Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 10/21/20

Good morning, everyone.

Thank you for joining the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee.

Today is October 21, 2020. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Select Budget Committee.

The committee will now come to order.

It is 9.36 a.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Thank you very much and we want to note for the record that the Council President is excused for today.

We appreciate her sending in her notification and continue to hope that she feels well.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted folks.

I want to note as well for the record for our viewing public.

We do have a presentation.

I want to note that yesterday, Seattle parks and recreation.

related to the central staff memo has been updated online to correct the percentage change.

So that is from our clerk's office.

Want to make sure that that was available for the viewing public as well.

Yesterday's parks and rec related central staff memo has been updated and that is online.

Also want to reflect for the record as well.

Thanks to Patty.

They sent out an updated PowerPoint today, deleting one duplicated slide and also adding to the conversation one inadvertently left off.

I want to welcome you all back as well to the fourth and final day of the Select Budget Committee.

Today we are here to identify issues in the proposed The, I'm sorry, this is not today's script.

One second here.

We are going to focus on just looking at my notes.

Council Member Herbold, I know much of this starts in your morning this morning.

So we're gonna start with an overview of public safety, and then we're gonna get into a conversation on human services.

And then in the afternoon, we have homelessness response and COVID response.

Allie Panucci, I see you online there.

Is there anything else to add to that?

Okay.

We also want to make sure that folks know that the deadline for Form Bs, again, is Thursday.

Please do turn in your Form Bs in your conversations with central staff.

They are happy to work with you through various ideas that you might be thinking about now that we've had a chance to really walk through the various issue ideas.

And as we'll see today, a lot of council members had very similar ideas.

So maybe there's an opportunity to work with your council colleagues to combine various issues and to put forward Form Bs together.

that will streamline our conversation as we work towards honing in on various priorities for the Seattle City Council's proposed budget, which will come out in early November.

Okay, thanks so much, everyone.

If there's no questions, sorry for the confusion on my summary of the agenda.

Why don't we go ahead and go into public comment.

Today's public comment, we are happy to offer folks the chance to participate in these public meetings at the beginning of every Select Budget Committee meeting.

We also are offering time for a more robust discussion during our longer public hearings.

Again, that's October 27th, starting at 5.30 p.m.

We will have public comment sign up opportunity that evening, starting at 3.30 in the afternoon.

Today, we do have a lot of folks signed up and we are going to endeavor to get through as many people as possible, but we are limiting today's public testimony to 30 minutes.

So the first Three people to speak that are present are Bill Sampson, Castille Hightower, and Kelsey McGrath.

I don't see Kelsey present, so we'll go to Barb Finney.

Folks, you're going to have one minute to testify, and we're going to try and get through as many people as possible.

Bill, good morning, and thanks for waiting.

We were dealing with some technical issues on our end.

Thanks for hanging in there.

Oops, Bill, it looks like you just muted yourself.

Hello.

Now we can hear you.

Can you hear me.

Okay.

Good.

Hi.

Good morning.

My name is Bill Sampson.

I'm a Seattle resident in District 4. Thank you for giving the opportunity for a public comment today.

I would like to speak briefly on an issue in the solidarity budget.

There's an ask to expand the duress defense which means do not convict a person of a crime if they are trying to meet a basic need or struggling with mental health or drug use at a time of the offense.

I think, you know, one part of the role of government is to help as many people as possible meet basic needs.

And, you know, this can't happen all the time.

So, you know, feeling that I think it's reasonable to stop convicting, you know, stop criminalizing, meeting basic needs.

and that this is, uh, doing so is, uh, inhumane and, you know, a waste of, um, resources.

And thank you very much, Bill Castile.

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thanks.

When my brother Herbert Hightower Jr. was killed by Seattle police in 2004, he was experiencing a mental health crisis that should have ended with him receiving the help he needed instead of his life being taken.

An all too often scenario for people with mental illnesses and their encounters with the police.

On public records, we are still fighting SPD to release.

At least one in four fatal law enforcement encounters involved an individual with a mental illness.

I urge you to honor his life and all those killed by Seattle police, including the eight under Mayor Jenny Durkin's watch by defunding SPD by 50%, and redistributing in the communities that need it, including housing, economic stability, healthcare, and mental health.

Make mental health and community wellness a priority over the overinflated budget of SPD, and responding to homelessness and mental illness with a police response that all too often is unnecessarily escalated in overcrowded jails in the middle of a pandemic that disproportionately caged and prosecute Black people who make up just 7% of Seattle's population but are 27% of the cases prosecuted.

Expand the arrest defense and the de minimis ordinance and give people a fighting chance to life and liberty.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you very much for calling in again today.

I still see Kelsey not present.

We're going to go to Barbara Finney followed by Howard Gale and Christopher Connolly.

Barbara, good morning.

Hello, my name's Barbara Finney.

I'm a homeowner in District 5, a union member, delegate to the MLK County Labor Council, Washington State Labor Council, and member of the People's Budget Movement.

I urge you to sign on and support Councilmember Sawant's proposal to create a democratically elected Community Oversight Board with full powers to hold SPD accountable.

Seattle police have killed 27 people in the last 10 years, including Charlene Lyles and John T. Williams.

Masses of people protesting for Black Lives Matter, plus media, medics, legal observers, and residents have been abused, injured, and their rights trampled by SPD during the last four months.

Despite OPA, CPC, and the IG, the current police accountability system doesn't work.

Our city needs an independent, democratically elected, civilian-controlled police accountability system.

Support Council Member Sawant's proposal to finally create such a system.

Thank you.

The next person is Howard.

Good morning, Howard.

Good morning.

This is Howard Dale from Lower Queen Anne District 7, speaking on public safety.

This morning, you will be considering a proposed council members to want on establishing a truly independent and community based police oversight board, a system that would be unlike what we currently have in a system that does exist in other cities like Newark, New Jersey and Nashville, Tennessee.

If you believe in the righteousness of the moment we are in, if you believe in justice for George Floyd, then how can you not believe in justice for charlena lyle's cargrey jason sievers i'd see a political danny rodriguez brian spent showing her and perry caver all killed by seattle police in the last three years since the council approved accountability legislation all these police killings were never properly investigated i'd ask today that you at least be accountable transparent to your constituents if you do not support council members who want proposal you must at least explain what measure of justice and are existing accountability has brought to the families and loved ones of Charlena Lyles, Kyle Gray, Jason Seavers, Josiel Faltego, Danny Rodriguez, Ryan Smith, Sean Lee Kerr, and Terry Kaver.

Thank you, Howard.

Christopher, good morning.

Thank you, Council.

My name is Chris Conley.

I'm a renter at Dan Strauss' District 7. I'm also a member of Sunrise Seattle.

And I'm calling to urge you to divest from SPD by at least 50% and support distribution of funds divested from SPD through a participatory budgeting process that creates real public safety.

This includes increased access to dignified emergency shelter and affordable housing, access to hygiene and decriminalizing homeless services.

This also includes taking common sense measures to meet basic needs in our communities rather than punishing people who are trying to survive.

Black people make up 27% of the cases prosecuted by SMC in 2017-18, even though they only make up 7% of our population.

When we say defund the police, we mean undoing a racist system of oppression.

We also mean stop wasting money and resources on criminalizing poverty and mental health struggles, when we can instead be investing that money in meeting people's basic needs, like safe and dignified housing, economic stability, and healthcare.

I stand with 60 other organizations who have signed on to a solidarity budget, and I urge you to pass this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next three people are Jackson, Jackson, Petrish, Kate, Ruben and Dan Wise Jackson.

Good morning.

Hi, good morning.

I'm Jackson.

I'm a renter in district four and thanks for offering comments today and to the people who've already given very powerful comments so far.

I just moved to Seattle in February and my whole time here I've been very disillusioned.

by this wealthy city that calls itself forward thinking.

But you know, my whole time here, I've seen people on the streets struggling and a lack of resources going toward dignified housing and sanitation, see police sweeping those people's camps, destroying their belongings amid a pandemic in a smoke cloud, and instigating violence at protests and refusing accountability for killing people.

And a government that sometimes makes moves years too late and takes credit for scaling down a criminal justice system that helps drive black and indigenous folks into a permanent underclass, uh, and not acknowledging enough the work of activists in the community.

Um, but anyway, we have an opportunity to make a humane and also economically sensible moves that would put us ahead of the game, calling on the council and especially Alex Peterson to, uh, make good on commitments and fight for the six points of the solidarity budget, especially, uh, expanding the, um, uh,

Thank you.

Katie or I'm sorry Kate.

Good morning Kate.

Can you hear me.

I can hear you now.

Good morning.

Sorry about that.

Good morning.

I'm the executive director of B Seattle and a resident and renter in District 2. And I'm calling in support of defunding SPD by at least 50% and reinvesting that money into our community.

The past couple of months have made it abundantly clear that our taxpayer dollars are being wasted on a department that prioritizes property over people.

We've spent millions of taxpayer dollars on encampments, we've militarized weapons and overtime for officers who've been behaving recklessly and violently.

We're experiencing a homelessness crisis in the city with black and indigenous folks being disproportionately affected.

Investing directly in our community by prioritizing funding of tenant services to keep people in their homes in the middle of a pandemic, tiny house villages and affordable housing will greatly improve the quality of life for many marginalized members of our community and ultimately reduce crime and segregation here in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Dan Wise is the next person.

Good morning, Dan.

Hello, my name is Dan Wise and I'm the Deputy Director of Catholic Community Services of King County.

I'm here today to ask you to allocate $100,000 in your budget to fund the Social Service Provider Academy, an innovative partnership between Seattle Central College and local area providers of housing and homeless services.

Providers such as Plymouth Housing, Mary's Place, Chief Seattle, DESC, and CCS.

The Social Service Provider Academy is aimed at supporting employees who face systemic barriers to career advancement.

The program recruits people with lived experience of poverty and people who identify as BIPOC from frontline physicians and human services and provides robust support so that students can go back and complete certificates in human services towards an advanced degree in order to further their career advancement in social services.

Thank you for supporting our budget request of $100,000 in advance.

Thank you very much for calling in.

The next three people are Vendrana Dharvok, Jimmy Hightower, and Sonia Sivinson.

Good morning, Vendrana.

Hi, yeah, my name is Vendrana Dharvok, and I'm here to speak on budget item 12. I'd like to thank Council Member Juarez for supporting our community proposal for two behavioral health outreach workers in North Seattle.

So I'm a resident of Lake City and I've been working as a service provider in Lake City for over a year running a senior center focused on serving underserved older adults.

As you're all aware the pandemic has exacerbated many challenges including homelessness and behavioral health issues as well as substance abuse.

As a service provider I've noticed a worsening situation within encampments during the pandemic to the point that it has made our work almost impossible.

and causing burnout amidst my team.

We did not have the capacity to address the many challenges that unhoused folks face.

So after an extensive collaborative effort within Lake City, we came up with the proposal to create two job positions, outreach specialists who would build trust in the community and trusting relationships with all community members, including folks living in encampments, provide support and assistance.

This would be an innovative approach that will aim to improve the lives of all community members housed and unhoused.

Thank you, Vedrana.

If you could send the rest of your comments, that would be appreciated.

Sorry, there's time limitations today and you didn't get to hear that last sentence.

Jimmy, good morning.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Good.

I'm Jimmy Hightower.

I'm also addressing agenda item number 12 for the behavioral health outreach workers in North Seattle, and I'm also a resident of District 5. In working with neighbors over the past few months, I've been amazed at their compassion and spirit of collaboration when it comes to supporting folks in crisis.

while also realizing the sometimes negative impacts that can be had on house neighbors and businesses adjacent to encampments.

I live across the street from Albert Davis Park and just a few blocks away from Lake City Mini Park, which has been challenging these last several months, as both parks have substantial encampments that have been attracting significant illicit activity and putting already susceptible populations at greater risk.

Working with this collaborative group to design and propose the creation of two Lake City Behavioral Health Outreach Specialists and seeing the support for these positions throughout the community has given me a lot of hope.

The funds we are requesting for these two positions will offer competitive salaries and benefit packages.

We believe that providing a competitive salary and benefit package is critical to attracting well-suited candidates and contribute.

Thank you.

Sonia, welcome.

Thank you.

Good morning.

My name is Sonya Stevenson.

I'm a homeowner and a small business owner in District 1. I am calling today to ask the City Council Budget Committee to stop investing our tax dollars in the prosecution of drug use, mental health struggles, and houselessness, and instead expand the de minimis ordinance and the duress defense and support the solidarity budget.

I first visited Seattle's jail, the King County Correctional Facility, in 1995. when a fellow student at my high school was arrested for defending her life against abuse and violence.

In the 25 years since then I have visited loved ones in many of Washington's prisons including Monroe, Purdy, Stafford Creek, and Airway Heights.

I have seen firsthand that prisons and jails do not create safety do not heal communities or offer the solutions to the problems these institutions claim to address and resolve.

We have to stop convicting people for trying to meet basic needs.

because 90% of Seattle Municipal Court cases qualify for public defenders.

Seattle is spending millions of dollars each year prosecuting poor people.

And we know that.

Thank you so much, Sonia.

If you could send in your remaining comments, that'd be great, too.

The next three are Tammy Van Eeder, Anitra Freeman, and Josie Harvey.

Tammy, good morning.

Hello.

Hi there.

Good morning, members of the city council.

My name is Tammy Van Eder, and I've been living at Share Wheel Tent City 3 since March.

I'm asking you to please fund Tent City 3. We always need food, water, blankets, tents, pallets, clothes, shoes, and socks.

These are items we need to keep safe and warm.

I like Tent City 3 because of the self-management and self-locations we are in.

These are the reasons I think Kent City should be funded today.

Right now we are in Crown Hill.

The name of the church is Trinity United Methodist Church.

They have hosted us twice before and had an indoor shelter too in the past.

On the December 19th, we're moving to the University of Washington.

This will be our second visit.

We've been also hosted there three times by the Seattle Pacific University and once by Seattle University.

In 20 years, no one has harmed a neighbor while living in Tent City 3. Thousands of people have lived there, gotten themselves back together, and moved on.

In fact, the Tent City 3 continues, and I'd like to...

Thank you for calling in this morning.

Please send the rest of your comments as well.

Anitra, hello.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes, I can.

Hello?

Yes, I would like to...

exchange my time with Martina Emma because your time is limited this morning.

I think she's a resident here at the wheel shelter and I think it's more important that you hear directly from her.

Is that okay?

Is she with you there?

Yes, she is right here.

You can pass it over.

We'll restart the time.

Okay.

There you go.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My concern, okay, is my regards and condolence to those affected by their lovely lost ones.

I want to add in this, homeless is the definition of homeless.

People should look into this matter.

There are a lot of them, no matter how far Seattle or Washington State is moving, We need a lot of facilities, buildings, to accommodate homeless people, to reduce them being homeless.

And they have bathrooms.

Here I am.

There's no bathroom.

This building needs to be torn down and rebuilt fresh again so that people can accommodate.

Like other buildings, please help.

They don't care whether they're out there suffering.

I haven't gone through that also.

I was on the street for almost two years, going for three years.

Thank you both very much for calling in.

And Anitra, if you can send in the comments, that would be really appreciated.

Josie, good morning.

Good morning.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, thank you.

All right.

Hi, my name's Josie Harvey.

I'm an advocate at the new Junction Point Shelter and have worked with Catholic Community Services for a year.

And I'm a current student at the Social Services Provider Academy, which is what I'm here to speak about.

I came into this line of work because of similar life experiences.

Most of my adult life, I was stuck in a cycle of poverty, addiction, and incarceration, and I didn't think higher education was available to me.

Three years ago, I decided to break that cycle and I found housing services to help me be successful.

Today, I'm self-reliant and working towards adding formal education to my life experience in order to help communities stuck in similar cycles.

Being an SSPA student has been so rewarding.

It's more than just a student sitting in a class.

I've had a whole team working together to support each other, and we're navigating this together, which is exactly how the social services team should operate.

I feel fortunate to be given this opportunity.

These types of educational resources are essential for frontline staff in the social services.

If we're...

Thank you, Josie.

Clara Laser, followed by Jenny Price and Anitra Sanders.

Folks, we usually stop public comment at 10 a.m., but because we were 10 minutes late this morning, we're going to go for another 10 minutes to fulfill our 30-minute slot.

Okay, I'm not seeing any objections to that.

Clara, good morning.

Hi, my name is Clara Lazor.

I'm a renter and a lifelong resident of the fourth district, and I am a member of Sunrise Movement Seattle.

I'm calling to urge the council to support true community safety by divesting from the SBD by at least 50%.

In addition, I urge the council to expand the arrest event so that a person is not convicted of a crime if they are trying to meet basic needs or struggling with mental illness or drug use at the time of the offense.

In 2017 alone, Seattle caged people for 63,000 nights in jail cells.

During the current pandemic, a night in a jail cell could very well mean a death sentence.

We are watching how you choose to act or not act now, and as long as you refuse to dismantle the system of white supremacy and state violence that is killing our community members, you're complicit in their death.

Thank you, and I yield my time.

Thank you very much.

Jenny, good morning.

Good morning.

Hi, my name is Jenny Price, and I'm a renter in District 4. I'm calling in today to ask the council to amend Mayor Durkin's proposed budget to reflect the demands of the solidarity budget.

So I urge you to divest from the Seattle Police Department by at least 50 percent and support the distribution of those funds divested from SPD through a participatory budgeting process that creates real true public safety.

Meaning we stop wasting money and resources on criminalizing poverty and mental health struggles.

And instead, we invest that money in meeting people's basic needs like safe housing, economic stability, and health care.

I urge you to expand the duress defense and expand the de minimis ordinance.

Thank you for your time.

And I yield my time.

Thank you for calling in.

I'm Neetra Sanders.

Good morning.

Hello?

Hi there.

Good morning.

I am Atrina Sanders.

I am here to address the importance of programs like the Social Service Provider Academy.

I'm currently a case manager at REACH for the medical risk team.

Let me just first say, I never thought I'd be able to take college courses, especially in the field that I genuinely love.

But here I am getting the education that I need to advance professionally through the Social Service Provider Academy.

I initially came to Seattle as a homeless single mother just looking for stability and safety.

I was connected to CCS as a client only.

I was able to get transitional housing, obtain my high school diploma, and other support through the organization and employment as well.

There was always opportunity for me enrolling in training to be able to support me in the field that has allowed me to learn and grow.

CCS and REACH has extended the opportunity with 100 Pacific 100% support from the agencies, which is amazing.

Seattle Central has been very accommodating as well and keeping us reassured.

I love the fact that I can apply this opportunity.

Katrina, thanks for calling in.

If you could send in the rest of your comments as well, that'd be great.

And apologies for mispronouncing the first name.

The next three speakers are Lisa Dugard, Julia Buck, and Serena Baseman, that brings us up to caller number 23. Lisa, good morning.

Hello.

Hi there.

Hello, can you hear me?

Yes, thanks.

Sorry.

Good morning, council members.

I'd like to thank you for your leadership over the years in making efforts to shift the paradigm away from punishment and criminalization and toward a public health model for responding to real behavior issues that arise from behavioral health conditions and extreme poverty.

As you know, the lead program now named Let Everyone Advance with Dignity was born almost a decade ago out of an effort to create an alternative response to those kinds of problems.

And wherever it's been used, staffed by people with lived experience of the conditions that we're trying to create alternatives for.

And in a low-barrier, no-barrier model, it has been widely received, well-received, widely popular, but it's never been used at scale.

There was a resolution last year to move towards scale, and I ask that that be

Shoot, sorry, we missed you on that last comment.

And just for IT folks, if we could double check that the chime is still working.

Lisa, do send in the rest of your comments, please.

Julia, good morning.

Julia Buck, followed by Chris Hatch and Valerie Charlotte.

And then just want to note that Serena Basement and Chris Miles Miller, we have you listed, but it shows you're not present.

Do we have Julia with us?

Hi, Julia.

Can you hear me?

I thought I heard the chime for star six.

One more second.

Okay.

Let's keep Julia there and we will go to Chris Hatch.

I don't see Julia popping up though.

Hi, my name is Chris Hatch.

I'm a renter in District 3 and member of the AFL-CIO.

I am calling to join the chorus of people saying to divest from SPD by at least 50%, stop criminalizing homelessness, poverty, mental illness, and substance abuse struggles, expand the duress defense and the de minimis ordinance.

Considering 90% of cases qualify for a public defender, and we're spending millions on our racist policing system that polices the poor and putting so much funds into these awful sweeps and increasing the trauma in our communities and increasing the instability.

Plenty of the funds should be able to be reallocated into programs that are invested in real public safety and housing and ways to help people get out of this cycle.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thanks for calling in this morning.

I want to just check to see if Julie is with us.

Okay, I see Valerie is with us.

Good morning, Valerie.

Good morning.

My name is Valerie Schloret.

I live in District 2 and I'm speaking to the proposal to begin the process to establish and elected community oversight board.

We need an accountability system that is transparent and independent and answers to the voters who paid for it and are impacted by it.

This is about value for money, but it's mostly about fairness and democracy.

The present office of police accountability is within the police department.

The majority of its investigators are police officers.

The general public doesn't know what it does because its operations and outcomes are opaque.

City residents pay for the police department and we pay for the current accountability system.

It's not delivering consequences and transparency to create the different kinds of policing we want and need.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the last three speakers this morning are going to be Laura Lowe, Talia Wright, and we'll go back to Julia Buck.

I also see Gabby Guthrie, who is listed as not present.

Hello, Laura.

Good morning.

Good morning, everyone.

My name is Laura.

I'm speaking on behalf of Share the City.

We have over 100 folks in our Slack group.

We do quarterly workshops that have been attended by hundreds of people.

We have 6,000 followers on Twitter.

And many of the folks in shared cities are intimidated by testimony testifying or have a lot of barriers to testifying on child care and other caregiving and other responsibilities.

So I'm here on behalf of all of them.

We signed on to support the solidarity budget.

We fight for fair and just and safe housing choices for everyone.

And we need to fund our communities by defunding the Seattle Police Department.

Today specifically we are adding to our request.

We want you to expand the duress defense as well as expand the de minimis ordinance.

We should not be criminalizing people and putting them in jail for crimes of survival.

And we absolutely need to rethink the way that we treat our neighbors and the way we think of safety and the way that we've privileged people that are comfortable.

Thank you, Laura, for being here on behalf of so many.

Talia Wright, followed by Julia Buck and Serena Besserman.

Good morning, Talia.

Hi there.

Hi, my name is Talia Wright, and I'm a resident of District 2. I stand with the 60 Plus organization to have signed on to the solidarity budget, and I'd like to ask respectfully the City Council to divest from SPD by 50%.

Please stop wasting money and resources.

Please stop prosecuting people who are living in poverty and experiencing mental health struggles and drug use.

Expand the duress defense.

Expand the de minimis ordinance.

And none of us should be taking pride in this city with so many people living in inhumane conditions during a pandemic.

We need to get it together.

And I appreciate everybody's solidarity and rethinking how we do things.

I yield my time.

Thank you so much.

And the last two people today are Julia Buck and Serena Basserman.

I apologize to folks who were not able to hear from this morning.

Again, reminder that we will have public comment at the beginning of every meeting moving forward for 30 minutes and a larger public hearing on the 27th at 5.30 p.m.

Sign up for that starts at 3.30.

We got through 30 people out of 50 this morning.

Julia, if you can hear me, please go ahead.

Okay, I'm not seeing Julia pop up.

We will go to our last speaker, who is Serena Bosterman.

Can you hear me?

I can.

Good morning, Serena.

Thanks for being with us.

Thank you so much.

So my name is Serena Bosterman.

I'm a lifelong Seattle resident and student at the University of Washington.

I'm in San Felipe Louis's district, but I did have the opportunity to meet with Tammy Morales in person.

So Hello again.

I'm at a CERC forum.

Thank you for being here.

So I am here to echo a lot of the other comments I've heard specifically about defunding the police and community investment.

And I would like to echo the call to expand the direct defense and expand the de minimis ordinance.

I think like we can all agree that these are about prioritizing human rights.

And I had the chance to like sit in on in a public courthouse once and just seeing how many convictions that were really about nonviolent and pretty small things just really shook me and made me really care about just having the opportunity to recognize in a judicial way that we can just let these petty things go.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thanks to everybody who called in today.

Also for those who both got to speak and didn't get to say as much as they wanted to, and those who didn't get a chance to talk today, we do hope that you email us at Seattle at council, I'm sorry, council at Seattle.gov, or you can email it to me and I will send it out to our colleagues, Teresa.Mosqueda at Seattle.gov.

That ends our public comment period for this morning.

It is 10.13 a.m.

Let's move on to our items listed on today's agenda.

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

agenda item one, community safety and violence prevention for briefing and discussion.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk, and welcome back.

I see Ali Panucci with us.

Ali, do you want to kick us off today?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, council members.

I think you summarized what is coming up for the rest of the day today and highlighted the upcoming deadline, so I don't think I have anything to add, and I will just turn it over to Asha Venkatraman to kick off the discussion on community safety and violence

Thank you so much.

Welcome back, Asha.

Good morning.

Council members, as Ali mentioned, we'll be talking about community safety and violence prevention this morning.

As you'll be hearing a lot from me today in this presentation, but I just want to note that the other central staffers that were part of the team on this memo are also on the call to answer your questions as needed.

So I'll start with sort of setting out the frame of this memo and how we approached it.

So you have some context for what we'll be talking about.

We used as our foundation, the resolution that the council passed over the summer 31962, which events and intent to create a department of community safety and violence prevention.

And 1 of the things in that resolution.

to move forward in a work plan is to recommend a structure and functions for that department.

So this memo starts along that path in terms of identifying what happens when the public interfaces with law enforcement in the context of calls for public service.

So essentially 911 calls and how the city and the county to some extent respond to those calls.

So we'll go through a intercept model, which we'll get into in a little bit.

That's how we framed the criminal legal system.

And I'll just note that there are a variety of different departments that are implicated in community safety.

This paper doesn't go into them in real depth if the budgets for each of those departments are addressed either in the miscellaneous paper or in the department specific papers that you've seen thus far or that are coming the rest of today.

So if we could move to the next slide.

So you'll see here, and this I think will be more useful once we've talked about the intercept model itself and how we've chosen to categorize services within each of these intercepts.

But I will note that we're talking about approximately $8.3 million worth of services in the 2021 proposed budget.

If we could move to the next slide, I'll turn it over to my colleague Carlos to talk about the intercept model itself.

Hey, thank you, Asha.

Good morning, Madam Chair.

Good morning, Council members.

For the record, Carlos Lugo with your City Council Central staff.

And in this slide, existing functions or new and expanded functions in the 2021 proposed budget are presented by stage in the criminal legal system using the sequential intercept model.

And this intercept model was developed to provide a conceptual visualization to use when considering the interface between the criminal legal system and the mental health system.

It's useful, however, beyond its original intent, as it provides a framework for where the city's programs, responses, and proposed investments fall.

And the intercept model maps out the criminal legal system by breaking it into six intercepts corresponding to key decision points where interventions could prevent individuals from entering or penetrating deeper into the criminal legal system.

So it's a valuable tool in mapping how the city is investing its resources upstream of involvement in the system, or further downstream within the system itself.

I will also note that the criminal legal system realignment work group that the ledge department is conducting along with OCR is using this intercept model.

And this is the framework that we're really analyzing as we go through the criminal legal system in the city to figure out where we can put together recommendations for different investments.

And with that said, This section focuses on the existing services within the first two intercepts, which would be intercept zero and community services, or intercept one, which is law enforcement.

And there is an intercept that's not reflected in the model above, but it reflects an intermediate stage in which responses other than law enforcement answer calls for services.

And so we're calling this intermediate intercept 0.5.

So when an individual calls 911, dispatchers usually send SPD sworn officers or Seattle Fire Department basic advanced life support, depending on the need.

And then services other than those standard responses and funding where appropriate is described later in this paper and that I will turn it back over to Asha.

We could move to the next slide.

So on page three of the memo, you'll see some more detail here about services that are described in intercept zero.

So as Carlos mentioned, this is what happens until somebody calls 911. So somebody's having.

just before we move on, so sorry.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

On the previous slide, thank you.

Really appreciate how this is laid out.

It's really extremely helpful.

I'm wondering how a program like LEAD falls into this kind of visual depiction of a intercept model.

I believe the point at which LEAD is interacting with a potential client slash potential offender would be before a model like Choose 180, but I don't, I'm just curious as to why we don't have it represented here given where the LEAD program interacts with potential offenders.

So I can answer that question.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

The LEAD program generally would be looked at as an Intercept 1 program.

Since it is law enforcement and generally traditional LEAD would provide an alternative to arrest.

However, as LEAD moves beyond involvement with police officers, we could say that it's moving further into intercept zero, which is community services and interaction before that traditional point of arrest or point of intercept with law enforcement.

Right.

And just as a clarification, they still will actively take referrals from law enforcement.

They don't have any intention of ending that practice.

They just don't want that to be a requirement of serving clients.

So it would be kind of in between one and two on this model.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Great question.

And I thought I saw a reference to LEAD somewhere, but perhaps it's coming up later in the memo.

Appreciate it.

Good reminder for where it fits and how it is continuing to evolve and meet our community's needs.

OK, Asha, slide three, please.

So here we at intercept zero.

Again, I'm on page three of the memo which has a little more detail about each of these services but what we've tried to do is lay out sort of the landscape of what we're looking at in terms of what happens before we get to the point somebody has an incident and needs to call 911. We're looking at everything from prevention, so things like crime prevention coordinators within the precincts.

They help to help people with how to go about preventing crime when it comes to individuals or businesses.

Things like community service officers who are helping to improve relationships between police and communities, critical incident responders, community crime prevention, so place-based strategies.

And then these last two is the nurse call line and on-site nurses.

So these were added to the budget, I think, in previous years, a nurse call line, for example, from homeless service agencies.

So that instead of calling 911, you're able to call a nurse to get medical advice or on-site nurses that are part of the emergency shelters.

So everything that leads up to the point which somebody could hopefully not have to call 911, but can call or access other resources.

And then if- I had a question about that one on the nurse call line.

So this is an internal number for service providers.

It's not a number for the general public.

Yes, that is true.

This is Amy Gore.

Apologies, Council Member.

Yes, that is true.

OK.

Great, because I think that this goes to another form that we'll see in a bit, and I sort of teed up as well interest in that as well.

Having 911 be able to have a nurse line internal or a consulting nurse on site so that those calls can be handled.

But it sounds like this is something similar, but just for service providers.

Yes, it is for service providers.

Thanks, Amy.

If there are no further questions, we can move to the next slide here on intercept 0.5.

As Carlos mentioned, this is the, we have inserted into the traditional intercept model.

When someone calls 911, you either get a law enforcement response or you can get a non-law enforcement response, but that is still a government response.

So somebody is still responding to that call for service.

And this is where things like HealthONE, are relevant.

So instead of an armed officer showing up, you have two firefighters and a mental health professional showing up.

It is services like the DESC mobile crisis team.

This is a county service in which mental health and substance use disorder professionals go to a scene to see what a client needs.

It's things like OneCall, this crisis that's done by Crisis Connections, the single portal divertal, oh, excuse me, single diversion portal.

And it allows first responders to show up and help individuals in crisis.

And so in this category, you're looking at those things that are, in which somebody has called 911, but it's not law enforcement that's showing up.

And then if we move to the next slide, intercept one.

Does everyone have a quick question?

Thank you.

On the crisis connection one call, that is something that people can access when they only know to call 911. It's a change that happens after they make that 911 call that the dispatch does.

Or is it a different phone number altogether?

I thought 411 was a different, like you didn't call them through 911. have to be one of those people who knows that 401 is a thing.

My understanding is that it is staffed by the same organization, but that one call is specifically for first responders to avoid unnecessary institutional response and that they direct any individuals in crisis to crisis connections and the crisis connections can hand them off to a wide variety of providers.

That's super helpful.

And have we asked sort of the question of what percentage of 911 calls are able to be diverted from these three intercept 0.5 non-law enforcement options here?

I can't speak to the other two, but I can tell you that the crisis connections was technically a pilot program.

And this is actually an extension of the pilot program in 2021. And because of how odd 2020 has been in general, they really wanted an additional year of data under hopefully what will be more normal circumstances to gather that data and learn kind of what percentage of calls might be diverted through this type of program and how to scale it up.

But I'm not sure how to answer that for the DESC mobile crisis team or HealthONE.

So there is data for crisis connections, one call.

You're suggesting it just may not be useful because it was a strange year?

Correct and correct.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'd be interested in that data as well for the other two and also seeing how it has reduced the number of calls that our firefighters have had to respond to.

I believe that even though the HealthONE project is still technically in its kind of pilot phase or infant phase, we still have data showing the reduced numbers of calls where ladders have to be sent out or other firefighter personnel.

So do you have that information, Greg?

I see you came off mute there.

Well, we thank you, Greg Dawes, Council Central staff.

We had a call with the fire department and I think one thing to note with Health One, as you bring up Council Member Mosqueda, is that The calls that it responds to have already been screened by call responders and they fall into the medical category.

And so, you know, just for the viewing public, when somebody calls 911, the call answer first screens the call to figure out if it's a medical call or if it's a public safety call.

And if it's a medical call, then they dispatch it through to the fire 911 answers.

and they take it from there.

And so it's not until the call goes to the fire department for medical purposes that HealthONE might be dispatched.

So I think as you point out, really what you're doing with HealthONE is relieving dispatches that otherwise would go to engine companies and paramedics.

I think that the policy question for the council is, are there situations that where HealthONE could be dispatched to calls that have traditionally been handled by police.

For instance, right now, all mental health calls are sent to the police officers and not to HealthONE.

There are certain kinds of wellness checks that will only go to police once they've been screened as solely medical, then a wellness check can go to fire.

And so I think that part of the question here is not just what are they doing now and what kind of data is there, but more how could things change so that HealthONE could go out on calls that right now are being responded to only by police?

Is there a way, for instance, that dispatchers could screen a call so that Maybe it's not medical and they don't need to send up a fire, but maybe there's no public safety issues that would need a cop and they could send health one.

I think that's the kind of that's that's why we have the team has this before you today is is so that we can raise these issues and and talk about how things might change.

Very much appreciated.

I see a few hands.

And just before I do that, a quick PSA as the health one team told me when we did the ride along when you call 911 if it is a medical issue, it does get triage and I and hopefully we'll get to them if they have the capacity as Greg just said so.

If you're in community and you see someone who is having a public health related issue, you can call 9-1-1.

You can say this is a medical related issue and that helps them triage.

In case you have any concerns about calling 9-1-1, just note for those medical related issues, that's the first thing that you can say that helps triage it to the public health first responder teams.

Is that appropriate?

Is that appropriate summary, Greg?

No, that's exactly right.

If you specify that the emergency that you've got is medical, then it can go to HealthONE.

Otherwise, the default is probably SPD.

Please note that in case you are seeing anybody in duress, duress yourself.

And as we've all been trained, call 911 if there's an emergency.

You can still call 911. Please do indicate if it's a medical-related emergency that helps to triage.

I did not know that that's the process on the back end.

Until we make other changes, we wanna make sure that folks know that information as well.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I have...

I think a couple of related questions.

The first is that if we go to the first slide that shows the chart that you created, do we have, thank you, this is helpful, to see what the different intercepts are and what the kind of categories are in there?

Do we have an additional layer on this of how much we are in fact investing in each of these different intercepts?

Because I think that's the question that we also need to be answering here is. you know, as we, as the memo, further on the memo, particularly as we talk about the RSJI question, which I really want to thank central staff for, for that section of the memo in particular, I think it's a very important element we need to focus on.

But as we're talking about all of these processes and all of these, you know, organizations and programs and pilots that we're doing, I think we need to be asking the bigger question of what outcomes are we looking for with all of this and what are we duplicating and what additional burden are we placing on community by recreating something that is already in place or that is already existing well.

And so, you know, for me, the slide about this intercept 0.5 is, How, you know, if we invest further upstream, if we invest in the outreach workers for homelessness, the kind of programming that we're trying to get, you know, the funding that we're trying to get out the door for this year, for example, what impact will that have on HealthONE, on, you know, DESC?

Will they, will we be able to reduce the burden on the fire department of responding to calls about homelessness so they can get back to fighting fires?

if we invest further upstream in the homelessness services, I guess is the basic point that I'm trying to make here.

And the question of do we have an understanding of what the investments are at each of these intercept levels?

Yeah, I think I'd say that the idea, the framing here is that the more we're investing upstream, the more we are diverting away from even touches with the criminal legal system.

And so that's in part why we use this intercept model is because it is intercepts in which people can exit from the criminal legal system.

And so to your point, when we get to the first issue ID here, the question really is around what to invest in in order to downstream decrease the involvement of people in the system.

And the fewer people are involved in the system, the fewer resources then we'll need governmentally to address the system as part of the governmental institution.

And this a little bit also goes back to why we framed the paper this way is because For these remaining intercepts for things like the courts for the jails.

I think we have, it's a little easier to figure out what the spending is there because you have for the courts, for example, you have the Seattle municipal courts budget.

that takes care of an entire intercept.

When we're looking at prosecutions, we're looking at the, for example, the criminal division of the city attorney's office.

When we're looking at these earlier intercepts and looking more in terms of community services, it's a little more amorphous, which is why we decided to look at this on that don't necessarily need to be using their resources to respond to 911 calls.

They can, as you said, go fight fires instead of responding to these calls if a crisis line, for example, could take care of that medical issue.

And then that leads to less in the system itself.

And so you get to, by the end of this intercept model, you're in something like the transformed probation, which we, very briefly talked about earlier in this process, cutting the funds for probation and using a model that is very much human-centered as opposed to people in the system in a time-based versus goal-based way.

Does that help answer your question?

Thank you, Sasha.

Yeah.

Any other questions, we can move into the slide on intercept one, which is the law enforcement response to 911 calls.

So, we here are looking at.

So normally a police officer is going to respond to these calls.

And what we've broken out here in Intercept 1 is not just the regular response of police officers without any additional training, but specifically you have the crisis response unit, for example, in SPD.

So officers who are showing up with along with a professional for somebody in crisis.

You're we're talking about crisis intervention trained officers.

So all tour members are required to go through crisis intervention training, but you also have the officers that do addition about crisis intervention.

So this piece is primarily about mitigating the impact of having law enforcement respond to a call.

Something like emergency services patrol in which you have an outreach team that's present to engage people.

The idea at Intercept is that yes, you have the traditional response of the police department, but there's also responses that can mitigate the effects of what happens and the potential harm for in terms of what happens when law enforcement does show up to somebody in crisis.

If it'd be possible, I could add a bit on this if the chair doesn't mind.

So the thing I would add on the crisis response, just your description was perfect.

But to note that currently right now, there are five crisis response units in the city.

So that's five officers that are paired with five mental health providers.

And the information that we received from the department says that, the police department, that in most cases, the vast majority of the CRU are responding to 911 calls, which are labeled as disturbances.

And those are individuals who are creating a situation where the public has concerns about their actions or behaviors.

Um, really people that are in crisis.

And so, uh, when the CRU response to those type of calls, the primary role of the officer is just to ensure scene safety, but it's the mental health provider that engages with the person, um, initially.

And so, That's important because it is a very different way of responding to those disturbance calls that we've been talking about.

SPD has said that they don't currently have the resources to expand their call responses in those areas.

One potential option the council could consider for mitigating harm in the short term is to expand the number of crisis response units so that there's a greater capacity for the department to send out teams of officers or a team of an officer and a mental health provider to more calls and put the mental health provider in front, so to speak.

There are certainly opportunities to do that.

We have some data about just mental health calls alone that would suggest that you could have a significant increase in CRU trained units, and there would be demand for it.

And we can get you that data.

Some of it was in my paper yesterday.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, then Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

Greg, I would be interested to know what your thoughts are about how to incentivize a crisis response unit that relies less on SPD officers for backup.

I, of course, acknowledge that there are times when it is necessary and appropriate for armed police to be available and or present, but during the summer rebalancing discussions, Many of us on the council mental health workers tha response unit and they t that they appreciate the support of the police department, but that it might be worthwhile looking at making shifts to the model that doesn't always assume that an armed officer needs to be there.

And so I think, as I understand it, at least, that the model currently is that's the team, that's who goes.

There's no question on the front end of whether or not the team with the officer is always necessary.

And so, you know, we've talked about the CAHOOTS model.

The CAHOOTS model is, I think, is a model that does rely, I mean, at least from the analysis I've heard, it does rely more on the backup provided by armed officers, whereas another program that we've heard a lot about recently, the STAR program out of Denver, doesn't rely on officers to go to calls.

So if we were interested in a model that had less reliance on officers to accompany our crisis response unit on all calls, how could we begin to move in that direction?

Yeah, thank you.

And that's something that Carlos, my colleague, is doing a bit of research on.

He's looked at cahoots, and that's the model that he's a little bit more prepared to speak to you on.

merely pointing out that on the calls that the 911 center gets where there is a potential for a need for an officer, that's something such as a disturbance, there are many more calls than there are an opportunity for a crisis response unit to go to.

And so on those that you might need a police officer, there are not enough crisis response units to go.

And then of course, I think your point is changing your processes so that as dispatch is taking the calls, they could determine if it was a disturbance that really required an officer.

And if not, then that's where the cahoots type model I think would come into play.

Carlos can speak more about that.

And again, I want to just underscore, I think what we're hearing from community is not the cahoots type model, but more like the star model, because the star model has less reliance on law enforcement accompanying it.

Yeah, go ahead, Council Member Lewis, if it dovetails into this, and then Carlos can maybe address both of them.

My understanding, and maybe Carlos can correct, CAHOOTS does not have law enforcement accompany them.

The STAR program is essentially a carbon copy of the CAHOOTS model in Denver.

From my conversations with the CAHOOTS people and with the STAR people, and the town hall I had in July, the star people were pretty emphatic that their model is taken directly from CAHOOTS.

My understanding is the community concern from talking to folks at DPRM and King County Equity now about CAHOOTS is that Eugene has a dispatch that is sworn.

And so that's an issue.

So like the Eugene Police Department 9-1-1 dispatchers or uniformed officers, that's an issue we don't have here since our dispatchers are civilian and we are going to move them away from sworn oversight and supervision to be a fully civilian model.

The statistics that I've seen from CAHOOTS, and maybe Carlos could jump into this, is CAHOOTS workers, like STAR workers in Denver, have the ability to call police for backup if they feel it is warranted.

But with the data they've provided in 2019, they only elected to do that 150 times out of 24,000 calls.

So they very, very rarely do it.

That's super helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, but it is an issue that Eugene has a model where sworn officers are sort of the gatekeepers to what gets sent where.

But that is something we don't have quite as big of an issue here since we have a civilian dispatcher force that will be removed from sworn command and control.

But I'll let Carlos jump in on that, too.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Actually, I don't know that I could have provided a better answer than what you gave.

Council Member Lewis, did you have more as well?

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Okay.

I do also have some questions about CIT.

So I can move on to that now, if that would be good, Madam Chair.

That would be great, but before you do, I have some items on CIT, too, so I'll use those as a follow-up to whatever you're about to say.

I just want to put a plug in one more time.

I think that this entire council has been tremendously supportive of HealthONE, and Councilmember Lewis and others who've been in conversations with them over the years, please feel free to chime in.

My understanding as well, though, from talking to the folks at HealthONE is they really felt like this was our Seattle homegrown Cahoots style model, and that it was a model that was in the similar vein of Cahoots, but was really more representative of what the size of the city of Seattle needed.

And so while there might be other models out there that work for various sized cities that are relatively smaller.

that we should, we can consider the HealthONE model here very similar, if not Seattle's own version of CAHOOTS.

And I think it would be helpful to hear both central staff and any other council members take on that as well.

But I wanted to bring that back and to daylight that conversation because if that's true and other folks feel that way, then I think it's really a matter of saying, great, we're out of some of the changes that we can make to get more support for HealthONE and to make sure that there's less less interaction with those sworn officers, ensuring that people feel safe and have the safety that they need.

But just wanted to offer that and see if that was also your take.

HealthONE being our Seattle homegrown scalable cahoots style model.

What are your thoughts about that?

I'll take a quick stab at it and then turn it over to Carlos who's done a little bit more on CAHOOTS.

I think the challenge with that approach is that I think that CAHOOTS also provides, they respond to calls with people that are in mental health crisis.

And so the challenge with that particular, approach is that right now those folks who are in mental health crisis only receive SPD response.

So that's where you would again need to change your policies and procedures at the dispatch center and the 911 call center so that there was some sort of screening that would allow for the dispatcher to send health one to a mental health call.

where they knew that there was not going to be any kind of a need for a public safety officer, essentially to provide protection for the firefighters and the mental health providers.

So I think you absolutely could see that HealthONE could be used like cahoots.

It's just a matter of revising some of the way that Seattle handles its dispatching.

Carlos, anything to add on that?

Yeah, I do have something.

Thank you, Greg.

In addition to what you said, which is spot on, the other difference that I've seen researching both HealthONE and the CAHOOTS model is that the CAHOOTS model, because it is a nonprofit and it's not using fire department personnel, for instance, they have a lot of folks that were former clients of the CAHOOTS model that are now shifting to working in it.

So one of the things that CAHOOTS would say is that it's also a form of community support and making sure that community is more involved in the treatment and really building on that community knowledge from the folks that have gone through the system.

Whereas with HealthONE, because it is institutionalized and it has the fire department model, that's one of the components that I would point out would be different.

And Council Member Mesquita, if I can actually jump in and role play a central staff a little and build on what Greg and Carlos have said on this too.

Because I asked this exact question to Health One, so I could report back on my anecdotal from them being like, how do you compare yourselves to CAHOOTS or whatever?

Um, one of the responses they gave was it's their understanding.

And this is something I want to flag for central staff to, to maybe look into, but they thought one of the biggest differences from their perspective is that health one actually has more, um, uh, back end work than the coots model does.

Um, that health one, um, has a more integrated, uh, like that half of their job is going out in the field to do the first response.

And then the other half is they do, they actually do ongoing casework.

They were not aware of whether CAHOOTS or the STAR pilot in Denver has such a robust back-end casework system.

So like in some ways, HealthONE could kind of be described in that capacity as like a CAHOOTS+, because it's the first response plus the casework.

I'd want to look into that a little bit more, because my understanding is, at least in Eugene, CAHOOTS is based out of the Whitebird Clinic, which is sort of like a DESC.

So I would imagine that there would be some kind of follow-up casework that would be part of that.

But that'd be something to look into, if that is a real difference.

And then, obviously, the differences Carlos laid out in terms of, who was doing it.

There is no government-integrated component to CAHOOTS.

It is all provider-based, and so is STAR in Denver.

It would be the equivalent of, like, if DESC had a first response team that was integrated in the 911 dispatch.

And there's advantages and disadvantages to that, from what I can tell from talking to people in this field.

Very helpful.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

And you also still have the floor for the next issue on crisis intervention as well.

Great.

So I did a ride along with crisis intervention and was very impressed with the sworn officers and the caseworkers who make up the crisis intervention team in terms of the perspective and the Um, the mission of that u made representations to m whole bunch of different c respond to without the sw depending on the nature o What I would be interested in, and just flagging this for central staff, is sort of a Venn diagram of some of these different response models.

Because I think there is a lot of overlap between HealthONE's response, crisis intervention team response, and if we move to some other low-acuity community-based kind of CAHOOTS or STAR model, the overlap of that response.

Because things that do have a very strong criminal nexus, but are also mental health related, would certainly be a CIT response.

If there's someone who poses a potential public safety risk, CIT would go to that.

But I feel like at the center of the Venn diagram, there's sort of the call of like, you know, someone in a doorway, unresponsive, you know, alone, possibly under the influence of a substance.

It seems like all of these things could respond to that right now, as it is currently constituted.

And just sort of To make CIT's mission more impactful, I would, you know, I mean, this is just me flagging, I guess, my preferred approach.

I would almost make their response portfolio more niche and more toward things that are exigent public safety criminal threats, and then rely on the other low acuity responders to deal with things that have a very, very clear nexus that is exclusively in behavioral mental health.

substance addiction.

And even in some cases, I mean like de minimis criminal activity, if it involves, you know, someone is like trespassing, but clearly what's really happening is they're having a behavioral mental health episode or something where they don't really know exactly where they are.

It's like they're trespassing, but they're not maliciously or knowingly doing it.

Like I think that would be a health one or a cahoots kind of intervention instead of like CIT.

So I just think, Greg, to your points about kind of really intentionally engaging the CIT.

My understanding is that it's critical.

It has a really important place.

We need to keep it and work with CIT, but I want to make sure that as we're doing that work, we're making sure that in the Venn diagram, these other types of responses, we're maybe giving them the mission to lean into that are the things where I think that is a smaller category that might not necessitate expansion of CIT but may justify maintaining its current size as we give some of their

One thought on that.

As the council considers the change in public safety services and sort of re-envisions public safety, as the city of Seattle moves towards a system, a dispatching system and a 911 call system where they're better able to discern the calls that wouldn't require a police officer, the CIT is there in between the time we get to that point and where we are now to handle those disturbance calls where there hasn't been a vetting of the call to determine that there's no public safety urgency there.

So, you know, one potential option for the council to consider is whether there's a crisis response unit, temporary or short term, COB, Ryan Nolese here.

It's going to be the case, I think, that as disturbances or other calls that are mental health, that are, let's say, that body of work is owned by the police department, will continue to receive 911 response from the police department, could potentially have more crisis response units available until we reach another place.

Just a thought.

I appreciate this conversation.

Council Member Lewis, I don't want to cut you off.

Follow up on yours.

Just a quick follow up.

I mean, I would say that part of that too, Greg, because those are really, really good points.

From my conversation with the folks at STAR about this and sort of their relaying how they talk to the CAHOOTS program and Eugene to set up their pilot is that some of that Some of that can be developed through 9-1-1 dispatch screening processes and really working with the dispatch on how to fess out what would be an appropriate thing to send where.

So I think that that would be part of the equation as well as maybe talking to maybe looking really critically at sort of the training and systems and practices in the Denver and Eugene dispatches to see kind of how they make those determinations at that level on what to send when they exclusively send, you know, something like Star Cahoots.

And I think that's sort of the first layer of it.

And then, of course, I mean, I can totally see scenarios where even if that screening criteria you know, doesn't capture exactly what's going on, that you could have like a CIT respond and then like clear the call and move on to the next call because they determine that it's sort of a lower, a lower public safety threat and flag it for a different type of responder.

So, but I think that there is that really leaning heavy into the practices, procedures and training of dispatch is something that is, part and parcel to this discussion as well.

Excellent points.

Thank you all very much.

I know we have a dense memo to get through and want to make sure that we give it the time it needs.

So we are going to continue here.

Remind me where we are at.

We are at the bottom of page four.

And I will add a few more things before we move on.

Just very briefly, if we can double check with HealthONE, I know from my conversation with them, they are responding to mental health calls.

And Greg, I think the nexus is because it's co-occurring, right?

It's co-occurring with something else that might be health related.

And so we should double check to see how those co-occurring situations are addressed, because that might help us with changing the policies related to how 911 9-1-1 handles those calls and sends them off to a non-SWARM person, so that policy clarification would be helpful.

And then the second thing is, if I might be so bold, and Central South can correct me if I'm wrong, when we did the walkthrough of Seattle Fire Department's priorities, one of the forums that I had was on training, and really doing some lessons learned on trauma-informed training.

I believe that that type of training for the Seattle Fire Department potentially could fit into here as well, into similar vein of the crisis intervention trained officers.

Because in situations where our firefighter personnel are out, either dealing with someone who has a mental health crisis or they have found someone sleeping in the street and they've been called to those situations.

If there is a case where someone who is agitated or aggressive is by them and firefighters feel that their safety is at risk, they are also likely to call 911 and then sworn personnel would show up.

One of the things that both the firefighters and folks within HealthONE mentioned to me was that the way in which they had been trained to sort of deescalate the situation and really get to know the individuals that they're working with and create that relationship.

It's helped them to feel like they need to call SPD less frequently because they have more skills to sort of handle the situation.

They are often in very tense situations where one firefighter is watching out for the other team because they're concerned about the dynamics around them, but having additional training on how to help deescalate those situations.

can also reduce the incidents where SPD is called for something that is truly a health-related issue.

So I wanted to flag that to see if that is also something, if it were to advance, would be sort of in the similar vein as what we're seeing in an intervention so that we can prevent fewer incidents when sworn officers, armed officers are called to a scene that's truly not necessary, if we can deescalate the situation with additional training.

Thoughts on that?

Okay, I'll put it out there for my own thought.

Council Member Hurdle, did you have anything on that?

Okay.

Okay, I'd love to follow up with you all to see if that does make sense and if it is part of the interventions at some point then.

Yeah, and we can definitely dig into that and get back to you.

Okay, if there are no other questions, we can move to the next slide, which talks about changes in the 2021 proposed budget more broadly.

In the interest of time, I believe that you all have talked both about moving the SPD 911 Center out into a new department in SPD's paper yesterday, and then moving the parking enforcement officers to SDOT.

as well.

And so if there are no specific questions on those two, I propose we move to the third budget change, which is the Safe and Thriving Communities Division.

I have one quick question on this.

Please go ahead.

Yeah, can we go back to the slide?

I'm sorry.

No, not that slide, sorry, the one about traffic enforcement or parking enforcement.

Yeah, it's the it should be.

Yes, there we go.

Okay, we're there.

Okay, yeah.

So So I guess I just have a this is just a quick question for central staff.

I I think I know the answer.

But I just want to see I or maybe flag to central staff that I'd be interested in the best way to make sure this happens regardless of where parking enforcement ultimately lands based on our discussions this fall, but just making sure that we that wherever they go, an attendant sort of policy understanding goes with them to expand their duties consistent with what they itemized in their letter to us earlier this month or last month, indicating additional things that they could take on.

I don't think it matters what department they're in to have the authority to do those things.

I think as long as I would like to confirm that.

As long as the bargaining unit wants to take on those duties and it is duly bargained with other ones.

They could do those things even if they were in SDOT.

I want to confirm that here and flag my interest in pursuing that.

I just want to respond to that from Councilmember Lewis.

The legislation, the budget legislation that we discussed yesterday related to the PEOs moving to SDOT, we have discussed with central staff our interest in amending that budget legislation to address just those issues, giving PEOs the authority to do work like automated traffic Enforcement camera red light and speed camera enforcement duties There's there's the list of things and we're looking to again to amend that legislation to include those things even understanding that the shift of some of those responsibilities from SPD to PEOs might require some bargaining.

Council member, if I might also respond to that.

That I think is the case in certain instances where, as the council has discussed, for instance, when a traffic light is out or there's event duties where a traffic light is being attended to by a police officer rather than a PEO.

And that may be a case where where that can be bargained or PAOs may just have the ability to do that under state law as you're aware.

State law does require, I believe, a police officer to issue the citations on automated enforcement.

So that's absolutely something that could be pursued.

But I believe a change to state law would be required.

We checked with the law department on that, and they seem to think that even though state law does specifically call out a law enforcement officer doing sort of the back-end writing of the ticket, they seem to suggest, and I'll send you the email from the law department, that there's a I forget what it's called.

I think it's a law enforcement certification process that we could do for that particular function, even though there is this language in the RCW.

appreciate you flagging that Council Member Herbold and for looking into that.

That is definitely a low-hanging fruit if we can go ahead and advance that effort, appreciate it.

Yeah, it's called the Special Commissions.

Do you want to say that again?

It's an ability to grant what's called a Special Police Officer Commission.

But yeah, I'll definitely pass this on.

Thanks.

Thank you very much.

Okay, I think we're ready to move forward.

Okay.

Council Members, this is Amy Gore again from Council Central Staff.

The third change in the proposed budget to discuss today is the consolidation of safety programs at HSD into a new division of HSD called Safe and Thriving Communities.

Currently, HSD administers community safety interventions both within the safety program, which is housed in the Youth and Family Empowerment Division, and for gender-based violence response, which is housed in the mayor's office on domestic violence and sexual assault.

The 2021 budget would combine these functions into a new division called Safe and Thriving Communities.

This division would also include the Victim Advocacy Program, which was transferred from SPD during the 2020 budget revision this summer.

In 2020, these three functions were funded with 19.4 million.

In the proposed budget, the new division is funded at 21.4 million.

I point out that while this is a net increase, there are reductions included, such as the removal of 1.3 million for the safety RFP ramp down, which provided one-time funding to community partners who were previously funded through the Seattle Youth Violence Prevention Initiative but who are no longer aligned with the goals of the safety RFP after the community co-design process, which some of you might recall.

This new division also includes 2 million in funding for investments in non-police public safety programs, which will be informed by the participatory budgeting process and by the joint community, excuse me, interdepartmental team, which Asha will discuss shortly as part of item number five.

That is all I wanted to highlight as part of this change to the budget.

Unless there are any questions, I will turn it over to Carlos to talk about number four.

Okay, seeing none.

Thank you very much, Amy.

Hello, Carlos.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

The fourth item is expansion of Health One.

And the 2021 proposed budget would add $575,000 to the Seattle Fire Department to expand the HealthONE program.

Those funds would support a second team of two firefighters and one case manager, and they would respond to low-acuity emergency medical system calls that do not require emergency department transportation, and to divert patients to appropriate destinations.

A second team would enable the program to fully cover core operating hours during weekdays when critical partner services are open, And it would also expand geographic coverage beyond Pioneer Square and downtown to Ballard, the University District, and a number of South Seattle neighborhoods.

And with that, I will turn it over to Asha, unless there are any questions.

No, I'll just know what I think other council members have as well.

I'm very interested in scaling this up to the 5 stations, the 5 districts that the fire department has across the city at some point and want to be thoughtful about how we scale it up.

But.

Appreciate very much that this was in the mayor's proposed budget and looking forward to building on that.

A question about that expansion as proposed by the Mayor's 2021 budget.

I think I have a budget question in on this, but perhaps you already know, Carlos.

When they talk about service to North and South, when they refer to South Seattle, are they including Southwest Seattle?

Council Member, I don't know, but I will find out and get back to you.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant, question from you.

Yes, Chair Mosqueda, I apologize.

I should have asked this question earlier, but I had a sort of a general sort of overarching question around the whole intercept model that was presented.

It's not a specific question, but an overall question.

You can ask it.

That sounds fine.

Okay, thank you.

So obviously, needless to say, my office totally supports any measures to stop doing further harm with the use of armed officers by not using armed officers.

But I also wondered if central staff had anything to add about any conversation around actual funding for of backing up a different model, like a non-law enforcement model, because without actual funding for services, real services and housing, this model cannot actually be effective.

I mean, we will nominally transfer the those functions from the police department, which is also important as a first step.

But in order to actually make it work, they will need funds because that's the whole problem with homelessness, mental health illness.

There isn't real funding and those funds over the decades have been gutted at the city level, state level, federal level.

And that's the underlying problem behind why law and part of the underlying problem, why the law enforcement aspect has encroached upon every other thing that should be socially addressed.

So, you know, just one example is if you send mental health professionals to people in crisis, they will have the skills, of course, but they also have to be armed with the resources to have a material impact on the actual crisis.

Like let's get you somewhere to stay.

for a little while to make sure you're able to get over this.

Let's go get a hot meal.

Let's make sure you have access to showers and bathrooms.

Let's go do some community social activities.

Let's figure out what you need to set yourself up, you know, that sort of thing.

Here's a comfortable setting where we can talk now and in the future about what's going on.

All of this is going to require tremendous resources.

So I was just hoping that I was just wondering if central staff could shed some light on what what conversation, if any, has happened about that aspect.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sawant.

Asha, I'll turn it over to you.

I also think that Councilmember Morales' question earlier helps to shed some light on that as well.

As we look at where the funding is going in the different intercept categories here, we may be able to see an imbalance in funding.

So that would be illuminating as well.

Asha, the question I think was about overall funding for a more balanced model.

And if you have thoughts on that, that's welcome as well.

But I just wanted to highlight that.

I thought it also complemented what Councilmember Morales brought up.

Sure, and I think this is one of the things that will get to an issue ID as well, and in talking about the frame of this paper, because we zoomed in on these first two intercepts, the intent was very much talking about in this little world of Here's what happens when there's a crisis.

What do you do in that crisis, the paper sort of framed on okay here are the responses that currently exist here are the different types of responses that could go moving forward underlying all of that and maybe that that is clear in this paper is the fact that there is. the difference in philosophies about how to fund all of the non-law enforcement type responses.

Does that come from divesting from the criminal legal system?

Does it come from somewhere else?

And so that particular piece of it, in terms of where the funds should come from, isn't so much part of this paper, but it is.

And that's not because it's not an important part of this discussion by any stretch of imagination, but just because The frame here is particularly about where to invest instead.

And I'm not saying that the conversation about divestment and investment should be bifurcated in any way, but just that when we get to a conversation about divesting, it's also a broader conversation about where it is those funds are going.

So I don't know if that's helpful.

Just in terms of frame, we were focusing very much on the response as to what happens as opposed to backing up from here's the funding that is available to go to those alternative responses.

It's more about which of the responses to invest in, if that's helpful.

Thank you very much.

Very helpful.

And I think helps many of the discussions to come in the next month.

Okay, let's keep going.

I will note for folks that we have about an hour and 45 minutes left in this morning's session to the extent that we don't get through HSD as we can roll that over until the afternoon.

And I also want to thank folks for the conversation to have this afternoon on homelessness and COVID response.

The COVID response paper does not have any council member identified for Mays or issues.

And if we don't get to COVID, we'll do that offline.

But just wanted to offer that just so folks didn't feel crunched on our time today.

We were going to really try to make sure that we get through community safety, HSD and homelessness today, as this is going to be one of the biggest issues to address in our budget in the next month.

So please don't feel pressured for time.

And if you do have questions, colleagues, feel free to keep raising your hands.

Okay, turn it back over to central staff.

Thank you.

Okay.

So the fifth item you'll note in the changes to the proposed budget deal with the proposed investments to BIPOC communities, research and capacity building, and then community engagement.

And so in this section, we'll talk through not only the different work groups and sort of IDTs that have been proposed, but we'll also talk about the funding streams that are associated with those.

So the first thing is, In the executive order that came out earlier this year, the mayor's executive order 2210, there were a variety of working groups and IDTs that were identified.

They include everything from a community safety work group, which is intended to be an internal group to integrate community input into how we spend.

this $100 million proposed for an equitable communities initiative.

It also includes an equitable investment task force, which is proposed to be comprised of community leaders from the Black, Indigenous, and communities of color planning to engage with communities about the $100 million.

There's an SPD functional analysis IDT that is intended to advise on the operational aspects of SPD.

There's also a joint community safety IDT, which I'm not entirely clear if that is the same thing as one of these IDTs, if it's a combination of existing IDTs or something new altogether.

But there is $2 million proposed in HSD for that community, that joint community safety IDT to advise on how to use the $100 million.

And then there's a functional transfer, IDT.

And that is intended to support the transfer of functions out of SPD, which I believe you all discussed yesterday during SPD's paper.

So moving 911, moving the victim advocates, all of those.

And so to make it a little easier to see where all of those groups sort of land, I'm on page, Seven of the memo and they're all broken out that way.

But if we could move to the next slide.

I'd also like to look at it from the lens of where funding lands.

And so are a variety of different streams of funding that have been proposed.

So as I mentioned, the hundred million dollars of the equitable initiative.

There's also the $2 million I mentioned in the Human Services Department that is intended to go towards implementing recommendations that come out of Joint Community Safety, IDT.

There is $500,000 in third quarter supplemental budget that is intended to go to the Department of Neighborhoods coming from SPD Underspend, Seattle Police Department Underspend, and that is intended to go to community engagement run by the Community Safety Work Group.

There is $14 million that the council discussed over the summer, and that's intended to go towards services and capacity building.

$4 million of that is ready to scale up existing services, while $10 million is awaiting a community process to develop an RFP about what that looks like.

And then there's $3 million currently within the legislative department that's intended to go towards supporting community research.

So these are all the items that are proposed either in this 2021 budget or are currently in play for this group of different IDTs or work groups to get into.

And I'll talk a little bit more about the implications of that when we get to issue ID.

But the intent here is really just to lay out all of these different groups and funding streams so it's a little easier to understand where everything lands.

I'm not sure if there are any questions about that at this moment.

As I mentioned, I'll get into it when we get to issue ID as well.

Council members, are there questions?

All right, I have a few.

Going back one slide.

Thank you for the chart that shows where funding goes, but I just want to confirm on number one, number three, And number five, I don't see dollar amounts associated.

I see half a million associated with number two, this community safety work group, which is sort of, you raised some questions about how that fits in.

And I see 2 million associated with the joint community safety interdepartmental task force.

But is there funding associated with one, three and five?

So, I don't believe there is funding associated with the SPD Functional Analysis IDT or the Functional Transfer IDT.

Those two are, I think, intended to be, and this is from my understanding of the executive order, internal teams that are supposed to be advising on the technical aspects of things.

The first piece, the equitable investment task force, and this is where there's a little confusion about whether this is that task force, how that fits into the joint community safety IDT, because that $2 million is intended to come from the piece around excuse me, the $2 million that is allocated to HSD to the Joint Community Safety IDT is supposed to be for implementing recommendations from that group.

And I believe that the Equitable Investment Task Force is going to be part of the process that figures out what the recommendations are about how the $100 million should be spent.

And so there's not a lot of clarity about what that $2 million is intended to do.

considering the Equitable Investment Task Force is supposed to do recommendations about the $100 million.

That doesn't provide a lot of clarity.

I think this is part of the issue ID piece, which is, it's confusing.

No, this is very helpful, thank you.

And is there any money associated in this budget for the number one Equitable Investment Task Force to convene, to pay people, to do the research, anything?

like that?

So it's possible that the $500,000 that's in the third quarter supplemental that the community safety work group would use in conjunction with that task force, that could be what that $500,000 is for is for that community engagement.

But again, I'm not entirely sure on the connection there.

But if there was going to be funding that goes towards that, I believe that's the $500,000.

Thank you.

And then on the next slide, page 8 in the memo, either for central staff or for our council colleagues, can we get a quick status update on the two items in the $14 million bucket there, where we are at with the $10 million process to try to get those dollars out to community.

I understand, I believe, the $4 million is being processed and getting out the door.

But if there's an update we can offer for the public, that would be helpful.

I myself do not have an update on that $10 million.

This memo is essentially drawn from the letter that came from the mayor's office about what the status of that was.

So if council members have more up-to-date information about that, that would be where that update lands.

I just jumping in to say that I've been trying to get time with Director Johnson for a couple weeks to discuss just this issue.

My monthly meetings that I have with Director Johnson were canceled because we are in the budget process and I was like, no, we can still meet.

We just aren't supposed to talk about 2021 budget issues.

And this is one of those non 2021 budget issues because it is related to funding that we provided in 2020 that I'm working really hard to get some clarity on what the process is for for for getting those dollars out the door and and what the what the process is for developing the RFP itself.

I have been suggesting to community that they might want to consider convening themselves rather than waiting to be convened by the city, but convening themselves and making some recommendations for what this RFP looks like.

Again, I feel a lot of anxiety around getting these $10 million out the door.

and we are a few steps away from that in that HSD is proposing.

And I agree that we need to bring community together to develop the RFP.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

And then on the first line there, Councilmember Morales, if you have any updates as well, I'm interested in any status updates on the $3 million at the Ledge Department.

is working on.

I know that this is something that you and others, including Council Member Herbold and others, have been working on, but I believe it might be helpful to have an update on how the $3 million process is going.

Yeah, so we are very close to getting a signed contract and being able to get that out the door.

There is a meeting this afternoon, I believe, just to get final approval from our law department.

And my deep hope is that we can get that accomplished this week and get that money out the door soon.

Excellent.

That's very helpful to hear.

And thank you for your work on that effort.

It would be still helpful for me if we had some form of a matrix, like a flow chart, even though we don't fully understand where each of the...

elements on page seven of the memo flow together to try our best to visually represent that.

And perhaps I'm jumping ahead to something you already had prepared.

I see Allie on there.

Allie, feel free to jump in.

But this is very helpful.

Asha and team, thank you for your work to help dissect where the dollars are going and what the proposed bodies are.

But I think visually it might be helpful to see how that flows together.

Allie, anything on your end?

Council Member, I just wanted to highlight for Council Members that the $14 million, the $10 million in particular is one of the pieces where the, we understand the executive is moving forward.

I don't know where.

Ali, hold that microphone right up to your mouth if you can.

Oh, sorry.

That's better.

Is that better?

I'm having all sorts of technology issues today.

So I just wanted to note that I don't have any additional information beyond what Council Member Herbold described in not knowing where they are with the $10 million RFP process.

This is the piece of the 2020 budget revision ordinance that the executive has said they're moving forward with the spending authorized by the council, but has not executed the inner fund loan to support those investments.

So that is part of the issue with the starting balance for 2021 proposed budget.

And then also just wanted to note that I understand, I think that the $2 million listed here is probably not moving forward.

That is the $2 million listed here is sort of a relic of the compromise or the alternative budget revision ordinance that was being contemplated prior to the council overriding the veto and that $2 million was going to go to HSD and $1 million was going to go to ledge for participatory budgeting.

So my understanding is that may be a duplicate and could be used potentially for other purposes.

That's welcome news.

Council Member Herbold, any comments from you?

Yeah, as it relates specifically to this issue of the fact that the Interfund loan has not been implemented per the council's direction.

And we've got a $14 million hole in the proposed 2021 budget.

I'm assuming that's identified in issue ID with some solutions that we just haven't gotten to yet.

Council Member Herbold, that was highlighted in the presentation on the general fund balancing analysis last week and with some options identified and we will be working with the budget chair and all of you to help address that issue.

One strategy is these are in fact investments in community that you could consider using a portion of the proposed $100 million proposed by the mayor to support the investments that were already committed to by the council is one strategy, and we can talk offline about additional ones.

Thank you.

I did not put in a form A on this, but I'm really interested in addressing this issue.

I am struggling with the consequences of not addressing it.

At first, I was sort of like, okay, well, if the mayor is saying that they're going to get the dollars out the door, It's nothing we can do about the fact that they haven't taken the loan, but I can imagine a situation where they could work with community to identify what the contract should say in the case of item four, the $4 million item, or they could work with community to develop the RFP with the $10 million item.

And then they could at some point, when it comes time to start funding, making the dollars flow, I could see a situation where they might say, well, the council didn't make the dollars available.

So I'm feeling much more motivated to figure out how to solve that problem.

Do we know if there's been ever been a situation in recent history where the mayor has proposed an unbalanced budget?

I, you know, I can't speak to that.

I will say part of the, one of the challenges here is to just, frankly, the timing of when the council took up the veto vote and when the budget office was sending the budget to, you know, to transmitting the budget to the council.

So I just want to acknowledge that.

And I see Director Eder has joined us, so he may have more to add here.

Yeah, excuse me.

Thank you, Ali.

The idea that the money is going to begin to flow, I think, is the important one here.

I don't think it is likely that the $10 million is going to be spent by the end of this year.

It seems much more likely to me that the RFP process would take up enough time that There wouldn't be sufficient number of days, weeks, or months left in 2020 for all of the money to be spent, but there could be a commitment to spend the funds.

That commitment could have, you know, take shape and be formed in a binding contract that would take some portion of 2021 to actually spend the dollars.

So to the extent that there is a problem with balancing the budget is the commitment that would have been made in 2020. And then in 2021, there's the actual cash problem.

Allie mentioned that one of the strategies that was identified in an earlier issue ID session was to essentially allocate a portion of the $100 million that the mayor has proposed.

Another proposed solutions to the problem that has been identified might be to authorize an additional Interfund loan.

The Interfund loan would certainly need to be repaid at some point, and 2022 and beyond would be the time for repaying the Interfund loan.

But that would at least provide a budget that is fully balancing the anticipated expenditures with reasonably anticipated revenues.

And it is possible that the mayor may choose not to, again, take the inner fund loan that has been authorized.

That is merely, you're providing the authorization and she has to choose what to do with that authorization, but the budget would be balanced in any event.

Thank you.

Thank you all.

Amy, please go ahead.

I just wanted to clarify one quick thing related to the $4 million.

We did hear from HSD this morning that rather than issue an RFP for the $4 million to expand services, what they would prefer to do is to contract with existing providers so that they can get those funds out more quickly.

But I just wanted to clarify that one very small point.

Thank you, Amy, for that clarification.

This is a helpful point for us to make sure that we understand that as well.

And council members, please chime in.

I believe that that was part of our intent as well with existing organizations who do gun violence reduction strategies within the community to be able to scale that up.

Is that correct, council members?

I see council member Herbold nodding.

Yeah, I mean, I guess the question I have, Amy, is are they asking for some sort of clarification from us?

Because this particular slide does refer to an abbreviated RFP process, but it refers to an abbreviated RFP process that is intended to only be used to scale up the funding of currently contracted organizations.

So are you suggesting that they need some sort of a green light from us before finalizing these contracts?

Because I was under the impression from talking to folks in community that they were at the contract expansion signing point.

Yes, I think that is absolutely correct.

I just wanted to clarify that what is actually happening is a little bit different than what is represented on the slide, just so there's no confusion about that.

Okay, this has been very helpful.

Thank you very much for your patience, central staff, as we walk through these various questions.

Council colleagues, thank you for your engagement on this base level understanding of the community safety memo.

We're going to move now into issue identification.

I'll turn it back over to Asha.

could move to the next slide.

The first issue we're looking at is something that I think you all have been talking about as we've been going through this memo, but the decision about what and how to fund these different intercepts.

And so when we were looking at this, what the actual available services are, it came down to sort of dividing this into three separate categories.

First, what is the appropriate function of government compared to the function of community-based services?

Within whatever the appropriate scope that you all decide the governmental function is, what is the appropriate scope of what should be handled by law enforcement and then what should be handled by non-law enforcement?

And then within law enforcement, what should be handled by sworn officers and what should be addressed by non-sworn officers?

And so it laid out in table one, a variety of different services that exist you all have been talking in other budget deliberations discussions about the scope of things like the parking enforcement officers.

So, all of those really.

are what this issue ID is about.

So we've laid out a couple general options for what you can do.

This is obviously not a mutually exclusive list nor a comprehensive one, but the first option would be to expand intercept zero services.

So community services in an attempt to prevent the need for people to even get to the point where they need to call 911 and decrease the opportunities for eventual collision with law enforcement.

The second, option B, would be to expand intercept 0.5 services.

So we're increasing the governmental response to 911. And this is, again, where HealthONE might fit in.

Expanding those responses so that, again, we're avoiding the law enforcement response.

And then option C would be to expand the law enforcement response, but those responses that are paired with crisis response.

So it wouldn't necessarily decrease when law enforcement responds to a call, but it could mitigate potential harm of having law enforcement respond to that call.

And then the last option D would be to take no action just to adopt the budget as proposed by the mayor.

Thank you, Asha.

Colleagues, I'll also offer potential option E.

which is some combination of A, B, and C.

I think Asha said, these are not mutually exclusive, but I wanted to make sure that we had that on our radar as well.

Various elements that we've been talking about could fit within A, B, or C.

And so we could think about doing a combination as well.

Council Member Herbold.

Thanks.

And as it relates specifically to the option A or the option E, since it would include A, I just want to clarify that LEED, And that's the way the model has worked.

historically have had SPD approve the referrals, but they are receiving referrals both from officers in the field and from community members.

And so, because it doesn't require, there's not a necessity to call police for service in order to get the services, they consider themselves an intercept zero service.

Council Member Morales, did you have a comment?

Yeah, just a quick comment that as I'm foreshadowing issue number three again with the RSJI lens, that if we are going to be making our decisions using that framework and really focusing on anti-racist principles, and in my mind, whenever we invest, the bulk of that should go toward A or B and make sure that we are moving as far from possible as increasing any investment in something that would involve engagement with law enforcement for those who are most vulnerable in our community.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

I see no additional comments or questions on this.

Let's do issue number two on page nine of the memo.

Hello again, council members.

Issue ID number two is Health One expansion.

And the 2021 proposed budget would add 575,000 to Seattle Fire Department to expand the Health One program to support an additional team and expand operating hours and geographic coverage.

One thing I will note is that this 575,000 add would be in addition to the 400,000 that's already funding the Health One unit.

And with that, I'll say that there are two potential issues for council's consideration.

First, council may consider requesting that the executive expand the scope of calls to which HealthONE responds.

So currently SPD's dispatch completes primary 911 screening and SPD retains the majority of calls for wellness checks and behavioral health crises.

SPD has limited number of crisis intervention teams and crisis response teams personnel available to respond to behavioral health calls.

And HealthONE provides an additional resource for wellness checks and behavioral health calls that does not involve sworn officers.

In contrast, however, other cities such as Eugene, Oregon dispatched 911 alternatives such as the crisis assistance helping out on the streets, otherwise known as cahoots for wellness checks and non-violent situations with a behavioral health component.

Second, while the proposal to expand Health 101 aligns with community's request that the city expand non-police 911 alternatives, it does overlap with work funded by council through a proviso in the summer budget rebalancing that asks that community-based organizations explore how to scale a non-police 911 response system and identify any resources necessary to accomplish the work.

In several of the city's previous community engagement sessions regarding criminal justice reform, participants have expressed that the city needed to engage and involve community in decision-making and solutions.

And one of community's recommendations was that the city partner with community-based organizations to ensure accountability and cultural competence in both program design and operations.

As the community visioning process adopted by council is in its beginning stages, It's unclear at this point whether and to what extent expanding Health One will align with the proposals that will be generated by the community process.

Additionally, if Council later wishes to initiate an alternative model based on future community recommendations, doing so may become more challenging if the city is already committed to expanding the Health One model.

And with that, we've laid out three options for Council's consideration.

Option A, would be to appropriate additional funds to expand health one while adding a proviso restricting those funds until the executive revamped dispatch protocol.

Option B would be to set aside the proposed funding addition and finance general reserves until the community-based groups report on the recommendations.

And action C would be no action and to adopt the proposed budget as it was laid out by the mayor.

Thank you very much, Carlos.

I appreciate your walking through of the proposals in front of us.

And also, I think this complements the conversation we had about 45 minutes ago.

And I want to add something to this.

I think there is the potential for us to not see this as an either or, but really an interim as we ramp up to some of those more community-driven response models, but recognizing right now, if we don't ramp up HealthONE, which is a model that is ready to help be brought to scale at a quicker pace, then we're going to continue to see armed personnel show up where we could have non-sworn personnel, and we could have more mental health and case managers showing up with a public health lens that are equipped to do that work now.

So I appreciate the conversation we just had, and I wanna add to something that I think Greg and Carlos and Amy, you all were flagging along with Asha, which is potentially we could change the protocol within 911 to trigger the calls to HealthONE to be more responsive to calls that they're not currently getting dispatched to.

So instead of maybe a proviso as one articulates, we could still appropriate funds and add protocol or add policy to both create a more I don't know, accurate use of the 911 systems for deploying HealthONE and also couple this with one of the form A's that's coming up, I believe by Council Member Lewis, to include additional personnel at 911 to help triage calls.

So I just want to offer that to folks.

I just, you know, I wouldn't want us to have behavioral health calls to, sorry, I think it would be nice to have a protocol for our 911 dispatch.

Yeah, thank you, Madam Chair.

I just wanted to jump in and echo your sentiments on this based on my engagement with HealthONE and sort of studying some of these other systems.

One of the things they raised to me, which was interesting, is it wouldn't necessarily be mutually exclusive with our community visioning process to scale up HealthONE.

and then to also decide we want to invest in similar low acuity provider based responses.

HealthONE, from my conversations with them, talked about how their model could be integrated really effectively with a model like that.

where sort of health one could arrive and then maybe flag a call as being more appropriate for like a DESC based or like lead even based kind of first response or even vice versa.

And that there could be ways to develop that scope of work to also invest in a system like that.

They're super amenable.

to it, I don't think that it would unduly commit us too much to invest now in scaling up something that is ready to be scaled up and can alleviate very, very real harm in the community.

right now and I don't think in this budget cycle we should take a pass on being able to expand a service that can alleviate very real human suffering in the city.

And I think that it could also be helpful with the community visioning process to provide this as an additional data point of something they can look at on what the impact and effect of the scale up has had and recommending how to improve it.

So I agree with all the sentiment you just expressed and wanted to add my support.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any additional comments?

Council Member Herbold.

This just gets back to my earlier request of what, under the current staffing under Health One, do we have an estimate of the percentage of 911 calls are able to be diverted?

And do we have an estimate of how much the mayor's proposed expansion would increase that percentage of diversion from traditional 911 response.

Because, you know, this budget does include an expansion of HealthONE.

And I guess before we are before we talk about expanding it even further beyond what's in the mayor's budget, I would like to have a little bit of a better understanding of the ability of additional expansions to meet our shared goals here on the council.

Because I'm also wondering if there might be other Disciplines, crisis response disciplines that we want to focus our resources on beyond what the health one response can currently provide as it relates to a health response or potentially in the future more of a mental health response.

I think there are other crisis response disciplines that might be more important to work on investing and trying to connect to 9-1-1.

So I would be really, I'd really appreciate having a little bit more data about the, current HealthONE program and the number of calls that they take and what we anticipate under the mayor's proposed expansion.

I'd be happy to compile all that and send that out to you all.

I just don't think we have it in a easily digestible format at the moment.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

I'm not seeing additional questions or comments on the Council Member Herbold.

I mean, sorry, Council Member Morales, did you have something on this item?

Yeah, I just want to echo, I think, the broader point that Council Member Herbold is making, which is that there's a lot on the table here and I think I think we need to be cautious or just aware of the fact that these all have broad outcomes.

And the bigger goal or the longer term outcome that we're looking for is better safety, violence prevention, and the policymaking that we're doing through this process is going to have some long term effects for folks.

I just appreciate what Council Member Herbold is saying, that as we're making these decisions, we shouldn't be making them on individual programs necessarily, but on what they mean for the bigger long-term outcomes we're looking for.

Thanks.

Okay, excellent.

Let's keep moving.

Okay.

Moving to the next slide, issue number three, we are talking about an RSGI lens here and the potential duplication of community efforts around engagement and research.

And so, as I mentioned, when we were talking about changes to the 2021 proposed budget, There are a variety of work groups of of potential community engagement sessions that have been discussed different approaches to divestment investment in the criminal legal system.

And all of that has.

made clear that there is a difference in the values that are underlying what the proposals have been.

And it's not only a difference in the principles that are governing these proposals, but also an understanding and analysis of diversity versus anti-racism and the role of impacted community in analysis and decision making.

And so for a bit of context, I just want to talk through some of the concerns that have come up in previous years and how council has attempted to get us to a place of some more aligned values and principles and how that's gotten us to the analysis that we're looking at today.

So back during deliberations in the 2019 proposed budget, one of the issues that had come up during issue ID was that there weren't any values or principles that were holding together all of the different initiatives funding work groups that were formed across the city intended to address.

either crime prevention or criminal justice generally, the criminal legal system.

And so what prompted the criminal legal system alignment project that Carlos and J.M.

Wong over at the Office for Civil Rights are running is this concern.

And so the idea was to look at all of these different things that we are doing as a city and come together by centering them in anti-racist principles so we could stop overburdening communities by asking the same questions over and over again without looking at what we already have from community, all of the information that they've provided over the years.

And it also sprang from the recommendations coming out of a 2018 report from the reentry work group That work group was commissioned essentially to provide recommendations to the city about how to support individuals that were reentering society after being incarcerated.

And one of their recommendations was to have all of the branches, all four branches of the city government work together to build a coherent strategy, something that's aligned and working in partnership with the communities most impacted by the criminal legal system.

So that was the formation of that project and a project that is currently underway.

The other thing that came up during the 2019 proposed budget was a call to defund probation.

And in response to that call, the council added $1.08 million to the budget of the Office for Civil Rights, essentially to support organizations that were researching and standing up alternatives to the criminal legal system.

The funding was specified by council to go to organizations that were focused on achieving health and reconciliation, addressing the harm done by the legal system.

I note that the 2021 proposed budget cuts these funds.

These were intended to be ongoing funds when added to the budget in 2020. In the 2020 budget, excuse me.

I also wanted to note the 2020 proposed budget included a variety of recommendations from the High Barrier Individuals Workgroup, which was a workgroup intended to come up with recommendations about how to address high utilizers of the criminal legal system.

And those proposals were to fund enhanced shelter at the King County Jail, provide a case conferencing attorney to the city attorney's office, as well as place a rapid reentry connector in the jail and start a high barrier probation program.

During Council's discussions, you all expressed concerns about the latter three proposals.

Everybody was in agreement that shelter is always a good thing.

But the latter three proposals, there were concerns about.

The concerns were essentially that these proposals came up that were formed by the work group, where it was not done in conjunction with the alignment work that I just mentioned that's happening between Council and the Office for Civil Rights.

It wasn't clear how these recommendations were based in values and principles as brought up by the reentry recommendations.

Council ended up cutting the funds for the high barrier probation program, moving those to support alignment work, the alignment project, the outreach and engagement that was taking place there.

And they also put provisos on the rapid reentry connector and the case conferencing attorney.

I'd note that the funds for the rapid reentry connector and the case conferencing attorney were under proviso until the executive came back with essentially, among other things, a racial equity analysis about how those proposals aligned with the city's RSGI principles.

In this year's budget, the third quarter supplemental, cuts the funds for the rapid reentry connector and the case conferencing attorney.

There was never any analysis that was provided to counsel about how those proposals met with the racial equity principles.

provide all that context to say, Council has been working towards trying to get all of these different pieces that are, you know, spread across different city departments and branches of government to align and make sure that they're rooted in racial equity principles.

And if you take a look at page 11 of your memo, I've listed out the ways in which the RSGI principles can be applied to city government.

So I won't read them all to you.

But the They are essentially about honoring racial justice organizing and respecting and valuing community, communities most impacted, and making sure that the city understands its role in how it affects communities most impacted through its institutional power, and making sure that the city is accountable to itself when perpetuating harm.

And all of this is provided essentially because it's not clear that the proposals that are coming out of the executive about all of these different community engagement processes, about this $100 million Equitable Communities Initiative, about the task force that's intended to figure out where that funding goes, it's not clear that any of that has been informed by a racial justice analysis.

or that there's been the kind of self-examination about how the city as an institution that is perpetuating structural racism may be doing further harm to communities of color.

So as an example, I'll take executive order 2020, and which we discussed earlier, and that is the piece that laid out all of the different work groups and it's within that executive order itself, there are already some.

So there's already some duplication in terms of the types of things that the different IDTs, the questions that they're trying to answer, and the engagement that would take place with community.

There are baked in assumptions that don't take into account the need to look foundationally at whether the things that the executive order is even asking are rooted in racial equity principles.

And in terms of looking at a comprehensive analysis of what the city is already doing versus what has been proposed, there doesn't seem to be any consistency in the sense that, for example, HSD is planning a community process to allocate the $10 million that council was just discussing.

At the same time, The $3 million that's intended to go to a research project to King County Equity Now's Black Brilliance Project that's going through the legislative department is a separate pot of funding that's going towards this particular process.

But at the same time, we're cutting $1.08 million in funding in the Office for Civil Rights that was intended to go towards research, potentially the same kinds of research and engagement that the executives were proposing to do through the task force and the other community engagement.

So there isn't the consistency to say we're cutting these funds for a particular reason when that 1.0 million has been supporting organizations that are already doing that work.

In addition, the source of the $100 million is not entirely clear because there's the potential that it comes from the jumpstart funding plan, which was already intended to go to communities of color, as well as the $30 million in the strategic investment fund that, again, was already intended to go towards communities most at risk of displacement, which are communities of color.

It's not clear how those cuts balance out with the $100 million that is now being proposed in this year's budget.

So all that to say, and I use those examples to point out what I see as a lack of comprehensive analysis around what the different pots of funding are doing, all of the community engagement that currently exists within the city, and the answers that we already have from community, and to look at all of those before moving forward with any new community engagement that is coming from the executive's proposal.

or looking at how using this $100 million could be a source of harm for communities of color.

I do want to note that the sense of urgency that the executive is showing around addressing these problems is a good thing.

It's just that it's not entirely clear that all of the events of 2020 have led to an understanding of an RSGI lens and racial equity principles.

that might inform how acting on that sense of urgency without a full understanding of how city government perpetuates structural racism could further harm communities of color.

And so I just note that something like the foundation of the principle about respecting and showing up for communities organizing for racial justice, that would mean learning and taking the lead from anti-racist organizing community.

The city's RSJI effort is essentially born of the work that all of these communities of color and anti-racist community organizing has been doing for all of these years.

And I just acknowledge that it was all of the work that people have been doing outside of city government.

all of the ways in which communities have been creating safety for themselves, all of that work has been happening for a very long time and has happened before the city decided to acknowledge that it is also causing harm and decided to take action this year.

And so just say, somebody recently used the term, the community has been talking for a very long time.

City government has just decided to start listening and doing something about those things.

And so, one of, it's just not clear that.

excuse me, these efforts to engage community and to get all of these inputs are necessarily complimentary rather than duplicative.

And so I'll just wrap this up by saying, if we don't do racial equity analyses or racial equity toolkit before moving forward with all of this, we won't know whether the actions that are being taken are harmful to communities of color, will continue to pit these communities against each other if we're not asking questions to disrupt the status quo.

And so it's possible that at the end of a racial equity analysis, the city would choose to take the exact same actions that it's proposing right now.

But we would be informed about what it is that those actions are doing and how racial equity and power is playing a role in the decisions that the city makes.

But without a racial equity analysis, it's possible that we're continuing to perpetuate racism, but just cloaked in the language of anti-racism and equity.

So that being said, I've laid out a couple options here.

As I mentioned before, these are neither mutually exclusive nor a comprehensive list of all the things that council could do.

But the first option, option A, would be to proviso some of the funding that I previously discussed, either the $100 million, $500,000 allocated to Don in the third quarter supplemental, or the $2 million at HSD, until the executive has completed a racial equity toolkit or a racial equity analysis, at least, about the source of the revenue used for the $100 million, the process for allocation, and what the community engagement is.

I just note that sometimes racial equity toolkits can take a long time.

They can be intensive processes at the same time because we've been talking so much in 2020 about the racial equity outcomes and the ways in which the city as a governmental institution perpetuates racial equity, excuse me, racism, not racial equity.

It's possible that a lot of this analysis has already been done and just hasn't been shared.

Option B would be to not allocate the funding for the $100 million, the 500,000, or the $2 million and reappropriate them in a way that reflects council's priorities.

Option C would be to restore the $1.08 million that was cut in the 2021 proposed budget back to the Office for Civil Rights to support community organizations looking at alternatives to the criminal legal system.

option D would be to restore the $30 million from the strategic investment fund that is also cut in this budget.

And then option E would be to propose the mayor's budget as laid out for 2021. So that's it for the options.

And if council members have any questions, I'm happy to address them.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Morales, you're next, thanks.

I just want to highlight my understanding and Asha correct me if I'm wrong.

We actually took the vote on the funding for SOCR to do the one point $1 million investment.

I believe we took the vote for that in 2018 to be spent in the 2020 budget or the year 2020. And so I just highlight that.

My recollection is we voted in November for that money, but that was a biennial budget.

And because we were going to do a, A funding process that, um, modeled, um, the, um, I believe it's the social equity funds, uh, uh, RFP process.

Um, That.

The decision was not to make the dollars available in 2019, but to hold onto them in 2020, because that process takes longer.

Um, but I just, I raised this because, um, Because the community has been waiting for a long time for these dollars.

And I just, I don't understand and I didn't hear, Asha, whether or not we received an explanation from the executive for why they're cutting these dollars after a year's worth of process and engagement with community on what the priorities were for, for these dollars or a couple years worth of process engagement.

I'm just, I'm completely baffled as the person who used to have SOCR in her committee and have been, you know, tracking the efforts of SOCR to both identify what the priorities are and work with community Um, to do so, uh, I, I, I just, I, I don't understand why those dollars would be cut at this at this juncture.

Um, cause I thought we were getting pretty close to the point at which they would be awarded.

at this stage.

And then my second question is, as far as options, the issue that we were talking about earlier, and maybe it just doesn't align with the concept of a lack of an RSJI lens and duplicating community efforts, and maybe that's why this isn't an option in here, but I'm wondering whether or not another option could be to restore The $14 million that we were discussing earlier, there was intended to be an Interfund loan to pay for crime prevention, community-based crime prevention programs and the RFP to design sort of the crisis response system that will hopefully replace some of the traditional law enforcement crisis response.

I'm happy to take that second question first, because it's the shorter one.

But yes, that could be an option.

This list is not nearly the whole list of options that you as council members have.

So that could definitely be an option.

As for the first issue, you are correct.

The council did vote on those funds when it was a biennial budget.

So it was the vote for the 2019 adopted and the 2020 endorsed budget.

So that vote happened.

Um, and then when we went into discussing the 2020. Proposed budget, those funds were assumed in the baseline budget.

So you didn't have to take an additional vote to make sure those funds were included.

Um, the, when I talked to.

the executive about these funds, the collaborative grant making process, which you mentioned, that process has been ongoing and the funds for 2020 should be going out the door.

I think the contract should be signed in December and the funds should be going out the door.

The reasoning for cutting that funding was that because that process took the year, the funds would be spent in 2021 and then we could reconsider adding funds back into the budget in 2022 when that year's worth of funding was spent.

I just add that though that is an accurate statement that the funds will be going out the door in December, $1.08 million in ongoing funding.

Theoretically, you could just double the amount that was going to communities, community organizations that were doing that work and award the 2021 funds in the same way without restarting an entire process.

Not to say that that is necessarily the way to go, but the There's no reason why funds starting in 2021 couldn't just go through and be added in the same way that, for example, this HSD is adding $4 million to existing contracts.

So that is also a potential option or a potential way that the executive could have gone.

And instead, they chose to cut the funding for 2021. Thank you so much.

I understand now.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

I want to first begin by thanking Asha, Carlos, Greg, Amy, and Lisa for this entire memo.

I think it is really important for understanding the deep frustration that we've been hearing from community members.

And I will say personally that I literally wept after reading Section 3. because I, you know, I just, I recommend that the viewing audience find this memo on the council website and read it.

I think it's really important to understand the complete disconnect between all of the things that community has been asking, not just funding, but recognition, acknowledgement, and an understanding of the, power that this institution wields and the decisions that we make about how to wield it and for whose benefit.

So I'm really thankful that we have this very nicely laid out.

Asha, thank you very much.

And my hope is that all branches of city government will do the work of digging deeper to understand the difference between diversity and anti-racism.

So we can stop using our institutional power to deny responsibility for the impacts of our decisions.

I am looking forward to having the conversation with my colleagues about which of these options we will choose.

As the person who is trying to get this OCR money out the door, trying to get participatory budgeting in place, trying to make sure that we are investing in community in a way that centers their brilliance and ideas and their solutions.

I really wanna thank central staff for bringing into relief just how much of a disconnect there is and how critical it is that we fix it.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Council Member Morales.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

I want to echo my colleagues' comments on this entire presentation thus far and really appreciate the summary here of issue number three.

Thank you very much, Asha, for walking us through this.

I also want to make sure for the viewing public that we remind folks, as the bottom of the screen shows, we're in the middle of deliberations.

The executive, the mayor's office, has proposed a budget to city council, and I just don't want to conflate the term city with what has been proposed.

I think it is important for us to remember that the proposal from the mayor's office is now up for the city council's deliberation and ultimately what does pass and then if we'll eventually get signs and then per our conversations today hopefully gets implemented that is a reflection of the overall city.

But I just want to make sure that we're also continuing to distinguish between where we are at in the conversation and the documents in front of us.

With that, I want to summarize something that you said at the very end and make sure that I ask a pointed question to get at the data and the analysis that your memo calls for, that the central staff has identified through the years of research and investments that we as a city have invested in and the concern that we are either not listening to and we are outright ignoring and outright potentially duplicating if we go down certain paths.

That's my high-level summary, so feel free to fill in the details there.

But at the bottom of page 12, it says, although understanding of the city's institutional power and footprint in local communities most impacted by structural racism and how power plays in the context of racial equity would also lead the, I'm sorry, and how power plays out in the context of racial equity would also lead the city to honor the work that has already been done, inform how to avoid duplicating efforts underway, rather than characterizing them as complementary to each other and stop further overburdening communities of color.

Without a comprehensive analysis of these efforts with a racial equity lens, the mayor's proposed budget risks continuing perpetuating racism, repeating problems of devaluing community, pitting communities of color against each other, and failing to learn from the information community possessions in many cases has already provided to the city.

It's possible that after such an analysis is completed, the city would choose to take the same actions proposed currently.

But without a racial equity analysis, it is not clear, it will not be clear whether those actions are in alignment with racial equities principles or whether the proposed budget is continuing to perpetuate racism cloaked in the language of equity.

So with that, let me just ask you very directly, have we received any indication of whether SOCR, the Office of Civil Rights, was able to provide an analysis on the creation of the task force or the work groups, as I think we all would hope that they have.

I have asked that question.

I've requested that we get an analysis from the RSGI team of what each of these would be or what their analysis would be of each of these and I have not yet received the response through and this is through the SharePoint process.

I have not yet received the RSGI teams analysis through that response.

It's possible that it's already been done.

It's possible that.

that the team wasn't consulted, all of those things are possible, but I have not received information through that SharePoint back and forth of RSGI's analysis.

Okay, so we don't even know if the Office of Civil Rights RSGI team has been able to conduct an analysis or recommendations on the various task force or work groups summarized on page

to, what was it, page three of the memo?

Yes, I mean...

Page, sorry, seven of the memo.

Yes.

From just being generally involved in the wider structure around RSGI and part of more than just the RSGI team that's in OCR.

My guess would be that there has been some analysis, whether that has been whether that has been used by the executive in informing their proposals, I'm not clear.

And I haven't been provided the analysis itself through the SharePoint site.

Okay.

Thank you again for summarizing this issue and also for helping us to remember that there are strategies to get that type of information already baked into the internal process, let alone making sure that we don't ignore the external advice that we've received from expert communities as well.

Asha, go ahead.

I'm sorry, I just I meant to mention one more thing.

One of the things that's come up in previous years and something that we're currently working on was the piece around whether RSGI and the Office of Civil Rights in general is able to provide the kind of analysis that the council would be interested in while under the purview of the executive.

And so we've been having these conversations about what independence might potentially look like.

And the reason for that, and this is this is sort of quoted in the memo is that RSI work is essentially speaking truth to power, as it were, and so if there are.

if there are actions that are being taken that are not racially equitable or are just status quo and because the government tends to perpetuate structural racism and racial equity analysis.

I'm so sorry.

That's okay.

This is a work from home here.

We all get it.

I'm so sorry.

We can still hear you.

Okay, great.

What was I saying?

To the extent that there are analyses that are happening or have taken place that do show that there are ways in which the actions that are being taken are not racially equitable because of the nature of the fact that accountability that the RSJ analysis is trying to get to is the same person who holds power over the people the employees.

Let me start over.

I'm sorry.

The person to whom RSGI is trying to create accountability is also the person that holds power over their jobs.

And so there is an inherent conflict in terms of doing anti-racism work within a racist institution in that you can be pointing out things that are racist, but at the same time, it's not necessarily you can't necessarily be open and transparent about that because the person you're criticizing is the person that is holding your job in their hands.

So I just note that to the extent that, you know, if there has been a request for RSDI analysis, and it hasn't been acted on, there's not necessarily anything that employees that are doing that work can do to get that analysis out to others.

And so that's some of the reason we've been discussing what the need for potential independence is for RSRI and that office.

I hope that was clear.

Apologies for Oscar.

No apology necessary.

Council Member Morales, anything else to add?

Yeah, I just want to highlight this point again, which is that it is very hard to speak truth to power in the structure, the hierarchy, you know, that our city departments are in.

And so this is why it is so important for us to to infuse all of our city departments with this culture of racial equity and a deep understanding so that it isn't just, you know, one or two people in any department that are pushing for these kinds of conversations to happen, but that it is coming from the top down and everybody understands that this is a priority and that this is how we do our work in the city.

Just having one person in every department whose job it is to go poke about why we aren't paying attention to racial equity puts that person at risk.

So, you know, I think we really need to think carefully about how we do this work well, or we're going to jeopardize people's professional lives and not really have the kind of outcomes that we're looking for, for the communities that we're trying to serve with this work.

Thank you very much.

And as the legislative branch, we really need that information.

We rely on these analysis to determine not only funding priorities, but policy priorities.

So, thank you for flagging that.

I would like to make sure that we don't lose sight of this request that the request that you have made to make sure that we get the analysis if it has been completed, or to get an answer about whether or not 1 is being completed.

is necessary for us to be able to answer how we would address the options listed on the memo on page 13. with that, let us know how we can help if needed, but we really appreciate you continuing to push to get that information and that analysis.

And I think that that brings us up to the budget actions from council members.

We have about nine and we have 30 minutes left.

So that leaves us with three minutes for each one.

We can get through these.

And council colleagues, thanks for the robust discussion.

We will continue with the HSD and homeless services discussion this afternoon if we can get through these budget actions here.

First one up is from Council Member Herbold.

I'll turn it back over to central staff to walk us through these items.

Okay.

As you mentioned, this proposal is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

It is to consider passage of legislation that would allow the dismissal of crimes of poverty, and it would do so by revising the definition of duress as a defense against prosecution.

I'll turn it over to the Council Member.

Thank you so much.

Really appreciate the opportunity to address this issue.

Community is asking that the council consider this to be budget legislation.

And I'm.

putting it forward in that spirit in the hopes that my colleagues agree that because of the potential impacts that it might have legislation like this to our budget, that we do consider it budget legislation.

90% of cases prosecuted by the city, in those cases, the individual charge is represented by a public defender because the individual is indigent and cannot afford to hire their own lawyer.

If you recall in 2015 the council passed resolution 31637 creating the Seattle reentry workgroup to examine how the city could assist formerly incarcerated people reenter their communities and that the workgroup's final report found that poverty, institutionalized racism, and systemic oppression are root causes that lead to mass incarceration, and they found that punishment and incarceration are harmful and ineffective tools to address behaviors triggered by poverty and illness.

The work group recommended that the city move away from reliance on the criminal legal system to address these behaviors related to poverty, illness, and oppression, and aim to reduce the criminalization of poverty and the disproportionate representation of black and indigenous individuals, other targeted communities of color, and people with disabilities within Seattle's criminal legal system.

and they recommended that we instead develop responses that do not burden individuals with criminal history or the trauma of incarceration.

The link to the budget process is really bound in the negotiations that will be going on over the next several months into next year around jail usage.

This is, you know, this is, I don't know if this is an unknown right now, but the idea being that by providing this defense for individuals, it may result in even less reliance on the jail and might conceivably have some impacts on our jail contract.

Councilmember, thank you for flagging that this is the tie into the budget, but there is no dollar amount associated with implementation.

And in fact, it sounds like if it were implemented, it could result in potential savings in maybe in future years after implementation.

Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

Let's move on to number two.

Thank you.

The second council member proposal is related to diversion programs.

The proposal would request that HSD deliver a report to the council calculating the funding needed to meet the demand for diversion programs.

The report should include forecast of the number of priority qualifying referrals and estimates of the funding necessary to support these services citywide from 2021 to 2023. The proposal is sponsored by Councilmember Herbold.

Great, Councilmember Herbold.

Sorry about that, thank you.

Yeah, so this proposal is intended to underscore some of the points raised in Resolution 31916 that we passed in November of 2019, where we acknowledge as a city our responsibility to reduce unnecessary justice system involvement, and that pre-arrest diversion programs such as LEAD represent a harm reduction evidence-based approach to reduce recidivism and provide for public safety.

In the resolution, we declared our commitment to ensuring that law enforcement pre-arrest diversion programs, such as LEAD, receive public funding sufficient to accept all priority qualifying referrals citywide.

And we expressed an intent that LEAD operate at scale by 2023, with scale being understood to mean that the program would have appropriate funding to accept, again, all priority qualifying arrest and social contact referrals citywide.

This slide is intended to ensure that budget decisions in the future are guided by well-supported projections as council works on taking LEED to scale over the next several years.

We know that LEED has built and activated community referral channels where community members can directly request response to chronic law violations that could but do not need to be responded to through an enforcement lens.

Most people in Seattle support alternative responses to public order crimes that are related to behavioral health and extreme poverty.

And given that we're spending so much time talking about investing in these types of programs, we cannot lose sight of the LEAD program and the commitments that we've made to, again, to bring this program that's been grown in our own backyard and has now been replicated throughout the country.

And, you know, again, we have a commitment both in principle and in policy to make best use of this program.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Are there any questions on item number two?

I thank you for walking us through this.

I think it's also a good reminder that this is not a homelessness service response program.

This is a crime, you know, a way for us to address crime, but also a restorative justice model and alternative to incarceration.

So thank you for flagging this and just wanted to reiterate our appreciation for LEAD.

Okay.

Let's go to item number three.

The third council member proposal for discussion would add $80,000 to HSD for commercial sexual exploitation services, including advocacy, client assistance, and drop-in services to those facing homelessness, those exploited by sex trafficking, and sex workers.

The proposal is sponsored by Council Member Juarez.

Hospital Aurora is good to hear from you.

You are up.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As you know, Aurora Commons serves all of Seattle, more notably the Aurora Corridor.

Aurora Commons was founded in 2011 and it provides specialized services every day to help women in the sex trade industry who are commercially sexually exploited or victims of human trafficking.

Over 500 women a year access their drop-in services more than any other of their partner organizations combined.

Very proud of them and the services that they're providing.

Most of their clients, which include both men and women, are experiencing homelessness and many are facing addiction and mental illness as well.

Clients are frequently fleeing domestic violence and are recovering from sexual assault.

From the storefront on 89th Avenue in Aurora, Aurora Commons provides basic services such as hot meals, laundry, hygiene and clothing, Most critically, they provide the trusted advocacy of people who need to access health services, housing, and stability.

They currently partner with Harborview Hospital's Madison Clinic to provide medical services on site, and these services include a wound clinic.

Other key partners include NeighborCare, which helps provide a buprenorphine clinic to clients, as well as Seattle-King County Public Health to support testing and treatment of HIV.

The CDCL has invested $80,000 in Aurora Commons every year since 2017, and this request is for continued funding.

There are no increases.

These are critical services, particularly given the increasing numbers of people who are homeless, the severity of the conditions, and the impact on the pandemic on this population, which is often overlooked.

Now is the time for us to continue to support the work of Aurora Commons.

Aurora Commons provided a list of their programming per our request, and I just want, if you can just hang with me for a minute, I won't go over my three minutes.

Number one, outreach to street-based sex workers and victims of human trafficking.

Number two, weekly drop-in, basic needs, hygiene, clothing, food.

Number three, harm reduction.

Number four, in the category of trauma-informed care, we're looking at their comprehensive women's healthcare, the safe, healthy, empowered, called the SHE Clinic that offers STI and HIV prevention and care, medication-assisted treatment, preventive care, and acute care.

That's just to name a few of the items under the SHE Clinic.

The clinic is also in partnership with the Pacific Hospital Preservation and Development Authority, the UW Medicine's Harborview Medicine Clinic, the Department of Health, and the City of Seattle.

Advocacy and one-on-one support for navigation of services and connections to resources like housing, detox, and medication-assisted treatment.

Again, this is all under trauma-informed care.

And client assistance that helps women with emergency support, rental assistance, ID, getting an identification is a big one, phones, advocacy, and stability.

Elizabeth Dahl, the Executive Director of Aurora Commons says part of the power of the Commons is people witnessing others making their lives better.

Elizabeth quoted a recent client.

If she can do it, I really believe it is possible for me.

I want to just add one quick note.

I want to thank past and current councils who have always supported the Aurora Commons and the work that they've done and the growth that they have, the successful growth that they've had with the city's participation and all the other groups that we have worked with them to connect them with, including now looking at the housing piece that we want to look at later on in the budget.

I know we have a lot of work to do, but this is a real success story.

They have delivered real solutions and services to a community that is often overlooked and stigmatized and I'm hoping we can continue.

Thank you.

The fourth council member proposal would add $100,000 to HSD for domestic violence and sexual assault programming administered by a Native-led organization.

This funding would support a case manager who will conduct outreach and be a dedicated advocate for American Indian and Alaska Native women facing domestic violence or sexual assault trauma.

The proposal is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is a proposal that my office crafted in conversation with Colleen EchoHawk at Chief Seattle Club to really talk about some of their needs down in Pioneer Square.

And with the folks who they are a primary service provider for, it's a really critical add.

I think all of us are very, very keenly aware of the massive toll that domestic violence and sexual assault have in our society and in our community.

I'm very much looking forward to sustaining this partnership and getting these resources out.

And I hope that this is an ad we can support.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Are there any questions on number four?

I am not seeing any questions right now.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

Let's go to our next one, number five.

The fifth council member proposal would add $50,000 to HSD to increase funding for a re-entry program led by a Native-led organization.

Currently, this program is funded through the Re-entry Re-Rooting Indigenous Community Healing RFP, which was awarded to two organizations in 2020 for services through 2022. The proposal is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This is a really critical investment.

One of the things that we do terribly in the criminal legal system is reentry.

And this service, and particularly through Chief Seattle Club, can really be game-changing to make sure that we are emphasizing community wellness, that we're emphasizing resources, setting folks up for success.

and definitely I'm looking forward to talking more about this as we go through the budget process.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any questions on this item?

I'm not seeing any.

Thank you very much.

Let's go on to item number six.

Item six would add funding to the Seattle Fire Department for a nurse, and this is also proposed by Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you, central staff.

So this is a little different.

There's going to be some conversation later about adding a nursing component to the HealthONE program.

This is a little different.

Well, this is actually very different.

This is a proposal that I've been discussing with Chief Scoggins to add a consulting nurse to the 911 dispatch for the fire department, who could work to potentially resolve certain calls that are relayed to the fire department over the phone with the consulting nurse service.

It's a service that I'm I'm fairly familiar with anecdotally since my mom actually when she was working as a nurse growing up on several occasions served as a consulting nurse.

So I do understand the benefit to being able to potentially resolve something by consulting with a nurse at dispatch rather than us having to send a like an EMT team or something to someone's house when simply talking to a professional over the phone could potentially resolve the issue.

through some kind of other resolution.

This is something that is a priority for the fire department from talking to Chief Scoggins about it.

It's something they're readily capable to absorb and integrate into their 911 dispatch.

and could have a massive impact on preserving when we do or don't have to deploy critical first response resources out in the field.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

So just walk me through the process here, and this might be a question for you or central staff.

So someone calls 911. They flag that this is a medical related issue that immediately gets them transferred or a warm handoff, I assume, to the firefighter side of 9-1-1's dispatch.

Is that correct?

Well, yeah.

So my understanding, and central staff could maybe jump in on this too, is everything initially goes to the dispatch center that is currently under the police department.

If something is flagged as like, you know, My husband's having a heart attack.

That will get sent to fire because, you know, that's something fire would respond to.

And then fire has a separate dispatch that is staffed by firefighters, not by civilian, the civilian dispatchers in 9-1-1.

It's staffed by rank and file firefighters.

uh this nurse as I understand it from talking to Chief Scoggins would be with those firefighters at the dispatch so that when it gets to the firefighters and it's like you know if it's something like oh my god I've got a carrot stuck up my nose like I'm worried I'm not going to be able to you know breathe out of my nose um then the the firefighter go oh well um here maybe talk to our nurse here and then the nurse could be like okay can you Can you just grab that carrot firmly with both hands and pull it out of there?

All right, we're good.

We can clear this one.

You know, something like that.

I mean, I'm not a professional, so I don't know.

But it would be to basically resolve things like that so that potentially you would not have to send an EMT to actually go and engage in a call that is that extreme low of acuity.

Um, and my understanding is they'd be right there.

It might be a case, actually, from talking to Chief Scoggins about this, that, uh, that the consulting nurse might be based at a partnering hospital, and maybe the call would be, like, transferred from, uh, from the fire, um, Dispatchers to that nurse and then maybe it would come back if that nurse was like actually we need to send a person.

Um, but that would those would be questions for for central staff in the fire department as we move further with this but but I think it's a, you know, their goal here is to basically make sure they they can reduce even further the strain on folks, including HealthONE, that have to go out in the field and on a really regular basis respond to calls that could maybe just be resolved from talking to a professional and talking through it.

And that is kind of where this fits in.

Excellent, thank you for that summary and the example.

I think that this is a really important piece as well, given that many of the models that we're talking about, whether it's HealthONE or community-driven models that are already in existence, many of those organizations and entities are not operating 24-7.

So for example, with HealthONE, we did hear that with their 40-hour-a-week model they currently have, even with additional staffing, they're not going to be a 24-7 entity.

Having someone who is able to answer the calls as a consulting nurse or a nurse triage line is very much needed so that when people call 911, they can have some of those low acuity, low acute needs met when they're on the phone versus having somebody deployed.

Very excited that you put this in.

Thank you for flagging it.

Anybody else have any questions on this?

Okay, let's go ahead.

We have two more that are in a very similar vein.

I'll turn it over to Carlos.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So echoing what you said, the next two concern expanding Health One.

The first proposal, which is, sorry, excuse me one second.

Sorry about that.

The first proposal is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

And this proposal would expand HealthONE beyond what the executive proposed in the 2021 budget.

And it would take the team from one, as it currently exists in 2020, to three teams in 2021.

Excellent.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

This Form A was written before I went and did my ride-along with Health 1. And it would probably be more similar in structure to Madam Chair's Form A had I had the privilege of doing that ride-along before writing it.

So I feel like this could be a fairly collaborative effort, Madam Chair, with your Form A. It could be merged in.

I would still be interested in seeing if maybe we could add like a third team, third vehicle.

I want to have more discussions with the fire department about this because it just seems that in my discussions about the the physical area that programmatically they want to expand to, I've heard a lot of different versions of this where they're saying oh yeah with the second vehicle we're going to expand service to The U District and Ballard, but then I also hear, you know, like, and the Rainier Valley and West Seattle.

And like, that's at that point, that's most of the city.

And I don't know if with two vehicles, if that really is going to be like, it'd be interesting to see if maybe one vehicle could permanently be based north of the Ship Canal or one vehicle permanently based in West Seattle or.

to cover that service area, but I'm also not a, I mean, I'm not a first response deployment expert.

So, I mean, I could be totally wrong about that.

But it seems like since the ultimate goal is to have, I believe, five vehicles spread across the five ladder companies, it'd be nice to see if we could go to at least three teams in the 2021 budget, if there's the scalability to accommodate that.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

I'm going to ask Carlos to summarize number eight, because I do think that there is a lot of synergy there.

And I will, after he summarizes, I will address your comment about the vehicles as well.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

The eighth proposal, sponsored by you.

would add four firefighters or EMTs with two starting in July 2021. It would transfer three social workers with case management of diverse needs from HSD to SFD, Seattle Fire Department.

It would add two case managers starting in July 2021 with one providing administrative support, and it would also acquire an additional vehicle.

Great.

So in addition to that, I think what we had written into the form is was that we wanted to make sure that the fleet that the, I'm not sure what the technical term is, the freezing of the fleet or the fleet reduction was not applied to the Seattle Fire Department as well, which would allow for firefighters, including Health One, to be able to repurpose some of those vehicles.

But to address the concern that Council Member Lewis just brought up, this would include the addition of one extra vehicle, which could be acquired through a I think the only other difference between this item 8 and item 7 is that we are talking about phasing in the additional team.

implementation.

So it would have a slightly smaller price tag.

It would include the fleet and we are sorry, the cars, and we would love to work with you, Council Member Lewis, on how we can merge these two ideas as we work forward.

Questions on either number seven or eight?

Okay, thank you.

And number nine, Council Member Sawant, last one here, Council Central Staff.

Take it away, Asha.

Okay, there you are.

So this last proposal is for legislation that would allow the city to establish an elected communities oversight board with powers over police accountability.

And, excuse me, including the power to investigate reports of excessive force and racially biased policing, subpoena witnesses and evidence, and hire or fire or otherwise disciplined officers.

As you mentioned, it's sponsored by Council Member Salon.

Thank you.

Council Member Swat, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So just to reiterate Arsha's summary, this proposal would request that the city attorney's office research and prepare draft legislation to enable the city to establish an elected community oversight board with full powers over police accountability, including the power to investigate reports of excessive force, in racially biased policing to subpoena witnesses and evidence and to fire our otherwise disciplined officers.

And the draft should include any necessary council bill, voter referendum or charter amendment, whatever process that might be necessary.

I don't think anybody can honestly claim that the Seattle Police Accountability Structure is working.

We can see that police are not being held accountable.

Was the police officer who maced a seven-year-old child in the face during the Justice for George Floyd protest disciplined?

No.

Have any police officers involved in killing eight people just since Mayor Durkin came into office faced any discipline?

No.

We're told that the Office of Police Accountability and the Inspector General are independent oversight bodies because they are not led by sworn officers.

But the reality is that they are extensively tied to the structure of the Seattle Police Department.

And even if that were not true, they certainly are not independent of the mayor and the political establishment of the city.

That is why we need an oversight board that is elected, that is empowered democratically to hold police accountable.

And they need to be empowered to have full oversight over the police to investigate, to subpoena, to discipline, to fire if necessary.

Being an elected board for the explicit purpose and mandate of bringing about police accountability will mean that they are going to be answerable themselves to voters.

They themselves will be under pressure.

I understand that such a meaningful overhaul would require several legal steps to come into effect.

It may even need a charter amendment, as I mentioned before.

This statement of legislative intent requests the city attorney's office to prepare that full legal pathway.

to implement genuine community oversight of the police.

And I urge council members to support it.

I think this whole morning has been an extensive discussion by council members expressing their frustration about various aspects that are not working.

I think this is not going to be the solution for everything, but this is going to be a key part of addressing the broken structure that we have right now.

I wanted to add that my office and the People's Budget Movement is hardly the only section of the society nationwide that's having the discussion.

First of all, I would mention this demand came about as a course of the Black Lives Matter movement over several years, but especially got amplified in the Justice for George Floyd protests over this summer.

And there have been various polls done nationwide.

One of the polls that was conducted in July by the Pew Research Center shows that three quarters nationwide, and this includes also majority of Republicans, 58% of Republicans supported this.

Not exactly what we're talking about, but basically the idea of civilian oversight boards having actual power to investigate and discipline officers accused of misconduct.

That's how the question was phrased.

An overwhelming majority of Democrats, which is 89%, and as I said, 58% of Republicans supported it.

More urgently, San Diego has a voter initiative that is going to be on the ballot for November.

The history is, quickly, the activists wanted a stronger community review board for the police department back in 2016. but did not get it and very watered down something called Measure G was voted on at that time but it made minimal changes.

Then there was a demand to have some meaningful shifts again in 2018 but the city council did not act at that time.

So now in 2020 San Diego voters have a measure B, which is asking, which is about creating a commission on police practices.

Again, this is unfortunately, they don't say it's elected.

I think an elected board is a fundamental component of making this work.

But what is good about measure B is that it says that such a commission will be able to appoint their own staff, their own independent attorney, and most importantly, They will have the power to subpoena and conduct investigations into police officer misconduct.

It will also have the power to review complaints against officers and investigate in custody deaths, shooting by police, and other allegations of misconduct.

Also, in Portland, there's a measure 26-2017, which is a charter amendment on the November ballot, which would, if passed, amend the city's charter to establish a new police oversight board, giving the board the power to subpoena witnesses and request police documents and evidence to investigate complaints made against the Portland Police Bureau, allowing the board to impose disciplinary actions up to termination of law enforcement professionals, and authorizing the board to put forward policing policy.

The strongest, so these are both very strong measures that are being put forward to the voters.

In addition to this, though, in Chicago, this very month, the strongest measure has come forward, and this is not a ballot measure.

This has come from the aldermen.

the Board of Aldermen or the City Council in Chicago.

And at this moment, 30 aldermen are supporting, I think about out of about 50 or so, 30 aldermen are supporting a measure that has been put forward by Alderman Ramirez-Rosa, which has been a culmination of discussions in the Coalition of Community Organizations under the umbrella of Grassroots Association for Police Accountability, which is a substantive piece of legislation which would create an elected community control board over the police.

And predictably, corporate Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot is not supporting this, but the fact that it has a really strong support among the aldermen in Chicago, I think it shows that Seattle is not the only city that is going to be having this discussion.

So In light of all the urgency that has been created by the movement, in light of all the statements that have been made by councilmembers, I would really hope that councilmembers support this research into actually, in the near future, creating such an oversight board.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

Are there any questions here?

Okay.

I did hear you say it's a statement of legislative intent, correct?

It's okay.

I can follow up with you afterwards.

I just wanted to make sure.

Yes, it is a statement of legislative intent.

I just want to be clear that it's a study that needs to be conducted by the city attorney's office to have the actual steps to go forward.

And it includes also for them to to make a concrete recommendation as to the legal process that would be necessary.

Should it be a charter amendment?

Should it be a city ordinance?

In that sense, it's very specific.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I am not seeing any additional questions on this item.

So that concludes us walking through the community safety memo.

Thanks again to Asha and Amy and Greg and Carlos.

And who am I missing?

Allie, thank you.

The entire team, really appreciate all of your work.

And we will go ahead and see you again this afternoon at 2 p.m.

where we will go into HSD.

and homelessness, and if we have time, we will do the COVID response paper, which we appreciate the central staff's memo on that as well.

But we do understand there's not any council member issue IDs in there, so it could be used as background, and central staff could do follow-up conversations with members on that if we don't get to it.

But for sure, homelessness and HSD.

If there's nothing else for the good of the order, the meeting is in recess until 2 p.m., hearing no objections.

We will see you all at 2 p.m.

Thanks again Central South for walking us through this morning.