventions, what we learned, and I want to surface this with you, students are not always aware of the existing resources.

And we see this, you know, even in the care, like we see this across the government services, you know, is truly very difficult to understand what's in the system and how can we better connect students to what is already available to them, whether it's our services, the school services or others.

And it's like one of the most efficient ways we can build up services for students.

One student said, I did not know who my academic counselor was until there was a school shooting.

Secondly, with stigma, stigma is a barrier to students asking for help, and we need to normalize mental health and give parents, teachers, other trusted adults, and students a language to communicate when things are needed.

And then third, students want more enrichment programs.

And this is because enrichment programs get to the root causes of students' stress, such as academic stress, family stress, substance abuse, getting to be in sports and other pro-social activities.

is incredibly important moving into tier two with early intervention this is where we learn students spend an enormous amount of time trying to get help when they need it and when they're feeling low they may not want to reach out and so there's evidence-based practices to get students help earlier and more upstream before we start seeing visible things such as grades, disciplinary actions, absenteeism, because by that time it's far too late.

So how we put some interventions in place early on to make sure students get help sooner is going to improve their outcomes.

And then lastly, in tier three, there's a true gap in the system when it comes to the supply of therapy.

I mean, parents, students alike, they will spend three to six months looking for a therapist to, and we heard over and over how much fit is important in terms of getting good care, appropriate and culturally relevant care.

And so evidence shows that a mix of telehealth and in-person can really meet that need because this enables a much wider geographic reach as well as people from the community and seeking that balance.

And I'm going to pass it over to Deputy Mayor.

Thank you, Leah.

So next slide, please.

Our investment, I'm going to start with Tier 3. Investment will be increasing in-person therapy and also introducing telehealth therapy.

We have currently, next slide, 29 school-based health centers.

Primarily all high schools have them.

We have all middle schools, but five don't have them, and there's some in elementary schools.

The proposal will be, currently we have one counselors at each school-based health centers.

We'll be adding another one, so two counselors for each, summing up to 29. We'll also be introducing what we call a healthcare coordinator.

Basically, we'll function as a triage, first point triage for kids to help navigate the system and the access to the services that we'll be providing.

For instance, if a kid is matched with a counselor, is not a good match, the coordinator can help navigate that space for the kid to pair them with another counselor, or even for the five that are middle schools that don't have the school-based health centers, we'll be helping navigating, linking them to the closest schools that have the services.

So going back into the prevention and intervention, Mayor Harrell, next slide.

Um, nope.

Sorry.

You're going backwards.

Don't go backwards.

Um, yeah, this is it.

Maraher launched a reach out initiative, um, which consists of, we partnered with, um, a nonprofit organization called, um, Erica's Lighthouse.

And the concept is we're modeling a medic one concept that we launched in the seventies.

It's to bring awareness of mental health, um, the triggers, the indicators for kids and also intervention.

So the idea is to create this Erica House Lighthouse has a module that folks can take it home.

And in terms of training, it's online.

We are looking in incorporating it with SPS.

There's a youth curriculum and also having their staff to be trained in this.

We're also working with Parks Department and having our community center employees to take the training as we're looking at scaling the services, not just for the 10 months that kids are in school, but looking at the 12 months or in the summertime, the services are also accessible at the community centers.

So let's just dive in into the investment and the amount for 2024. The reach out does not have any cost, but you'll see a lot of advertisements on the buses and so forth as we've launched the campaign, the marketing campaign last month, just bringing awareness and then to the curriculum so people can tap into it and activate those resources.

We will be...

Again, in our partnership with Public Health, King County Public Health, who administers the school-based health centers, there's a $5.6 million to get that increased capacity.

Adding the counselors and the coordinators and the centers is a $5.6 million cost.

And then we'll be introducing telehealth.

Telehealth, and I can personally talk about this, I have two kids.

For years, it's been very challenging for my kids to find a counselor that look like them, but both my kids are utilizing telehealth, which gives them that national network and be able to pair themselves with someone that looks like them and can help navigate the spaces for them.

So this is going to bridge the cultural barriers that folks encounter, as my kids did, but also gives us a whole network to supplement into the challenges that we face with limited providers here in our region.

And let me talk about one more.

So there's a one-time investment of $2 million in the violence and prevention, which will be led by HSD.

This is the first time in which we've been investing on school safe passage for kids.

And it's a pilot that they will be testing based on data, selecting a handful of schools to demonstrate this.

Alrighty, other factors that are coming in, not in 2024, but you'll see it in the 2025 budget submittal, youth connectors.

Leah talked about a 24 million program that currently we have and administer in the city, but kids are not accessing it because Our platforms is impossible to navigate.

It's impossible for me to navigate.

So we'll want to kind of develop a platform that resonates with kids so they can take advantage of all those investments that we provide.

The other piece is partnering with SPS.

Currently there is a screening survey that's done at eighth grade.

We would like to introduce a 10th grade milestone in that to make sure that we're capturing people and help navigate into the services that we'll be providing.

There it is, so up to questions.

Tight, right?

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

I appreciate you so much.

And I just want to also respond to Ola Ramiske who provided public comment today and to others who are saying we need to be spending the $20 million immediately, $10 million isn't good enough, et cetera, et cetera, to say that this program has been built in a very different fashion than almost every other program that we build at the city.

And the fundamental difference is that this funding passed before a program was set up.

Typically how government works is that we, build a program, we do cost assessments, we get third party opinions, we coordinate as Chief Smith was mentioning with all of the different providers on all of the different levels to come up with an efficient program that we know will create good outcomes.

From that framework, we make a cost assessment and put money in the budget.

This process did go the opposite way where we put money in the budget and then asked to build a program.

And so within six months, You have developed a very robust program that I believe will create good outcomes.

And I just want to take that moment to compliment you because it is not necessarily easy to do it that quickly.

And yes, I would love to have $20 million worth of spending to be here and ready, but this is not an experience of going to the grocery store and picking programs off of shelves.

This is an experience of making sure that our programs are well-tuned for the environments and the students whom they are serving.

Thank you.

Thank you for that recognition.

And I would like to thank IP, who has done a lot of work in convening in the six months to help shape this.

And yes, we need to be judicial about the providers that are there and what we're embarking on spending $10 million is relative to the resources that we have.

We will learn a lot as we operationalize this and utilization rate and so forth.

So this is not the end of it.

We'll continue to tweak and adjust as we learn more.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I see we have many hands.

We have Council Member Morales, Council Member Kettle, Council Member Rivera, and then Council President Nelson.

Thank you, Chair.

In the interest of time, if it's okay, I'll start with Deal and then just go through my other comments that I wanted to get on the record.

Please.

So I appreciate this work.

This is important.

We do have some school-based health center supports already.

There was an initial investment, an earlier investment.

So that work is happening.

We've been investing sort of one-off in restorative justice programming and leadership for black girls, at least since I've been on council because I've been putting that money in the budget.

So I do think it's important that we continue these investments.

And I think if DEAL is not able to deploy the full $20 million for these programs...

which I understand that's a lot of money to try to get out the door, then I would be interested in whether there are other ways for us to develop MOUs with small businesses or with the schools directly, with these organizations that are already providing this support so that we can get that money out the door.

One of the things I hear over and over again from our young people is that they need third places to be that are safe, where there's activities, there are things for them to do.

places for them to hang out that are free.

So I am interested in whether there are other ways for us to use that money to help with skill building or connecting to jobs or apprenticeships or some other way so that we are still moving that money out the door to support young people, even if it's not very specifically for mental health.

So that's what I'll say about that.

And then just in general, with regard to all of these documents, I will share the council president's concern about using one-time funding for ongoing expenses.

We hear that concern a lot on council, and so I don't think that is unique to these bills.

It is something that we've been talking about a lot this year.

And being asked to approve ongoing expenses before we know the plan to pay for them in outgoing years is a problem.

And before we really know what policies are going to be wrapped around this funding is also a problem.

So I'm interested in understanding what controls we might put in place for these funds should we decide to approve these documents.

And then to the Chair's point about this being a long-standing structural deficit in our budget, Yes, we know that.

And it's time for us to figure out how we're going to fix it so that we don't have these conversations every year.

So I am interested in also exploring what the ways are from the mayor or from this council to really address what that structural gap is and how we start to move toward a real solution instead of having one-off conversations every year.

And the last thing I'll say is I appreciate what Chief Smith said about the expense of sending the same response to the same people without offering any real connection to services.

I couldn't agree more.

And I think repeated expenses that don't really address the crisis that we're trying to solve is fiscally responsible.

I don't think that is a prudent way for us to be spending city resources.

And that's why I have historically and will continue to oppose spending millions of dollars on encampment removals that don't offer real connection to services and don't really help people who are in crisis.

I'm not even sure if you could call that triaging because all it really does is move people from one block to the next.

And we don't really connect people to meaningful services.

So that's another place where I will be diving into what's being proposed in this mid-year supplemental.

Thank you, Chair.

All wrapped up all in one.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Could you slide to slide 27?

First, I wanted to thank you for the presentation that we had in our meeting direct, and I really appreciate what we're looking to do here with students and mental health, a very, very important topic.

TWO POINTS THAT I WOULD LIKE TO MAKE IS, ONE, FIRST, A PICTURE'S WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS.

AS YOU CAN SEE, THE CURRENT DISTRICT 7, AND ACTUALLY EVEN THE OLD DISTRICT 7, HAS NO DOTS LOCATED IN IT.

AND SO I JUST WANTED TO HIGHLIGHT, AS WE DISCUSSED, THE NEED TO ENSURE THAT MCCLURE MIDDLE SCHOOL IS COVERED AS, YOU KNOW, WE LOOK TO MOVE FORWARD.

AND THE OTHER THING TOO IS, YOU KNOW, AND AGAIN, I APPRECIATE AND SUPPORT WHAT WE'RE TRYING TO DO WITH MENTAL HEALTH AND OUR STUDENTS.

But really, this should have been on the back of years and years of advocacy and, you know, raising the alarm with Olympia.

And so my ask is that as we move forward and what we're doing is that OER puts it near the top of the list, right next to public safety, to be clamoring for the state to fulfill its responsibilities regarding to mental health and education.

Mental health points, as Chief Smith knows, I hit again and again and again.

The failings on the state regarding mental health are impacting our public safety, but it's also impacting our schools.

And so the city, in a one Seattle way, needs to be hitting the state hard on mental health spending and then the education side too.

Just two points.

We completely agree with you.

And it is on our OIR agenda, legislation agenda, that we'll be going out to Olympia, for sure.

Thank you.

And just one last thing.

Happy birthday.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Well, I just want to say I agree mental health Students need access to mental health all students.

I Will and you know, I agree with councilmember kettle.

It's a state responsibility It's also a state responsibility to do education and safety in the schools then becomes in my mind a state responsibility as well and And so I very much appreciate, first, I wanna highlight that I very much appreciate the position you all are in when you're reacting to these horrible things that happen at the schools in Seattle.

And I very much appreciate how quickly mayor's office and other city departments have come together to really figure out how can we best support students during this time.

And as a parent of two, Seattle Public Schools teenagers I very much appreciate and I know how hard it is to come up with a plan that really will touch upon how we deal with an issue that the entire country is dealing with that is not just Related to access to mental health, though, that's a really important piece.

And that piece isn't just to address the school violence.

It's just post-pandemic.

All the kids have suffered in the aftermath of the pandemic.

when they weren't able to be together and be a support system for each other, which is what teenagers actually tend to do.

Now, withstanding all the drama that happens, the drama is actually part of the growth, and that didn't happen during the pandemic.

So I really want to underscore the importance of the mental health investments, not just related to the school violence, though it addresses that need as well.

I wanted to point out two things.

One is a question, actually.

I know that we fund our school-based health centers via the levy, and every time we've had a levy, and we've had one since 1990, we've added more school-based health centers, and that's how we got to the 29 we have today.

Recognizing that there are five middle schools that don't have school-based health centers, how are we going to ensure that those kids have access to these both the telehealth and the in-person therapy investment.

I do understand also that part of the reason we're doing the telehealth is because there's another issue at play here, which is we don't have enough therapists across the country.

There is a shortage of therapists across the country.

That is very real.

And I think that's why it helps to have the telehealth services, because these are therapists that are not necessarily in the state, but are able to provide.

And so it really expands access.

So I appreciate that.

So we'd love to hear what the plan is for those five middle schools and access for those students.

And then I just wanted to make a statement about the fact that, you know, the mental health piece is one piece, how do we, and I also recognize the violence prevention programs, which I very much support are a long-term They really have impacts, particularly with at-risk youths long-term.

But what are we going to do today to address the violence in the schools beyond providing the mental health supports that are often, you know, something that...

is done after something occurs and the kids need that support.

So what do we do to try to keep kids safe?

Would love to hear any initial thoughts on that.

I know we can continue this conversation.

Appreciate that.

So going back on the five middle schools that don't have school-based health centers right now, We are up for renewal or our FEP levy next year.

So that will be considered in that process to consider the addition of those five.

In terms of school safety, we're a strong partner with SPS.

They do have a strategic plan of safety.

So HSD will be working in this pilot program creating a nexus of an ecosystem, for lack of a better word, to, you know, create an ecosystem for youth, you know, outside of the four walls of the schools, you know, their path to home, you know, after school and before, and or even community centers to the childcare element.

You know, how do we formulate a unified strategy as we think about our student safety?

That's something that's gonna be flushed out But we're going to continue to this dialogue.

This is not just the end of it.

It's a strong partnership that we've built with SPS, so these discussions occur a lot.

And I also want to kind of, as we think about the ecosystem, the programs that we offer, the partnership, you know, just it's a way in which to think about providing access for our youth to...

pivot them to those enrichment things, to get them rich in other things to where their mental health is equipped.

We think about, for instance, nature deficit.

So kids are in front of TV and playing games and in front of the phone.

appreciating our Northwest, you know, outdoors, you know, just, you know, having that strategy and peer-to-peer support that they need to build.

Those are the collective things that we continue to think about how we elevate that ecosystem for our young ones.

Thank you, Deputy Mayor.

And as far as, and I appreciate the RCEP renewal and the proposal to add school-based health centers, but what about the students in those schools now?

Is there a plan to help ensure access to those students that don't have access to a school-based health center at the moment?

Yeah, as part of the proposal with King County Public Health, it's for them to think about a model.

So we're really leaning on that coordinator piece to kind of shepherd and connect those resources for those kids that don't have them.

There are neighboring elementary schools and so forth that could be taken advantage of.

So that's the model that we're having them to develop.

It's underway, so I'll definitely share with you once it's developed on that strategy.

Thank you.

Great to hear that maybe they can utilize resources at the other school-based health centers, which is what I'm hearing.

So very much appreciate that.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Colleagues, you knew that I had a long list of questions for you to ask on the record.

In the interest of time, I will save that for our next time together.

Colleagues, I see Council President has her hand up.

Council President, we are 12, 15, and still have another panel.

Just time check.

Yeah, my hand was up.

I guess I must have bumped the button.

But anyway, question quick question about the 2Million for community safety last week in the housing and human services committee.

We got a presentation from HSD on the forthcoming RFP for the community safety initiative programs.

And so is that 2Million going to fund the the programs that are approved or that get those contracts, is that the connection or is there no connection?

That's my understanding.

Yeah, that is the connection.

So those $2 million are what were described in the executive order that went out on June 14th.

And those convening providers, those provider convenings are happening this month.

Got it.

And then really quick, on the second to last page, there was a, it was a, It was an idea.

It was an exploring idea.

Could you put that up there?

My question is, is that 24 million of programs, five departments, is that sort of a summary of what we're already spending now?

Or will that be a proposal in the fall budget?

Existing investment.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yes, yes.

Happy birthday.

Thank you for your time.

I'm gonna let this panel go.

Chief Smith, great work.

Deputy Mayor, thank you for all you do.

Leah, appreciate everything you're doing for our city.

Dan Eder, I see you so often.

Can't wait to see you again.

Ben Noble, if you could stay at the table, I'm gonna ask central staff to come on up moving into the third round of the three bills.

Happy birthday.

Colleagues, I am going to ask that you hold all questions during this presentation until the end and possibly for a...

A one-on-one meeting, primarily, I did not make that request as explicit in the last panel because the executive departments are not within the legislative department.

Our central staff analysts are at your availability off every workday of the week.

And so I'm going to ask colleagues to hold questions to the end and possibly for one-on-one because we have 13 minutes until my extended request.

And Jen, we've got another...

Chair down here.

We were able to get all nine appointee candidates at that table.

So I think we can do it with central staff too.

Ben, I'm going to, so up here we have Jen Labreck, Eden Sezic, Ben Noble, Tom Mikesell, Ann Gorman, and Brian Goodnight.

I didn't read my script that time, ladies and gentlemen.

Excited to have you here.

Just again, central staff is going to be focusing on two of the three bills.

They are not going to be focusing on the AWI.

We will be focused on the supplemental budget and the grant acceptance ordinance.

I'm going to stop talking until the very end.

I will say, Eden, I really appreciate the chart that you put together.

In the comments that you've heard today, we continue to ask, what are the ongoing funding implications?

What is the grant match implications?

So thank you for putting together those documents.

With that, I'm going to be quiet until the end.

Over to you, Director Noble.

thank you um in interest of time i'm going to quickly move this on to some of my colleagues in the context of council's deliberations about the legislation that you've heard described today we want to take a few moments and only a few to raise some potential policy considerations for you we've reviewed the overall proposal and have identified SEVERAL POTENTIAL ISSUES THAT YOU MIGHT WANT TO CONSIDER THAT WE THINK RISE TO A POLICY LEVEL.

IN PARTICULAR, THEY'RE SUMMARIZED HERE, THE ADDITIONAL POSITIONS AT HSD, THE ADDITIONAL POSITIONS AT THE CARE DEPARTMENT, AND THEN THE APPROPRIATION THAT YOU WERE JUST DISCUSSING OF THE $10 MILLION OF JUMP START MONEY FOR NEW STUDENT MENTAL HEALTH PROGRAMMING.

SO I'M GOING TO TAKE THOSE IN ORDER, AND I'M GOING TO TURN THIS OVER ACTUALLY TO JEN FIRST TO TALK ABOUT THE POSITIONS AT HSD THAT ARE RELATED TO HOMELESSNESS.

All right, good afternoon.

So in the mid-year supplemental, there are 21 positions that are being added to the Human Services Department.

19 of those are to support the Unified Care Team, and two are to FTEs to provide additional contracting support.

These new position adds are related to the decision of the executive earlier in the year to transfer about $11.4 million of homelessness prevention, and outreach funding from KCRHA to HSD with those contracts starting to transfer in 2024. All 11.4 million is general funding that is being transferred from KCRHA I'm sorry, from KCRHA to HSD.

The total cost of the position adds is $3.2 million.

Ongoing funding will be provided.

I'm sorry, ongoing funding for $2.2 million has been identified from existing programs or activities within HSD Parks and the Office of Housing.

So let me just take a step back to you and explain what the new positions are that are being added.

There are 14 new counselor positions to do outreach for the unified care team.

There are five regional coordinator positions to also support the unified care team.

And funding for those five regional coordinator positions was provided in the 2023 adopted budget.

Four out of those five positions has been filled through some administrative action on the executive's part.

The mid-year supplemental request is really to sort of officially ask for position authority for those five positions that were funded in an earlier budget.

And then two of the positions are administrative contracting specialists and an executive assistant to support the additional contracting needs that HSD will have now that they've transferred some of this funding back to the department.

So for the 14 new counselor positions, those are also really the outreach positions that will be added to the unified care team.

A million will come from the transferred KCRHA funding, but it is not yet known if those funds will come from outreach or prevention dollars.

So there is not yet total clarity about what the impacts or trade-offs would be in order to be able to provide that $1 million of funding.

for the 14 new counselor positions.

I will say that the executive has put these position requests in the mid-year supplemental rather than waiting until the Q3 supplemental or the 2025 budget deliberations in order to begin the hiring process sooner.

HSC has indicated that they have their paperwork completed and kind of ready to submit to the HR department.

So they're really ready to go as soon as they get budget approval.

I'll stop there for any questions.

No questions until the end.

Thank you.

Moving on.

All right.

Next item are the new positions of the Care Department.

I'm going to turn this over to Ann Gorman to give you some additional background.

As was described by executive staff, the executive is requesting 21 new positions to expand the care crisis response operations and to hire gradually into all of those positions so that they are all filled and care crisis response is available citywide by early 2025. And that's the rationale for including the positions in the mid-year supplemental rather than in the proposed budget so that they are available and they can be filled gradually.

over that time.

The executive has identified sufficient funding for the 2024 costs associated with the expansion.

The ongoing annual cost of the expansion, we have calculated at about $4.3 million.

That is higher than the $3 million figure that Director Eader shared.

We will work on reconciling those figures.

The executive has not identified an ongoing funding source to offset the ongoing costs of the program expansion, and these new costs will increase the city's projected budget deficit beginning in 2025. As a refresher, the Care Crisis Response Program operates under a memorandum of understanding with the Seattle Police Officers Guild, which represents police officers and sergeants.

And dispatch of care on the basis of a 911 call occurs in limited circumstances.

In a June 26th press conference announcing the planned expansion, Mayor Harrell explained that about 12% of the time, CARE is dually dispatched with an SPD response unit.

And 88% of the time, they are called to the scene by an SPD response unit who's already there.

This 500 call figure is also from that June 26 press conference.

As Chief Smith explained, that figure is higher.

I think she mentioned that it was about 600 by now.

Seemingly successful crisis response programs in other cities use sole dispatch and respond to more call types.

The CARE 911 dispatch can only occur in response to two call types and even then only in limited circumstances.

Programs in cities like Durham and Albuquerque respond to hundreds and even thousands of calls per month as Chief Smith's slides showed.

When the executive and council committed to developing a dual dispatch pilot, they agreed that it made sense eventually to have an independent evaluation of the pilot consistent with four goals that were laid out in an agreement between the executive and the council.

That evaluation has not been completed.

The care department currently has about a $500,000 budget increment that is intended to fund the independent evaluation, and the executive is proposing to redirect that increment to help pay for the costs of the program expansion.

However, given that CARE is a new program and dispatch protocols are evolving, assessing the pilot may not offer meaningful insights at this time.

There are also a limited number of data points with those approximately 600 calls.

However, if council is interested, central staff could develop options to preserve funding for a later independent devaluation at a time that makes sense and or to slow the pace of hiring as described in the mayor's expansion plans so that the city does not make a full funding commitment until council has more awareness of the overall budget implications.

OF THE ADDITIONAL OPERATING COSTS.

OF COURSE, THAT WOULD DELAY PROGRAM EXPANSION CITYWIDE, CONSISTENT WITH THE MAYOR'S PLAN.

THANK YOU.

AND THEN WE'LL MOVE ON TO TALK ABOUT...

SORRY, I'M GOING TO TRY TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO GET DOWN THERE.

GOING THE WRONG WAY.

Jumpstart funding for student mental health and violence prevention.

So thank you, Brian.

Good afternoon, council members.

So I think this was fairly well described by the executive, but I'll just touch on a couple points.

So as was described last fall, council raised the Jumpstart payroll expense tax to raise an additional $20 million with the intention of funding student mental health.

Council also increased appropriations in the Department of Education and Early Learning their budget, but they're not able to spend it due to restrictions on the jumpstart.

So the mid-year supplemental includes a proviso that would allow that spending in 2024. Right now it's written as $10 million, as the executive mentioned.

Just a quick note, if the council wanted to spend money in 2025 or beyond, we would either have to have a similar proviso for future years or would have to change the Seattle Municipal Code to make that an eligible expense.

So the proviso just applies to the 2024 budget year.

And as you can see, so that the slide just breaks down, as they said, the $2 million for violence prevention, 2.4 for telehealth, and 5.6 for the in-person mental health through the school-based health centers.

On the next slide, these were just a few observations.

So as Council Member Kettle and Rivera noted, mental health is not typically a city-funded activity.

It's a state-funded one typically.

But that being said, Council did decide to fund it last year, and so that's why this is before you.

And then just the final note on, given that you know the $20 million is what was was in the proposed budget.

If the council approves the proviso as it's currently written for 10 million, the remaining 10 million would just stay in the jumpstart fund and would be available for the executive and the council to decide what happens in 2025 and beyond.

So yeah, that concludes my remarks.

Those slides and comments summarize our observations about the significant policy issues that are in the supplemental.

And a couple of comments about the mid-year grant acceptance.

Again, we haven't identified significant issues, but...

GOOD AFTERNOON, COUNCIL MEMBERS.

SO THIS IS THE SECOND COMPREHENSIVE GRANT ORDINANCE SUBMITTED BY THE EXECUTIVE THIS YEAR.

AND IT'S AUTHORIZING DEPARTMENTS TO ACCEPT 73.7 MILLION AND APPROPRIATE 53 MILLION FROM EXTERNAL SOURCES.

AND IF YOU'RE WONDERING THE DIFFERENCE, IT'S MOSTLY BECAUSE SDOT IS ACCEPTING GRANTS BUT THEY'RE APPROPRIATING FUNDING IN THE OUT YEARS BECAUSE THAT'S WHEN THEY WILL NEED THAT FUNDING.

over half of the total acceptance amount is related to two grants.

One is in SDOT and one is at City Light.

The SDOT grant is from Federal Highway Administration and the $18.7 million would fund The paving, curb ramp installation, and crossing improvements for Roosevelt Way and East Marginal South CIP projects.

And City Lights, $19.5 million is funding from the Washington Department of Commerce to provide low to moderate income residential households with a one-time $200 bill credit.

I highlighted a few more grants in the memo, so I won't go through those.

BUT THEY'RE ALL DESCRIBED IN SUMMARY ATTACHMENT 8 THAT WAS SUBMITTED WITH THE ORDINANCE.

AND SOME OF THE GRANTS DO REQUIRE GRANT MATCH AND IN THE MEMO THAT IS HIGHLIGHTED AS WELL IN THAT LAST COLUMN ON I BELIEVE STARTS PAGE 2 OF THE MEMO.

And that wraps up our comments about the legislation that's in front of you.

Just highlighting next steps, if you will.

Plan is the next meeting to consider this legislation will be at August 7th.

That'll be a meeting of the Budget Committee.

If you have amendments to propose to this legislation, internal deadline for those is the 25th by noon.

This don't have to be precise wording, but rather approaching me or staff with questions WHAT YOUR GOALS ARE, AND WE CAN THEN WORK WITH YOU TO IDENTIFY APPROPRIATE LEGISLATIVE TEXT IF THERE IS SUCH.

THAT WOULD THEN VOTE A COMMITTEE ON THE 7TH WOULD LEAD TO A FINAL ACTION BY THE COUNCIL ON THE 13TH, AND THEN JUST REMINDING YOU THAT THE MAYOR WILL SUBMIT THE PROPOSED BUDGET FOR 25, 26, AND A LAST SUPPLEMENTAL FOR 2024 AT THE END OF SEPTEMBER, AND THAT WILL BEGIN THE BUDGET PROCESS.

AND THAT CONCLUDES OUR PRESENTATION.

Thank you, Director Noble, Brian, and Tom, Eden, and Jen.

I am not going to take questions from the colleagues because we are at 1231 p.m., and thank you for being available to us five days a week, 9 a.m.

to 5 p.m., and sometimes more often, although you shouldn't be.

I will just do the same thing that Director Noble stated, which is that the amendments, if you are considering amendments, the deadline is Thursday, July 25th.

You can just say, I have an idea about X, Y, Z. That's it.

So if you think you're going to do something, it might be worth just putting it on the record so that you can pull it back later.

I would love to also have advance warnings.

So if you are submitting amendments, I would love to know.

And the amendment deadline is real.

I've provided over a month notice as I provided it the day that the bill was transmitted.

The next select budget committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, August 7th.

The agenda is the August economic and revenue forecast recap.

and then we will be having the mid-year budget adjustments package.

Director Noble will return to the presentation table to give us a budget process preview on what we can expect for the fall.

With that, the next Finance, Native Communities, and Tribal Governments Committee meeting will be held on Wednesday, September 4th, and this does conclude the Wednesday, July 17th, 2024 Finance and Native Communities and Tribal Governments Committee meeting.

Thank you for attending.

We are adjourned.