Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session I 10/20/2020

2020 Tuesday.

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

The meeting will come to order and will the clerk please call the roll.

Council Member Sawant.

Here.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Morales?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Chair Mosqueda?

Present.

Eight, present.

Thank you so much.

And did you get Council Member Morales?

She is present as well.

I did not get confirmation.

Council Member Morales?

We'll give her one second.

I saw her come on the video.

Sorry.

Hi.

Yes, here.

Thank you.

Nine present.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

And thanks again, Council Colleagues.

I know that this is slated to be another long day, so I appreciate your participation and your engagement today.

Thanks as well to Council Member Juarez for chairing the parks meeting last night.

Many of us were on the meetings until the evening, so I want to thank you all for your robust participation and having a full council participation day at Select Budget Committee.

I really appreciate your time.

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

hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

Council colleagues, as you can see from the adopted agenda, we have a robust conversation starting here with session one with Seattle Parks and Recreation and Department of Transportation.

In session two in the afternoon, we will have the full afternoon devoted to issues related to the Seattle Police Department.

Council Central staff will present issues and options as they have identified through their own independent analysis, and we'll be presenting those issues to the Select Budget Committee.

Then we will have a chance to hear from select from the central staff on the form A's that were submitted by council offices.

And those will also be presented by central staff a quick overview.

And as we did last week, you will have the chance to briefly provide any additional context to those issues.

Again, I'm going to try and keep us moving along for the discussion today.

So at about two minutes, if you are still describing your issue, you'll see me come off of mute.

That'll be an indication to try to wrap it up so that we can see if there's any questions from other council members and to make sure that we move along to the other items on the agenda.

I appreciate all of your discussions and questions last week.

We did have a chance to adjourn on time on all of our meetings, so I really appreciate that.

And as a reminder, you will have at least a break between 1 and 2 p.m.

today for lunch and to make sure everybody gets the rest that they need.

We did have quite a few, four Mays, as you remember, over 150. And so we want to keep the conversation moving along as fast as possible, but we do want to make sure that we fully understand the issue.

So council colleagues, just a reminder, if you do have questions or issues you'd like to raise, this is not necessarily a debate, but wanting to make sure you get all your questions answered, either from central staff or from the council members, this is a great time to do that.

Just like last week, we want to make sure that we get a chance to hear from the public as well as to hear from each of you on the questions that are coming up.

So we have built in the first 30 minutes for public testimony today.

At this point, I'm going to open it up for public testimony, and I want to remind folks it is our extreme.

intent to make sure that we do get the chance to hear public comment at every meeting, at least for the first 30 minutes.

The public comment period here today, we have almost 30 people signed up.

So I am going to ask the IT folks to give us just a minute and a half.

So please adjust your comments accordingly to make sure that we get through all of the speakers on time.

If you have not yet registered to provide public comment, you are welcome to do so at seattle.gov backslash council.

And if you are not able to join us to present today, just a reminder that we have a robust public hearing next Tuesday, October 27th at 530 p.m.

Public comment signup starts at 5 at 330 p.m.

Today, we're going to call the names in the order in which they appear.

And if you have been called, please do push star six to unmute yourself on your line as well.

And we will also unmute our end of both actions that need to be taking place.

Just double check to make sure you don't actually have your phone also on mute.

That has come up before.

So we want to make sure we get a chance to hear from everyone.

Thank you for stating your name and also when you hear the 10-second chimer at the end of your time slot, do wrap up your public comments so you don't inadvertently get cut off.

And then hang up and dial in on the listen-in line or watch on Seattle Channel or the other listen-in options listed on today's agenda.

The public comment period is now open and we will make sure to get through as many people as are present.

The first three people are Megan Cruz, Jill Anderson, and Howard Gale.

Megan, good morning.

Star 6 to unmute yourself.

Hi there, Megan.

Please go ahead.

Hi.

Good morning.

Yes.

Megan Cruz here.

I'm here to talk about public safety and the budget.

I've lived near Thurden Pike downtown in District 7 for over 30 years.

And I'd like to start by saying I really support the new programs, the LEAD, REACH, HealthONE.

Once these are scaled, they are going to make a huge difference in our community.

So they're long overdue, but still we have to address violence that occurs regularly in my neighborhood.

Much of it is related to an open air drug market that's been operating for years.

The violence that comes out of this area touches hundreds of residents that live within a block of the corner and thousands who catch the bus here daily.

I've been caught up in the violence, most recently in January when a man tried to use me to shield him from a group wanting to beat him up.

They got me out of the way and pummeled him in plain sight of dozens of bus riders.

Looking back, I was fortunate, though, because the next day a woman lost her life across the street when she was killed by stray gunfire.

The point is, as we work to change racism in the cycle of violence, it doesn't mean we don't need police.

Who else do you call when people are so willing to use deadly force?

As you consider today and in the days to come the public safety budget, I ask you to put aside the slogans and the arbitrary percentages Please keep in mind Thurden Pike and the other spots in the city like it.

Engage directly with the police to see what they need to keep people safe.

This budget is one on which life will depend.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Megan.

And folks who are on the public testimony list, I'm sorry, I did the math wrong on that.

We will need to scale it to one minute to make sure to get through everybody within the 30-minute time slot.

So apologies for that.

And Megan, thank you.

And we will continue with the list here.

Jill, good morning.

Hi.

Actually, also as a person who has witnessed and been victimized by violence in the community, I would urge the council to defund the police because I resent not being able to call them and knowing that they will safely resolve a situation.

We need to invest in community services rather than criminalizing our homeless population who are very often like mentally ill and in just dangerous situations and not violent.

Drug use doesn't equal violence.

It is an illness.

And we need to defund the police by at least 50 percent and reinvest in the community or else these situations will only get worse.

Thank you, Jill.

The next person is Howard.

Welcome back, Howard.

And then the three people after that, Carly Gray, Frank Francisco, and Quan Wan Lee.

Welcome, Howard.

Hi, this is Howard Gale from Lower Queen Anne District 7. Rather than discussing defunding and reimagining our policing system this afternoon, you will actually be discussing giving the OPA, Office of Police Accountability, more money.

The OPA has stood by over the last 10 years, while the SPD has killed 27 people without any accountability.

Your job is to defund the existing failed structures of both the police and the accountability system, and support and fund real community oversight, as Council Member Sawant has just recently put forward.

Please, in discussing any police public safety funding today, explain to the public how giving more money to the very entities that ignored the recent murder of Terry Kaver by the SPD will increase accountability or justice.

Do not give more money to entities that serve to continue existing police practice.

Thank you.

Thank you, Howard.

Good morning, Carly.

Hi, my name is Carly Gray.

I'm a resident of Andrew Lewis's District 7 living in Lower Queen Anne, and I'm also a member of Sunrise Movement Seattle and UAW 4121. I'm calling in support of a solidarity budget that makes six key amendments to Mayor Durkin's budget.

First, I support the demand that you've heard in the streets and in countless city council meetings over the last several months to divest from the Seattle Police Department by at least 50%.

Those funds that are divested from the police department should be distributed through a participatory budgeting process.

I'm also asking that investments in Black communities and community-led health and safety solutions are funded through money divested from police and prosecutors and courts, not by taking away money from funds like Jump Start Seattle revenue or other city funds.

Jump Start Seattle funds and other city funds should remain allocated to their intended purposes to preserve things like vital city services, transportation projects, parks, and COVID-19 relief.

I urge you council members to reject Mayor Durkin's tactics and refuse to pick community identified priorities against community health and safety.

Five months of protest and organizing should make our message more than clear by now.

We need a city budget that protects and uplifts Black lives in Seattle.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Frank Francisco.

We don't see you listed as present, so I'm going to keep going.

If you do call in, we'll come back to you.

Quan Nguyen-Louis, followed by Naveen Jastil, Jim Street, and Mac Mitchell.

Quan Nguyen.

Good morning.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Still shows you muted on my end.

Quan Nguyen, if you want to try to hit star six one more time.

Okay, we are happy to come back to you.

I'm just looking at that icon right there.

It still says you're muted.

If we can have Naveen, good morning, just star six to unmute yourself, Naveen.

Hi, go ahead.

Hi, I'm Naveen Jassi.

I live in Deborah Harris' District 5. I moved to Seattle in 2019 to start medical school.

And one thing that's been clear during that time is that treating an illness is less effective and more expensive than preventing it.

In the same way policing responds to crime poverty and mental illness with punishment.

The budget should diverse from SPD by at least 50 percent to invest in Black communities and community-led programs that actually build up health and safety.

That also allows the jumpstart funds to be used to maintain public services fund affordable housing and move towards a Seattle Green New Deal.

I'm asking city council to support the solidarity budget because it works for dignity and justice for everyone.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Jim.

Good morning, Jim.

Hi, this is Jim Street.

First, I would thank Councilmember Strauss and Gonzalez and so on for their proposed Office of Sustainability Advects.

The Senior Planning and Development Specialist, the Green New Deal Advisor position, and the Climate Policy Advisor position.

These positions were already urgently needed this year to fully staff the planning and other pre-implementation activities needed to carry out carbon reduction actions.

Delay on climate action pushes the world closer to the tipping point.

Carbon emissions spill over.

In the long run, our children, our grandchildren, and the most vulnerable people in the world will pay our carbon emission bill.

They'll pay our bill.

The law system delays in the implementation of the council's Green New Deal actions are permanent.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And Mac, you are up next.

Good morning, Mac.

Good morning.

Good morning.

This is Mac Mitchell.

I'm testifying today for the League of Women Voters regarding the budget and the Green New Deal.

I'm currently the chair of the League of Women Voters Seattle-King County Environmental Committee.

We have given formative input over the past year to King County's Strategic Climate Action Plan and the Climate Action Toolkit, which are highly aligned with Seattle's Green New Deal goals.

Our current role is unique.

We work with city councils in King County to develop their climate plans through democratic public engagement, transparency, education, and climate justice.

Our committee believes that the city is the real unit of change for climate action.

When grassroots ownership and education is deep, then the public will be motivated to vote for more proactive legislation, reducing greenhouse emissions, and supporting council members who sponsor such initiatives.

Thank you very much, Mac.

And please do send in the rest of your comments as well.

Grace, Chris, followed by Lynn Judge and Jess Walsh.

And Quan Hua, if you are still with us, we will come back to you.

I just want to make sure we have the chance to get you off mute.

Good morning, Grace.

It's Grace Chris.

I'm a social worker who has worked for seven years in a mental hospital in New York City.

I also work with the FBI family.

after the World Trade Center attacks as well as teaching social work at Columbia University in New York where I have experience before moving downtown Seattle where I now live.

I and my downtown neighbors believe that the plan to send out social workers for mental health emergencies without police backup is unrealistic and dangerous.

The police some of what you've heard about today the police in Seattle are highly effective and well trained in deescalating these situations which unfortunately today as you've heard often involve guns other weapons suicidality, and homicidality.

The presence of an armed person in situations where disturbed individuals have weapons conveys a needed sense of control that facilitates de-escalation and problem solving.

And I just wanted to say about the most recently we have lost over 150 of our best trained and culturally racially diverse policemen and women due to the adverse political environment that has

Thank you, Grace, please do send in the rest of your comments as well.

Lynn.

Good morning.

Hi, my name is Lynn judge and I'm a homeowner in district 6. I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget, which has been endorsed by over 100 local organizations.

I'm asking you to reject the mayor's austerity budget and pass a 2021 budget that meets our urgent demands to defund SPD and reinvest in the black community.

In particular, I'm asking you to prioritize, first, divesting from SPD and cutting their budget by at least 50%.

Second, investing at least $100 million in the black community, using funds cut from SPD and allocating them through a participatory budgeting process that allows the community members most affected by police violence to determine equitable safety solutions.

And third, preserving vital services and programs like transportation, COVID-19 relief, affordable housing, and the Green New Deal.

As our city continues to deal with the fallout of major crises, including COVID-19, homelessness, and climate change, we cannot afford to cut the programs and services that address these vital needs.

These programs are necessary to building an equitable city and reinforce investments in the Black community safety.

Investments in the Black community should not come at the

Thank you so much.

And please do send in the rest of your comments.

We'll go to Jess and then we will go back to Quan Hua.

Good morning Jess.

Good morning council members.

Thanks for having me on.

My name is Jess Wallach.

I'm a campaign co-director with 350 Seattle and I organize with our Green New Deal.

And when I show up to fight for Seattle's Green New Deal I'm not just talking about climate action.

I'm not just talking about climate justice or curbing our climate pollution.

Those things are so important.

But I'm talking about fighting for a city that we can all live in, no matter what you look like or where you live or what's in your wallet, that you have a shot at a healthy future.

And that's why today I'm calling in to urge you to divest from SPD by at least 50% and reinvest that funding in Black and BIPOC communities in Seattle and to make sure that funding is reinvested through participatory budgeting.

I want that money to not come from the Jump Start Seattle revenue measure so that we can preserve vital city services and avoid cuts to critical community programs and investments that will keep us healthy and safe through the COVID economic recession and the coming climate crisis.

I urge you to hear the folks today calling for a solidarity budget and know that taking action on the solidarity budget is Seattle's Green New Deal.

Thank you.

Thank you and good timing.

Let's go back to Quan Hua and then we will have Karen Taylor Gordon Padelford and Katie Nooner.

Hi Quan Hua.

Sorry for the delay.

Hi, can you hear me now?

Yes, we can hear you.

Thanks.

Okay, I'm going to start.

Thank you for letting me in.

So, good morning City Council members.

My name is Kwan and I live in District 7 in Pioneer Square.

And I would like to reinstate that the city needs to meet the five demands.

So, number one, define SPD by at least 50% in 2021 and working on its abolition in following years.

Number two, we allocate police budget to underprivileged commuting.

And when I say police budget, it means that these vital services should be coming out of police budget as well.

So there are participatory budgeting from some arts and then some vital services for the underprivileged communities.

And number three, All protestors should be free with all charged jobs.

Anna, you're on time.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And thanks for hanging on the line there.

Karen, good morning.

So sorry.

Hi there.

Can you hear me?

Hi, Karen.

Yes, please go ahead.

I'm just calling to talk about the police budget.

I didn't have exactly what my remarks were going to be, but I wanted to address what that woman said earlier about needing safety from physical violence.

And what I noted about her story was that the police haven't been able to shut down an open-air drug market for many, many years, and they weren't able to protect her or someone else in her community immediately after that.

And so I might not be a police abolitionist if I thought that they would do their jobs, but we've been given them a chance to do their jobs for so long.

And now it's time to let the community figure out how to be safe.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for calling in.

Gordon, good morning.

Thanks for joining us.

Please go ahead.

Hello, council members.

My name is Gordon Padelford.

I'm the executive director of Seattle Neighborhood Greenways.

And we just came through an unprecedented summer of climate fires and toxic smoke, which leads me to wonder why we'd be considering a budget that cuts 21.5 million from walking and biking projects that would help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

There's also increased talk right now about basic maintenance.

And we really think that basic maintenance should include basic mobility of being able to walk safely and comfortably and bike and take transit to where you need to go.

We're also concerned about suspending the minimum general fund requirement to move Seattle levy.

We're incredibly reliant on that levy and making sure voters trust it is really important.

Finally, three specific proposals on the table that we support.

The Thomas Street proposal is good.

The Georgetown South Park Trail proposal is fantastic.

And a sidewalk repair in general and a long rainier ave is really important as well for basic maintenance.

So thank you for your consideration and hope you're all doing well.

Thanks so much, Gordon.

The next four people I'm going to read are not present, but we do have you signed up.

So if you dial back in before we end public comment, we are happy to get to you.

Number 17, Katie Neuner, number 21, Emily Graham, 22, Jesse Hewley, and 28, Jennifer Gosar.

So we will go to number 18, Valerie Charlotte, number 19, Celine Russo, and Mia Mendoza.

Valerie, good morning.

Well, good morning.

Sorry, I just lost track of what was going on there.

My name is Valerie Suret.

I'm a resident of District 2. I've been following policing in Seattle for 10 years now, and I'd like you to consider a different arrangement to the Office of Professional Accountability.

It costs millions every year, and it only produces the appearance of accountability, not real accountability.

If this STD knew that it was truly accountable to the people who pay their salaries, we wouldn't have seen over many, many, many years belligerent police culture, police brutality, police killings that really shouldn't happen.

So I'm really, I'm just imploring you to really reconsider what you fund and fund an entirely civilian body of police accountability.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Valerie.

Selene, good morning.

Just star six to unmute yourself there.

And after Selene is Mia.

Selene, if you can hear me, just push star six to unmute.

Oh, wonderful.

Go ahead, please.

Okay, thanks.

Hi, my name is Selene Russo.

I'm from District 1. And thanks for giving me the chance to talk.

I wanted to call in support of the solidarity budget.

There's been like people have said before we've given the police so many chances.

There's been years of internal changes being made and that has produced nothing.

So we need to cut their budget by 50 percent especially in this time when we are cutting so many other budgets of crucial services bus routes transportation projects.

Everything is being cut.

We also need to cut the police budget and we need to reinvest that money in solutions that have been proven.

There are active community led solutions out there currently that are making real change.

And those that's where we need to put that money.

So that is all.

Thank you.

Thank you very much Celine.

Mia.

Good morning.

Just star six to unmute yourself.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Mia Mendoza.

I'm from District 6. I had a whole thing prepared that was two minutes, so I will message that to you guys.

But I just wanted to call in and talk about the inflated and mismanaged Seattle budget.

I just Sorry, I had a whole thing prepared.

Basically, friends of mine and members of our communitors have continuously, this whole summer, gotten their butts kicked by the Seattle Police Department.

And we're paying for that.

$237 million of our money goes to them assaulting our community every year.

When we could be supporting something like Jump Start Seattle, something that could actually help us in the wake of COVID-19.

Why would we take from that to give to our Black community instead of taking from what's assaulting our community?

So I just want us all to consider that and also that even Safe Seattle, a right-wing Seattle group, has started talking about how SPD isn't doing their job either to protect

Thank you very much, Mia, and do send in your comments.

We really appreciate that.

You can send it to council at seattle.gov, everyone.

Okay, the next folks that are present.

Good morning, Caleb.

And then after that is Eric Fisk, Michael Malini, and Katie Wilson.

Good morning, Caleb.

Good morning.

My name is Caleb.

I live in District 3, and I'm also calling in support of the solidarity budget.

I'm pretty sure that everyone else has put it really well.

And so I just wanted to add my voice to theirs and say that I support the solidarity budget.

And that's about it, because I think everyone's pretty much covered it really well.

Thank you.

Thanks for adding your voice, Caleb.

Eric, good morning.

Please go ahead.

Hi Eric.

It looks like they're unmuted on our end.

Hi.

Go ahead.

All right.

Hi.

Yes I'm Eric.

First time speaker here from District 4. I've lived in the district for 25 years.

I want to talk about fixing Northeast 45th Street for cyclists and pedestrians over I-5.

SDOT spent $50,000 planning improvements for cyclists and pedestrians including adding a protected bike lane going through the slow climb up into Wallingford from the U-District and adding a jersey barrier to protect pedestrians.

and and others going downhill into the district from Wallingford.

SDOT found no adverse impacts from the work.

No delays to throughput.

No lost parking.

No stumbling blocks with WSDOT or other agencies.

The cost was estimated at $500,000 to a million dollars and the right time to do the work was when the multimodal improvement project happens for Route 44. Unfortunately SDOT eliminated the work as part of recent cutbacks and we would like you to either specifically restore funding for that part of the project or mandate that the work be done as part of the Route 44 corridor.

We'd rather see the entire project delayed than have this essential component cut.

The language of the levy to move Seattle mandates that SDOT do this work before U District Light Rail opens.

Thank you very much for calling in for the first time today, Eric, and please do send in the rest of your comments as well.

Appreciate that.

Michael, good morning.

Hi, my name is Michael Mulaney.

I'm a resident in District 3 and also in support of the Solidarity Budget to defund SPD by 50%, at least $100 million going to participatory budgeting for reserve vital services and for community identified priorities.

The City Council has commented several times throughout the events of this past month that they are committed to this bill, and we hope to see them follow through on their actions.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And the last three speakers that I have listed as present.

So if you've signed up and you don't hear a name, now's the time to call in Katie Wilson, Anna Zavartz, and David Hines.

Good morning, Katie.

Good morning.

Hello, this is Katie Wilson representing the Transit Riders Union.

We support the solidarity budget.

We also support the budget priorities of the MAS coalition, which you all should have received.

We're glad that the council will be discussing restoring funding for the Georgetown to South Park Trail and sidewalk repair on Rainier Avenue.

We would also like to see funding restored to the various multimodal corridor projects.

And specifically, we ask the council to restore $1 million cut from the Route 44 multimodal corridor project.

It's not clear to us exactly what parts of this project are in danger, but we think SDOT's design for upgrades and other improvements is good, and we don't want to see it watered down.

With the I-976 decision, Seattle's authority to implement VLS fees is reaffirmed.

We support considering an additional councilmanic VLF to raise funds to get transit, biking, walking, and rolling projects back on track.

I also want to echo Gordon's concern about suspending the minimum general fund requirement for the move Seattle levy.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Katie.

Anna, good morning.

Good morning.

This is Ana Zivar, Director of the Disability Mobility Initiative at Disability Rights Washington.

And to start, I want to say that we also support the solidarity budget that divests from police and pollution and invests in community.

In the transportation budget specifically, we want to highlight the need to fund the pedestrian transportation infrastructure that those of us who walk and roll and ride transit rely on.

BIPOC, immigrants, poor people, elderly, and disabled people are much more likely to have, less likely to have a driver's license or access to cars.

And we are also more likely to be transit reliant and more likely to walk or roll for transportation.

We need accessible and well-maintained sidewalks to be able to get to transit or to walk or roll to services.

especially in communities that have faced historic disinvestment.

For example, the sidewalks along Rainier are abysmal, and with improvement getting further delayed because of the postponement of the Rapid Ride R, we're not sure when that's going to change.

Cut the police budget and fund community needs.

Thank you very much.

And we do have one of the speakers that I called did dial back in.

So the last two that we have are David Hines and Daniel Clark.

David, good morning.

Good morning.

Thank you.

David Hayden.

I just want to point out that two thirds of the cops in Seattle are unqualified to fight real crime.

Yet racist interim chief who should be fired is further sabotaging crime fighting units while refusing to require two thirds who are unqualified to fight real crime to step up and pass the training requirements or be let go for not being qualified and willing.

We do not need propaganda cops doing coffee outreach, intimidating, bothering law-abiding citizens, acting fake nice while falsely assuring community they're safe, while saying cops aren't even qualified to fight real crime, yet are allowed to blame innocent poor homeless while refusing to go after drug pushers and destroying lives daily.

In a separate issue, is the city council paying the librarians to stay home, or are they in the central and other libraries redeveloping the interior to accommodate the need for personal space and protection from predatory spit sprayers.

Thank you.

Thank you, David.

And the last person that we have present is Daniel Clark.

Good morning, Daniel.

Hi, my name is Daniel Clark, and I've been a protester since the beginning off and on, basically, and I want to talk about one of my personal experiences after being arrested on july first when shop was cleared out me and a fellow protester that evening or walking on six and james across by the all city bill bonds when the window broke out in silence and i turn to my protest and i think that that actually happening like you have a lawyer i'm gonna keep on walking we walk fast and we walk fast up the hill and we turn to our right in the uh...

in that housing building to the right we saw a police officer going to an unmarked car in the 24-hour parking spot.

And then I continued on with my walking.

Later that week, I followed up with OPA.

It seems that SPD reported about two hours later, and it was a 10-millimeter socket that went through the window.

Now, I think this was targeted harassment because I was in the jail yelling Black Lives Matter and Other Chance.

And when I came out of the jail, this is what happened to me.

Daniel, thank you for sharing your story.

We will also follow up with you and OPA as well.

Would like to hear the rest of that account.

So thank you for sharing that today.

Thank you, everybody.

That is everyone who I have signed up for public comment today.

I appreciate everybody calling in with various perspectives to provide context for our deliberations today.

With that, that ends public comment, and we are going to move into items on our agenda as they appear on the published agenda.

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

Agenda item one, Seattle Parks and Recreation for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, and I do see Allie Panucci and Tracy Ratcliffe from Central Staff.

Thank you for being here with us today.

I will turn it over to Allie.

I see you unmuted.

I want to thank you again.

This is day three of four as we are walking through issue IDs and our form A.

So thanks, Allie, for being here once again.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning, committee members.

I just wanted to briefly update the committee on a minor schedule change and the public.

Tomorrow, as the chair described, today you will hear presentations on the Parks Department, Department of Transportation, and the Police Department.

Tomorrow you'll hear presentations on community safety, human services, homelessness response, and the citywide COVID response.

I just want to note for the record that originally we had human services department and homelessness scheduled as one presentation in the afternoon.

Given the number of council member proposals and the cross cutting issues in the homelessness paper, we have separated those into two separate papers and the human services department will be in the morning session unless the community safety discussion runs long.

So I just wanted to flag that for everyone's information.

Thank you very much, Allie.

And also, we'll note that Patty has already sent out the packet for tomorrow.

We want to thank them for that.

Are there any questions for Allie on the agenda for tomorrow?

OK, I'm not seeing any, Allie.

Anything else on your end, Allie?

I will turn it over to Tracy.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thanks, and good to see you.

Good morning, council members, Tracy Ratz of central staff.

Today, I will go over highlights from my issue identification paper for the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

As has been covered in prior presentations, the pandemic has posed significant financial challenges for the Seattle Parks and Recreation in 2020 that are expected to continue in 2021. Reduced user fees and rental income associated with the closure of many SPR facilities, decreased revenues to the city's general fund, and decrease real estate excise tax revenue to the city all contribute to SPR's budget challenges.

The 2021 proposed budget assumes a gradual reopening of 21 community centers and four pools as permitted by public health guidelines.

As Superintendent Aguirre mentioned last night, their budget was built on the idea that phase three guidelines allowing for up to 50% capacity of recreation facilities would be permitted.

As we know, those guidelines have actually been modified now to actually lower the capacity to 25%.

I raise this just to highlight for you the uncertainty with which parks will be entering into the 2021 year and also to recognize that there could be further impacts revenue wise to the parks department that we might have to take up in the middle of 2021. My issue paper gets into detail about the proposed changes on both the capital and operating side that I will not go into today due to time limitations and the fact that we've had now this will be our third session regarding the parks budget having had the department presentation on the 2nd of October and then last night's session on the MPD spending plan specifically.

In an effort to, and as we heard last night and previously, in an effort to maintain SPR provided community services and a trained staff to deliver these services, the proposed 2021 budget captures expenditure savings, primarily through a continued hiring freeze and reduced seasonal hiring, a shift in the debt service payments from general fund to REIT, and reallocating funding from the MBD capital programs to operating programs to sustain SPR operations in 2021. In addition, the 2021 proposed budget makes $19 million in reductions to REIT funded projects and programs.

Attachment one to my memo, which you have attached to this agenda, describes those specific changes to REIT funded programs and projects.

So as slide one shows, the 2021 proposed operating budget is $175 million.

which again is just a slight decrease over the 2020 adopted budget.

As you move to slide two, we see that the proposed capital budget is $53 million or a decrease of $34 million over the 2020 budget.

And again, this reduction really reflects the shift of NPD funds from capital to support operating costs.

and the $19 million reduction in REIT funding to park supported capital projects and programs.

Total appropriations then reflect this $34 million reduction shown primarily from the capital reductions.

On the revenue side, we can see the changes that have happened in terms of the reduction in general fund, REIT, and other resources.

And those other resources really reflect predominantly the fees that are generated from the park's facilities.

Are there any questions about this information?

If not, I will move on to slide three and issue identification.

So as we know, the executive has proposed reductions to MPD programs and projects to backfill the general fund and parks and recreation fund deficits.

The MPD may be used for this purpose because MPD funds are a revenue source that can be used for SPR-related operating or capital costs.

As we know from last night's discussion, the MPD's first six-year spending plan approved by the council ended in 2020, and SPR was not able to submit a new six-year spending plan because of the pandemic.

As such, SPR developed an interim spending plan for 2021 by using the 2020 annual spending plan as the base budget, increasing it by the annual inflation rate that we had used for the prior six-year annual spending plans, and then making modifications to address the General Fund and Parks and Recreation Fund shortfalls.

The proposed changes to the NPD spending plan programs that include support of ongoing operating costs versus one-time costs will need to be supported in future years by the new six-year spending plan, general fund, or for parks fees.

Notwithstanding this, the council could propose additional or different reductions to other NPD-funded programs to support council-related, parks-related priorities.

Any such changes could have programmatic and or potential SPR staffing implications.

So your options really include to adopt the changes to the spending plan as included in the 2021 proposed budget, or to modify that NPD spending plan to support council programs or project priorities.

Are there any questions about this issue?

I don't see anyone raising their hand, Tracy, so you can.

Okay.

Oh, thank you, Councilmember Gonzalez.

Okay, so let's move to slide four then, and I will now talk about the parks-related budget legislation.

So the first piece of legislation is the 2021-2022 Fees and Charges Ordinance.

So this legislation adopts the parks fee schedule for the next two years.

This fee schedule establishes the charges that are incurred for the use of certain park and recreation facilities and services.

This includes pools, athletic facilities, any tennis rental for some of their parks facilities.

The proposed fees for 2021 and 2022 are unchanged from the 2020 parks fee ordinance and that change or that holding those fees steady was SPR's desired intent given the current economic downturn.

Moving on to the second piece of legislation, the 2021 general fund support exception resolution.

So this legislation would authorize the city to provide a reduced level of general fund support to the park district in 2021 due to the demanding economic circumstances caused by the COVID pandemic.

The interlocal agreement between the city and the park district requires a baseline amount of general fund support adjusted annually for the inflation to be provided to SPR.

In 2021, the general fund required level of support would be $103 million.

And as we have seen, the mayor's proposed budget provides $97 million.

The ILA does permit the council to provide less general fund support if the council determines that a natural disaster or challenging economic circumstance prevents the city from maintaining the required level of general fund support and to adopt a resolution with three quarters approval affirming the circumstance.

This resolution would in fact provide that authorization to provide the reduced level of general fund in 2021. No questions about that.

I move on to the last one.

The 3rd piece of legislation is the 2020 3rd quarter supplemental.

So this legislation addresses the 17.2Million dollars of anticipated shortfall in the parks and recreation fund.

And it does this by reducing expenditures in the parks and recreation fund by 3.3Million dollars.

primarily from holding positions vacant and reducing hiring of temporary labor.

Appropriating $7 million in general fund reserves that were established during the revisions to the 2020 budget to offset what were anticipated to be the losses to the Parks and Rec Fund.

Reducing MPD-funded capital projects by $5.3 million, and these projects include Smith Cove, the Queen Anne Turf Project, and the Soundview Playfield.

And then finally, reducing MPD-funded operating programs by $1.57 million.

Are there any questions about this legislation?

Tracy, thanks so much.

I do have a question about this one.

In the memo, it summarizes the components that go into the Parks and Recreations Fund and the $3.31 million reduction from vacancies.

Yep.

And temporary labor reductions, yep.

When we look at the golf program allocation, it's about a million dollars, $912,000 reduction there.

Yeah.

It's just offhand and I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to ask this of you earlier.

Could you put that into context for us though?

I understand that from other conversations that we've had, the golf program is not necessarily revenue generating with our golf courses across the city.

This is just looking at the vacancies and temporary labor.

This isn't looking at reducing overall payments towards.

Correct.

This is actually a savings that they were able to generate this year.

Because if you remember, the golf courses were closed for a certain period of time.

They were, I think, closed about 30 days.

And so they were able to reduce staffing and generate these savings of $900,000 in expenditures.

They are now back operating, just FYI, probably only one of the parks facilities that's been able to operate and is only about 4% behind budget for the year, actually, in terms of revenue.

So they actually have recovered very well.

That's my second question.

Are they even further in the hole, given that they were not revenue generating?

So credit to the current operators of the golf courses, they have been able to get people out on those courses and they have had people in droves wanting to go golfing because apparently they can't go anywhere else.

And so again, as of I think the September report, they were about 4% behind on their revenues for the year.

So they had made up quite a bit of their revenue loss when they had been closed for that one month.

Okay, and do you know offhand what the 4% equals?

I want to say it's like $300,000.

Okay.

All right.

Council members, any additional questions on number three here for quarter three?

Thank you, Tracy.

That answers my questions.

So moving to slide six and budget actions.

Sorry, I actually have one, two on this.

I'm sorry.

Please go ahead and I see Council Member Peterson.

I'm sorry if I was slow to see you both, Council Member Lewis and then Council Member Peterson.

Yeah, yeah, no worries there, Madam Chair.

So just talking about the those various capital projects that have been put on hold.

I know this is the case with Smith Cove, and I asked Director Aguirre about this, or Superintendent Aguirre, about this yesterday.

But I'm curious how much money is tied up from other sources in Smith Cove, in addition to the money on our side.

our capital reductions and whether that's at risk.

I'd like to maybe see, I mean, if you can't answer with all the details here, that's fine, but I'd like to maybe see a summary of You know, how much money would potentially be at risk and and whether that money could be put on hold until later to resume those projects, just because I know.

With Smith Cove in particular, there's been a lot of organizing around that over the years to get that in place.

I know that, I remember Bagshaw, that was a big priority of his work.

So I wanted to make sure that if that is frozen, that we are also able to rely later on the intergovernmental funds for that critical project.

So I wonder if you could touch on that a little bit.

I could.

And then as far as those other projects in there, too, if they're in a similar position where there might be money from other sources put at risk by delay.

So I can tell you about Smith Cove.

So Smith Cove had got a $250,000 grant from the county youth sports grant program, and then another $250,000 from the state Recreation Conservation Office.

I need to follow up with parks to see what the requirements are for the spending of those dollars to see if a delay in this project will put those funds at risk, and I already have that question into them from last night.

I believe the balance is about $2.5 or $2.6 million, and I believe that's all our money.

I don't think that's any other dollars coming in from other sources, I believe from my memory when I was looking at the CIP earlier.

As it relates to the Queen Anne Turf Project and Soundview, I have to look and see.

I am not certain that those projects actually have any other money from them.

I think we actually have ended up between this action of the third quarter supplemental as well as the mid-2020 budget revision.

We essentially cut the entire funding, which I think was all the city's funding, but I will verify this, between these two actions that we would be taking, the one that's already been taken as part of the 2020 budget revision, and then as part of the third quarter supplemental.

But I will check on whether there's any other sources of funds that are non-city in the Queen Anne or the Soundview Playfield.

I don't think that there is, but I will check and make sure.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, Tracy.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And I wanted to thank Tracy and the superintendent last night during the Metropolitan Parks District meeting to tease out for me one of the line items that's not shown here on the chart is a pay increase that's going into effect for parks employees.

And since we might have a different audience today from the general public, just to highlight the fact that there is a pay increase That's going into effect for parks employees it's quantified to about $1.3 million.

And so it's just, I think it's important for folks to know sometimes the, the contracts that are negotiated with the city employee labor unions are done on a multi year basis.

these particular contracts were inked last year when the economy was in much better condition pre-COVID.

But it is something to think about is that we have cuts happening on the one hand.

On the other hand, there are Pay increases going into effect for for next year.

And so I just wanted to is one point the $1.3 million.

Is that the approximate amount?

Well, that's the amount that the MPD would be funding.

I'm sure I got to believe that the amount for all of the SPR staff for that pay raises probably a little higher since they have about 800 or 900 employees.

But to be very clear, council member, that's happening for every other department.

So human services, everybody else who has representative employees are seeing that 2.9% pay increase that's been built into their budget.

So they would be no exception to that.

Okay, thank you.

And you are correct.

They're part of the labor contracts that we cannot change unless we were to try to go into renegotiation.

Okay.

maybe I'll follow up later to figure out how much of it is for the whole parks department.

If it's, if it's more than a million.

Okay.

Thank you.

Yep.

Okay.

And I am not seeing any additional hands.

Council member Juarez, you are always welcome to chime in any time in case you have any additional contacts as the chair of parks as well.

I will keep going here.

Okay.

Why don't we move to slide six then?

And these are the budget actions that have been proposed by council members.

So item number one would add $50,000 in funding for the Neighborhood Response Program sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

This program provides funding to respond to issues raised by neighborhood organizations.

And this program was cut by $50,000 in the Mayor's proposed 2021 budget.

Excuse me.

All right, Council Members, let's go ahead and dive into our issue IDs.

Council Member Lewis, you are up first.

I'll be brief on this one.

I just think this is an important service, especially at a time when outreach into parks is a very big issue that we've been dealing with, even through COVID.

It's a fairly modest budget restoration to provide the service to make sure that our parks and green spaces do have folks who can respond and be on the scene to help and address issues and collaborate with other city departments and service providers.

And just wanted to put this out there and make sure that we keep this in the budget now more than ever.

And just to be clear, there is still $200,000 that remains in this program after that $50,000 cut.

And that's shown, you can see that in attachment one to my memo.

It shows what's being proposed for a cut and then how much remains in that program, just for a full information there, folks.

Right, thanks for that clarification, Tracy.

Sure, you're good.

Very helpful.

And hold for just one second.

I want to just double check.

Council Member Juarez, I see you unmuted.

Did you have anything else you wanted to add for context as we go into the council member form A's?

Yes, I apologize.

I thought, anyway, I'm not, I'm unmuted now.

I wanted to just make a few comments before we go into the eight requests of five, which are Council Member Lewis's, and I do appreciate and know the history of Smith-Cove and all of these programs, And this is just what we've learned from working, obviously, with Superintendent Aguirre, his staff, and Tracy.

And this is just a general where I'm at as the chair of this, just to be straightforward and candid.

A lot of capital projects, feasibility studies, and programs, particularly the outdoor ones, are going to be on pause.

It's like what we're seeing at Sound Transit.

These programs are on pause.

Some of you know the same as a lawyer, delayed but not denied.

Only because we're dealing with COVID and only because we've had to shift to backfill the general fund and having the opportunity, if you will, or even some cities don't have this, having the Metropolitan Park District funds that we can actually use those funds for the general fund for the parks.

So I'm hoping, and I think we're hoping that by the third quarter 2021, that things are gonna look a lot different.

That's what we're shooting for.

I may be speaking out a little bit.

I think I shared this with you, Madam Chair, and some of my conversations with Park.

I'm not gonna try to hold ourselves to the third quarter 2021, but I'm just not inclined.

And I understand where Councilor Peterson is going to on the salary raises.

And again, we know that those are locked in through union contract, And I just really want to give a big shout out, because I don't think people understand or don't know this.

A lot of these employees for the parks, in which we've not laid off anybody, our main goal was to keep staff and their jobs and people in place, have been doing things that are not in their job description, have been deployed in other areas where we need it the most.

As you know, community centers, hand washing stations, sanitation, emptying garbage, doing the things that they normally wouldn't do.

We had well over 60 people that just showed up to volunteer to be park ambassadors.

So again, I don't want to sound like a broken record, but parks and library staff and their leadership and their boards have really come through to fill in those holes and be that safety net for people who are experiencing homelessness and those frontline workers that need childcare.

I don't want to be Debbie Downer here, but I'm not inclined to support any of these requests for those reasons.

Not that they're not good projects and they shouldn't go forward, but just the basic...

If anything ever got hit hard for COVID, everything did.

But a lot of these programs require us to be in community and require us to be outside and require us to interact to build these big projects.

So that's where we're at right now.

So I just want to share that.

I'm trying not to sound so negative, but I just want to be very upfront and transparent.

So thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

And thank you for that context, Council Member Juarez.

I also think about many of the essential workers that receive, for example, hazard pay or COVID support pay as they were putting themselves in harm's way to take care of our community.

And I think a lot of our parks folks are providing critical services as you just articulated.

So I wanna echo your appreciation for their work and thank you for helping to put that into context.

Okay, I see no additional comments on number one here.

Council President, good to see you again.

Glad you're feeling a little better.

Appreciate you being with us today.

Thank you.

I am going to ask some general questions about the parks budget in light of a couple of remarks that I've heard.

I appreciate Council Member Juarez.

reminding us of those practical challenges and realities as it relates to the CIP proposed funding in particular.

On attachment A1, Tracy, there's about eight capital improvement projects that show nothing proposed for 2021. and then a reduction for REIT dollars.

And then in the notes, it says that the funding is eliminated in the six-year CIP.

So am I reading this correctly, that that means that those eight projects are effectively eliminated and not moving forward?

Or is this trying to communicate something else?

Yeah, that's saying for the next six years, the executive is proposing that they're not being any refunding for those projects.

You know, I, we, I suspect that this will be revisited once the economy improves and depending on what the draws are on our, you know, we've had a slashing, I think, about almost half of our refunding.

And so they are making some projections about what that's going to look like and when they're going to recover.

But that is their proposal, is to eliminate not only for 2021, but also for the remainder of that six years planning period, the funding for those specific activities.

Okay, so that includes comfort station renovations.

roof and building envelope program, ball fields, minor capital improvements, sport and court restoration program, play area safety program, environmental remediation program, the ball field lighting replacement program, electrical system replacement program, and the boiler and mechanical system replacement program.

And I guess it would be helpful to get a little bit more detail about exactly what those programs are, or more importantly, what is the impact of the elimination, not just the fiscal impact, but just the programmatic impact to those.

It's a little unclear to me whether the elimination is being proposed because they're effectively done or far enough that we're pulling back, or sort of like where is the, Where are they in the stage of those various programs?

That would just be helpful to understand.

Sure.

And just to provide more information.

OK.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

And then the second thing I wanted to ask, I didn't see in the memo.

I saw just a brief description about what the Neighborhood Response Program is.

It just says that the program provides funding for unplanned projects identified by neighborhood organizations.

I'm not sure what that means.

So my understanding is it can mean uh, you know something happens at a local park that was not budgeted that could be uh dealt with in a with a short small amount of money and so the superintendent essentially You know works with the community to address that specific thing and this program helps to to address that that specific thing um, I can't remember if one of the comfort stations being set on fire was one of the examples.

I got, I got, I think back in my notes, I think I have some examples of the types of things, but it really was kind of these unplanned one-off things that the community raises up as this is a really urgent issue we need to deal with and this program helps the superintendent be able to actually address that issue in kind of real time.

So these are discretionary dollars and therefore sort of small sized Yes, that's my understanding.

Yeah, infrastructure maintenance projects in part.

Yep.

Yep.

Correct.

That's my understanding.

Helpful.

And the last thing I just want, it's a comment, not a question, but I just want to be mindful of the conversation around payroll increases for city employees, particularly for two reasons.

The first being that we are a high road employer at the city of Seattle, and that means that we have a significant amount of bargaining units at the city.

I think at last count, we had about 156 bargaining units with various unions across the city.

City family and the appropriate place to have conversations about issues related to salaries for employees in specifically proposed AWI increases that have been approved already by the city council and that are memorialized in the contract that those conversations be had with the Select Labor Committee and eventually through the Labor Relations Policy Committee as required by Seattle Municipal Code.

And then secondly, as we continue to have conversations about AWI proposals that have already been approved, commitments, I should say, they're not proposals anymore, contractual commitments, that we keep in mind the significance of proposing not to move forward with those commitments without really evaluating and taking into consideration the race and social justice impacts of proposed.

reductions in those AWIs in addition to our obligation to continue to negotiate in good faith with our labor partners on those particular issues.

And so I just want us to be mindful of that.

And that doesn't mean that we're not going to have those conversations with our labor partners.

And it also means that we will continue to make sure that we are looking at ways to not lay off a significant amount of employees or any employees at all if we can through this economic period in the city.

But I just want to really lift up those points as it relates to ongoing concerns about salary increases.

And parks, I think, is one of those departments where we see uh, a huge, sometimes a very large disparity in pay between field workers, um, and, and, and management and people who aren't in the field within parks.

And so for me, the RSGI impacts of, um, exploring a, um, rollback on AWS is, is, uh, uh, I think I've been pretty acute in terms of my concerns around RSGI impacts.

So, I just wanted to make a general comment about that since I continue to hear about the potential to pull back on commitments the city has made with labor partners around AWI increases.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

I really appreciate your questions and the last comment as well.

and how we support our city family as we move forward.

Are there any other questions on the general presentation before we move forward with the form A's as presented by council members?

I do have one more question then, Tracy.

I'm sorry to sort of pause in our analysis here of the form A's.

It is a question related to item three in the budget legislation.

And if I'm understanding correctly, on page seven of the memo that you provided, we have in the last paragraph here describing the third quarter supplemental, that the grants are being used for park program updates to make improvement in low income neighborhood.

Work is performed by the Seattle Conservation Corps, a job training program for formerly homeless individuals that is run by Seattle Parks.

I went and visited their facilities in Peterson's district over there in Sandpoint.

And it's a tremendous program.

I guess my concern is on the first page of your memo.

I thought I saw.

The conservation core program being zeroed out in the first half of that chart.

Can you tell us more about if that's accurate?

It is not well, it's being zeroed out as its own budget summary level.

It is actually being moved into.

the department-wide program BSL.

And I think my memo has a footnote that indicates that.

So it is not being zeroed out.

It is moving into department-wide programs because that seemed the more appropriate place for it.

And we will be able to track, because we can at the BSL level and at the program level, their expenditures and so forth.

So there is no loss to it being moved into that program at all.

I see.

Thank you very much.

The footnote is right under the chart, not at the bottom of the page.

And so it's the Seattle Conservation Corps move to department-wide programs and it's 100% maintained.

Correct.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

And thanks for reading my memo.

It's nice to know you guys read.

Oh, yeah.

We never quite know.

You put a lot of work into these are you and the whole team so we really appreciate it Speaking of footnotes.

I'm loving the footnotes in the memo coming up as well.

So thank you for that Tracy and I'm sorry I did miss that underneath the chart there comes a lot of information to cover.

It's it is It's complex here.

This is a complex.

Yeah, it is and and your memos really do help us out So we appreciate that and I know the viewing public does as well.

Wonderful.

I

Council Member Herbold, question from you.

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Also, as it relates to the memo, it says that the proposed budget assumes SPR will hold 68 positions vacant for the entirety of 2021. And then you go on to say this achieves 5.5 million in expenditure stable.

Does that mean that we are?

We're not only holding those 68 positions vacant.

Navigating 1, but we're also.

We're also defunding the positions.

Is that how we're achieving the savings?

Yes, so we're exactly that's exactly what we're doing is we're not going to fund those 68 positions.

We're going to they're going to keep them because their hope is things will recover and they don't want to lose those positions.

So yes, that's exactly what's happening there.

Thank you.

Okay, well, that was a very, very helpful discussion.

Thank you.

Council colleagues for going back and asking those base level questions.

I think with that, I don't see additional hands.

Let's go ahead and go on to number 2 in our issue identification form a discussion here for the view in public.

We're on page 7 of the memo as well.

So item number two would add $2.8 million of funding for phase one of Smithcote Park development.

This is the project that was proposed to be reduced by the same amount in the 2020 third core supplemental that I just described for you.

And this is Council Member Lewis.

Excellent.

Council Member Lewis, any additional comments?

Thank you, Tracy.

And I do want to say I am very understanding of the points that Council Member Juarez raised earlier.

I think just to reiterate my previous comments in regards to Smith Cove that I made during the presentation and then I made last night, my primary concern is just making sure that when I think it is important to make sure that when this deferred project is taken up again that there is some arrangement right now in this budget process to make sure that the half $1 million from other entities is not put at risk.

Figuring something out if we can, in fact, get an extension on those grants or some other kind of arrangement.

As I mentioned earlier, this project came together with extensive organizing and work from a lot of We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

We have a lot of work to do.

budget constraints and issues presented by COVID, we're making sure that some of the resources from our partners stay intact as this is sort of temporarily frozen to be resumed later.

So if that can be worked out, certainly open to it.

Otherwise, it's something I would like to potentially pursue going forward with if it would mean losing half a million dollars from other entities and is a certainly a very important project in the district.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, questions on that item?

Seeing none, Tracy, let's do a number 3.

Let's move to slide 7 and item number 3, which would be to add funding for the development of a new dog off-leash area at Mercer and Dexter.

The funding amount would be determined and it would be used to acquire property currently owned by the Estat, and also be used to develop the infrastructure needed to service the off-leash area, including water hookup and a double-gated fence.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis, I'll turn it back over to you.

Right, so this is a site in the district that I've been talking to the South Lake Union Community Council about that is currently S dot property that was essentially created through the Mercer Street project.

It used to be a massive concrete hole in the ground where a where an arterial was.

It is now a strip of green space that is currently used in a in an unsanctioned way as essentially a dog park.

And there is interest in the South Lake Union Community developing it as such.

I think moving to Form B land, what I would like to do to change this is maybe figure out a way to propose transferring in a land bank kind of capacity, this strip of land from SDOT to parks and exploring that with the mutual departments.

My understanding from talking to SDOT is they do not have plans to use this property.

And then we could pursue some other way to use it in parks at some future date.

But to preserve those options, I would like to, through this budget cycle, pursue transferring the parcel to parks.

So as we move to Form B land, that's probably how this will be repackaged and to defer any additive or additional planning until we're in a better budget situation or in the context perhaps of the parks capital projects in the Metropolitan Parks District as we take that up next year.

In the meantime, as we get to Form B, I'll probably revise this to be more of a departmental transfer of the land.

And just to be clear, that will likely mean dollars to facilitate that transfer, depending on what the source of funding was for the purchase of the SDOT property.

My understanding is they would have to be compensated for that.

And I think Calvin Chao, I'll discuss with him that issue, but I think that's how that would play out.

So probably he'll still have to come with a price tag for the property acquisition.

I'm happy to look into what that would entail for moving to the Form B. Yep, exactly.

And we're already looking at getting you some numbers on that.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for flagging that potential change for us.

Colleagues and then questions?

Okay, let's move on to number four.

Item number four would be adding $46,800 in funding for security at the Daybreak Star Cultural Center.

This is Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you so much.

So this was raised.

Daybreak Indian Star Cultural Center is located in Discovery Park.

They've been having issues with break-ins and other kinds of property crime that have been occurring at their cultural center, which is a very important community gathering space.

This is the request that they sent to my office in a letter for some kind of additive security measures that could potentially be supported by the city just to make sure that they can keep a close eye on these important cultural gathering spaces and prevent vandalism, property destruction, and other kinds of activities from happening.

in these really important spaces.

I mean, this is the number that they've provided.

I don't know what the final, if there might be a way to reduce it going into the next phase to get at what they programmatically need to provide this extra assistance.

But I did want to bring this forward.

They're great partners in District 7 and excellent partners in Discovery Park.

and what is happening to these really important gathering spaces is really concerning to me and a lot of members of the community.

So wanted to bring this forward to this forum and make sure we could see if there is something we can do to help alleviate this problem.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

And I would say I could distribute that letter I received from them as well if any council offices are interested.

Thank you so much.

Any questions or comments on this item?

Okay.

Seeing none, let's move to slide eight and to item number five, which is the adoption of a statement of legislative intent to determine activation strategies for the East Queen Anne green belt.

And this would be a study that would be undertaken by parks and department neighborhoods to conduct a feasibility study to identify strategies for activating this green belt.

And this is council member Lewis.

Council Member Lewis, I know exactly which Greenbelt you're talking about, used to live right there.

Please tell us more.

Yeah, so this has been, it's not only the Greenbelt, but also adjacent, there is a park, McLean Park.

This has been a particular area of interest for the Queen Anne Community Council for a while.

There has been great community interest in potentially developing a dog park here as well.

there's been questions about the suitability of the site, but it's a green belt with an attendant, fairly underdeveloped park.

It is accessible to the public.

Folks can go there, but it's not really maintained.

It's not activated.

Certainly an area that would probably be a good candidate for some kind of project in the next Metropolitan Parks District measure.

So the intent here would be to try to craft I know there has been a lot of interest around this.

see that there's a lot of potential here in the space.

It's a pretty big piece of parkland that is not really in a current state of use to be used for recreational purposes.

So it would certainly be a good opportunity to look toward in the next round of capital improvements.

And this would be a good start to facilitate a visioning process on what we could do in that space.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Any questions on this, colleagues?

Okay.

I am not seeing any.

Let's move to number six from Council Member Morales.

Moving to item number six.

So this proposal would add $200,000 in funding for a feasibility study to assess the recreation and community gathering space needs for the Georgetown community.

This is Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you so much, Tracy.

So I'm sure everyone knows that Georgetown is one of the areas in Seattle that has a real lack of green space.

There is the Georgetown Playfield and the small little Hat and Boots Park, but there's not a lot of place in the neighborhood for kids to play outdoors.

And so when the Georgetown Playfield was built, I think it was 2017, there had been also a request from community for a community center because there isn't a gathering space in the neighborhood.

So what we're trying to do is assess what it would take to be able to plan for and build a community center in the neighborhood.

Even the use of the play field right now is somewhat problematic in that it is not the neighborhood kids who are able to use the play field.

It is very often reserved for soccer games and soccer tournaments and other organized sporting events, very often from outside groups who come into the neighborhood.

So there's a there's a real need for some designated space and we are looking to.

I wonder if we might be able to have I.

T.

mute our friend council member herbal.

I think that she's on a.

doing some, thank you so much.

We all are trying to work as hard as we can to multitask.

So Council Member Morales, if you could just start that few sentences over a quick second ago, that'd be great.

Yeah, so we're just trying to get some funding to do a feasibility study and assess what it would take to design and build a community center.

Folks in the neighborhood understand that this isn't something that will happen overnight, but they do want to begin the process.

And so we are hoping to at least begin with a feasibility study there.

Are there questions on this item, colleagues?

Okay, I am not seeing any hands.

I do want to just double check here the difference between a feasibility study and a statement of legislative intent as Councilmember Lewis just articulated the interest in evaluating what options exist in the area.

Tracy, what is the either

So I think Council Member Morales is actually recommending money be allocated to do a feasibility study, and Council Member Lewis is saying, no, let's direct the SPR and Department of Neighborhoods to essentially use their staffing capacity to conduct a feasibility study for activating these Queen Anne greenbelts.

certainly an alternative, and I need to check because I know as PARS is getting ready for the next six year spending plan for the NPD, that they have done a strategic plan, I think that assesses what the citywide needs are for community centers, and that's based on current population, but also estimates about population growth.

And so they may have already done some work on this as it relates to the Georgetown area, but one alternative to spending money on that would be to in fact say, Parks, can we have you assess the feasibility of, you know, the recreation and community gathering needs in Georgetown and see whether they would be willing to do that body of work without additional resources as just an alternative to.

Councilmember Morales' proposal, which would be similar to what Councilmember Lewis is saying, essentially, to parks and to DAWN.

Ali, did you have something to add to that?

Yeah, thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I thought I'd just take this opportunity to say something more generally about statements of legislative intent versus council budget actions that increase or decrease funding for a department.

It is somewhat of a balancing act.

A statement of legislative intent can just be a statement of the council's legislative intent.

It is often a request to a department to take up specific work in the coming year?

And it is somewhat of a balance of, is this asking them to do something that is different than the work they would be doing otherwise?

And if so, is additional funding needed?

Or is this something that is the type of work that the staff generally take on and can be sort of absorbed into their normal Um, normal operation.

So it is sometimes in the balance that Tracy was just sort of highlighting.

If some work has already been done, there may be ability to this for this, the department to just take on this work.

But in many cases, statements of legislative intent, sometimes, um, are responded to in a way that is not as satisfying as council members may, you know, may not be satisfactory to council members, because really, to really fulfill the request, additional funding is needed.

So it is, just highlighting, it is a balancing act in picking through the resources of the department and what can be absorbed versus what needs additional funding.

Okay, great.

Council Member Morales, anything else to add to this?

Well, just that I'm happy to meet with you or talk with you, Tracy, and see if we can dig into that a little to understand if it is slated to be again.

And if it's not, we can move on to Form B and figure out what that should look like.

Sounds good.

And I will check with Parks and see whether they've done any of that initial analysis as well.

Great.

Thanks so much.

Okay, thanks, Tracy.

I don't see any additional questions on this item.

Let's go on to the next one, Council Member Sawant, number seven.

To slide nine.

Yes.

So this would adopt a statement of legislative intent regarding signage at Licton Springs.

This would ask the Parks Department to work with the Muckleshoot Tribe to design and place signage at Licton Springs, discussing the cultural and historical significance of the springs.

This is Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Sawant, good morning.

Please go ahead.

Good morning.

Thank you.

This statement of legislative intent, as mentioned, would request the Parks Department to work with the Muckleshoot Tribes Cultural Department to design historical signage in Licton Springs.

Indigenous activists in Seattle, as we know, have been organizing for several years to uplift the history of Licton Springs.

This past year, they appealed to the Landmarks Preservation Board and successfully landmarked the springs, which I believe is the first time the Landmarks Preservation Board has protected something other than a building.

Almost 33,000 people signed the petition supporting that landmarking, explaining that, quote, since time immemorial, Licton Springs has been a recognized sacred site and a natural curative resource for the Duwamish and other Coast Salish tribes of the Puget Sound region.

For countless generations, Coast Salish people have gathered at Licton Springs to harvest the sacred red ochre medicine used for traditional healing ceremonies, spiritual renewal, and celebrations.

Licton Springs is one of the last remaining cultural and holy places of the Duwamish and other Coast Salish people, unquote.

So that's from the petition that 3,000 people signed.

And I wanted to congratulate all the organizations in the indigenous community, including UNIA, urban natives for Urban Native Educational Alliance for spearheading that petition.

And I'll just end by saying that community activists are requesting that the Parks Department work with the Muckleshoot Stripes Cultural Department to design the signs and to honor that history.

Thank you very much, Council Members Sawant.

Any questions or comments?

I'm seeing none.

Let's go ahead to number eight.

Okay.

And the final item would be to add funding of $48 million to backfill the loss of general fund and other resources to the Department of Parks and Recreation in the 2021 proposed budget.

And this is Council Member Sawant's proposal.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Like I mentioned in the Budget Committee meeting that we had last Friday, the budget proposed by Mayor Durkin contains draconian budget cuts, slashing funding to parks, transportation, housing, and libraries.

In the Department of Parks and Recreation, the mayor has proposed cutting $48 million, $41 million here in the 2021 proposed budget that she has sent to the council, and a further $7 million in the 2020 third quarter supplemental budget For a total of $48 million.

Her budget proposes closing community centers and pools and deferring maintenance and other capital work.

However, as we discussed on Friday, and as many council members stated, there's nothing inevitable about these budget cuts.

It's not an act of nature.

They are a policy decision.

by, if the budget cuts go through, then they would be a policy decision by a political establishment that would rather close community centers than increase the taxes on big business, which we know is a viable and legal avenue for us to shore up the budget to eliminate all the cuts.

So this budget amendment would restore all the $48 million that are being proposed to cut this year with the intention that it should be funded by increasing the tax rate of the Amazon tax, I will not go over in detail as I presented that in the budget committee last Friday.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Any questions, colleagues?

Okay.

I do have a question for clarification, and I think this gets back to some of the charts that central staff have offered on the first page of many of the memos we've already reviewed.

You know, for example, when I asked the question about conservation core, if you just were to look at the chart and not the footnote, it does look like conservation core is zeroed out.

It says 100% cut there.

but then when you look at the details, it's actually a transfer.

So just for clarification on the parks, for example, here, when we talk about $48 million to backfill the proposed cuts as Council Member Sawant just articulated, is part of the $48 million including transfers in those programs are actually being maintained in other departments?

Can you offer clarification on whether there's $48 million in total cuts here?

No, if you do the math between 261 and 228, you get, I think, $34 million reduction overall between the 2020 and 2021 budget.

I don't really know where the $48 million figure came from.

It was on the form A, so maybe Council Member Swann can explain that.

Okay, thank you.

Council Member Swann, anything to add to that?

I mean, we can look at it again.

We're always happy to keep making sure that our numbers are right.

But as far as my office has checked, and we have checked multiple times, $41 million is the cut to the general fund to parks, plus the $7 million in the 2020 third quarter supplemental budget is what we are aware of.

Okay, thank you.

Council member Swan and I may follow up with you as well.

I think it is important for us to just make sure that the viewing public as well knows if there's an overall reduction, are those services going away?

Or in some cases, are there services that are being accounted for as a cut, but they're actually being transferred to other areas just so that we are.

Go ahead, Council Member Sawant.

Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you.

I apologize.

I was just going to add, I forgot to add that as far as I understand, the $41 million figure is actually in the mayor's, in her budget, in the introduction.

I'm not sure why central staff are not seeing that, but we will check back in with central staff, but we didn't sort of derive the number.

It's actually there.

So I just want to share that.

Yeah, I think central staff is as accurate in their overall question that I just asked, which was, is there a cut?

And I think you're also accurate that there is a reduction in the overall department.

The question I'm asking is really for the viewing public and for all of our council colleagues is an actual cut in services, which I think is different than has some of the money been transferred to other departments.

I just want to make sure that you hear where I'm coming from in my question and also central staff hear me saying I fully support the answer that they just provided as well.

It can be both and.

You could see an overall reduction by 48 million, which is, I think, what you and your team are articulating.

And I believe what central staff is saying is there is, in terms of cuts, less of a cut.

It does not total 48 million when you look at where those transfers have occurred.

So I just wanna make sure that we're clear when we talk about where there are actual cuts and where there are some transfers.

But I think both are accurate.

So I don't wanna, I'm not sure that I can impugn anybody's good work here, including in your team as well, Council Member Swann and for our central staff.

Council Member Herbold, anything to add?

Not to further muddy the waters, but I recall one of the key takeaways from our original revenues overview was that there was a city-wide, department-wide, the number that I think central staff gave us, for through all departments, $27 million in spending reductions.

Does that?

Allie, you want to respond to that?

Yeah, happy to.

Council Member Herbold, Chair Mosqueda.

So it's a both and, as Chair Mosqueda mentioned.

So in looking at the details of the mayor's proposed budget, if you look line by line, every cut is sort of listed separately and then ads are often listed separately.

So as an example of how we get to the net for the creation of the Office of Emergency Management, about $2.5 million is cut from SPP's budget and then a similar amount is added to the new office of emergency management.

There's about a $20,000 difference and there's a $20,000 add to reflect increased costs for their services.

So the number we are, we have been presenting in that general fund balancing analysis was that I think it is a net overall, but in total, if you take all the cuts and all the ads, it results in overall a $27 million reduction.

I believe Council Member Sawant's staff is looking at all of the cuts, some of which are actual cuts.

It is eliminating services, it is reducing programs or services, and some of it is a transfer between departments or transfer of general fund support and then the same work is supported by a different funding source.

So it's not a simple response, I understand.

But I think both things are true.

If you look at all of just the cut items in the mayor's proposed budget, it does look like there's about $200 million of cuts.

But if you offset that with the transfers and that sort of thing, that's where we get to the net.

I appreciate that clarification.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

And so just as a follow-up, I mean, if what we wanted to do was to restore funding for reduced services, the number that we're looking at citywide is the estimated central staff $27 million.

I wish it was that simple.

I don't know what exactly that number is, because what we would have to do is look specifically at what is actually cut entirely and separate, because there's also new spending in there, right?

So in some cases where the funding for a position is cut from the 2021 proposed budget, but then a new position is added in another department.

That is actually a loss to the department that lost the staff and a gain to the other department, but it's not necessarily for the same services.

So we can work on trying to focus sort of what is entirely new spending, what is entirely an actual complete cut, like this thing will no longer happen, to share with council members.

I don't have that number exactly in front of us, So I'm sorry.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Sawant to close us out on this item.

Did you have a last comment there?

Yes, I just want to preface what I'm about to say with just reiterating that we will continue to discuss with central staff to revise and fine tune the numbers.

And I agree that sometimes the interpretation of the numbers is different and I accept that central staff's interpretation of some numbers might be different.

But just to clarify the numbers themselves, just if you do the subtraction of the 2020 parks budget and the difference between the 2020 parks budget and the 2021 parks budget, 35 million.

And then if you add to the 35 million, the cost of living increases that are now removed, then it adds up to 41 million.

That is my understanding, which is what was cut from park.

So it's not the services that are offset, but we have to take the COLAs into consideration as well, the cost of living adjustments.

But as I said, yeah, we will continue to discuss with central staff.

Happy to work with you.

Excellent.

Well, that brings us to the end of the presentation and an overview of the memo.

I think this is up there for any reminders on where we are at.

Tracy, anything else on this?

Nope.

I think we've got it.

Thanks so much.

Okay.

Well, we appreciate your time and thank you for walking us through this memo.

We know there's much more to come here and appreciate the dialogue and interest in parks and recreation.

Let's move on.

I see Calvin up there.

Hello, Calvin.

Thanks for joining us today.

If you want to introduce yourself for the record and before you do that, Madam Clerk, could you please read item two into the record?

Agenda item two, Seattle Department of Transportation briefing and discussion.

So on my agenda, it says that we are going to do this at 1105, which I'm really excited about.

We are right on time.

Calvin, let's have you introduce yourself and take it away.

Morning, Council Members.

I'm Calvin Chow with Council Central staff, and I just wanted to thank Patty Wigrin, who is running the slides for us today.

I have a fairly long memo that's attached to the agenda, so I'll be covering sort of the highlights of that memo.

Please feel free to stop me and pose any questions that you have.

As we go along, I'll try to keep us going at a fairly high clip because we have a lot of material to cover.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So our first couple slides just do the budget summary comparison table.

And I wanted to just take a moment to mention that this can be a little bit confusing.

So for instance, this is showing the expenditures and the operating and capital portions of SDOT's budget.

The operating subtotal you will see goes down by about 18.3% from 2020 adopted to the 2021 proposed.

But this is complicated by a couple of big swings in dollars that we'll get into in the paper.

The most important ones are that the existing Seattle Transportation Benefit District transit measure, which expires this year, generates about $65 million or something like that of funding for a bus service.

In 2020, that measure expires in 2021. So it is not shown in this budget.

So that is one of the significant decreases.

And then in addition, this budget proposes to move the parking enforcement officers from SPD to Seattle Department of Transportation.

So that is an increase of personnel and budget.

So if you take those items out, the actual operating expense is reduced by about 2.5% or so.

In the bottom section, the capital appropriations are also showing as being decreasing by about 17.3%.

I think it's just always important to remember that capital is spread over six years.

So there is some, our CIP covers six years of spending and so There is natural variation from year to year and what that spending plan looks like, depending on what the projects look like.

This is a real reduction in the overall amount of capital spending for the next six years, but the specific numbers are driven somewhat by timing issues, as well as that actual reduction in project spending over the next six years.

Next slide, please.

Let's just pause real quick.

Are there any questions, folks, on that first slide?

Or maybe we could take them after you do this summary here.

These first two slides summarize the table that's on page one of the memo.

OK, no questions at this midpoint.

Calvin, let's see if there are after you go through this last part here.

Thank you.

This slide shows the total appropriations for the department decreased by 17.7% between the adopted budget last year and this year's 2021 proposed budget.

And again, with the same caveats I mentioned before.

And then you can see the PEO officers reflected in the increase of total FTEs, which is a 12.6% increase.

The rest of this table includes the revenues, and it also includes fund balances that are used to pay for these expenditures.

So it matches the total resource use drop 17.7%.

Just want to highlight for folks that general fund is a small portion of the funding that goes to SDOT.

The rest of the resources are, generally speaking, transportation restricted funds.

The department does get real estate excise tax, which has some other uses that it can use for, as well as some bond proceeds from the LTGO bond sale.

Next slide, please.

So my paper goes through nine issues and I'll try to cover them.

We'll see how quickly this goes.

The first issue that I want to highlight is just the financial constraints that the department faces in 2021. In developing this proposal, SDOT identified an $85 million less in 2021 than they had anticipated.

in last year's budget.

So that's a combination of reduced revenues in 2020, reduced revenues in 2021, and some unanticipated spending that happened in 2020 with the COVID response as well.

To respond to that, they have proposed a budget that reduces cost-cutting by about $60 million and proposes a $25 million Interfund loan to cover 2021 operations.

That Interfund loan is It's essentially trying to look at the expected recovery over the next four years and to count on that recovery so that we don't have to take deeper cuts in 2021 and then be forced to try to hire people back and get projects moving again.

The idea here is that by taking this loan, we can take a lesser cut and extend that over four years and have less disruption to services.

So that's the broader context of how the budget is presented.

My paper goes into a little more detail on just some of the specific revenue sources and the like, but unless there are any questions, I'd like to move on.

Let me just pause real quick.

Council members, any questions?

Okay, let's go ahead.

Next slide, please.

So as part of the cost-cutting reductions in the budget.

SDOT is proposing to abrogate three positions and defund another 30 positions.

And nine of these positions are currently filled and would be subject to layoffs.

I would highlight that the idea of defunding positions but retaining the position authority is intended to help SDOT rehire those positions when the economy recovers, though that is sort of leaving that up to the executives, leaving them with that authority.

They would not necessarily have the budget to do so unless they got additional appropriation authority from the council in a future time, or if they reduced appropriations within those BSLs for other spending.

So as a consideration, you may want to consider reducing position authority to stay in line with the budget that's in front of you.

Comments or questions?

Okay, Calvin, I see in the memos that we've reviewed so far, this seems to be the department that's taken the brunt of the FTE reductions.

Is that true?

I think that's true.

Allie may have a better sense of how this fits in with the overall city impact, but SDOT is taking a fairly significant cut.

They have, it is 33 positions being cut, but none of those are filled.

Yeah, and similar to the question that we asked last week, and I just wanted to sort of put this into context.

Just on first blush, it looks like this department is taking the highest amount of reductions overall.

17.7% overall reduction in revenue.

Is that relatively high, Ali?

I know we're still waiting on that sort of macro analysis, but.

Is that accurate?

Yeah, I think that is all accurate.

I'm just doing a double check to see if there are some other departments.

If you just look at the percent change numbers, you'll see a higher percentage.

However, most of that is related to a difference between the 2020 adopted budget.

That department had a lot of one time ads or cuts versus looking at SDOT that is more looking at reductions in some of their I guess, more of their base services or programs and capital investments, if that's accurate, Cal?

I think so, but maybe this is a line of questioning we could follow up with after the meeting.

No problem.

That sounds good.

Thank you very much.

Let's go on.

Next slide, please.

So the Move Seattle Levy, which voters approved, four or five years ago, expires at the end of 2024. And when that levy was proposed to voters, it relied on leveraging other transportation dollars and other external grant funds to deliver the full suite of programs and projects that were presented to voters.

Because of the COVID emergency and the response and the recession, We now expect to have significantly less transportation funding, local transportation funding over the next four years.

So the CIP and the proposed budget identify a $60 million loss or thereabouts of funding sources that have been used to support Move Seattle.

The Move Seattle levy is very consistent.

It's property tax and it is a consistent funding source, but it's really some of the other sources of funding like the commercial parking tax or the gas, the fuel tax revenues that have decreased and sort of force us to have less overall money for this suite of projects.

So the proposed budget has significantly shifted dollars around for any number, for most of the Move Seattle projects.

Uh, this has been a, uh, where many of, I think the council members proposals that we'll get to at the end of this, uh, presentation, uh, sort of come into play.

Um, the move Seattle oversight committee has had a chance to review this and has, I believe, sent a letter to all the council members with their recommendations on this issue as well.

I believe yesterday, um, the main, um, I could go through a list of some of the specific reductions, but these include things like Vision Zero projects, projects like the Farnel-Royd Boulevard project and 23rd Avenue Phase 3. There are sidewalk projects, Grand Street Infill Station contributions, some other paving and arterial concrete paving projects that are also delayed.

For a lot of these projects, they would be delayed past the expiration of Move Seattle and would have to be considered in some future levy proposal or other funding source.

I will get to this in the legislation section, but there are a couple of legislative items that are related to Move Seattle.

One has to do with the minimum general fund requirement, and the other has to do with some specific I'll cover that in a couple of slides.

Next slide, please.

I have a quick question on number three here.

In your memo, page six, middle of the page, you talk about how the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee received a briefing from is going to be providing comments for our consideration during budget deliberations, but we don't have those yet, right?

When do we anticipate having recommendations back from that oversight committee?

I believe they email, I've seen an email from them, I think went to council members yesterday.

I will make sure that it gets to everybody today after this meeting.

I believe they have sent a letter formally to you.

Okay, I see Council Member Peterson nodding.

As chair of transportation, you've received that as well Council Member Peterson.

Yes, it was received yesterday morning.

It's two pages long, and it's fairly general in its requests in terms of the principles they lay out.

And I can recirculate that so it's more accessible for folks.

That would be great.

Thank you.

And I think the Move Seattle program in general Even regardless of the decisions that are made with this budget, we'll continue to oversee the levy implementation for the next four years as well.

So this is really their review of the proposal in front of us, but they will continue to be reviewing this to the conclusion of the levy.

Great.

Thank you, Calvin.

Let's go ahead.

Next slide, please.

So the West Seattle Bridge, as everyone I'm sure is familiar, was closed in 2020 due to observed cracks in the main span of that bridge.

And we do expect the mayor to announce a preferred alternative for whether we repair or replace that structure later this year.

So that is still a conversation that has a lot of unknowns and is still in front of us.

I wanted to just make sure that council was aware of the budget actions that you have approved and the budget actions that are included in this budget proposal.

Earlier this summer, you did approve $70 million for this project.

That included an interfund loan for that amount to be made so that that money was available to SDOT now.

The 2021 proposed budget would essentially pay back that loan and would also add an additional $30 million in 2021. And they would do this through a bond sale, our general government bond sale.

So this would be essentially pledging future REIT to support this project in the future.

This pays back the inter-fund loan in its entirety and the total amount that would be authorized for 2020-2021 and any carry forward would be $100 million with the proposed budget.

Okay, great.

And Council Colleagues, I know that we do have some issue identification form A's that correspond to the nine items that Calvin is walking through.

If you don't mind, I'd love to try to hold those for the end so we can get an overview of the issues, and then we'll go through each one of the issue identification sheets as we get to that part of the memo.

Council Member Herbold.

Oh, excuse me.

Council Member Herbold, question.

Thank you.

And on that direction, I will not say anything about budget action proposal number three with my name on it.

I do have a question about the option A identified by Calvin.

Is there funding in the 2021 budget for council consultant services?

I will have to do a little more research to figure out how much money there is in that proposal.

I'm afraid I don't have that information handy.

And just as a point of information for colleagues on the council, we do have a independent consultant that has been advising us, brought that team on, just a couple months ago, I think.

Is that right, Calvin?

About two months ago?

About two months ago.

And they helped provide some structural engineering support for us as we review the executive's proposals around the West Seattle Bridge.

So I appreciate your flagging this.

It might be a useful function to carry over into 2021 as well.

Good point.

Thanks, Council Member Herbold.

And also, Maybe in light of that, can you remind us when the solutions are on the preferred solution?

When is the preferred solution going to be announced, either council members or central staff?

I'm not sure.

I'm not sure exactly when an announcement is been scheduled, but I think we all expect it to happen this year.

I would say I expect it to happen early November.

But that might be illustrative in itself, the fact that my expectations in Calvin's are different.

But it wasn't originally intended to be October 21st.

And the mayor and SDOT has recently indicated just in the last week or so that they're going to wait until the community stakeholder group, the West Seattle Advisory Task Force or Community Task Force, they have an opportunity to review the materials that they have, that SDOT has just released in the CBA, the cost benefit analysis.

And so the executive didn't feel that it would be right to make an announcement about a preferred alternative before having an opportunity for our stakeholders who are advising the mayor in this decision to actually have an opportunity to to review those materials before giving their sort of advisory input to the mayor as part of the decision making.

And I think this is an issue that there is a lot of information.

It may be one that would be good for a council briefing shortly.

I see heads nodding.

Okay, thank you so much for flagging that.

Let's move on.

Next slide, please.

This item identifies the transfer of parking enforcement officers from SPD to SDOT.

This would consolidate the parking enforcement unit within the SDOT right-of-way management, and that sort of consolidates those functions.

In addition to the personnel and the budget for that personnel, the proposal also includes $800,000 to cover the overtime associated with special events.

There is one small, if you look at the decrease in the SDOT, excuse me, the police department's budget versus the increase in the SDOT budget, the parking officers move in their entirety, but the back office support has a bit of a difference.

The SDOT has identified, I believe, three positions that are necessary to help provide the back office support that SPD provided when that unit was there.

And so SPD is eliminating those positions in the SPD budget, and SDOT is asking for new positions to support that as part of their own management structure.

Great.

And I'll also note that Council Member Herbold does have proposal number four when we get to that.

So we'll do remember this conversation, but are there any questions on this piece?

Not seeing any questions.

And thank you for previewing the discussion to come on that form A.

Next slide, please.

So the next slide is relating to the Seattle Transportation Benefit District and the transit measures.

As I mentioned at the beginning, the existing 2014 transit measure will expire at the end of this year.

And so the proposed budget eliminates that funding from the 2021 budget.

Earlier this summer, council placed a replacement transit measure on the November ballot.

And so that is currently before voters.

So I just wanted to highlight that you don't see either of these dollars referenced in the budget, depending on voter approval.

If that comes to pass, then I will work with the executive to prepare budget amendments necessary for including it in the budget.

This was a piece of good news for our budget here and welcome news in 2020. Is there any additional comments on this?

OK.

Next item, please.

So last week, the Washington Supreme Court struck down Initiative 976, which would have eliminated our ability to collect vehicle license fees.

And those vehicle license fees are a significant portion of what we collect for the transit measure, as well as some basic infrastructure and maintenance funding that was imposed councilmanically.

So with initiative 976 struck down, the council and the city does have the ability to consider raising additional vehicle license fees, either through council action or through future voter approval.

And so I just wanted to highlight that this is an opportunity for you.

You could consider it as part of this budget, or we could take it up immediately following the 2021 budget as well.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

Am I muted?

No, I'm, yeah.

Calvin, can I ask a question here?

I know that we have now unlocked the ability to do the Council approved increase, which would be an additional $20 on top of the $20 that's already been assessed in terms of the tabs that we were not able to go to the voters with.

In the measure that's going to be while it is on the ballot right now.

What could the timeline be on us going back to the voters or, as I understand it, the $60 car tab that we're authorized to pursue under the Transportation Benefit District?

I mean, we made the really Difficult decision of increasing an incredibly regressive sales tax to offset the horrible hit that that awful to mine an initiative rightfully determined to be blatantly unconstitutional by the court.

I would like us to maybe also at the very least discuss a potential path forward on what some of the strategies on going back to the voters might look like to restore the voter-approved car tab element as well, which, you know, is different from, as I understand it, our Councilmatic authority, which is more limited to just that $20.

So I wonder if you could maybe talk about how we might be able to pursue a future transportation benefit district and what the kind of timeline would be on that given that we have a measure on the ballot already and the awkward timing of the court case.

Council Member, because we have a ballot measure before voters right now, I feel the need to be a little bit I don't want to speak too much for a measure that's currently in front of voters.

So I'll stay to kind of highlights in my response.

But I believe that this is a separate funding proposal from, let me step back.

The measure that council approved this summer is a 0.15% sales tax.

It's a separate funding source from the vehicle license fee.

So council could propose going to voters with a separate vehicle license fee measure.

And I believe the time restrictions are going to be based on when we can get in front of the, which election we could get a ballot measure to King County elections in time to meet and are not tied to any of the other measures that are in front of voters.

All right, that's good enough for now.

I appreciate your navigating a topic that's sensitive, given that we are in the middle of an election right now.

So I appreciate that answer, and we'll definitely follow up as we dive into this more.

Definitely still recent news.

So I appreciate you clarifying and providing your technical view of where we stand.

Soon in November, we will know how the outcome of that measure, and then we can figure out what the next course of action might be.

Any other comments on this item?

Okay, seeing none.

Thank you, Cal.

Next item, please.

So, like many of the transit service in Seattle, with the COVID response, we saw a decrease in transit demand, and so SDOT actually reduce the existing streetcar ridership by about, or excuse me, reduce service on the existing streetcar by about 10% from the pre-COVID levels.

The 2021 budget would also reduce that streetcar service, would maintain that cut and use that as an operational savings of about $700,000.

The budget did have some increases in the operating costs that are related to escalation of costs, that eats up a lot of those savings.

So it is not as much of an overall netting savings as it could be.

But you could consider further reduction in streetcar hours, either in terms of frequency or span of service, and might provide additional cost getting there.

And I see I skipped over a point here just to highlight that last year, or earlier this year, S.P.A.W.S. all work on the Centre Streetcar indefinitely.

So that project has been essentially defunded in the CIP.

Questions, colleagues?

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Calvin, interested in this option A, consider further reduction of streetcar hours, particularly the one in South Lake Union, if if employees are not returning to on site work quickly in the first and second quarters of next year or until there's a vaccine in place.

And so I don't know how easy it is for you to quantify this, but I'd certainly be interested in seeing what options there might be for the South Lake Union streetcar reduction, further reductions as suggested here by option A, whether there's a simple way to, would it be reducing another 10%?

And if so, how much does that, would that enable us to redeploy to some of these requests that are being made by my colleagues to add to, programs and projects.

And I'll be happy to follow up with the department to try to get some options in front of you.

I think just from my take on it, without knowing exactly how it might affect the rest of the operations, it does seem like 10% does relate to about $700,000.

Thank you.

I do have a quick question about the streetcar overall.

Oh, excuse me, Council President, please go ahead.

Thank you.

In terms of the option A here, and as a follow-up to Council Member Peterson's inquiry, I see from your memo on the budget summary document chart, I should say, so it does list South Lake Union streetcar operations.

It says that there is a proposed 3% reduction.

And I guess I want to get a sense of.

what you know, Calvin, about what the executive and the department assumed in terms of how that 3% proposed reduction impacts frequency hours of service or both in terms of that 3% proposed reduction before us.

So the 3% reduction of expenditures isn't necessarily a 3% reduction in service.

SDOT reported that they have reduced service hours in total by about 10% across the First Hill and South Lake Union streetcar lines.

So I will have to get some more information from them about how that has been implemented or proposed to be implemented for 2021. The savings that were related to that cut were mostly offset by the assumed escalation in costs that go along with operating a streetcar.

Some of that is part of our contract with King County Metro for operating the streetcar.

So in total, even though it is 10% cut in service, it doesn't, it only shows as this 3% reduction in the South of Union streetcar operations expenditures and 8.5% increase in the first sales streetcar operations.

Okay, so It would just be helpful to know a little bit more about that 3% and what it is actually where those cost savings are being found in terms of the 3% listed on your chart and then the overall 10%.

I guess I'm hearing from you that as far as you know, it doesn't impact frequency or hours.

service.

It will.

So I will have to get back to you about exactly how it's been implemented.

It is a 10% reduction in the total number of transit service hours that streetcars are operating.

Whether they've taken that in longer frequency times or in shortening the span of service, I don't have that information handy.

But I'll be happy to follow up and get that information for you.

OK.

And that 10% reduction, the broader 10% reduction that's across the streetcar network.

Presumably, and tell me if I'm wrong here, but presumably to allow the flexibility of sort of shifting hours of service and frequency across the system.

So just in order to allow for some flexibility as opposed to sort of focusing on one line versus the other.

The budget does establish separate BSLs for both of those lines.

So there is some implicit.

Those are reserved for each of the streetcars.

I just have to follow up with SDOT to understand how it's being implemented for each line, because I just don't know at this time.

Okay, and in terms of option A, that would be helpful information to get a follow-up.

And then just generally, I'll say that I want to be thoughtful about any sort of proposed further reductions to frequency and hours of service, in large part because I think that if the cut is too deep, then we're essentially signaling that we're abandoning the streetcar system in its entirety.

And so I would be interested in Council Central staff's analysis of where that tipping point might be.

And that might not be a very easy analysis, but Calvin, I have a huge amount of confidence in your ability to shepherd us through that analysis.

But that's sort of what I'm considering is sort of when we start digging into the frequency and hours of service In this particular space, I'm a little worried that we're going to, particularly on two lines that have already been built and that are existing infrastructure in our city, I worry about whether we're setting them up for future failure and not being able to recover the level of service and and frequency in the sort of outward years.

And of course, we don't know what 2021 will bring to us in terms of the safe start order that the governor is looking at and has looked at and what, you know, our employers, downtown employers are gonna do in terms of an entire 12 months of planning related to telework or a hybrid of telework and on-site.

I mean, I just think there's so many variables there that I just want to make sure that we are being careful about any further proposed reductions that would impact frequency and hours of service and the long-term viability of transit infrastructure that has been built and that we've invested millions of dollars in to help keep it successful.

So I just want put a plug in and a request for some further analysis on that point.

Absolutely.

And I think council member, you're absolutely right that we're all unsure what 2021 will bring and what that means for transit in general around the region.

The proposal from the executive is a 10% reduction that is really one time.

It really is just sort of a continuation of our COVID response piece.

I think the option in front of you is whether there is additional opportunity there.

I would recommend that any redirection of funding be considered one time and not for any ongoing use for exactly that reason, because we don't know what the long term forecast for streetcar ridership will be.

As a follow-up to that particular point, there is always the possibility of council looking at the question of frequency and hours of service either or in the 2021 supplemental budget process.

We're not restricted from receiving additional information as 2021 evolves and capturing additional savings based on ridership data and teleworking or on-site trends that we're beginning to see.

Is that fair to say?

That's correct.

Some of that could be done administratively.

The budget sort of lists that maximum that the executive can spend for this.

So additional cost savings could be done even without budget action in the future.

may be warranted depending on how SDOT operates the system.

So they can always spend less, but they can't spend more.

Got it.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Thank you, Kelvin.

And thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you, Council President.

Any additional questions on this item number eight?

Cal, one question that I have for us.

Actually, it's twofold.

One, is there any federal penalty for the city of Seattle not moving forward with the streetcar?

As we know, our congressional members advocated very hard to make sure that we got the millions of dollars we needed.

Do we have to pay any of that back or is there any sort of penalty associated with not moving forward on the streetcar downtown?

So I have this question outstanding to identify if we have any liability for any of the money that we have My understanding is we have not received money or this federal money for the Center City Streetcar Project, but there have been some expenses that had been spent in anticipation of that funding.

So I'm still checking to make sure that there are no outstanding liabilities.

Earlier this summer when we did the 2020 rebalancing, council redirected the, the money that was set aside for this project.

It was $9 million of Mercer Mega Block proceeds.

A million of it had already been spent.

Eight million of it was directed to other transportation priorities.

At this time, I don't believe there's any remaining liability, but I'm still checking that with the executive.

Thank you.

And I think that's an important clarification as well to to put into context with the second part of the chart that you offered on page one of your memo and slide number two in today's presentation, because it looks, at first glance, if you just look at the streetcar line item, it looks as if there's just a minor reduction, 0.6%, but we need to take that into context of what else has happened this year, and the overall reductions that you highlight in your memo is very helpful.

I remain concerned about us not moving forward with the connector.

And I understand as well, though, that we are in tough times and we're making really tough decisions about whether or not people have the services they need for basic life necessities, food and housing and other services.

So I fully get that.

But I just want to make sure that if there is any penalty or any issues that we need to address, given that the federal government has allocated funding and we'd be on spending that, that's helpful to know.

Okay.

Let's move on.

Last item on your sheet here.

Last item is the waterfront.

And my colleague, Aaron Carnegie, will be covering that item.

I'm just checking that I'm visible and audible.

You are fantastic.

Yeah, America Carnegie work for you all the central staff.

Just wanted to take a moment to note that the proposed delays spending on the waterfront to out years, but maintains that project schedule completion in 2024 and the overall spending.

There is some additional money coming from washed out.

for the Marion Street Bridge project, that's about $500,000 in, it's actually $500,000 in 2021, and a total of 8.5 million over the course of that project for the next few years, so there's an add there.

That's reimbursable dollars from WSDOT.

It also adds a new project, a maintenance project, and that is to maintain the new waterfront project assets, the new transportation infrastructure that's being built.

Next year, that's $100,000, and it increases in the out years.

I don't have any issues to flag here for you, but I just wanted to provide context.

And that rounds out the slide for me, but I'm happy to take questions.

All right.

Council colleagues, any questions on this?

We're on page 11 of the memo.

Okay, I am not seeing any questions.

Thank you, Eric, for joining us.

Of course, thank you.

Now we are into budget legislation, and then we're going to go to Council Members Form A's.

So I'm hoping to get to Council Members Form A's by noon so that we have a full hour to discuss those, Calvin.

Do you think that that is possible?

Yes, I think we can move through these fairly quickly.

So there are four pieces of budget legislation related to SDOT.

The first item is related to the parking enforcement officers.

There are some code amendments that have been proposed in this legislation to provide clear authority for the parking enforcement officers to direct traffic outside of Seattle Police Department as special police officers.

And later on, Council Member Herbold has an item that is related to this.

Next slide, please.

The second piece is related to categorical spending limits for the Move Seattle levy.

The Move Seattle levy established three sort of groups of programs, safe routes, congestion relief, and maintenance repair programs, and required a certain amount of levy spending between those different portfolios.

Because we have had the $60 million reduction in total revenues available for the Move Seattle program, to try to keep the programs moving forward, it has changed the amount of levy funding that needs to be spent in each one of these categories.

So that is a requirement of the Move Seattle levy.

It can be changed by three quarters vote of the council and the Move Seattle Oversight Committee needs to be heard in terms of their recommendations on this proposal as well.

And so that is included in their letter to you.

And thanks to Councilmember Peterson, who circulated the letter to all of our offices, 1126 today, or 1123. Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Next slide, please.

Also related to Move Seattle is the minimum general fund requirement.

So the Move Seattle levy does require that a minimum of $40 million, which is escalated for inflation of general fund, be allocated to SDOT in order to continue to collect levy funding.

And you can suspend this by a council ordinance with the finding that financial or economic conditions prohibit us from doing so.

The escalation would be about $45 million.

If you take out the parking enforcement officers, which is, of course, general funded, you would have about $42.8 million of general fund still in SDOT's budget.

So the proposed legislation in front of you acknowledges that this PEO transfer was not a consideration when the voters approved Move Seattle.

So even though we technically meet the threshold, it's only due to that function.

And so this would then authorize suspending the minimum general fund requirement Uh, remind you also that you took a similar action earlier this summer, uh, for 2020.

Great.

I see no questions on this item.

Okay.

The next item is our last piece of budget legislation.

It would authorize a $25 million inter fund loan from the housing incentive fund.

Uh, this loan would be short term.

It would be repaid by December 31st, 2024. And this loan, um, Unlike some other loans, which are often for specific revenue sources or for specific purposes, this supports SDOT's general operations and is used to balance their budget reductions over the next four years.

And we have confirmed that the Housing Incentive Fund has sufficient resources to cover the loan.

Oh, Council Member Peterson, I'll call on you in just a second.

I just want to provide a quick update.

I understand that The city's budget office has heard some of our concerns about using the office of housing funding, even though there is sufficient funding and there are many projects in the pipeline are able to leverage additional funding by recognizing that there's.

We have a lot of concerns about future dollars coming our way and we don't want to put at risk or in jeopardy any of those housing efforts.

I understand that the CBO is currently contemplating a different fund source for that inner fund loan.

Do you have any updates on that?

that they heard about the OH revenue stream.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I just wanted to note that on page two of the letter we received from the Move Seattle Levy Oversight Committee, they do support using an inter-fund loan to help fill the gap, so to speak, of the budget shortfalls for the transportation project.

the oversight committee does support the use of inter-fund loans and also the bond financing as well.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Other questions on this item?

Calvin, I think we got through it all.

Now to the really fun part.

All right.

We know we have many Form A's that were corresponding with some of the conversation we had.

And some council members have also identified other areas of interest.

So we will walk through those quickly.

And we have over an hour.

So I think we have plenty of time.

But again, please keep your comments relatively brief.

And we want to make sure that folks still have time for questions.

Please go ahead.

Sure.

And I will do a very brief introduction and then hand it over to the council member who sponsors the proposal to speak to it.

Item number one is from Council Member Herbold and it would reprioritize spending in SDOT's capital program to reserve funding for the Foxbury Boulevard project.

This was a project that was included in the Move Seattle Levy, but has been delayed by the Sound Transit Light Rail project.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much as Calvin mentioned full funding for this project was included in the move Seattle lobby passed by the voters in 2016 100% design was reached in fall of 2017. So I'm just asking my colleagues to sit with that for a second.

Full funding for this entire project was included in the MOVE levy.

That is an exceptional promise to the constituents in this community, and it's a testament to the need for the work.

After passage of the levy, worked with the community and spent the funds necessary to reach full design, 100% design.

We delayed with community begrudging acceptance and some other folks in the community full-heartedly supporting.

We delayed implementation of that project.

I supported that decision.

And the reason why we hit pause was because the project overlaps with one of the options under consideration for Sound Transit's light rail project.

So the decision was made to delay implementation until completion of Sound Transit's EIS process, expected to be completed in 2022. timing for the 2020 to 2025 CIP listing was not practical due to potential conflict with potential alignment for the Sound Transit Light Rail.

And I think it's really important to amend the CIP to add funding back in for 2023 and 2024. I just want to, as recently as November 1st, 2019, SDOT made a strong commitment about what the delay on the implementation of the project meant and what it doesn't mean.

They made the commitment, and again, this was a commitment that SDOT made to the community to get their agreement in principle to delay implementation of the project.

And so it's I think a really, really critically important that we recognize the role that these kinds of commitments play in getting community support for Voter approved levies.

So, at that point, in November, twenty, nineteen, as I said, we remain committed to the goals of the font Leroy Boulevard project.

If sound transit, slight rail design for West Seattle does not impact the way we will move forward with the full project as designed.

If Sound Transit's design impacts Fauntleroy Way, we will work with Sound Transit to implement streetscape improvements on Fauntleroy Way that align with the goals of the Fauntleroy Boulevard project.

So again, my proposal is to amend the CIP to add funding back in 2023 and 2024. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I have a quick question on this one.

When could SDOT realistically be expected to spend the reserve dollars?

Do we know the answer to that?

The reason why I'm proposing adding it in for 2023 is because we are expecting a sound transit EIS decision to be completed in 2022.

Okay, great.

I appreciate that.

I don't see any other questions on this.

Thank you for that overview on the historical context.

Okay, number two.

Item number two is also from Council Member Herbold.

This would redirect funding in SDOT to prioritize additional sidewalk maintenance.

In 2019, Council passed a resolution which asked for policy options for sidewalk maintenance, and in response, SDOT recommended a five-year shim bevel plan that would require an additional three to four million dollars per year.

This proposal does not have an amount yet determined.

Let's see here.

I'm off mute.

I don't have a whole lot to add.

I appreciate Calvin's description.

The recommendations coming out of SDOT were specifically in response to a council-initiated request through Resolution 31908. SDOT completed the report with the Evans School, and this is the first recommendation for addressing the backlog in maintenance.

the amount of funding for the project is to be determined.

Those are neither one of those questions are answered in this particular format.

Okay, thank you so much.

Next item number three is also Council Member Herbold.

This would add some reporting requests or requirements through either a proviso or a slide.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So this again, this is a placeholder for reporting on the West Seattle Bridge work and reconnect West Seattle program, reconnect West Seattle program for everybody's understanding is a program that is intended to fund capital improvements.

in communities most impacted by detour routes with a specific equity focus on particular neighborhoods.

Originally, we had heard from the mayor that there was going to be a preferred alternative announced tomorrow.

The intent was to find out more about that and help the knowledge of that preferred alternative to align with more detail in this form A for future form B.

The cost benefit analysis release was delayed.

Again, we were expecting to potentially get that last Friday.

So we're going to hopefully have some additional time to work with Calvin to allow for more detail on this particular item.

And hopefully we'll also hear from the West Seattle Community Task Force with their ability to digest the cost benefit analysis.

And that might also to be useful for us in developing a future version.

The final, realistically, because there's all this new information coming out, the final version with all the details that we intend for future reporting might need to be in the form C.

Just giving you a heads up on that.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Are there any comments or questions?

Okay, I see none.

Thanks also for sharing your survey data.

I did see it highlighted on local TV news.

Congratulations on such a high amount of participation in that survey.

Number four was previewed in Cal's presentation already, so highly anticipated.

Number four, let's get to it.

Number four is from Council Member Herbold as well.

It is a proposal that may address changes in the proposed Park Enforcement Officer legislation and the budget proposal It could include consolidating those positions and responsibilities in a separate office together with the Emergency Communications Center.

Thank you.

I just want to flag also that the broader proposal is not only related to where the PEOs are transferred, but also to rename the the new department from what is currently proposed to be the Seattle Emergency Communication Center to a new Seattle Community Safety and Communication Center.

This is my efforts to follow up on the PEO's request that they be transferred into this new department rather than being transferred into Seattle.

into SDOT.

The Seattle PEO Guild has proposed a number of activities that they could take on after negotiations and consultation with SPOG.

Some of those responsibilities include red light camera enforcement, school zone enforcement, response to non-injury collisions, minor thefts, car break-ins, to take the report when those break-ins happen and forward the report to SPD.

Responding to reports of abandoned vehicles or RVs with people living in them.

PEOs explained that they could inform and assist community members with available resources.

And they already do work collaboratively with Seattle Public Utilities.

historically with NAB team system navigators and field coordinators and civilian agencies within the RV remediation program.

They also, the PEOs also are interested in taking on work related to to staffing events, flagging, particularly as it relates to flagging special events, thus reducing the overtime budget of the Seattle Police Department.

I just want to also flag that some of these changes might might necessitate making some amendments to the budget legislation as described by Calvin earlier.

I would like to further analyze that legislation to see what changes might need to be made.

to ensure that PEOs have the authority to direct and manage traffic at special events.

And we might need to, again, look at other elements of the legislation that might result in needing to we're still waiting to hear back.

Just interested to learn more about what their thinking is for transferring the unit to SDOT and the work that they've done to facilitate that transfer.

We put that question in back on the 12th and we haven't heard back yet.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Peterson, did you have a question on this one?

Oops, sorry.

I saw you off mute.

I thought maybe that was the signal for wanting a question, but perhaps it was not.

Okay, no question from you.

Any other council members have questions or comments on this one?

I do Madam Chair, just, oh sorry, just briefly.

I really want to thank Council Member Herbold for bringing this forward and just want to signal my interest in working on this.

I do have questions.

I don't know if they would be best addressed by central staff or the sponsor.

But I wonder what the best avenue would be fully acknowledging that it's going to require bargaining on scope of work for some of the things that were included in the letter that we received from the parking enforcement officer union on new duties that they could assume, that they could assume regardless of where this unit lands.

So if this unit is in Estad, this unit is in the new department, no matter where they are, I mean, they could still do this.

And I also just want to flag for the general public that there are a lot of, because we've been talking a lot about non-criminal calls, but we should acknowledge that there are a lot of criminal enforcement aspects other city employees do beyond sworn officers for hire vehicle.

Enforcement can sometimes be criminal that's investigated by finance and administrative services by non sworn personnel Retail theft is done through the retail theft program, which is mostly civilian And privately employed loss prevention officers So I'd be really interested in looking at what the best vehicle would be to queue up expanding to be in the entire universe of that were outlined in that letter, and to start that process now, knowing that that was estimated in a public OLA piece as potentially representing 20% of the current sworn officer workload that could be taken on by this new service, which is 60% BIPOC, 50% women, fluent in several languages, beyond speaking exclusively English or mostly English speaking workforce.

So very interested in queuing that up, be it through this vehicle or something else.

And so I just wanna throw that out there as a question and see if that we might be able to do that in the scope of this proposal or if there'd be a more appropriate place to put.

Colin, do you have thoughts about that?

I think that we'll have to get into the issues and see how much can be done on the timeline that the budget requires, but it may be something that some items can be handled rather easily and others we might have to deal with bargaining or other issues and come back with separate legislation.

But I'm afraid I just don't know enough about what's involved to give you a good understanding at this time.

But I think it would be possible to follow up with whatever action occurs in this budget for where these officers, police department enforcement officers go with separate legislation that might address some of these other duties as assigned.

Great, thank you, Council Member.

Council Member Herbold.

Yeah, I just want to flag that I think there are a couple separate issues, the legislative issues that I've keyed up as having a strong interest in addressing in the legislation, the budget legislation that's before us.

It's about granting the authority of PEOs to do some of this work with the total understanding that being able to act on that authority would be subject to bargaining.

So I think those are two separate issues and it's not unusual for the council to move forward with a preferred policy approach before the bargaining is complete.

Excellent.

And I just signaling my interest, I would love to work with you on that.

Uh, this, this is going to be, uh, going to be a big way forward, I think.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

Council Member Harbold.

Item number five, please.

Item number five is sponsored by Council Member Lewis and Council Member Strauss.

It would repurchase capital spending to restore $777,000 for the Thomas Street redesign project.

Previously, council had approved funding for this project in anticipation of the transportation network company tax, and those proceeds have not materialized in 2020.

Council Member Strauss, would you like to speak to this?

Absolutely, and thank you and Councilmember Lewis will likely want to speak to this as well.

This, as Calvin said, would restore the $770,000 for the Thomas Creek Redesign Project As staff to Council Member Bagshaw, I work to secure this funding to support a community-led process to redesign Thomas Street because it's an important connection to the Seattle Center and South Lake Union neighborhood.

As in the summer rebalancing package, I believe it is important that we maintain this funding and the line item to ensure that the project can continue.

I understand that there may be other funding available that has not yet materialized, and that's why it's important to keep this as a line item.

This project in particular extends Seattle Center into South Lake Union.

It connects the skate park.

It has walking and biking that extends the Seattle Center campus into South Lake Union and connections to buses that run from Bothell to Burien.

This will become an important front door for our cultural center and our central park, which is Seattle Center.

And I just want to note that when the street design occurred originally in 2013, Our city had a very different understanding of what pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure is and needs.

At that point, the pedestrian-focused street had a standard sidewalk width, plastic bollards for a bike lane, and a full two-way street.

And I just bring this up because when the SR-99 closed, Harrison was designed as the street for transit, John, the street for cars, and Thomas Street, the street for pedestrians.

These updates are needed.

Hey, can I bring in the coffee?

Oh, hi.

Thank you.

finish up just to say that these updates are needed to bring our pedestrian street up to up to what our pedestrian our standards for pedestrian streets are today.

We have a tight time frame to make these improvements and this connects our Seattle center to our region.

And we need to protect this line item.

Thank you chair.

Thank you councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Lewis anything to add to this item?

I would just say that this is a very critical piece of infrastructure in District 7 and one of the city's fastest growing neighborhoods.

I want to make sure that we're maintaining pedestrian and bike infrastructure and protecting it and expanding it even in these difficult times.

I appreciate the support of Councilmember Strauss and the work that Councilmember Baxhaw and Councilmember Strauss did to to keep this project on track.

And, you know, it is an essential component of the improvements that we are building in anticipation of having a fully souped up and restored Climate Pledge Arena at Seattle Center.

And this is an intimate part of the transportation planning.

for the Seattle Center campus, looking forward to that arena opening.

So continue to be a big supporter of this and want to make sure that we keep moving along.

Any questions, colleagues?

I'm not seeing any.

Item number six.

It is from Council Member Lewis.

This proposal would restore funding for the Market to MOHAI project, $396,000.

Similar to the last item, this funding had anticipated using the Transportation Network Company Tax, which has not materialized.

Great.

Council Member Lewis and Strauss, you are up again.

Yes, thank you, Madam Chair.

I mean, as we look forward to recovering from the COVID recession and rebuilding our local economy and rebuilding our tourism, it's going to be important to maintain a lot of these infrastructure investments to connect a lot of the critical pedestrian corridors between Mohai and the downtown core.

There's been considerable investment over the last decade in expanding and building up the area around Mohai and building out Mohai in its new location in the South Lake Union neighborhood.

And making sure that we're encouraging folks to walk and congregate in a lot of our great iconic places.

cultural and civic institutions in Pioneer Square and in South Lake Union.

This is a critical connection to make sure that we continue to put resources behind emphasizing pedestrian improvements and the synergy that that has with a lot of our collaboration with partners in our cultural and business partners in building out these opportunities in the core of the city.

So I want to make sure that we maintain this.

And again, I want to thank Council Member Strauss for his work and Council Member Bagshaw for her work in moving this forward and make sure that we keep it on.

Any additional comments?

Okay, let's move on.

Number seven is also from Council Member Lewis.

It would repurchase capital spending to fund a new project, development of a new project for a shoreline bicycle and pedestrian path near the southern edge of Magnolia Park.

At the time that this proposal was put forth, it contemplated a million dollars in 2021 with future funding to be determined.

Council Member Lewis.

Yeah, so I can't speak to the price tag and this is something still being worked out.

I think a million dollars for something for this project would be a pretty heavy lift given the circumstances that we're facing right now.

But I do want to make sure that we are having some kind of coordinated effort in partnering with folks who have been organizing to put in a bike and pedestrian connection Um, that is on would be on city land in this area near the, the marina near Smith cove in Magnolia.

This connection would hitch up.

a stretch of road that leads to Magnolia Village to the broader interbay bike network.

It would help facilitate bike and pedestrian connections from Magnolia to the rest of the city and increase the multimodal opportunities for people to commute from Magnolia that do not involve single occupancy vehicles.

This might be a better candidate for sort of a statement of legislative intent for a little bit more collaboration between SDOT and parks in looking into this corridor in collaboration with a citizen group in Magnolia that has been working, I believe, with the Department of Neighborhoods on this for some time in terms of looking at the feasibility, but would like to formalize that process a little more with an eye toward queuing this up for a future bike and pedestrian corridor that we could realize without the need to acquire land since it would be on existing property that is city-owned but currently not being utilized.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

I don't see any questions on this item.

Thank you for also your indication that this might be a possible slide material.

Slide material.

Okay, next item.

Next item is item number eight.

It's also from Council Member Lewis.

It would reprioritize funding to provide for traffic calming improvements to Florentia Street.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So I have a couple of projects that will be coming up that are related to things people in my district have been organizing around all year with my office and that my office has been working with SDOT on to try to figure out some kind of long-term solution to particular materials that have posed, that have been problematic, shall I say, in terms of chronic speeding and a lack of traffic calming interventions.

Florentia in North Queen Anne is a three-quarters of a mile arterial.

It stretches from Nickerson to First Avenue West, kind of around the SPU campus.

This particular arterial has been problematic for a number of reasons.

A lot of folks...

Sorry, Council Member Lewis, could you hold for one second?

Can we mute the background noise from the tech team?

for Elizabeth's line.

Thank you very much.

Okay, Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So a lot of folks speed through from First Avenue West to Nickerson.

There's been several collisions on this stretch.

A lot of people, as a quasi-residential arterial, a lot of people live directly on it, and it has been Very problematic.

There's also a lot of people who bike down Florentia to connect to the bike path network that runs along the ship canal on either side.

So it's posed a hazard to bikers and pedestrians as well.

It's an area where potentially putting in speed bumps and other traffic calming interventions could have a big difference.

It's a small arterial that is not currently served by mass transit, so there wouldn't be a potential issue in slowing down a Metro bus or what have you that I know is a concern for SDOT on certain arterials.

would like to certainly pursue.

And this could be combined with some other measures to generally restore funds that provide these kinds of traffic calming interventions, but wanted to flag this area in particular, given the considerable constituent concern and demand.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Herbold, please.

Thanks.

This is a question for Calvin.

Whenever I've reached out to SDOT on behalf of constituents in my district about projects like this, I've always been pointed to programs like Your Voice, Your Choice.

Do you know whether or not funding for SDOT-related projects is steady for 2021?

Or should I direct that question to another central staffer?

I can certainly follow up for you to try to get a better sense.

Some of these projects are could be eligible for your voice, your choice, but there are other programmatic spending within the department that may address these types of issues as well.

So there may be several programs that that could be eligible for different kinds of traffic calming.

But I want to do a little more research to see how the spending levels differ from what had been anticipated last year, the specific with your voice, your choice, which we'll get to in just a moment.

One of the issues there is it has tended to be, I believe, a three-year grant cycle.

So the funding, you can't necessarily look from year-to-year changes to see kind of what that funding picture looks like because it's intended to get the ideas vetted, then developed, and then constructed over a period of time.

Yeah, I would just also want to flag that as it relates to projects like this, as Calvin says, there is your voice, your choice, but there are other pots of funding within SDOT for these kinds of traffic calming projects.

sort of has an approach that they use for how they prioritize projects.

Collision history is a big flag for them.

Equity issues are also something that they consider.

And I just would not want an action that we would take through the budget process to sort of circumvent I think it is important to be clear on what we are talking about.

The approach that SDOT uses for equitable, fair distribution of finite public resources that the entire city needs.

How does this fit with our RSJI principles?

And then number two is how does this fit in with priorities that have already been identified through things like the Move Seattle Levy and other projects where we know that there's a prioritization system that's been pretty robust.

So I just want to flag that for all of the items that we're looking at.

Those are some of the questions I'll be asking.

Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the next one.

Item number nine.

Item number five is from Council Member Lewis.

It is about the Your Voice, Your Choice program, and it anticipates restoring funding.

At the time the proposal was submitted, it proposed 279,000 would be reprioritized for this program.

I believe that looking at the 2021 funding from last year's anticipated budget, the program is down by about $1 million.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

So related to the comments Council Member Herbold and Madam Chair just made, you know, my intent in flagging some of these projects is certainly to approach them within the context of some of the existing mechanisms SDOT has to address them, which is why, in addition to just kind of flagging these particular projects, I am seeking to restore funding to Your Voice, Your Choice.

I think this...

You know, although we are seeing a considerable slowdown in the economy from COVID, there's a massive backlog of work all over the city that needs to be done to realize Vision Zero, to realize a lot of these kinds of pedestrian and traffic calming kinds of projects.

And I would want to make sure that even in these difficult times, we are allowing for these neighborhood based mechanisms of getting those projects resolved to continue to be funded.

So that's why I brought this forward.

It's one of the things I hear I am concerned about runaway traffic.

And I want to make sure just given that that is clearly been flagged by so many people this year that it is something that stays a priority.

Item number 10 is from Council Member Lewis.

It would reserve funding for sidewalk repair on West McGraw Street.

Proposal is for $10,000.

Thank you, Calvin.

Council Member Lewis.

Similarly, you know, my preference would be to address this through programs like your voice, your choice.

I did flag a couple of these projects that have been the result of considerable community organizing in my district just to, you know, plan a flag on them and move forward on trying to get them addressed.

I think I'll rest on my previous comments, but this sidewalk in particular has posed a hazard to the business district in this particular part of Magnolia.

There have been injuries from people tripping and falling down as a result of this poorly maintained sidewalk.

That is not a unique story around the city and would just like to make sure that projects like this, this one and projects similarly situated can continue to be addressed as an essential city infrastructure service.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

And I have a sidewalk repair program form B that I would love to have your support for.

I was going to say, I am totally on board with that.

Because any way to address this, definitely on board.

This is really important and appreciate your leadership on that.

And I will work with you on that resolution.

Look at this, making progress already.

Thank you both.

Let's go to number 11.

And number 11 is I think another one of these items that customer who spoke about it would reprioritize funding for traffic calming improvements to 10th Avenue West.

I old street Councilmember Lewis, let's talk about this.

Yeah, I have improvements on all the streets that Teresa Muscatia used to live on.

This is great.

So this has been another central area where there's been a lot of organizing in the district.

I've had a constituent who has had a vehicle flip over on his lawn.

because of speeding in this arterial.

It is something that has resolutely been identified as an issue by SDOT as well.

So this would be in the queue certainly for funds if Your Voice, Your Choice or similar programs had funding restored.

I believe that this is the one that has the firmest scoring on about what we would expect it to cost.

So, you know, any way we address it, I'm certainly open to it.

Just flagging that this is another priority, another corridor that is a big priority and one that we'd like to see addressed.

Thank you so much.

We lost our slideshow presentation, but for folks who are following along, we are on page 15 of the memo.

We are on item number 10 right now, and here comes our slideshow back.

Thank you so much.

But this is I'm using my hey, this works.

We know.

We know you put a lot of work in both the presentation and the memo, so this might be easier to see what's coming up anyway.

So thank you very much coming.

So that was covering number 11, which was 10th Avenue West.

So item number 12. Sorry, item number 12 for Council Member Peterson would add funding for bridge maintenance.

It would add $24 million that would achieve the spending levels that were identified by the city auditor's 2020 report on bridge maintenance.

And the idea for this proposal is to reprioritize resources that are not currently in SDOT's proposed budget.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you, Calvin.

So as we know, the recent independent audit of bridges across Seattle conducted by our city auditor concluded that city government has been substantially under-investing in the maintenance of our bridges.

The result of underfunding our bridge infrastructure increases the risk of harm and disruption.

Failing to invest at adequate levels today means taxpayers might have to bear an even larger replacement cost later.

pay now or pay more later.

So while SDOT believes lack of maintenance was not the reason for the failure of the West Seattle Bridge, the sudden closure of that bridge should be a wake-up call.

This budget action would increase SDOT's budget to provide the bare minimum of maintenance funding for 2021, which would be up to $24 million.

$24 million is the 1% of the 1% to 3% recommended of bridge value for funding maintenance.

and happy to answer any questions about this.

I do want to make a quick comment about everybody else's ads.

I just want to, I want to commend my colleagues for, you know, looking out for their districts and proposing things that they have heard their districts need.

I think that's, you know, really appropriate.

I know we've got shortages here on funding but I just wanted to to commend my colleagues for looking out for their districts when it comes to this funding.

This particular issue, bridges, would be citywide, impact multiple districts.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

And I think folks appreciate the audit that was conducted earlier this year, too, that provides some detail to where the need is.

Are there questions on this?

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

More of a statement than a question.

I just want to In recognition of the audit, a flag, the understanding that I think we all share that the lack of infrastructure investment is a national problem.

It's why we have a $1.5 trillion infrastructure bill that is stuck in the Senate right now for bridges.

Nationally, there's a $123 billion backlog in bridge rehabilitation and maintenance needs.

But the fact that we desperately need help from the federal government and should receive help from the federal government to meet these needs is not a reason for the city to not work to do more to respond to city auditor recommendations that I take very seriously to increase the funding that the city provides to achieve these recommended spending levels.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I also have a question.

Given the large price tag imposed on this item here, are there areas identified to cut from?

And given what we're already looking at in terms of cuts for mobility-related projects for safe streets, for people walking and biking in transit, and we know that it is mostly essential workers at this point who are being impacted by these current cuts, Can you talk a little bit more about where the slated reductions would come from for a mostly car-centric proposal here?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for that question.

So it could come from multiple sources.

We're still awaiting the revenue forecast update from the executive.

We still have to talk about the vehicle license fee issue.

And I would say buses and bikes use bridges too, pedestrians, some of them.

So I think bridges help all modes of transportation.

We, because of the city auditor's report, I just want to be mindful of the call to action that that has.

And so really just putting on the table here that this is an important infrastructure issue for the city and the region.

And if we are able to find additional dollars, we'd want to have that considered as well for bridges.

Thank you so much.

Okay, let's move on to the next item.

At number 13 is from Council Member Gonzalez.

It would reprioritize funding for the Capitol Hill Public Life Study.

This would restore $150,000 that Council had previously authorized, but was anticipated using Transportation Network Company tax proceeds.

Council President, any additional comments on this?

This very quickly.

This item, as Calvin just mentioned, would advance funding support for a public life study that was approved as part of last year's budget.

This was a council identified priority last year that has been proposed to be cut by the mayor.

And as noted by Calvin, the identified funding source was originally proposed to be the TNC revenue, which.

has not yet materialized.

I continue to believe that the study is important as we'll be able to learn from the densest neighborhood about how we can apply lessons learned there in this study to make every neighborhood multimodal, climate resilient, and vibrant.

And I believe that this effort is even more important now as the city and neighborhood leaders continue to build a strategy for recovery post COVID.

I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Council President.

Any additional questions?

Okay, I'm seeing none.

Let's go to item 14.

Item 14 is from Council Member Morales.

It would reprioritize funding for the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

The proposed CIP does not include funding for this project.

Last year, but it does identify an unsecured funding need of 1.8 million.

The amount of funding for this project proposal is not determined.

Okay, Council Member Morales, good to see you.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thanks, so as you all know, Georgetown and South Park are connected by the Duwamish River, so there's a shared history, a shared sense of needs, particularly environmental concerns, air and water and noise quality there.

So for more than 20 years, people living and working in both communities have called for safe, comfortable routes for people who are walking, biking, and rolling between the two areas.

This funding would support a critical connection between the neighborhoods and especially now with the West Seattle Bridge out, there's a lot of traffic being diverted through the neighborhoods.

So they are in need of better infrastructure to mitigate the increased traffic there and are particularly interested in ways to get out of their cars and find other ways to move between their neighborhoods and between right now, especially between different parts of town.

Okay, Council Colleagues, questions on this one?

Council Member Herhold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Thank you to Council Member Morales for raising this issue.

And Calvin, you may have already, you may have addressed this, I just missed it.

We took action on this last year.

Can you remind me what action we took last year and what the source of funding was.

Um, I'm afraid I just did not recall at this, at this moment, but I, I'll be happy to get back to you with that information.

Okay.

Um, yeah, I, I thought I, um, remembered that this was one of the, um, The, uh, projects that the council prioritized, um, through the budget process.

I, my memory may be faulty, I seem to recall it coming up in the context of the Mercer mega block proceeds from a couple years ago, and then it has been on the how much.

I don't recall if it was fully funded in that proposal.

I'll have to go back and look.

There were a number of bike projects that had been talked about over the last couple of years.

And so I'm afraid I just don't recall if it was fully funded in any of those or if it was sort of development funding that was approved at the time.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I would appreciate learning more.

Also, as relates to Reconnect West Seattle.

There are a number of projects that SDOT has already committed to as part of Reconnect West Seattle.

And again, Reconnect West Seattle is SDOT's efforts to focus capital dollars in communities that are not only most impacted by the traffic detour routes associated with the closure of the bridge, but most impacted specifically with an equity focus.

So looking at communities that have historically been underinvested in.

So I know that they've already announced sort of the phase one projects for funding under ReConnect West Seattle.

It would be helpful to understand whether or not this is because I just I know that.

for the ReConnect West Seattle process, SDOT went out and they surveyed the public about what the high priority projects are.

And I know this is a very high priority project.

So I'm just wondering, has this been tagged by SDOT as a phase two project?

Because I seem to recall that it was, and if it was tagged as a phase two project, I'm just wondering why there's, again, no funds in the CIP for it.

if it was to be funded by the West Seattle, ReConnect West Seattle project, it would be in the West Seattle CIP project page.

So it could be that the funding is in a different category and I'll have to follow up and see.

I hope it is.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

We can, three of us can have a little confab.

Absolutely.

Thank you, Council Member Raz.

I really support this effort.

Thanks for bringing it forward.

Thank you all for that summary.

Allie, did you have anything else to add to this?

I had it sort of going back a few minutes in time, but it's specifically related to the actions taken in last year's budget related to the Georgetown to South Park trail.

I don't know the answer to the question of whether or not it was fully funded.

And as Calvin said, he can follow up on that.

But there was a sort of shift in funds from the Mercer mega block to sort of what was intended to spend in future years to spend in 2020 in a proviso imposed on about $10.4 million.

specifically for implementation of bike facilities on Martin Luther King Jr.

Way, Beacon Avenue, and the Georgetown to South Park Trail.

So that was the action taken in last year's adopted budget.

So what happened?

That I do not know.

We will get more information on that.

Thank you for those questions.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Any additional questions?

Okay.

Seeing none, let's move on to item number 15.

Item number 15 is also from Council Member Morales and is another somewhat related issue.

Funding for bicycle connections on East Marginal Way.

I believe this project had, SDOT had previously programmed $400,000 for this project as part of the Backup Master Plan CIP project.

Council Member Morales.

Yeah, I actually, Calvin, I'm hoping you can answer this question.

It's my understanding now from advocates that this is actually fully funded and that we don't need to do a Form B for this.

Can you provide any clarity on that?

I can't at this time, but I'll be happy to track this down and confirm that for you.

OK, thank you.

We can move on.

Next time.

OK.

Any questions on that one?

No?

OK.

Council Member Morales, you are making our lives easier.

We have 15 minutes and just three more items, so we can do this, folks.

Item number 16 would reprioritize funding for sidewalk repair on Rainier Avenue South.

It identifies $1 million for this purpose.

It's Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Um, so as we heard in public comment, um, and as the arts called in, um, we are interested in, um, continuing the work, even if the work on the rapid ride R is, um, Suspended or delayed for now.

Um, the sidewalk improvements that would have gone with it along Rainier are really important.

Um, we have a lot of folks in.

The district who are mobility impaired, lots of folks roll, lots of folks with canes walk in up and down Rainier.

There's a food bank that gets lots of people coming to the area twice a week and very, very busy streets, as you all know.

So we want to make sure that we're continuing the sidewalk improvements along the Route 7. That still needs to happen to serve those who rely on that road for safe access along and across what is the most dangerous road in the city.

So we're looking to restore that in the budget.

Thank you.

Councilmembers, questions on this?

Okay, Councilmember Morales, thank you for flagging this.

I think in alignment with the conversation we've already had about specific areas of the city, I'll continue to look to see how this fits in with the various priorities and prioritization process that SDOT had previously used.

So I look forward to working with you all as we evaluate them through that rubric.

Okay, I'm seeing no additional questions on this.

Just double-checking.

Council Member Sawant, we are up to your...

You did have something?

No, I just said I'm good.

Thank you.

You're good.

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Two more items.

Council Member Sawant, you have the last two, and Calvin will turn it back over to you.

Item number 17 is from Council Member Sawant.

It would direct an additional $117 million of general fund to SDOT to restore cuts in SDOT's budget.

Council Member Swatt, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So, earlier this morning I was talking about the budget cuts to the Parks Department, so this is a similar situation.

And this budget amendment would restore the funding for all the I wanted to quickly provide.

The view of my office important accounting slides of hand that have been done by the mayor's budget to hide the scale of the guts to the department for example.

The $15 million that funds Seattle's parking enforcement was moved in this budget from the police department to SDOT.

And this is an accounting trick.

It does not change the real function of parking enforcement in any way.

It's not what community activists mean when we say defund the police by 50%.

But it also means that in the SDOT budget, it looks like there are $15 million in new funding, but that's not real.

And it does not go to buses and roads.

Also want to highlight that the transportation benefit district package that.

The council approved for the ballot is smaller than the transportation benefit district that is expiring.

And when the council voted over the summer to place this package on the ballot, I had said at that time that I would bring an amendment to the budget committee to restore that lost funding for buses by taxing big business, you know, through progressive revenues, which is very important.

And that is part of what this budget amendment will do.

So including all the cuts to transportation, including the decrease in the, transportation benefit district metro funding, factoring in the accounting tricks around parking enforcement.

The mayor is cutting a staggering $117 million from transportation.

And as we discussed this morning, there is nothing inevitable about these cuts.

They are a policy decision if they do happen, and a policy decision to eliminate bus routes rather than increasing the tax on big business.

And just wanted to also clarify that when we did our estimate calculation, We had not included the CAR TAP funding because at that time, I mean, the courts just recently struck down initiative 976. I just wanted to make a note, but also I would further note that needless to say, as my office has said many times before, we would prefer a progressive big business tax to the regressive measure that's used.

Thank you, Council Member Swat.

Any questions?

Okay, seeing none.

One more item in the memo here.

Calvin.

Last item is also from Council Member Sawant.

It would reprioritize funding for the West Marginal Way Safe Street and Accessibility Improvements Project.

This project was previously identified by Council in the 2020 budget, anticipated using Transportation Network Company tax proceeds.

Member Sawant.

Thank you.

This is the budget amendment to fund the safe street crossing from the Duwamish Longhouse.

Community members have been advocating for this since 2009 when the Duwamish Longhouse opened for a safe way to cross the incredibly busy West Martinal Way.

And it's not an exaggeration to say that people are risking their life actually crossing the street every time they go to or from the Duwamish Longhouse.

Council members may remember that during the public hearing, several people called in to demand these safety improvements, that is crosswalk, traffic signals, pedestrian walkway, bus stop.

It's also one of the solidarity budget demands supported by a large coalition of community and activist organizations.

And for this Form A, my office has proposed a proviso on SDOT funds to prioritize this project.

But if council members prefer using a budget act to pay for it, I'm happy to make that change for the form B.

And after the mayor submitted her budget, which from everything I've seen has not explicitly identified funding for this crossing, we hear that the Department of Transportation has told community members that they would build the safe street crossing this coming year.

So a provisor could be a good way to hold the department and the mayor accountable to actually do it.

But what I would say is that one way or another, any further delay would be unacceptable.

The Duwamish Longhouse is visited by 10,000 people every year.

And to be frank, after 11 years since the Duwamish Longhouse was opened, the fact that there is still no safe street crossing shows a shocking underinvestment and disregard for communities of color.

I'll stop there.

Council members, if I may, this may also fall into that category of portions of it may have been pulled into the ReConnect West Seattle project as well.

So I'll have to do a little bit of research into how that plays out.

That's my problem.

Thank you.

Appreciate Council Member Sawant bringing this forward.

At the September 23rd meeting of the West Seattle Bridge Community Task Force meeting, chaired by former Mayor Greg Nichols, We have been told that this project is fully funded through the funding adopted by the council as part of the west Seattle bridge reconnect west Seattle loan.

I think it would be great for Calvin to confirm this in writing.

I think it's important for us to hear that SDOT is responding to the community need for this project.

≫ Okay.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Councilmember Sawant, please.

≫ As I said before, we've been hearing from the community that SDOT has told them that they would do this, and I appreciate I will be connected with central staff to make sure that this is happening.

I also think, though, that after so much of a delay, a proviso doesn't hurt, and it could be a good way to hold the mayor accountable to actually do it.

Can you say that last sentence again?

I just trailed off a little.

You also think what?

I also think that after an 11-year delay, and given that people are actually facing dangers, literally when they're crossing the road, that a proviso doesn't hurt, and it will help us keep a check on that.

I see.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Council Member Swan.

I don't see additional questions on this.

Calvin, I believe we've reached the end of your presentation.

Do you have anything else to add to this?

Nothing else to add.

I don't know if Ali wants to do any closing remarks for the first morning session.

Thanks, Calvin, Chair Mosqueda.

I don't have anything except congratulations on staying exactly on schedule.

That makes me happy.

Well, that makes me happy too.

And I know other people are happy to have a full hour break.

We are going to pick up again this afternoon in session two.

Again, full afternoon devoted to the Seattle Police Department's budget.

If you haven't had a chance yet to complete your reading on the SPD memo, I encourage you to do so.

It is dense.

It says 29 pages, but I want you to know the last 10 pages of those are really appendices to provide additional illustration to the content of the memo.

So get through those first 19 pages if you haven't already so we can have a robust discussion and hear questions back and forth.

Is there anything else for the good of the order this morning slash early afternoon?

Okay, great.

Thanks.

Hearing none, the Select Budget Committee will be in recess until 2 p.m.

Thanks, council colleagues.

See you in about an hour.

Enjoy your lunch or a break or a walk.

Thank you.

Have a good day.

See you in an hour.