Select Budget Committee Session I - Public Hearing 11/18/21

We're recording.

Good morning, everyone.

Welcome to the Select Budget Committee meeting of the Seattle City Council.

Today is November 18th, 2021. The time is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Peterson.

Here.

Sawant.

Strauss.

Present.

Gonzalez.

Here.

Herbold.

Here.

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Mosqueda.

I want to note that Councilmember Sawant did notify us that she is unable to attend today's meeting.

We do want to send our best wishes to her if she is not feeling well, and if she does join us at any point today, we'll make sure to announce that as she enters.

Today, we will begin with a first part of our agenda, which is dedicated to public comment.

Colleagues, we have dedicated This will allow for our third public hearing during this budget session.

After public comment, we will move into a very short break so the clerks can readjust and take a quick moment before we get into the heart of today's agenda.

The heart of today's agenda includes going through the initial balancing package amendments and we will start with going through groups A which is the initial proposed balancing package.

Group B which is a suggested consent package of various amendments that relate to items that we have discussed We'll be taking an opportunity to take a recess as we always do from 1 p.m.

to 2 p.m.

We will adjourn around 5 p.m.

with the goal of either wrapping up today, and if that's not possible today, we will continue this agenda until tomorrow.

We have an all-day session scheduled for today and tomorrow.

If we do not need the full time tomorrow, we'll make sure to free up the rest of your Friday.

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

hearing no objection, the day's agenda is adopted.

Folks, before we get into public comment, I did want to offer you an opening frame and say thank you.

This is week eight of eight.

It's been a very tough budget session as we've continued to receive news from the revenue forecast about a downward trajectory.

And we have been working around the year on budget items.

This is a particularly grueling budget cycle in the middle of a divisive political climate.

in the middle of an ongoing pandemic.

We've been working to try to make sure that we are making investments into how we create greater stability for working families, for individuals, for our most vulnerable.

Housing stability, economic stability, and true opportunity is what we want to invest in now as we recover from COVID.

One thing that really stands out to me, colleagues, is the ways in which we have identified policies throughout the last two years that really focus on common ground among our colleagues.

Common themes include how we are making sure that we are investing in a city that is a thriving, vibrant place to be, whether you're outside playing or want to live here, grow a family here, retire here, come and study here.

We've invested into making sure that we have created affordable housing and homeless services to make sure that all of those who live here can have access to good quality housing and that those who are currently living in public spaces have the ability to move inside.

Throughout the last year and a half, we've focused on connecting communities, creating thriving communities so we can recover more equitably and invest in our city so that cities continue to be a place that draw folks to come to enjoy our arts and culture to make sure that small entrepreneurs have the opportunity to start up and that all workers have good living wage jobs.

We've invested through your amendments in greater health and safety to make sure that we're looking upstream as we think about public safety investments, and that we are creating a community that has trusted community partners as we think about what public safety truly is.

We're in the middle of a two-year public health crisis.

We are now into our sixth year of a homelessness and housing state of emergency.

We've invested this year in a historic amount of investments for affordable housing, $194 million going into affordable housing, half of which is coming from your support for the Jumpstart Implementation Plan and the Jumpstart Tax Package.

As we see rises in extreme income inequality, our goal here as a council is to make sure that we're investing in a budget that strives for greater equity and stability.

I appreciate all that you've done in the last year and a half.

There's really been about six different budgeting processes that you and I have been through as I've served as your budget chair.

We've dealt with the emergence of COVID by passing jumpstart and our first COVID relief package.

We've provided response and really helped to ward off the lingering effects of a recession.

We've created revenue streams to invest in multiple budget actions that have allowed for greater assistance to working families, to small businesses, to child care providers, to immigrants and refugees, and to make our economy stronger.

We've done this now through multiple budget actions throughout the year, last year's 2021 calendar budget, and today we will be adding the final amendments to the 2022 calendar budget.

I appreciate all of the conversations that we've had over the last two years and the common ground that we've been able to find, again, on housing and homeless services, on connecting communities and creating thriving local economies and making sure that our communities are healthy and safe.

We have faced some difficult decisions, especially with the downturn in the economic revenue forecast.

And while it was suggested last year that we dip into those reserves and scale those down to a mere $3 million, all of you helped to make sure that we had a healthy reserve coming out of last year's budget cycle.

This year, I'm excited to note, as we consider the amendments in front of us today, that we have retained all of the revenue that had been suggested to remain in the revenue stabilization accounts for emergency use if the economy continues to go down.

Not only that, colleagues, as you'll hear from central staff today, we've slightly added to that with some of the final amendments that are being offered today.

I want to thank all of you for the work that you've done in this budget cycle.

We have another two full days in front of us to get through these various amendments.

And as we do, I want to make sure that we thank all of our team at the central staff offices who have been really working out every opportunity to identify any errors, any opportunities to acquire additional funding, whether that's through general fund, whether that's utilizing REIT, or our coronavirus relief funds from the federal government.

We wanna make sure that you also know that there has been an ongoing problem that our city central staff and you as council members have continued to point out when it comes to the need to make sure that our general fund matches the ongoing investments that we are continuing to commit to both as a council and as the mayor's office.

As CBO has recently pointed out and as central staff pointed out a month before this, we need to make sure that we are responding to investing in creating additional revenue and creating various sources of revenue so that we can make sure that our investments that require general fund revenue have stable investments year over year.

You'll soon be receiving a response memo from Director Handy on the ways in which we've corrected, in many cases, for the use of one-time funds that should have been coming from a different source from the mayor's proposed budget.

We have not been able to correct for all of those because there's been many requests to use one-time funds for items that I know all of us would like to see in an ongoing way.

We will be talking a little bit more about the ways in which the statement of legislative intent that I have included that allows for us to remain committed to these one-time investments and seek additional revenue is baked into this budget.

But Director Handy's clarification memo on the ways in which we received a budget from the mayor's office that utilized one-time funds when it should have been coming from a different source will be coming to you.

And I appreciate all the work that central staff has done.

to correct for much of those efforts in this proposed budget in front of you.

Again, thank you to Director Handy, to Ali Panucci, to the entire team at the central staff, which I will name by name before we conclude with the amendments today.

And I'm proud that we've been able to maintain and slightly increase these reserves.

We've freed up tens of millions of dollars in one-time investments.

to make sure that we are recovering from this COVID crisis in a more equitable way.

And we have maintained our commitments to the Jumpstart Progressive Revenue Spend Plan.

Greatly appreciate all of your time today.

And with that, I look forward to hearing from members of the public about the ways in which we will continue to adjust this proposed budget to meet community needs and to make sure that we come out of this discussion with a robust agenda that sets us up for addressing income inequality, creating opportunity, and creating a healthier, safe community for everyone.

Let's begin with hearing from members of the public.

At this point, we are going to move into public comment.

Excuse me, before I do that.

Before I do that, colleagues, I didn't hear.

I need to adjust the agenda at the top of the hour, but I do want to make sure that we recognize that there are two walk-on amendments that will require us to adjust the agenda.

So, Ali, do I understand correctly that there was two amendments that were circulated the night before?

Morning, Chair Mosqueda, Ali Khabchi from Council Central staff.

There are two walk-on amendments that were distributed by the deadline, by 5 p.m.

last night, one sponsored by Councilmember Morales and one sponsored by Councilmember Peterson, I believe you would want to revisit the agenda to amend it to add Council Member Peterson's option.

Council Member Morales' walk-on amendment is actually a substitute option for another item on the agenda.

So that can just be taken care of when we get to that item through a substitute motion.

So you would only- Could you please remind me of the CBA number for Council Member Peterson's agenda?

I would be happy to.

It is CBA SPD 019A1.

I see it right here.

Thank you very much.

Colleagues, I do want to propose that we amend the agenda.

I would like to revisit that before we get into public comment.

In order to put that in front of us, I move that the proposed agenda be amended to add Councilmember Peterson's walk-on amendment, SPD-019A-001.

And that'll be placed after consideration on the corresponding vote in that group.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to amend today's agenda by adding SPD-019A-001 to today's agenda.

Council Member Peterson, we will have the opportunity to address this in full when we get to that item on the agenda, unless there's anything else you'd like to add here.

Okay, thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Apologies for the procedural misstep there.

Colleagues, are there any additional comments on the proposed amended agenda?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the amendment to the agenda?

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Excuse me.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Schramm-Mosquera?

Aye.

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One minute for each speaker to speak.

I will call on three speakers at a time in the order in which they are registered.

If you have not yet registered to speak, you can go ahead and sign up.

We may not be able to get to everyone who signed up for public comment this morning as we do need to get into deliberations on all of the amendments that we just spoke about.

Once I call a speaker's name you will hear you have been unmuted.

That is your prompt to hit star six on your end to unmute your own line.

Please double check that your own phone is not also muted.

Please go ahead and start your speech with your name and then you will hear a chime at the end of your allotted time.

That chime indicates you have 10 seconds left to wrap up your comments.

If you don't get a chance to add your comments today or if you get We look forward to hearing from you.

Appreciate all of the work that you have done throughout this budget cycle to make sure that your voice is being heard.

We appreciate everybody who's called in to make their voices heard.

And we recognize that this is in addition to the town hall meetings that many of you have had.

the community forums, and the opportunities to make sure that folks are offering public comment via emails and calls throughout the last eight weeks as well.

So thanks so much.

We'll start with Howard Gale, Samir Tana, and Peter Fink.

Good morning, Howard.

Please go ahead.

Good morning, Howard Gale.

Over the last three months, we have learned from five investigations published in the South Seattle Emerald and an investigation by KOW that the director of the Office of Police Accountability, whose entire career has been spent defending police and who engaged in professional misconduct as a city attorney, has committed gross malfeasance in investigating police abuse, judging nearly 90% of last year's police abuse cases to be without merit, and clearly violated laws regarding accessing and releasing the medical information of a protester who was nearly killed by police in 2020. The OPA director has found every SPD killing that he investigated to be lawful and proper.

We have learned that the director of the Office of Inspector General has allowed the routine certification of these flawed OPA investigations by a person with a 23-year career as a police officer without even looking at evidence and sometimes without even reviewing the investigations.

We have learned that the director of OIG has encouraged investigators to ignore failures.

into this failed system, you are now planning to put $10.8 million.

This is an epic failure of oversight.

Thank you very much.

Samir, followed by Peter Fink.

Morning.

Morning.

My name is Samir Tana, District 7. My council member is Council Member Lewis, and I'm part of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

To start, I strongly support the solidarity budget and exhibition.

There's so many important points to cover there.

I'll talk about a few given this time.

First, you must vote to maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD and vote to remove the 101 positions the SPD does not intend to fill.

I do not support Councilmember Peterson's and Councilmember Lewis's amendments to return any amount of money to SPD.

Giving SBD money from our emergency fund while there's so many people and so many families struggling so hard from the pandemic and multiple crises is a really big insult to them.

And there's just no explanation or excuse or nuance around this.

Next, you must vote yes on the amendments to ensure programming for the court and city attorneys comes from the existing budget.

Lastly, you must vote yes on the amendment for the $2 million to establish a social housing program.

Seattle can't solve the housing crisis without massively extending non-market housing, and this will kick off that process.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much, Peter, followed by Kate Rubin, Tashir Khurana, and Emily Cunningham.

Good morning, Peter.

Hello.

Thank you, Council Members.

My name is Peter Fink.

I live in the 3rd Council District.

I'm calling today as one of many who will be calling in support of the proponents of the solidarity budget, and you will hear from a lot of people today, and that doesn't speak to our organizing capacity.

It speaks to the fact that the people of Seattle want to ensure that we have a healthy future, that we all have homes to live in, and that we all have a safe planet to live on.

We know that the Seattle Police Department is inconsolable with that goal.

And so that is why I do not, and you will hear from many people today who do not support Council Member Peterson's amendment to add $10.9 million to the Seattle Police Department, nor support his amendment to add 5.3 million for the overtime and other sorts of related budget items.

You will hear from people today who ask you to cut, to stop overfunding the courts and city attorney's office and instead invest in housing and homelessness and $2 million to establish a social housing program here.

Thank you.

Kate followed by Shira.

Good morning.

My name is Kate Rubin.

I'm a renter living in District 2 and I'm the organizing director of the Housing Justice Organization v. Seattle.

One of the many proud endorsers of the Solidarity Budget.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Budget Chair Mosqueda for including the budgetary amendments for an additional $400,000 for tenant services and for $2 million to establish a social housing program.

In order to address the housing crisis we need to massively expand non-market housing with multi-family housing that is held in public ownership rent stabilized and managed by community responsive organizations.

I also vehemently urge you to vote to maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD and vote to remove the 101 positions the SPD doesn't intend to fill.

Getting SPD money from our emergency fund is wildly irresponsible and will only perpetuate further harm to the most vulnerable members of our community who are fighting to survive through overlapping credit lines.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And to share followed by Emily Cunningham.

My name is Tushar Khurana and I live and work in District 2. I'm calling in today to support the Solidarity Budget and demanding that you maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SBD's budget and cut the 101 unfillable SBD positions.

On no account should you give any money to SBD from the City's Rainy Day Fund.

No other department receives funding for 100 positions they can't possibly hope to fill.

Instead of squandering our money on SPD's bloated sign-on bonuses and imaginary positions, I'm demanding that the City Council take some of that divested money and allocate at least $1.5 million for mental and behavioral health for the Duwamish.

It's ludicrous that we can't even spend this paltry amount on the tribe's stolen land this city is built on.

We ought to be giving land-backing things serious reparations to the Duwamish.

So it's kind of preposterous that you all have to come to agreed to the trivial $1.5 million that the Solidarity Project proposed.

Thank you.

Emily, followed by Jordan VanVost.

Good morning, Emily.

My name is Emily Cunningham, and I'm with Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

It's hard to communicate the importance of this historical moment and standing on the right side of history.

The situation is an urgent matter of life and death.

We must divest in systems of harm and invest in our collective well-being and survival.

We must divest from SPD and invest in a Green New Deal.

I support the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD and the removal of 101 positions SPD does not intend to fill.

I demand no hiring or retention bonuses for SPD, but this is just the bare minimum and needs to be much, much more.

I'm terrified of a climate crisis we are living through right now that harms and kills black, brown, and indigenous people disproportionately.

It is only going to accelerate exponentially unless we act and invest in solutions like a Green New Deal.

Right now, our neighbors in Vancouver, BC are completely cut off from the rest of Canada due to unprecedented flooding, the most expensive in Canada's history.

The time is now.

Thank you very much.

Jordan, followed by Peter Condit.

Good morning, Jordan.

Good morning council members.

My name is Jordan Van Vos.

I'm a resident of District 3 speaking today in support of the recommendations of the solidarity budget.

I urge you to vote no on last minute amendments to attempting to undercut council prior commitments to reduce SPD's loaded budget and keep those funds available for investment in BIPOC communities where generations of institutional racism in the form of over-policing and other mechanisms have resulted in deep injustice and harm.

We are in a climate emergency as the latest flooding across the Northwest again makes clear.

We are going to need to pull together as a global community in order to preserve a livable world for future generations.

Solving environmental problems must begin with addressing social and racial justice inequities.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Peter followed by Bill Sampson.

Good morning Peter.

Good morning, this is Peter Condit in Dan Strauss' district.

A little over a week after the police murder of George Floyd, I marched to City Hall.

Hundreds of cops with smooth helmets and shiny riot batons lined up 10 rows deep along our route.

That week and the months that followed felt like war.

The mayor and the cops continue to use violence, gaslighting, fear-mongering, and budget tricks to protect structural racism.

I feel unsafe whenever I see an SBD employee and I want them off our streets.

That's why I keep showing up.

Every dollar that's defunded from SPD is a commitment to nonviolence.

I reject any increase whatsoever to the SPD or to the city attorney's office, including to CSOs.

It is incorrect to label any spending within the criminal legal system as an investment.

They do not provide a valuable return.

They just preserve an equity.

Even the cops don't like their jobs.

Without a bold defund of SPD, the public safety alternatives and upstream investments risk being cut in favor of violent policing during a more pro-cop and white supremacist political cycle.

Thank you.

Bill followed by Derek Bonafalla.

Hi my name is Bill Sampson and I'm in District 4. Thanks for letting me speak today.

I support the solidarity budget in full because I believe the solidarity budget Really, at the core, it's mostly about surviving global warming and the pandemic.

I'd also like to second the concern relating to the South Seattle Emerald articles about SPG and their actions almost a year and a half ago during the summer protests.

I'm very disappointed that there's been basically no accountability and oversight when they were routinely attacking unarmed protesters.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Derek followed by Alice Walker.

Hi my name is Derek.

I'm a renter in Green Lake in District 6. I don't think I'm saying anything controversial when I say that the city is dealing with some crises right now.

When I walk through the park every morning, I see neighbors living in multimillion-dollar homes 100 feet away from other neighbors having to live outside, sheltering from the rain under trees.

We're not doing nearly enough to make sure that the people of this city have safe, affordable places to live.

And in the midst of this housing crisis and this pandemic, draining the city's emergency reserves to grow SPD's already bloated budget is a cruel political stunt, not a policy designed to help the people of the city.

I urge you all, and especially my council member Dan Strauss, to reject the amendments adding money to SPD.

Instead, aggregate 101 unfilled positions from SPD so that we have money for things like social housing that address the actual emergencies facing this city.

Thank you.

Alice, followed by Janice DiGucci.

Good morning, Alice.

Good morning, Council.

I'm Alice Lockhart, and I organize with 350 Seattle.

We support the solidarity budget 100%.

And in addition, I'd like to speak to Amendment 159, SDOT 504, D01.

Last week, world leaders completely failed us at COP26.

We now know that it's on us, on local governments all over the globe, and particularly in relatively rich cities like Seattle, to determine whether, in a very few short years, we'll have to tell our kids we failed and that they face a bleak future as the world blows past 1.5 degrees of warming.

Amendment 159 is action at the scale of the problem, expanding Jump Start sufficiently to pay for the affordable and climate-friendly housing we must have if we are to do our share, and for Green New Deal spending getting houses off oil heat.

It's on us.

And today, it's on you.

Please, please, please pass Amendment 159. Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Janice, followed by Kelsey McGrath.

Janice, please go ahead.

Good morning.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda, members of the Council.

My name is Janice DiGucci, and I'm a resident of District 2, Executive Director of Neighborhood and Seattle Human Services Coalition Wage Equity Leadership Team co-chair.

I support the full FHSC recommendations and I would like to talk about the investment in wage equity study.

Market studies reproduce the inequity baked into wages that undervalues health and professions dominated by women and BIPOC workers.

This wage equity study will look at the core components of jobs and how they should be compensated when compared with jobs in the public and private sector with comparable skills and impact.

Neighborhood Health serves over 14,000 people in Seattle and King County and employs over 300 staff.

72% are BIPOC and speak over 40 languages.

We have 67 open positions for teachers, case managers, youth advocates, kitchen aides, and home visitors.

And the cost of living in our region, as the cost of living continues to soar, it's increasingly difficult for staff to live in the communities that we serve.

The staffing crisis threatens our ability to continue to provide the services health education and.

Thank you very much.

Kelsey McGrath you're listed as not present.

We're going to move on to Elisa Pan followed by Alice McGade.

Good morning Elisa.

Star 6 to unmute please.

There we go.

Great.

Hi I'm Elisa.

I live in District 2. I've lived in Seattle for over eight years and I'm a member of Amazon Employees for Climate Justice.

I strongly support the solidarity budget.

I urge the council to divest $10.9 million from SPD's budget and not to increase the budget for court and city attorney's office.

I attended a rally organized by youth and we were a crowd of maybe 40 to 50 people mostly school-aged kids.

I counted over 20 cops who showed up in full gear.

Why?

It was completely unnecessary and a waste of police resources.

I would feel much safer if that money went to funding home zones, for example, for people in my neighborhood to get around safely.

There are many parts of my neighborhood that don't even have sidewalks, let alone bike lanes or frequent bus lines.

I would feel much safer if that money went to funding affordable housing so that we could get our homeless neighbors a stable place so that they can rebuild their not lives.

We don't need more policing in the city.

They have lost their trust, and especially because they would basically be taking money from the emergency fund.

from us the community.

We need that.

We don't sacrifice our needs to add yet more millions to SPD's already huge budget.

We need help transitioning off fossil fuels to electric.

Thank you.

Please send the rest of your comments.

Alice followed by Camille Baldwin-Bownie.

Good morning Alice.

Hi good morning.

My name is Alice Kumar-Abe.

I'm a renter in District 4 and student at the UW-Evans School of Public Policy.

I support the solidarity budget and decision community is demanding that you maintain the $10.9 million cut to SPD remove the positions that SPD cannot fill and reject any amendments to return part of the $10.9 million to SPD.

The police do not make me more safe.

As a young Asian-American woman I am someone who is potentially vulnerable when out in the world and sometimes I do feel worried about my safety when walking alone at night.

But even if someone did pose a threat to me I would not want the police involved at all because the police are violence workers.

They cannot prevent harm from happening.

They can only inflict punishment.

What would make me feel safe is investment in non-market housing mental and behavioral health services the Green New Deal and more.

So please vote to remove the funding for SPD and invest in PD.

Thank you.

Followed by Ali and John.

Good morning Camille.

Good morning council members.

My name is Camille and I'm a resident of Seattle District 5. I'm calling this morning to support the solidarity budget.

It means putting money and power where it belongs.

It means not allowing the corporate interests that have purchased this election to control the narrative.

It means not pouring money into systems of oppression and violence, hoping that somehow this time we will have a different outcome.

And it means putting money and power in community and allowing community, especially those most vulnerable and who have been most harmed by systems of oppression and state violence, to direct city dollars and use that money to address the root causes of harm.

I support Council Member Gonzalez's amendment to abrogate the SBD positions that the department is unable to fill this year.

This amendment is both smart governance and can bring us closer to true equitable public safety.

I oppose the amendment by Council Member Lewis that drains the city's rainy day funds in favor of bonuses and overtime pay for SBD.

That money could be used for housing, Green New Deal, diversion and violence interruption programs, mental health, or any number of alternatives that actually keep Seattle

Thank you very much.

Aliyah, followed by Doug Newman.

Good morning, Aliyah.

Aliyah, your phone might be itself on mute.

You've already hit star six, which is great.

Can you check your own phone?

That's okay.

Sorry.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Good morning, Committee Chair Mosqueda and Council Members.

My name is Elaine Tan, and I am the business planning manager at the Downtown Emergency Service Center, known also as DESC.

DESC specializes in building and operating permanent supportive housing, serving community members who struggle with longtime experiences of homelessness and are living with severe mental and behavioral health conditions, substance use disorders, co-occurring disorders, and other pervasive disabling conditions.

In my years at DESC, I have had the pleasure of working in several of our permanent supportive housing locations, And I can tell you that these apartments, these homes, are what is necessary for the long-term health and stability of the folks we serve every day and the numerous people living unhoused in our city with disabling conditions.

I come to you today with a sincere thank you for prioritizing bridge funding to support the new developments coming online, which allow us to scale permanent supportive housing in our community.

At DESC, we are working on numerous apartment complexes that will house hundreds of people in the years to come.

Our buildings will all have 24-7 staffing, allowing us to help.

Thank you very much.

Doug Newman, followed by Jason Walsh, and then we'll go back to Kelsey McGrath.

Good morning.

Doug Star 610, mute, please.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Doug Newman, and I'm a resident of Seattle District 3. I would like to thank and voice my support to the council for including the Seattle Indian Health Board's request to launch a culturally relevant produce prescriptions and pilot program.

Thank you Councilmembers Morales for championing this very important program.

Thank you Councilmembers Juarez, Haribald, and Lewis for the continued support.

The produce prescription pilot will address food insecurity to treat and prevent chronic diseases among BIPOC communities such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease.

These food prescriptions will help low-income families with nutrition, security, which has worsened since the pandemic.

This would also be a powerful way to show how food serves as medicine.

It also increases the purchasing power of those who have been hit the hardest by the economic impact of the pandemic by also simultaneously supporting diverse food retailers.

Thank you very much for listening and hearing.

Yeah, absolutely.

Thank you very much.

Good morning, Jason, and followed by Jason will be Kelsey.

Good morning.

My name is Jason.

I am a renter in District 4. I'm calling in support of the solidarity budget and its vision, a vision endorsed by well over 100 community organizations.

I demand that council vote to maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD and vote to remove the 101 positions that SPD does not intend to fill.

I do not support Council Member Peterson or Lewis's amendment to return any amount of money to SPD.

Giving SPD money from our emergency fund while we are still in a pandemic and facing multiple crises would undercut the city's ability to provide for the community and be the ultimate insult to working people and families.

I demand that council vote yes on the amendment to ensure new programming for court and city attorneys comes from the existing budget.

I also demand that council vote yes on the amendment for $2 million to establish a social housing program.

Stable housing is the linchpin to individual and community health and well-being.

Securing the well-being of our community is your charge.

Stand up and heed the call.

Pass the Solidarity Budget.

Thank you.

Going back to Kelsey.

Kelsey will be followed by Maureen Irwig.

Good morning, Kelsey.

Star six on you.

Thank you.

Hi there.

I'm Kelsey McGrath.

I'm a District 3 member and I am calling because I support the Solidarity Budget and its vision.

Like Jason said, I believe that you must vote to maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD.

and vote to remove the 101 positions that SPD does not intend to fill.

I also don't support Council Member Peterson or Lewis's amendments to return any amount of money to SPD.

Giving SPD money from our emergency fund while we are still in a pandemic and facing multiple crises would be a an insult to working people and families.

Please vote yes on the amendment to ensure new programming for the court and city attorneys comes from the existing budget.

And please vote yes on the amendment for $2 million to establish a social housing program.

As someone who does a lot of outreach with our house's neighbors, I firmly believe that we can't solve the housing crisis without massively expanding non-market housing, and this will kick off that process.

Thanks so much.

Thank you very much.

Maureen, followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Good morning, Maureen.

Good morning, Madam Chair, Ms. Beatty, and council members.

Maureen Ewing with U Heights.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak on behalf of our outreach workers who are out in the field right now.

Just yesterday, they were supporting an older adult living in his vehicle, suffering from severe lung disease, and the hospital would only release them to a place with electricity for his oxygen.

He resourced for people with severe mental health and addiction issues, and recently helped a family with several scantily clad children living in a tent amongst the RVs.

I want to leave you with the words of one of our clients, who is employed, young man, recently evicted.

He says very often people end up living in their cars and in safe lots because there was nothing they could do to keep from rolling all the way down to the sticky bottom where the weeds are fixed, spaces replaced with numbers, and people become check boxes.

He's just one of the thousands of people living in their vehicles that represent nearly half the unpaused population in our city.

I urge you to please support Council Member Strauss's amendment to increase vehicle resident agency outreach which is a critical referral source for future safe lots.

Thank you so much for your leadership during this difficult budget cycle.

Thank you, Maureen, for all you do, too.

Trevona, followed by Tiara Dearborn.

Good morning, Trevona.

Trevona?

Hey, my name is Trevona.

I'm a resident of District 2. I'm calling in today in support of the solidarity budget recommendations for the city budget, which include supporting Council President Gonzalez's amendment to remove position authority for 101 positions, and also making sure that we do not support Councilmember Peterson or Councilmember Lewis's amendments to add more money to an agency of harm and oppression, better known as SPD.

We are demanding that we maintain that 10.9 cut from SPD, giving SPD more money for an emergency fund.

While we're in a pandemic, is a slap in the face to poor working class folks.

Lastly, don't grow the Seattle Municipal Court or City Attorney's Office, put diversion in community hands.

And also making sure that we do not need community service officers.

They do not help folks.

Follow Your Budget is here to stay.

We ain't going nowhere, so get used to it.

The community will continue to organize and make our voice heard.

We are demanding that we divest from harm and invest in care.

And if Black Lives Matter, Peterson, prove it, honey, not just by holding the sign.

Thank you.

Tiara Dearborn followed by Brady Nordstrom.

Good morning, Tiara.

Good morning.

My name is Tiara Dearborn, Seattle King County Lead Program Director.

I'm calling about lead funding.

I'd like to thank the council for your efforts to restore LEAD funding to the 2021 level and to add a moderate increase during a difficult budget season.

We'll be working very intentionally to utilize funding to prioritize folks who engage in public order concerns as a result of historical trauma, poverty, and behavioral health needs, while also continuing to respond to the needs of small businesses, residents, and visitors that help our community thrive.

Thank you.

Thank you, Tara.

Brady, followed by BJ Last.

Good morning.

Looking for Brady Nordstrom.

I see Brian Davis on my screen.

Brian, we'll come back to you.

Sorry for the prompt.

Brady, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Brady Nordstrom, and I'm speaking today on behalf of Seattle for Everyone.

We strongly support the amendment adding $545,000 in additional funding for OPCD to support the next major comp plan update and the SLI that requires SBCI to report on design review program outcomes, process improvements, and equity.

For comp plan funding, OPCD's outreach and environmental impact study is currently underfunded.

We believe that robust community engagement is critical to a successful comp plan strategy.

especially if we want to live our values for equity and fully integrate the needs of communities and future growth and land use decisions.

For design review, we believe that the process is broken, and it's imperative to understand unintended consequences related to housing affordability, access, and sustainability.

So it's time to find real solutions to improve this process to make it more inclusive, efficient, and predictable.

That's it, and thank you very much.

Thank you, BJ, followed by Julie Oana.

Good morning, BJ.

Hello, my name is BJ Lass.

I'm a D6 resident in the Small Business Center.

I support all of the Solidarity Budget Amendment priorities, including the $10.9 million reduction to SPD's budget, abrogating 101 vacant positions SPD has no plan to fill, and ensuring the municipal court and city attorney budgets do not grow.

There is no reason to take money from the city's emergency funds to give to SPD.

The attrition assumption in the balancing package is significantly lower than the last two years, despite SPD not presenting any plan on how it is going to lower attrition.

Council wants to question staffing assumptions.

How did SPD come up with its assumption that it can lower attrition by 40 percent?

And why is SPD assuming it can hire 125 officers next year, which would be a record and 50 percent higher than this year?

A potential hiring bonus does not support the increase since SPD has done hiring bonuses before, and SPD's own 2019 recruitment and retention study did not find that pay was a barrier to recruitment nor a reason officers were leaving, which isn't surprising since SPD pays more and neighboring police department.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Julie followed by Marinthia Torres.

Good morning Julie.

Hi my name is Julie Buona.

I am a resident of District 3 and I'm part of the Seattle Group for Police Accountability and I am calling today in full support of the solidarity budget and in full opposition to council members Peterson and Lewis's amendments to return any amount of money to SPE.

You must vote to maintain the entire $10.9 million cut to SPD and vote to remove the 101 positions that SPD does not intend to fill.

Need I remind you that we are in the middle of a pandemic which has sparked one of the worst economic crises in history.

Do you really think adding more money to the already floated budget of SPD is really the best use of emergency funds.

Here are a few things that would actually help working families and address real emergencies.

$1 million can build 7 units of permanently affordable housing in an emergency.

$1.5 million for mental and behavioral services for members of the Duwamish tribe would address our mental health emergency.

$13 million for existing 600 low-income homes of 30 or more people would address our climate emergency.

No more funds for costs.

Invest in community by supporting the amendment for $2 million to establish a social housing program.

Divestment for investment in the community.

Thank you.

Um, Amaranthia followed by Shelby Clark.

Good morning, Amaranthia.

And...

As Amarantia is coming up here, I want to let folks know we're on number 28 after that.

Good morning, Amarantia.

All right.

Great.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Amarantia Torres.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence, which is made up of over 35 community-based, culture-specific, and BIPOC-led organizations, all working towards an end to gender-based violence.

I'm here today to say thank you to the Council for your support of HSC 019B, which adds $1.5 million for community-based survivor-driven advocacy services to survivors.

I've been an advocate for survivors for over 18 years and truly appreciate that Council is investing in the self-determination and overall well-being of survivors through your support of survivor-driven advocacy, so thank you so much.

I also wanted to share our support of the full SHSP recommendations, and also say thank you for your investment in things like the inflation adjustment, wage equity analysis, and food banks, among others.

And finally, I want to also share that we oppose any additional allocations for SPD over what is already included in the balancing package.

Gender-based balance programs have a long history of re-envisioning what safety means and thinking outside the box, and we support the ongoing work to build meaningful alternatives to the criminal legal system and invest in community-based supports.

Excellent.

Thanks, Shelby, followed by Danica Adams.

Good morning, Shelby.

Good morning, Chair Mosqueda and City Council.

My name is Shelby Clark, and for the past three years, I've been a University of Washington doctor of nursing practice student.

I'd also like to on the record that I'm an enrolled member of the Confederate tribes and bands of the Yakama Nation and descendant of the Puyallup tribe.

I'd like to ask City Council to please include the Seattle Indian Health Board request to launch a culturally relevant produce prescription pilot.

This new budget amendment championed by Council Member Morales will serve up to 200 families.

As a Native American nurse I want to advocate that with improved nutrition security we have a higher chance of address addressing health disparities such as diabetes hypertension and heart disease a majority of which these diseases are highest among Native American people.

The produce prescription pilot addresses food insecurity to try and prevent such diseases amongst BIPOC communities.

I also want to support Seattle Indian Health Board's other two requests of increased health care access to the Thunderbird and the expansion of their Lake City clinic.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Danica followed by Andra Kratzler.

Good morning Danica.

Good morning.

My name is Danica Adams and I am a community safety specialist with the Seattle Peace and Safety Initiative.

As a community safety specialist, my job entails providing prevention, restoration, and meaningful services for our high-risk youth and young adults who are impacted by poverty, gun violence, and who have limited resources in South Seattle and King County.

We know that 100 to 150 black and brown youth or young adults between the age of 12 to 25 years old will be seen in the emergency room for gun-related injuries.

This is why funding the Seattle Peace and Safety Initiative is vital to ensure that we take a public health approach.

Like myself, I'm a public health worker, and I need skills like mental health, crisis responding, collaborative service provision skills to interrupt violence and make real life change in our community.

We know that violence in underserved communities are indicative of the systems politicians and local officials created.

We know that black and brown youth are not bad and violent people in nature, but that the systems create these types of environments by not resourcing

Thank you, Danica.

Andra, followed by Frances E. Good morning, Andra.

Hi, council members.

Thank you so much for your leadership this year.

My name is Andra Kranzler.

I'm from District 2. I am the director of the Tenant Law Center.

I want to thank you for the increased funding to deepen SBCI's tenant service protection services and eviction prevention work.

While most of the resources currently are dedicated to coordinated entry, You are leading the charge on coordinated stay.

Civil legal aid housing laws enforced when renters are able to immediate access social and mental health services and money to resolve emergent housing issues.

Your resources help us educate landlords and renters about their rights and their duties and we are mitigating challenges.

Thank you so much for your increased investment in mental and behavioral health.

This is the key to public safety.

If you set up this landlord-tenant task force, please consider inviting leaders, tenants, and landlords from other cities in King County.

We know that renters are in need.

You're leading the charge.

We need to get others on board.

As the president of the board of the directors for public center association, LEAD is a resource for this task force.

Sandra, please send the rest of that sentence into us.

Apologies for the time, folks.

Again, 10-second chime at the end of your live time.

Appreciate everybody dialing in today.

We're going to try to get through everybody that we can.

Frances, you're up next.

Please hit star six to unmute.

Frances will be followed by Christina Diego.

Good morning, Frances.

Hi, my name is Frances.

I'm a student at the University of Washington.

I'm calling to support the solidarity budget and say that I strongly oppose the proposed amendments to take away from the city's rainy day fund to invest in policing.

For example, Council Member Peterson and Lewis' proposed amendments.

In a time of need, given the COVID pandemic, homeless crisis, and the climate emergency, our funds should be focused on community support and not policing.

Instead of COPS, we can and should put our money into public housing.

For example, the amendment for $2 million to establish a social housing program Sleeping homeless off the streets doesn't solve homelessness, and our city needs to work together to uplift each other and to resolve issues, not to oppress each other and to be oppressed.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Christina, followed by Penny O'Grady.

Hello, I'm Christina Diego with the Seattle Indian Health Board and a member of the Colville Tribe.

I would like to thank Council Member Morales, Council Member Juarez, and Council Member Strauss for including the amendment of $308,000 for our prescription produce program.

This will increase food sovereignty and food medicine for our relatives.

I'd also like to thank you for including funding for our Thunderbird Treatment Center and Lake City expansion.

These efforts are critical to addressing the highest needs for our relatives and increasing health and wellness throughout Seattle.

I would also like to thank you and ask you to support our Native organization partner, Chief Seattle Club, for funding clean and sober housing in Soto and funding for their longhouse at North Seattle College.

We also ask that you support funding for the Duwamish Tribe for their social services.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Penny, followed by Alicia Essers.

Good morning, Penny.

Hi good morning.

I'm Penny.

I live in District 6 and support solidarity budget.

I passionately want public safety.

When police murdered George Floyd public outcry billowed throughout Seattle.

SPD used violent force in response.

Black Lives Matter signs sprouted up like mushrooms.

Council stood strong knowing that public safety went beyond policing.

You saw that more investment is needed in people's basic needs especially those communities that are the target of police violence.

There is a misleading narrative that conflates policing and punishment with public safety.

But public safety and the Green New Deal are synonymous.

Public safety and housing and indigenous sovereignty are synonymous.

And education and daycare, all the things that actually create public safety.

City Council has shown you understand this.

Stay strong.

Hold the line.

Vote yes to abrogate 101 unfillable SPD positions.

fund care over punishment, don't add back to SBD's budget, don't grow the city attorney's office in the court.

Thank you, council, for your hard work.

Thank you for dialing in.

Alicia, followed by Camille Gix.

Good morning, Alicia.

Good morning.

My name is Alicia Essers and I employ a nanny and a house cleaner.

And I'm calling to urge the council to support a resolution for a portable paid time off system.

for Seattle Domestic Workers and the $500,000 in the budget for the recommendations of Domestic Workers Standards Board.

Our two workers have been pivotal during these times but as always and have been consistent and supportive throughout the pandemic and deserve to have the same for their livelihoods and support their families.

When we give consistent pay And they know when they are going to be paid and can rely on that they can support their families.

And in turn it supports our community.

They not only show up to their jobs but are reliable and respected.

Our family feels so grateful to have them so that we can do our jobs as teacher and medical providers in our community as well.

Like all of us we need as much consistency and reliability.

Thank you very much.

Camille, you'll be followed by Kendall Tiley.

Good morning, Camille.

Good morning.

This is Camille Gix from the Real Change Advocacy Team and a student at UNO's Evans School.

Social housing is a model that has worked in cities and countries around the world.

Millions of families, members of the workforce, and unhoused people have been placed in deeply affordable housing suited for their needs and preventing displacement.

As we did with the $15 minimum wage Seattle has the opportunity to yet again set a standard for the rest of the country by adopting a social housing program that will do so much more to improve the lives of everyone in our city than criminalizing poverty wealth.

To reiterate what over 1,500 people have expressed through emails that are in your inboxes vote to approve Council Member Morales' $2 million budget amendment to create a social housing management program and get us to a much-needed start towards social housing.

Instead of further criminalizing the unhoused population by increasing SPD's budget, vote to help our amazing real change vendors and communities around Seattle get what they've been asking for, which is permanent, supportive, deeply affordable housing.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Kendall, followed by Marty Jackson.

Good morning, Kendall.

Star six to unmute, please.

The folks following along that brings us to number 38. Kendall star 6. There we go.

Good morning.

Hi good morning.

My name is Kendall Tiley.

I reside in District 2 and grew up in South Seattle.

I'm calling today in support of the Solidarity Budget and its commitment to addressing our dual crises of affordable housing affordability and homelessness.

I support the amendment for two million dollars to establish a social housing program.

When I was young my single mother and my little brother and I were in a scary situation.

If we didn't have housing provided to us I don't know what we would have done and where we would be today.

And I know that I would have been more hesitant to leave Seattle for a decade and work in federal and international government if I did not know that my family back home had safe and secure housing.

It's a game changer.

I ask you to redirect the $1 million from city attorney's office and court and give emergency housing vouchers for gender-based violence and family reunification to 200 families.

Moreover, please build more social housing across the city like Roberto Maestas Plaza housing, community spaces and schools.

The light between El Centro, Dela Grasa and Beacon Hill light rail to be held in public ownership, rent stabilized and managed by community responsive organizations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Marty, followed by Abigail Johner.

Good morning, Marty.

Hi my name is Marty Jackson and I'm a resident of District 2 and Southeast Network Executive Director for Boys and Girls Clifton King County.

I want to thank all city council members for your support in funding the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

I'm asking for your continued support by approving budget amendments to add $4 million general fund to HSC for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

This initiative is a community led place based non-arrest approach to public safety.

It's founded on restoration healing and economic resourcing of Black and Brown communities.

There have been a number of positive impacts, such as providing over 50 jobs to members of our community, providing safety support to our neighborhood schools, businesses, and families at funerals and other community events, reducing violent crime also in our neighborhood.

We have also faced some challenges that we're working through together with community to address and find solutions.

It's critical that you continue to invest in our collective efforts in order to produce long-term collective impact.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Abigail, followed by Kitty Wu.

Good morning, Abigail.

to unmute.

And Albert, we will come back to you starting from the prompt.

Abigail, good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Abwinair.

I'm a program manager at Puget Sound State and also a resident of District 2. I strongly support the vision and work of Solidarity Budget.

The council must maintain the $10.9 million cut to SBD and I urge the council to invest our public dollars in creating and maintaining collective care systems.

You must vote to remove funding for the ghost positions in SBD.

You must also move away from growing the city attorney and municipal court budget.

I ask that you direct investments to policies and programs that prevent displacement.

And you can do this by voting yes on the amendment for two million dollars to establish a social housing program to research social housing models that can be applied in Seattle.

We need these community driven place based solutions to solve our housing crisis and to prevent further displacement of BIPOC and low-income families and workers.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Kitty, followed by Cherish Hart.

I am a mother of three, long-time creative industry worker and neighbor in District 3. I'm a co-director of 206Zulu at Washington Hall, chair of the City's Music Commission and sit on Digital Equity and Youth Activity Committee Please support housing public health services and the amendment for cultural space PDA.

We have seen the investments in Roots in Place and mental and behavioral health protect us all.

CUNY's acre partnership at Washtenaw Hall with Historic Seattle's PDA has been life-changing for our longtime volunteers who are now employed.

Two-thirds of our hires have been previously housed housing unstable or unhoused my family included.

Investments in housing, public services, and PDAs make sense for our communities that are severely lacking in resources.

I also ask that you support the proviso on creative industry transition.

Please fund our unhoused neighbors, fund recovery anchors, fund public health, fund PDAs, fund mental health, and support our neighbors, not police.

Thank you.

Cherish, followed by Alicia Finch.

Good morning, Cherish.

Good morning.

My name is Cherish Hart and I work at the American Heart Association in Seattle.

I wanted to thank the council for including the request to launch a produce prescription program focused on the Native American and American Indian community.

The new budget amendment championed by Council Member Morales will serve 200 families.

And here's why it's so important.

Chronic diseases are rooted in structural racism and social barriers to health.

This makes them more prevalent in communities that our systems have historically under-resourced.

We see that in high blood pressure with nearly 60% of adults in tribal communities dealing with it.

This produce prescription will help the health board holistically address chronic disease while simultaneously meeting nutrition needs in a culturally appropriate way.

I also support the other health care access request of the Seattle Indian Health Board.

And I want to thank you, chair and council members, for supporting these and other projects that prioritize health equity.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Excuse me, let me scroll back.

Alicia, followed by Colleen McAllar.

Good morning, Alicia.

Good morning.

Hello I'm Alicia Finch a Spokane tribal descendant and I'm calling in with the Seattle Indian Health Board and I'm testifying today in regards to our budget amendment.

In reference to budget amendment FG001C001 we just wanted to thank Council Member Morales and Budget Chair Mesquita for including the prescription produce allocation of $308,000 which will benefit many of our families and relatives that we serve.

And we also want to thank the council for the budget allocation for a new Lake City Clinic which is set to open in 2022 and our preliminary community design survey for Thunderbird Treatment Center.

And I just wanted to also ensure that council continues to support our partner Urban Indian Organization Chief Seattle Club's budget amendments and their efforts to end urban Indian homelessness.

We also ask the Duwamish Tribe whose unceded land Seattle occupies social service budget request also be supported.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Colleen, followed by Albert Shiver.

Good morning, Colleen.

Yes, good morning.

I'm representing Laura Hearst Community Council of over 4,100 households.

And we ask that council members please support Council Budget Action 200, which restores the public use of the community center at Northeast 41st Street.

This action does not cost a penny of council's budget.

The net cost is zero, but requires parks and recs to balance its budget without shuttering one of its 26 community centers.

Pre-COVID this community center offered meaningful program from tots to seniors to after school classes for the adjacent elementary school whose students are 45 percent of color and 31 percent are low income and provides a great environment for much-needed recreation especially with our terrible Seattle weather.

The Lifelong Recreation Advisory Council representing over 200 Seattle seniors support keeping this community center open as well as does the 15 adjacent neighborhoods in Northeast District Council.

In a city with a population of over 100,000 increase in the last five years Seattle Parks and Recreation should not close any of its walkable community centers for budget balancing.

Please support number 200. Thank you so much for your work.

Bye bye.

Thanks.

Good.

Thanks to you Albert.

Followed by Grace Henshield.

Good morning.

Good morning Albert.

And Albert.

We are waiting for Albert to be on the screen.

Albert then Grace.

Hi.

Hi Albert.

Can you hear me.

Yes please go ahead.

Thanks.

Hi.

Hi.

OK.

I'm Albert Shriver.

I'm from Community Passageways and I'm an operations manager for the organization.

Thank you guys for giving us this platform to use our voices.

I'm advocating for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative for continued funding through 2022. I'm here to show my support for the collective.

Through this initiative I'm witnessing life-changing work that has been critical in changing and saving lives.

From providing jobs for young people and others in the community to preventing retaliatory actions among gangs and other other young people in the community.

An example of our effectiveness could be how There were a lot of shots fired calls being made on 23rd and Jackson and 12th and Jackson.

And so in the past couple of weeks, we focus our efforts over in those areas.

By doing that, we managed to have zero shots fired calls since November 10th on the geographical areas that CSI was responsible for.

This is a little but great example of why this work is needed in our community.

We are building back up our community with help from the city, which will help create new realities for people who are not familiar with healthy life.

We can't stop with one foot in the door after making so many great strides.

for this far cause it could have a detrimental impact on the community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Grace, followed by Nhu Le.

Good morning, Grace.

Good morning.

Thank you.

And I just want to say hello to Chair Mosqueda and city council members.

My name is Grace Henscheid and I live in District 5. I want to thank the council for including the Seattle Indian Health Board request to launch a culturally attuned produce prescription pilot program in the budget.

This new budget amendment championed by Council Member Morales will serve 200 families.

The produce prescription pilot will help address food insecurity to treat and prevent chronic diseases such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease among Black, Indigenous, and BIPOC communities.

It also complements the important investments from the sugary beverage tax championed by the Community Advisory Board in helping people access healthy food.

In addition, I support the two other requests of the Seattle Indian Health Board to increase health care access for the American Indian and Alaska Native community through the design process of the Thunderbird Treatment Center and by expanding their Lake City Clinic.

Thank you for prioritizing health equity and championing the well-being of all residents in this budget.

Thank you.

Nhu, followed by Penny Lipsu.

Good morning, Nhu.

Star six, Nhu.

Thank you.

I'm a part of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

I'm a full supporter for the funding of our program.

I trust and believe that the future of this foundation has already grown in the process of its full potential.

In order to keep growing and developing effectively funding will be a all that is needed to fulfill the needs of our youth and their families and members of our community.

Due to poverty financial obligations of low income households we always have a percent of children all of our children that becomes victims or susceptible to some kind of violent action in the teenage years.

Having us being present in the hotspot areas of our community every day increases the chances and probability of these high-risk teens to commit crimes, be in endangerment of society towards themselves or others.

Also provide resources to their specific needs.

I can relate and validate with their circumstances and value their focus on their dreams and goals.

Enlighten the mind with awareness of the justice system, mental health, gang life, and gun violence for career and educational purposes as well.

Whatever they find interesting.

We're in the process of saving and transforming lives on a daily basis.

All that is needed in order for our mission to thrive and sustain a promising state of the future is reliable funding.

No matter what the cost is, we're providing a priceless amount of support, care, trust, and love and efforts to better our community.

So thank you.

Thank you very much.

Penny, followed by Marissa and Tina Maru.

Good morning, Penny.

Good morning Chair Mosqueda, council members and staff.

My name's Penny Lipsue.

I'm a resident of District 7 and I work at the American Heart Association in Seattle.

I'm here to thank the council for all your budget work for your investments in health equity and for including the Seattle Indian Health Board request to launch a produce prescription pilot program to address health disparities with a holistic approach.

Like you all are fully aware health inequities and income inequality have worsened during the ongoing pandemic.

And this pilot program is a targeted community community-defined model to address and prevent chronic diseases for communities who are disproportionately impacted.

I'd also like to thank Council Member Morales and her Chief of Staff Alexis Turla for their leadership on this.

And I'd like to thank Council Member Warris Herbold and Lewis for their continued support.

We're really excited for this culturally attuned program and also would like to thank you for supporting health care access and services for the Seattle Indian Health Board's other two requests.

Thanks so much, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you very much.

Marissa, followed by Richard Finley.

Good morning, Marissa.

Good morning.

My name is Reece Tanimura from District 2, and I work in an arts and cultural and heritage organization in District 7. I'd like to speak in support of the amendment 02B01, funding arts and cultural anchors to do some recovery work.

The city has made a strategy around city recovery that includes arts and cultural activation.

So it's only fitting that there is funding to make sure that our cultural workers and cultural labor is paid for in that recovery strategy.

Additionally, I'd like to support 05B01, which is around the Cultural Space Agency, PDA, to make sure that cultural activation is not only event-based and temporary, but that our cultural communities have space permanently to make sure that they are not erased from our city.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Richard, followed by Hannah Lindlesmith.

Good morning, Richard.

Star 6 to unmute, please.

And for folks following along, we are up at number 50. After Richard will be Hannah, then Marvin Marshall, Karim Smith, and Wade Jenkins.

Richard, it looks like you're still muted.

Star six, please.

Let's go ahead and tee up.

Oh, hi, Richard.

Please go ahead.

Hello, how are you?

My name is Richard Finley, and I'm an Outreach and Engagement Director at the Boys and Girls Club, and I'm strongly encouraging you to continue funding the Community Safety Initiative.

Our communities are being affected by the uptick of virus and the lack of support and resources.

It's important to realize that the city needs frontline workers who are out here supporting the families and the schools that work to keep our city safe.

Please do not make the mistake of taking community safety for granted.

If you were to talk to the schools and the families and the youth who have benefited from Community Safety Initiative, you will realize the true value of it.

Community safety is not a want, it's a need.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

Hannah followed by Marvin Marshall.

Good morning Hannah.

Hello my name is Hannah Lindell-Smith.

I am a constituent of District 1 a sophomore at Summit Atlas High School and a community organizer and climate justice activist.

Last summer smoke from wildfires tearing through the West mixed with tear gas from police and riot gear after George Floyd was murdered in Minneapolis.

Climate crisis fueled the fires and the absence of justice for not only George Floyd but also Charlena Lyles Breonna Taylor and many many more fueled the national uprising.

Climate justice and racial justice came together in Seattle and the solidarity budget was written to address both and more.

The solidarity budget is hundreds of people including me from all over the city fighting for our lives communities and voices to be heard and valued.

Council members please hear us and vote to maintain the full 10.9 million SPD budget cut and remove the 101 unfilled position and support the amendment for $2 million for a social housing program.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Marvin, followed by Karim Smith.

Good morning, Marvin.

Star six to unmute.

Thank you.

Hello, my name is Marvin Marshall and I'm the Director of Violence Prevention Programs with the YMCA Social Impact Center.

Currently here to stand in support of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

I want to thank the City Council for supporting the initiative in 2021. That support was definitely a great help and a great start to the work.

I would like to point out that these are the types of alternatives that the council and the mayor's office was looking to support in community.

When we look at the last 18 months of what's gone on in King County, I think that the amount of jobs that we've been able to create in community, being able to hire over 50 to 60 people in community to do work in community is something that shouldn't be overlooked.

I think the level of relationship building with local providers, with local schools, local businesses, with community as a whole is definitely something that shouldn't be overlooked.

And I think that continued support into 2022 is definitely needed.

I'd like to thank the council member Herbal for making the amendment and those that are standing in support and ask for continued support.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Krim Smith and Wayne Jenkins are listed as not present so we'll move to Cat Howell followed by Michael Buon.

Good morning Cat.

Good morning.

My name is Cat Howell and I am a resident of District 4 and work at Literacy Source in Lake City.

And I'm here to support Council Member Peterson's amendments to support Internet for All to keep kind of Internet justice strong in Seattle.

This includes options for digital skills training which is what we do at Literacy Source with over 500 adult learners a year in the Seattle King County area.

It also provides for high quality Internet access or at least partially through SPL hotspots devices digital skills navigators and also accountability for this.

Our residents deserve Internet equity digital equity which involves skills Internet access and devices and this these amendments will help support that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Michael Byun, followed by Antoinette Kappestein.

Michael, star six to unmute, please.

Thank you.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Michael Byun.

I'm the executive director for Asian Counseling and Referral Service.

I'm here today to reiterate support for the 5.8% increase in human services contracts, which includes a one-time boost of 2.8%.

ACRS is also supportive of the six other budget amendments set forth by the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

ACRS believes these amendments are essential to successful pandemic recovery.

The amendments ensure the frontline staff are delivering critical services to those in need, rather than be part of the people who are in need of those services.

The investment also furthers the city's real commitment to address racial equity and support to the BIPOC community.

Again, I encourage the members of this committee to fully adopt the proposed seven amendments.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

And to Annette, excuse me, Annette, followed by Brian Davis.

Good morning, Annette.

Star six to unmute, please.

Star six.

OK.

Let's go ahead and tee up Brian Davis.

And Annette, we will keep you on the screen.

Star six to unmute.

Annette or Brian.

Hi there.

Yes.

Yes.

How are you guys doing this morning?

My name is Brian Davis, and I'm with the West Seattle Safety Team, and I am advocating for the Seattle Safety Initiative.

And I would like to say that we are the boots on the ground.

We are the ones that are dealing with the youth on an everyday basis.

We deal with the youth when they come to school.

We deal with the youth at their lunchtime.

We deal with them when they get out of school.

And we also provide after-school programs where we engage them on several different issues that they have going on in their life.

And we are the ones that stand between them and the violence and the gang activity that is going on in the inner city community.

I feel like we need more bodies out there standing between them and the gun violence and the gang activity.

We need more programs and we need more people who are willing to stand up and be a part of the movement to stop the violence in the neighborhood.

So with that being said, thank you for your time.

Thanks for dialing in today.

Annette SiliconHitStar6 and Andrew Liotta and RBM Morris will be next.

Annette I still see you on mute.

So Andrew please go ahead.

Hello.

Hi.

Hello.

My name is my name is Andrew Liotta.

I work for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

I'm calling to support the SESI funding.

SESI does a lot of great work in the West Seattle community.

One of the noticeable work we've done is by building relationships and providing resources for Black and Brown families in need by providing food rental assistance clothing for youth going to their first interview and also following through their journey of life and becoming a mentor and meeting them where they're at using our life experience.

Most importantly keeping these kids out of gang violence and out of gangs in general and help keeping the peace in our community.

This is why I feel like our program can use the funding to help change the mind of our youth and ultimately change the environment of our of our community by having professionals out here like the SESI to create long lasting relationships with our community and showing these youth there's more to life than just colors.

Thank you for your time.

Thanks for your time.

Avia Morris followed by Kim Ford.

Good morning Avia.

Hi my name is Arvia Morris.

I'm a climate advocate from District 4. Does this budget fund policies and programs that will reduce Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions by 58 percent by 2030 with a path to achieve zero emissions of greenhouse gas citywide by 2050. These are Seattle's climate goals which many of you say you are committed to achieving.

Does anyone know if this budget will result in a decrease in Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions over the next year.

I don't think that analysis has been done.

The social disruption triggered by unabated climate change will wipe out any near term health and stability this budget may achieve for our most vulnerable citizens.

The city budget must in an integrated way achieve both the city's climate goals and provide the social services the public safety that we need as a city.

This must be the last time A budget is passed that is not centered in a serious way on addressing Seattle's greenhouse gas emissions and our social.

Kim followed by Level Skies.

Good morning Kim.

Good morning.

My name is Kim Ford and I would like to address the agenda item for adding $4 million to the HSE for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

Normally I aim to challenge anyone in power and defend anyone without power but today in the spirit of the Thanksgiving season and because other amazing CP staff and community partners have already expressed the life-changing impact of this funding I would like to express my deep appreciation for how difficult these budget decisions are and all the painstaking work of you and your staff.

Shout out to Christina and Brianna.

I wish you all well in this endeavor and that your life is fruitful.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you, Lovell, followed by Matthew Offenbacher.

C is still on mute.

I'm looking for either Annette to come off of mute or Lovell to come off mute star six, please.

Go ahead, Lovell.

Great, thanks.

Lavelle Sykes Director of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative West Seattle Safety Team.

I have the honor to oversee a team of 14 caring capable community stakeholders whose task is to provide safe passage to our West Seattle community by being boots on the ground consistently present connecting and establishing relationships with our youth schools and local businesses as well as families to create a caring community collective ensuring that we are all safe and that that safety is sustainable.

We have partnered with local businesses and organizations high schools and community centers.

We have leveraged those relationships to successfully interrupt fights in schools mediate and bring positive resolution to conflict between young people brought down theft by young people at local grocery stores thus arrest erasing the possibility of these young people encountering disciplinary actions and possibly the police.

I ask that you continue to fund the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

It is not only me but it's expected community.

And if there's any more testimony that you may need, just ask the West Seattle community about it.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Matthew, followed by Raquel Jones.

Matthew Star 6 to unmute, please.

Hello, council members.

I live in District 3, and thanks for this chance to share some thoughts.

I enthusiastically support the solidarity budget and its vision of a Seattle which fully commits to prioritizing the most vulnerable in our community.

There's an encampment of unhoused folks in the pocket park across from my home that's going on two years now.

Every day I come and find that these neighbors still have not received the housing support they need.

I feel ashamed of my city.

I am also ashamed when I come home and find them suddenly gone having been swept out of the park temporarily.

Sometimes I am woken in the middle of the night by the shouting of one of my mentally unwell unhoused neighbors.

And even as I am feeling irritated, I feel shame because my city isn't giving them the mental health support they need to thrive.

I want us to be proud of our city.

We have so much going for us.

And I need you to do everything in your power to move money into the solidarity budget amendment priorities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Raquel Jones, followed by Catherine Legit.

Good morning, Raquel.

Good morning.

My name is Raquel Jones, and I am a longtime resident of District 2 and program director for Southeast Network.

Thank you for your investment into the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, led by Community Passageways, Boys and Girls Club, Urban Family Center, and YMCA.

We are asking that the $4 million invested into this work be put back, as the city has made a commitment to continue the place-based intervention and prevention work that is saving lives.

This is vital in maintaining community safety and following through on the commitment made by city to community.

Thank you and have a good day.

Thank you.

And Kathleen Lichit, followed by Ming Ming Tongue Elderman.

Thank you, Kathleen, followed by Ming Ming Tongue Elderman.

Kathleen, star six unmute.

Yes hello my name is Catherine Leggett.

I live in District 5 and I am a parent of two young children and I organize with 350 Seattle.

I'm a strong supporter of the solidarity budget and thank you for the opportunity to give public comments today.

Like many today who have spoken before me, I do not support Council Member Peterson or Lewis's amendments to return any amount of money to SPD.

We do not need to add to SPD's $350 million budget.

Instead, I strongly urge the Council to use these budget dollars to transition low-income homes off oil heat and support the impacted workers.

Thank you for your time.

Bye-bye.

Thank you very much for your time.

I'm going to try Annette Kapustin one more time.

Annette, star six to unmute.

We have two numbers for you on the screen.

Star six to unmute, followed by Ming Ming, Tung Alderman, and Will Topstern.

Good morning.

Looking for star six to unmute.

Annette.

Okay.

Ming Ming, welcome, thanks.

And we can go ahead and remove Annette at this point.

Ming Ming, good morning.

Good morning.

I'm Mingming Kang Edelman.

I'm the founder and executive of Refugee Alternatives.

I'm also an immigrant from Taiwan.

And our organization mission is to partner with refugees and immigrant women for prosperous transition in the U.S. to skilled training and micro-business development.

So I'm here today to thank you, our Seattle City Council members, Deborah Orr, Lisa Harper, and Lorenza Gonzalez.

for co-sponsoring the budget action OED-006A-001.

We're actually a very busy place here in Lake City of training refugee and immigrant women, making up-cycle some products from repurposed textiles.

In addition, we're making squats for our healthcare heroes with our partnership with Seattle.

We work with 28 women from around the world coming to Seattle.

And we have had seven in the past couple of months.

We have women open microbusiness.

They can earn living wages and be able to work right away when they arrive in the U.S.

Thank you for dialing in today.

Will, followed by Kathy Dawson.

Good morning, Will.

Star 67, you please.

Good morning, counsel.

Good morning Council.

My name is Wilk Hillsburn of Solid Ground.

I'm speaking on behalf of the Seattle Human Services Coalition today and hopefully my colleagues from Solid Ground will sneak in to talk about the rest of our priorities.

But in terms of the Seattle Human Services Coalition we appreciate your work to balance the budget in this difficult situation.

We know you agree with us that human services are necessary to support well-being and build an equitable recovery.

The budget you crafted includes the pay equity analysis needed to reverse the legacy of harm caused by underpaying human service workers and sustained funding for food banks and meal programs at 2021 levels as the needs in the community remain high.

With your changes, this budget also improves equitable delivery of services to seniors, middle school youth, response to gender-based violence, and makes a significant adjustment to human services contracts to keep up with the rising cost of delivering services.

your partnership in this budget, we'll be able to take steps to more effectively help more Seattle residents thrive at this critical time.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And Kathy, followed by Cynthia Irvin.

Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning, council members.

My name is Kathy Dawson.

I live in City Ridge in District 6. I'm retired and spend my time working as a climate justice and restoration activist.

I co-chair the King County chapter of the Climate Reality Project and I'm active in several other organizations.

I do support the solidarity budget and oppose last minute amendments that would increase police funding.

That said I'm tired of Seattle leaders claiming that Seattle leads in climate protect climate protection and restoration.

and then allowing our climate footprint to grow year by year.

It is time to put our money where our mouth is.

Seattle residents are clear that we must make immediate substantial and sustained changes as we transition rapidly to drawing down greenhouse gases.

To be just the constructive changes required must first benefit our residents who are most impacted by pollution and high energy costs.

We owe it to all future generations of all living things.

Thank you.

And Cynthia followed by Fonik Zong.

Good morning Cynthia.

Thank you.

My name is Cindy Irvin from District 4. I'm working with a grassroots initiative called Green Buildings Now.

We're working to do some small repair to environmental and wealth disparities by partnering with frontline communities to fund decarbonization one building at a time.

A priority of ours is clean energy resilience hubs.

We need to do a great deal more than we're doing about carbon emissions and other pollution, but we can't leave our most vulnerable community members who have contributed the least to the problem to suffer alone with the consequences of our environmental devastation.

We need places for people to escape heat, smoke, storms, and more.

Please pass amendment 82 and include the 100,000 for resilience hubs in all neighborhoods, beginning with the most impacted.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, colleagues.

We have reached the end of our allotted time, which was slated to end at 11 a.m.

I do have 13 more people that are present that are interested in speaking today.

If there's no objection, since we began about 15 minutes late with public comment, I would like to extend public comment for 15 minutes, but only to hear from those who are currently present.

If others dial in that are listed as not present right now, we're going to ask you to send in your comments.

If there's no objection, the public hearing will be extended by 15 minutes, and I will read the names of the folks who are currently present and with us.

Hearing no objection, public comment will be extended for the next 15 minutes.

And I'm going to read the next name so people know who's on the list.

When we conclude, then I'll list who was listed as not present.

The next speakers will be Phonik Zong, Iris Anteman, Annette Capestine, who was with us before and was not coming off of mute, Dominique Daniels, Andy Passifar, Noor Tal, Santel Patu, Chelsea Stevenson, Haley Bell, Orlando Ames, Sue Kay, Sheila Stickel, Dakota Rash, and that is it.

Okay, let's get going.

Go ahead, Fonik, please.

Hi, good morning, Council Members.

Thanks for that extra time, Council Member Mosqueda.

My name is Finika.

I'm a resident in District 6, and I'm calling in today as a staff of Solid Ground, a local service provider that works to end poverty.

And first, we wanted to echo the other comments today and our strong support of the solidarity budget.

And as a member of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, we're proud to support their recommended amendments, including the pay equity analysis and the 5.8% adjustment for inflation.

I personally have seen the passion and skill and dedication that service workers bring to this really challenging work, despite making fairly liberal wages in an increasingly expensive city.

These amendments will help ensure that we're paid the livable wages we deserve and help to retain an impactful workforce of service providers.

Lastly, I wanted to voice my support for Council Member Morales' amendment to the balancing package around social housing acquisition strategies.

It's an important step towards addressing our city's lack of affordable housing, which is a huge barrier for service providers in helping folks gain stability.

Thanks for the extra time today.

So sorry I was on mute but thank you.

The next person is Iris followed by Dominique Daniels.

Iris good morning.

Star 6 to unmute.

Star 6 to unmute.

And if we can tee up Dominique Daniels.

Good morning Dominique.

Star 6. Oh good morning.

Iris please go ahead.

Good morning.

My name is Iris Antman and a resident of District 2. This is the time to make critical and responsible decisions.

for how the city uses its resources to benefit all of its citizens.

We saw in the last election that voting from a place of fear can be powerful, but does not align with what we like to think of as our underlying values, those of justice, respect, and care.

The budget can reflect these values, and so I'm asking you to support the solidarity budget amendments and the balancing package by maintaining the almost $11 million cut to SPD's budget.

and using that money for the community-based programs dedicated to solving problems upstream, including supporting Seattle's Green New Deal, environmental justice, equitable and affordable housing, just transportation options, and equitable job opportunities.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Dominique Daniels, followed by Andy Pasaphar.

Good morning.

Good morning.

My name is Dominique Daniels.

I'm the case manager for the Community Safety Specialist Team.

I am in full support of restoring the funding for the SDSI funding.

Being able to support and address the needs head on for these children.

Restoring the funding provides a promise and future for these young individuals.

It continuously gives them pride and joy of graduating high school.

Getting receiving a diploma.

Also seeking out a lovable career and things that they want to do continuous in their goals in life.

We are one of the people that we are being able to be their biggest supporters and only audiences.

We continue to stay engaged and also connected in these young individuals and we will continue to be consistent.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Andy Pasifkar followed by Newell Tana.

Hi thank you.

My name is Andy Pasifkar and I live in District 2. And I'm a member of the Community Task Force convened by the Seattle's Office of Civil Rights.

and funded by the council to provide recommendations in criminal legal system reform.

As a formerly incarcerated individual, I know about the harms and trauma arising from any interaction with the criminal legal system.

One of the principal values of our task force is to reject the criminal legal system as a solution to crimes of poverty and to build up community alternatives.

We lay out our principles of diversion in our report.

Council Member Morales' proposal to make electronic home monitoring more accessible to people who are poor and disenfranchised, specifically those reallocating money from the city attorney's office as an example of a policy that our task force will support.

Excellent, thank you.

I'm sorry, that wasn't clear.

I'm not done yet.

Okay.

Okay, thank you so much.

Please do send in the rest of your comments, Andy.

Nyo, Nii, Nui, excuse me, Nui Taha, followed by Chantel Patu.

Good morning, Nui.

Star six, unmute.

Star six, unmute.

Nui Taha.

Okay, Chantel.

Let's tee up Chantel, please.

Button Chantel will be followed by Chelsea Staberson.

Good morning, Chantel.

Good morning.

We shan't over to an urban family part of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative and I'll leave with this.

There's little that can compare to the screams of a mother who has lost her child to violence.

This is even worse when there is no one to respond with support and understanding from someone who looks and shares the similar cultural values.

We all know poverty breeds violence.

Nevertheless the CSI team the SDSI team responds with compassion support and resources.

At SDSI we are in homes to streets and we attend funerals.

to help curb the uptick in violence in our community.

That said I'm here to advocate for the continued funding of the Seattle Community Safety Initiative and the 2022 budget amendment.

Simply put our BIPOC our BIPOC communities need safety representatives like SDSSI.

Just as the old adage states what you do for me but without me you do to me.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for dialing in.

I still see Neal muted.

Neal, star six, unmute.

Chelsea.

Chelsea Severson, you are going to be next.

Star six, unmute, Chelsea.

Please go ahead.

Hi.

Hi, Neal.

Hi, everyone.

Yeah, my name is Noi.

Thank you.

Thank you for having me here in the district.

My name Noi.

I'm working for RISE about three years.

My job is sewing assistant.

I come at work three to four days a week when my kids go to school.

My job, I do fulfillment and cooking.

And sewing, I also work at home to make some jewelry and sewing projects.

I would like thank you Min Min for helping and support me. and other assistance to have income for the family.

And thank you for the Seattle City Council members for giving money to support RISE.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for dialing in.

Chelsea, you are followed by Haley Bell.

morning.

Chelsea you might be muted on your phone.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yeah thanks.

Hi.

Thank you.

My name is Chelsea Stevenson and I am a constituent of District 5 and I work for the Southeast Network Safety Net Program at the Boys and Girls Club of King County and I am urging the council to continue to invest in the Seattle Community Safety Fund.

Over the past or sorry the Seattle Community Safety Initiative over the past year we have collaborated closely with Community Passageways the YMCA and Urban Families to work directly with the community and involve the community in addressing things like gun violence and community safety.

We've been able to provide a variety of different resources for youth and their families such as internships different diversion programs to provide activities to keep them busy during the day and case management support at school.

Thank you for investing in us this past year and I ask for you to invest in us again.

Thank you very much.

Haley or Haley followed by Orlando Aims Sue Kay Sheila Stickle Dakota Rash and that is it.

Good morning Haley.

Hi thank you so much for extending the time.

My name's Haley Bell and I live in District 6. I'm also calling in support of the solidarity budget.

We've tried policing for too long and we can see that policing and incarceration is only leading to more problems and have led to so many problems.

It's trying to time to try something different and the solidarity budget proposes many ways to uplift and support our most vulnerable community members.

I do not support Peterson's or Lewis's amendments to to add money to SPD.

Please vote to maintain the $10.5 million cut to SPD and the $2.7 million cut to in the Revenue Stabilization Fund.

In conclusion, the city's rainy day money should go to our actual emergencies, housing, and climate.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Orlando, followed by Suu Kyi.

Good morning, Orlando.

Star six, unmute.

And let's go ahead and tee up Sue Orlando Star 6 to unmute.

Sue, you're welcome to hit Star 6 to unmute.

OK, we're going to keep those two on the screen.

Sheila, Sheila Stipple, you're also welcome to hit Star 6. And Dakota Rash, I see you unmuted.

Please go ahead.

OK.

Hi, thank you.

My name is Dakota Rash, and I'm speaking in support of the solidarity budget.

So my grandma's retirement home is closing and her fellow residents are worried.

She told me it's because at her age, change is scary.

But she wasn't scared.

She was excited to find a different community and make a better path forward.

Change can indeed sometimes be scary, but it's also in our nature to evolve and grow and change and the nature of species that survive.

We are in a very dire time where many roads forward lead to cruel futures that drastically degrade the quality of life.

But this is also a better opportunity to carve a better path forward.

To do so we cannot continue along with the current methods we've employed thus far.

We can't solve a problem the same way we've created it.

Instead we have to take brave dramatic steps forward to live in harmony with the planet and protect and care for the people that our society has already disadvantaged.

The solidarity budget does this.

It is the required first step.

You must take it.

Your citizens have spoken up in a massive way to demand that.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you very much.

I still see Orlando muted.

Sue Kay, you're muted.

Please hit star six to unmute.

Sheila Stickle, if you're with us, you can hit star six to unmute.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any of those three.

Oh, good morning, Sue.

Please go ahead.

Good morning.

My name is Sue Kay.

I'm a 76-year-old senior.

born and raised in Seattle have lived in many red line communities here and I'm also a Barfield graduate like our mayor.

I am currently a member of the Chinatown International District Coalition also known as Humbug's Mount Hotel and H.

Seattle Regent Granley.

I strongly support the solidarity budget and Green New Deal maintaining the 10.9 million dollar cut to the police budget.

I am concerned with long term affordable housing in Seattle, and the CAD particularly, safe, immediate, and sanitary conditions for our unhoused neighbors, and I'm very concerned with the blatant and ongoing criminalization of poverty.

For public safety, police are not a viable solution.

Throughout the years, I have observed firsthand increasingly militarized racist behavior of police and court system to BIPOC, and more recently, protesters exercise.

Thank you very much.

And our last two speakers, I still see muted.

So I'm going to go ahead and close out public comment.

I'll read in for the record.

Oh, Sheila, I see.

Come on, mute.

Just in time.

Go ahead.

I may have been, like, hashtag sixing instead of star sixing.

So I'm Sheila Stickle.

I'll close it by saying thank you.

I appreciate the energy and I am from the National Nordic Museum in Ballard.

I'm here to support the chair's balancing package in the city budget.

The budget item actually helps museums like the Nordic and the Northwest African American Museum that did not qualify for the Federal SBA Shuttered Venue Operators COVID Relief Grant simply because we do not have fixed seating in our venue.

not receiving the SFOGS funding, for the Nordic at least, means that we were denied a million dollars in federal dollars for COVID relief between SDOT's Market Street construction all of 2019 and COVID.

And now we have vandalism to the building regularly in the last weeks and months.

It's been really brutal for the museum.

Keeping up financially has stretched us very, very thin.

And 70% of our staff was affected financially by the pandemic.

The museum is an anchor to this part of town.

This weekend, we are having thousands of people free of charge, which will attend Yule Fest, which is one of the great.

Thank you, Sheila.

I appreciate the opportunity to hear from so many of you.

As a reminder, folks, after I read the names of the folks who were not present just for the record, we will take a five-minute recess for a courtesy to the clerks.

In addition to the folks that we heard from today, the following individuals were not present.

Thank you so much for everybody dialing in today.

If there's no objection, we will take a five-minute break and come back together at 1122. 1122 a.m.

Hearing no objection, we will be in recess for the next five minutes.

Thank you so much.

you

I wanted to thank you all for the opportunity to take a quick recess and thank the clerks and everybody.

from our communications and IT team, Seattle Channel, for making this streaming possible.

I want to start with a thank you, as we always do.

I want to thank my team.

Sejal Parikh, Aretha Basu, Farideh Cuevas, Aaron Howes, Lori Maggio, have really been doing a tremendous job of working with all of you, your offices, and central staff to get us through this last eighth week here as we finalize the budget.

I want to thank central staff team and really specify by name how great their contributions have been to creating the proposed budget and amendments in front of you.

Director Esther Handy, budget lead Ali Panucci.

We want to thank Dan Eder, Patty Worgen, Asha Vankantraman, Brian Goodnight, Calvin Chow, Eric McConaughey, Greg Das, Karina Bull, Amy Gore, Anne Gorman, Jeff Sims, Kettle Freeman, Lisa Kay, Lish Whitson, Tom Mikesell, Tracy Rathcliffe, Yolanda Ho.

Have I missed anybody?

We want to thank all of you and please let me know if I missed anybody because your work has been incredibly important and very much appreciated.

I want to give you a sense of the work that has gone into this balancing package because there's been a lot of conversations about the revenue shortfall that we have experienced, but I want to make sure that that work to balance this budget is not deduced to simply saying, okay, there was a $15 million shortfall and you took 10 million or X million out of any one department.

That is absolutely not the case.

It was much more complex than that.

I'd like to refer to a memo that you received from central staff on November 9th explaining how we were dealing with the bad news from the revenue forecast.

And really I think this underscores the incredible work that CBO has done to help respond to some of the questions that central staff had.

But central staff really helped to unravel the various components of the proposed budget and help us adjust for the revenue shortfall that was revealed in November.

CBO transmitted the revenue forecast on November 3rd.

Late on Friday that week, they followed up with additional changes to the forecast due to some calculation errors on the CBO side.

Our central staff team had been working around the clock to parse out that information.

And since receiving the information from the November forecast, they have worked to address all of the deficits from the revenue projected in our proposed budget.

They made sure that we addressed the revenue forecast that was projected not only for 2022, but for 2021 by making sure that the decreases in the November forecast were really evaluated to make sure that there was any funding available for council members.

We scoured every single department.

Reductions were made from the 2021 budget by amending the year-end fiscal supplemental by making $8.7 million in reductions because of items that would not be spent in 2021. For 2022, we moved $41.5 million from the chair's omnibus central budget amendment to restore Jump Start's fund, reallocate one-time Clifford funds, acknowledging the 2021 carry forward to support community-led investments.

We adjusted, as we've talked about, the Seattle Police Department's proposed increase by $8.5 million.

$10.8 million to make sure that we were adjusting for items that weren't essential in the upcoming year and making sure that we could free up some of those investments to do things like mental health investments, the community safety initiative that we heard so much about this morning, investments in LEAD and so many other critical strategies.

We adjusted $4.4 million using the FEPP levy underspend in Seattle Promise and I want to thank the FEPP levy and Seattle promise oversight committees for reviewing our proposals in this budget as well.

And we know that they're continuing their deliberations on that and greatly appreciate their work.

We made sure to reduce to adjust for the IT projects and to adjust for those using CLFR funds and acknowledge that some of the projects that we all may want to see soon in 2022 could potentially not even open until as late as December 2022 if you look at, for example, the triage one program.

So capturing some cost savings in the proposal allowed for us to make adjustments along with using increase in the REIT funds and the commercial parking.

and adjust for the commercial parking tax revenue that is being proposed with Councilmember Lewis' sponsored amendment.

To say it was as simple as just trying to take one or two cuts to adjust for a $15 million shortfall doesn't allow for the full view of all of the work that central staff has done, that central staff have done with all of you and your offices, and I really wanted to remind folks that that November 9th memo outlined that point in time where we were trying to adjust for some of those changes.

The council balancing package in front of us invests heavily.

Once we adjusted for those changes that were needed, it invests heavily in the items that the city needs.

It invests $194 million in affordable housing to make sure that folks not only have a roof over their head, but they have services that correspond to the housing.

And this budget includes five times the amount of investments from previous years for first-time home ownership options.

First-time home ownership options allowing us to create a pathway out of generational poverty and make sure that we are investing in wealth opportunities for communities impacted by past discriminatory policies.

The proposed budget that we are considering invests in immediate homeless solutions, $1.5 million in vehicle residency and safe flats, $5 million going to shelter and services for those with the highest acuity needs by partnering with King County, leveraging those dollars and creating a multiplier effect so we can stand up high acuity needs services in the very near future.

5.4 million going to one-time payments reflect the growing need for services in our human service provider population with one-time appreciation allotments.

And over 6.2 million dollars going into the cleanup services for the Clean Cities Initiative when you combine our 3.1 million with the Mayor's proposed 3.1, we have created a full year of service.

We've invested in small businesses and building a city of the future with over half a million in technology equity programs, 300,000 in small and refugee immigrant and women-owned businesses.

We're planning for the future with over $2 million investment in climate resilience, investments into planning for our neighborhood business districts, green spaces, housing, and future transportation systems.

And because of your support with the Jumpstart Progressive Revenue, we've invested and held $14 million in the base budget for Green New Deal investments, along with $12 million in transportation projects.

We've invested $27 million in upstream community public safety initiatives, while making sure that we also maintain the commitment to the full hiring plan, as requested by the Mayor and the Chief.

We know in order for us to continue to make meaningful investments in alternative responses, it has to continue year over year, and that is why we've invested 26 positions in the Community Safety and Communication Center to address 911 dispatch operational needs, 2.5 million to expand the mobile mental health behavioral crisis systems, 3.9 million in the lead investments to intervene in the criminal injustice system by creating post-arrest pre-booking diversion programs.

We've invested $10.4 million for organizations that are working towards community-led solutions to end violence and create safety in the BIPOC community.

We're all doing this as we invest in the actual infrastructure of our city as well as the human infrastructure.

$5 million for retrofits and maintenance for bridges across our city.

$1.1 million to SDOT to bring bridge design for key projects up to more than 30% designs.

We're ready to act on federal and state dollars in addition to the opportunity to bond here.

We've authorized the city to have bonding authority for funding and paying for critical investments in our city's infrastructure, and we will soon be receiving a report back from SDOT on which projects could potentially be bonded for and worked on.

We have done this all in a bad budget news cycle.

We have done this all because of your support for the Jump Start Implementation Plan, again, unanimously passed.

We have done this in large part to the hundreds of community coalition partners who helped support Jumpstart last year and the thousands of community members who have continued to call in and ask for us to continue to make investments into Jumpstart's investments, maintain our investments into community safety and housing, and work to ward off any austerity budgeting, depleting reserves, or cutting employee services and programs at the very moment when our community needs it the most.

So in this context, as you take into account the additional amendments, I hope that you see all of the additions that we are making to this budget, not just as nice ideas on a printed piece of paper in front of us, but I hope you look at the hours worth of work that it took from central staff, our community members, and your offices to get this work done, to find every available dollar to make meaningful investments into those who are in most need in this critical time.

I want to thank you again for your work over the last eight weeks.

We have a day and a half in front of us to get through these amendments, and I look forward to working with you as we finalize the budget in front of us.

Colleagues, I'll go through very briefly groups A, group B, group C, and D in terms of what you can expect today.

My assumption is that we will get through group A and then take a recess from 1 to 2 p.m.

We will probably conclude group B this afternoon, and we may not be able to get to group C and D until tomorrow.

But if we work faster than that, that's great.

I just wanted to let you know the timeline I was assuming for today.

As we look at the amendments in front of us, you will note that they have been grouped into four different categories.

Before we have the clerk read into the record item number one, I want to orient you to the groups that you see in the agenda.

We will see amendments that consist of budget items that were included in my initial chairs proposed balancing package.

a set of amendments that make up the chair's budgeting package.

This includes 155 items that we are offering as a consent package.

I would encourage you, colleagues, if you'd like to highlight any of these amendments that you originally submitted that were incorporated in the chair's initial balancing package, to please do so.

We will ask you to speak to any of those items after central staff summarizes group A.

And you will also have the opportunity to highlight and feature some of those key amendments that I just mentioned so that folks know all of the great work you've done and community sees their items reflected.

We do have three budget amendment items that are included at the end of the section for group A.

And those three items start on page 30 of your agenda.

items 157, 158, and 159 are actually potential substitutes for three items that are in group A.

We will ask any member to go ahead and ask to remove any items that either you have a substitute for or that you would like to pull out and speak to separately.

I will note that for all of the items that do touch on Seattle Police Department, we do have a number of those that are also included in group D.

So I'm asking for folks to please try to keep all of the items in group A collectively together if an item relates to a follow-up item related to a Group D item, we will have the chance to speak to those.

I am hoping that we can speak to all of those in Group D. You do not have to remove those items.

If you will allow for us to keep it in here, we will then be able to have a cohesive policy conversation related to all of the SPD-related items when we get to Group D, so it's not necessary to remove those.

I would encourage you to continue to allow for those to stay in group A.

As you'll see for group B, the group B consists of the amendments that are amendments to the balancing package.

Most are different options of items that were presented in last week as part of the initial balancing package, or they're also new items that I, in working with central staff, and viewing as slight tweaks or would be generally supported by the committee at large.

We've offered these as one cohesive set of a consent package for your consideration.

And group B, I'd like to make sure that all folks have the opportunity to speak to each of these items as some of them are slight adjustments to some concepts that we've talked about.

or are potentially a new take on some items that you have flagged before.

So central staff will walk through each of the items in Group B. Each of the sponsors will have a chance to speak to them so folks know more about those details.

And then we will have a chance to consider Group B as a cohesive consent package.

Again, if you have any items specifically for Group B, you are welcome to remove those if you'd like to take an individual vote on those.

The same caveat that I mentioned before, is still consistent, hoping to allow for group A and B items to stay as cohesive as possible, recognizing we will still have an opportunity to discuss SPD later.

group C is consisting of stand-alone budget items that do not impact other items in group A and B.

The fact that they are not included in the consent agenda package does not indicate my support or non-support for an item.

There are a number of items in group C that I am going to be supporting, but we wanted to make sure that those stood alone so that there was an opportunity for discussion since some of them are relatively newer to our select budget committee discussion and allowing for individual vote on those and discussion makes sense.

group D, as I mentioned earlier, is the group composed of items that will have an impact on the fiscal reserves.

We have included these all as one section of the agenda.

They are not a consent agenda.

Each item will stand alone and does have an impact on the proposed use of the fiscal reserves.

So that is why they are considered in group D.

I'm going to turn it over to Ali for a more in-depth overview of the groups that I just summarized here.

And in doing so, Madam Clerk, could you please read item one into the record?

in the item one, introduction and voting process overview, and working group A consent package.

Excellent.

Welcome.

Allie, thanks for all your work to get us to this point here today.

And we will let you walk through the presentation with more details on the four groups that I just outlined.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good morning again, council members.

Today, I am excited to say that it marks the penultimate step in the budget process, the vote on the balancing package.

You can move to the next slide.

So we are on step five of six in the budget process.

And so we'll have our final actions on Monday that I will talk about in a few moments.

We can move on to the next slide.

So as Chairman Skater just described, the agenda is set up today to take up the balancing package and amendments to the balancing package in four groups.

I won't spend a lot of time going into the description of these groups, as I think Chairman Skater provided a good overview of how this will be arranged.

But again, voting group A represents items that were in the initial balancing package.

There are a few new items for technical budget legislation that are necessary to adopt the budget, and there have been some technical adjustments.

And for that group, we will not, central staff will not be describing each item, but we are available to answer questions should council members have any about the items in this group.

that we're in the initial package or ideas that are related to other concepts that have been discussed previously in the budget process and from previous discussions.

Following that consent group, we will move to group C and D and all of the items in those groups will be taken up individually.

Unless there are questions, I'll move on to the next slide.

So following today's committee and tomorrow's committee votes, on Monday morning, the committee will convene for one last meeting to take up final actions on the proposed balancing package.

And this is really a technical exercise to vote on the budget adoption bill.

And there will likely be some other technical adjustments as we work through all of the changes that get passed by the committee today and tomorrow.

And that will be followed by a final council action on the budget at the full council meeting at two o'clock on Monday afternoon.

Next slide, please.

So briefly, I will just walk through the procedural steps that we'll go through today.

And then we may return to some of these slides throughout today and tomorrow as needed.

We have some sample scripts and that sort of thing for some of the different procedural actions that council members may want to make to make changes to the amendments.

But in general, for groups A and B, how this will work is the chair will move to approve all items in the voting group.

Central staff will then decide, describe the group generally, or for group B will describe each item.

Council members can add a CBA or apply a council budget action or a statement of legislative intent to the agenda, remove an item from a voting group to substitute a different item.

Any items that are removed from the voting group would be taken up after the vote on the consent group.

We can move on to the next slide.

So council members may want to remove a budget amendment from groups A or B in order to have individual discussion and consideration of the item.

And if you do have an item, a sort of a substitute option, you will want to remove the original item that's in the group from that consent group to be taken up individually.

So you can make that request to remove an item After we've described the group, the chair will at some point call for requests to remove items.

But you want to make sure you have made the request to remove an item from the group prior to the chair calling for a vote on that consent group.

Moving on to the next slide.

So again, just as a reminder, the order will be, first, we'll vote on the group.

So any items that were removed will be separated out, and then the chair will call for a vote on the consent package.

Then we will take up any CBAs or slides that were pulled from the voting group for individual consideration in alphanumeric order by department.

As Chair Mosqueda described, there are three potential substitutes already identified on the agenda in group A.

And then all CBAs or slides added to the agenda for a given voting group will then be taken up in alphanumeric order by department.

Next slide, please.

So this is a sample script of what the sort of requests that a council member makes to remove a CBA or slide from a voting group.

The next several slides include other scripts for substituting items and that sort of thing.

a great amount of time on these process slides, but again, we will put them on the screen as necessary if needed to help walk through some of the procedural gymnastics that will happen today.

And then if we could jump to the last slide, thank you.

So this remaining slide is a chart highlighting how the amount the city has held in our two fiscal reserves has fluctuated over the years.

This is provided here for context as the items in group D would reduce the 2020 to contribution to the Revenue Stabilization Fund, one of the city's two fiscal reserves, by as much as $10 million.

So the bar on the far right would be reduced by $10 million.

I note this as you all received the November revenue forecast.

That didn't significantly decrease the 2022 revenue estimates, but did signal that there's significant risk in the 2022 forecast.

If the COVID public health emergency continues to delay when workers are returning to work, We may be looking at a updated revenue forecast early in 2022 that would reduce the expected revenues.

So I just note this as the, as you can see from this chart, the where we would leave things on balance in our fiscal reserves, if the balancing package was passed as currently presented on the agenda, it is still significantly below where we have been in previous years.

I would just ask if my colleague, Tom Mikesell, wanted to add anything to the discussion on the fiscal reserves.

I'm not.

Thanks, Allie.

Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the Budget Committee.

Tom Mikesell with Central Staff.

So just to add, the chart, I think, is fairly self-evident in terms of the progress over the last I don't know how many years that is, 12 years or so.

I'm tracking through the Great Recession and COVID pandemic.

I just for committee's consideration, I would just add a little bit of context.

And that is the reserves in as a percentage of the general fund.

Because it's difficult, you know, in absolute values, you can you can evaluate these numbers just by looking at the stacked bars, but just I guess, to give a few touch points.

In 2011, the prior drawdown in the reserves, that level of balance was approximately 6.3% of the general fund expenditure budget.

Then at the peak in 2020, before the COVID pandemic hit, the reserves were providing about 8.5% of the general fund expenditures.

And then now with the 2022 balancing package, the reserves would be at a level of about 4.1% of the reserves.

So just gives you a sense of the amount of coverage, for lack of a better word, that the reserve balances provide for the general fund.

Thank you, Tom.

Good to see you again.

And is there any question for Ali or for Tom?

especially as we consider the impact of the recession on our fiscal reserves and the health of the city as we seek to recover in a more equitable way.

Vice Chair Hurdle, good to see you.

Thanks so much.

Please go ahead.

Thank you.

Not a question, but just wanting to show my appreciation to you, Madam Chair, as well as central staff working together to get these reserves replenished slowly but surely to get us in a better financial position to weather future revenue reductions.

Really appreciate your foresight there.

Thank you very much, vice chair, and thanks to all of you for your support on that effort as well.

And as we'll talk about with some of the amendments today, we are not only preserving what the mayor had suggested for the reserves, we're slightly adding to that.

And with the walk-on amendment as well that I circulated, hopefully we'll be able to add just a slight bit more.

So continue to work on it.

Thanks so much.

Any additional comments?

Okay.

Allie, Tom, thank you for that reminder and that overview.

At this point, I think we're ready to go into items on group A, our consent package for your consideration.

Colleagues, as a reminder, this consists of the items that were initially presented in our chairs balancing package.

I want to thank you for all of the work that you've done.

And I want to just reiterate that this is the time to really highlight, before we get into removing any items, to highlight the items that you are especially excited about.

There are 155 items in this consent package.

So before we consider any removals, I want to offer this as a time for council members to highlight an item.

Again, you do not have to pull an item to speak to it.

That's what this opportunity is for right now.

So we look forward to hearing more about the items that you have included in this Group A package, because we know a lot of work went into developing the ideas within your teams.

And I'm very excited to see some of these items included in our Group A proposal here.

I see a few hands, and before I call on any hands, I just wanted to double check.

Allie, did you have any additional comments that you'd like to make for opening context?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I don't have anything to add.

OK.

Colleagues, in order to get Group A in front of us, I would like to go ahead and move it for the purposes of our discussion.

To be able to consider the consent package as outlined in Group A in front of us, I move to approve Group A, the consent package.

Is there a second?

to approve group A.

Thank you so much.

I just want to highlight a few of the items in the balancing package, starting with the expansion to 911 dispatch, adding $879,000 and increasing the number of.

FTEs for 9-1-1 dispatch by 26 positions.

This is relying on findings from a 2016 SPD staffing analysis recommending that the call center have 169 FTEs based on a workload analysis.

The 2022 proposed budget would have funded 140 positions, of which 20 are vacant, and an additional 17 currently have part-time absences due to situations such as medical and military leave.

So this addition of 15, I'm sorry, 26 FTEs is really important for addressing some of the vacancies there, as well as allowing them to expand and helping them address some of the recruitment and turnover issues that they have.

Also want to highlight another safety-related ad, specifically firefighter recruits.

This action adds $1.5 million to the fire department to support the training of additional 20 firefighter recruits in 2022. SPD is planning to hold a recruit class of 60 or up to 80, starting in February 2022, with graduates joining the department as new firefighters mid-year.

With this additional funding, the fire department can hold a second class of 20, starting in August and graduating in November.

This really recognizes the need for overtime shifts, is a strain on first responders.

And just wanna highlight that in my regular meeting yesterday with Chief Scoggins, I learned that there are currently 101 vacancies in the department and he expects that number to climb as high as 110 next week due to separations related to the vaccine mandate.

Additionally, I want to highlight some of the behavioral health investments in this package.

Group A includes multiple investments that will address the shadow pandemic, the impacts of the year and a half of fear, grief, and isolation, and which occasionally erupt into harm and violence.

This week, New York Times reported that more than 100,000 Americans have died of overdoses in the past year.

This is a 30% increase over the previous year.

And in Washington, we saw more than a 40% increase during that same time.

Behavioral health is funded at state and county levels.

We need their leadership and their partnership, but we cannot wait to invest in services that will help Seattle residents that are struggling.

So the behavioral health investments that I want to highlight in this package include $1.5 million for mobile advocacy services.

a best practice to support survivors of gender-based violence, $500,000 to expand behavioral health staffing for school-based clinics, and a resolution calling on county, state, and federal governments to lead the way in increasing behavioral health investments in partnership with the city.

Also, the last item I want to mention is wage equity analysis for human services jobs.

The top request of the Seattle Human Services Coalition, an important investment in a sector that the city relies on to do extremely difficult and demanding frontline work.

We need our human service workers to show up to work every day, ready to help fund help folks find safe housing, heal from trauma, and get connected to services.

But we know low wages lead to high turnover and lost opportunities to build trusting relationships.

So this analysis is an important first step in appropriately valuing the critical work of frontline service providers and investing in their effectiveness.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Thanks for all of your work on these items, especially as they relate to public health and safety and addressing the shadow pandemic.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Lots in here related to land use and creating more connected city.

Please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

There are so many good items in voting group A.

I do want to thank you for including mobile crisis team expansion in this.

I don't want to take up any more time because I know that there's a lot of work to do getting through here and I don't I want to be efficient with our use of time today.

So I'll hold all of my other comments.

And I know for anyone watching, my office has been sending out newsletters multiple times a week with the updates.

So rather than speak to it now, please check in with our newsletters if you'd like to hear my thoughts.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much, Council Member Strauss.

Vice Chair Herbold, is that a holdover hand or did you have additional comments that you wanted to add?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Chair, for your leadership on this budget process with the bleak revenue forecast that we received and the many needs of our city.

It's been especially challenging this year.

I appreciate your leadership navigating this process and highlighting our common ground and providing space to allow civil discussion when we do disagree on items.

Group A has a large number of excellent amendments in it.

Appreciate the chair, including many of my amendments.

including expanding digital equity through Internet for All items, helping out University Heights, Magnuson Park, and my council district, and then also including the proposal to boost bridge safety and infrastructure investments.

I want to thank all the co-sponsors of that proposal after the West Seattle Bridge and the bridge audit.

We saw the University Bridge malfunction and close for two days this past weekend, and it's just a reminder that we want to do more faster and this proposal in in group a will enable us to authorize bonds.

and enable the incoming administration to do more faster on bridge safety for bridges throughout Seattle, especially multimodal bridges, as we saw with the University Bridge shut down and that straighted buses and bikes, pedestrians, emergency vehicles.

So thank you for including that.

There are some reductions to the Seattle Police Department budget in Group A, rather than I know we will be getting to some ideas on how to consider different options in group D, so what I'll be doing with group A, I support so many of the items here, but because of those items, I'll just abstain for group A, and we'll get to talk about these in group D.

Thank you very much.

I thought some of you might be shy, so I'm going to go ahead and feature some of the investments that we are really excited that you all brought forward and a few that we put in there as well.

Again, it's been my honor to be able to work with all of you, especially as we crafted the chair's initial balancing proposal.

And I want to lift up a few items that really are unifying themes that we've seen this year.

from Council Member Morales, we have half a million for cultural responsive afterschool programming, investments of three quarters of a million for youth employment, job and retention program.

From Council Member Peterson, almost $200,000 for afterschool programming for making sure that resettled children are investing in equitably for our youth to ensure that working families have safe places for their kiddos to go.

Councilmember Herbold, as she noted, the important investments into the wage study.

This is an item year over year since I've been here that has been requested from the human service providers.

And we have included the $600,000 to make sure that we're evaluating what it takes to make sure we're stabilizing our human servant community so that there's stability for kiddos, our elders, homeless youth, and those who rely on our food systems.

I'm excited that we were able to include an item that was noted today in public comment and in our public hearing last time to ensure that the Office of Labor Standards has the ability to work to develop a portable paid time off policy for domestic workers and we have followed what the Office of Labor Standards and the domestic workers We've included labor protections and economic opportunities for those who are left behind by making sure there's half a million going into the calling serves $850,000 to address the needs within the legislative department, including making sure that our council meetings are able to be brought to folks in an equitable way during this time of COVID and that we address pay equity thanks to Council President Gonzalez's inclusion of Ledge 001. Council Member Swann has $1.4 million to create new safe parking lots and investments in resources for those residing in vehicles, as we know that over half of our homeless population is currently residing in vehicles.

Council President Gonzalez has half a million dollars for one-time investments to the Human Service Department to make sure that we're coordinating for a community-led process to create health-centered a health center addressing BIPOC communities, those who have been disproportionately impacted by generations of systemic racism and oppression, especially against Black community, Indigenous and people of color communities as well.

This also includes $661,000 for the Legal Defense Network, which she has constantly been a champion of.

Thank you, Council President.

Councilmember Strauss has included, we have included $2.5 million, as he noted, for the expanded mobile health crisis services system.

These are boots on the ground right now, as we were asked.

Is this operational?

Yes.

Councilmember Strauss is helping to expand this and making sure that our mobile crisis team operated by DESC and behavioral health response teams currently out there have additional support.

Councilmember Morales is adding $1.5 million of expenses into the Office of Arts and Culture that correlate with our Jumpstart commitment for creating cultural and art programming so that we create resilient activities throughout our city, especially rooted in community-based organizations in neighborhoods across Seattle.

Councilmember Herbold has nearly $900,000 for 26 positions at the community services and communication center to address the existing dispatch operational needs that she noted.

Council President Gonzalez infuses citywide transportation planning with the future for the vision of pedestrian-oriented streets and plazas.

Shout out to the super block concept and making sure that our light rail expansion possibilities are integrated into our city's future planning.

Councilmember Morales adds funding for indigenous-led clean city in a clean, excuse me, clean energy sustainability and cultural preservation projects and looking forward to continuing to work with Councilmember Juarez on all of the work that she is championing here for investments in safe parks and culturally responsive community centers, especially in the north end.

I'm excited, colleagues, about the $194 million historic investment in affordable housing.

Wanted to note that $165 million of those investments are going into creating new affordable housing units.

That includes supportive housing to help make sure that people are exiting chronic homelessness and having access to deeply affordable housing, make sure that our vulnerable communities and our community at large can be healthy.

This includes $15.7 million for community-driven investments in BIPOC, specifically BIPOC communities, to achieve site control and ownership of housing.

so that more families, especially those who've been affected by redlining and displacement, have opportunities to stay in Seattle and have true liberty and ownership over those options.

$10.6 million is going into home ownership programs.

This is including about $6 million from Jumpstart that focus on home ownership opportunities, because you all prioritize that in our Jumpstart spend plan to make sure that folks have access to owning a first-time home and having opportunity to build generational wealth.

all of these investments support our efforts to help address the inequity that we see continuing to increase in Seattle, and I'm very thankful for all of your work.

I didn't feature all 155 amendments.

I do hope that I touched on every council member because I greatly appreciate all of your work.

Now we can consider any additional comments.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson, for your note about continuing to keep the policy conversation related to SPD cohesive I do know that we have before we consider any I want to make sure just to expedite the process for those three items.

157, 158, and 159, again, starting on page 30 in our agenda here today.

In order to swap out those items and to expedite this process, I will go ahead and make the motion to remove the correlating amendments so that you can consider the potential substitutions when we get to that section.

Colleagues, just to get our process started here, I will go ahead and ask to remove item number 72, 122, and 123, Those are for the council members who have substitutions that are listed on today's agenda.

Again, that would be removing number 72, 122, and 123. As a reminder, this does not need a second.

I just wanted to repeat that for the viewing public.

Okay, we will remove item 72, 122, and 123 for the council members who have substitute items that we will consider later.

Are there any additional items that any council member at this point would like to remove from the consent package A that's in front of us?

All right.

Colleagues, if there's no additional items that we would like to remove, I will go ahead and ask for us to consider a vote on group A without item 72, 105, excuse me, item 72, 122, and 123. Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on approving, oh, excuse me, Council Member Herbold.

Which is seconded, you are.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Will you please go ahead and call the role on Group A that includes our consent package as amended, removing items 72, 122 and 123. The rest of the items 1 through 156 would be included.

Your son.

Abstain.

Strauss, yes.

Gonzalez.

Hi.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Seven in favor, one abstention, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries.

Group A's consent package as amended is approved.

We will now move on to the items that have been pulled from Group A for discussion and individual votes.

We'll start first with item 157. Council members, again, this starts on page 30 of your agenda and I will have the central staff speak to the amendment, and then we will have the council members speak as well.

In order to get the item in front of us, I will turn to the council member to move their individual item.

Council member Morales, I believe you are up first on item 157. Would you like to move item 157?

Yes.

However,

I might need my city clerk's help here.

But we're all right.

What I would like to move is law.

Would you like me to help out council member?

I can help out if you'd like.

Well, what I want to move is 2C1.

Can we pause real quick?

Can we pause real quick?

I apologize for interrupting.

Council Member Mosqueda, this was going to be a substitute to the version in group A.

So I believe the version in group A that was pulled first needs to be moved and then Council Member Morales would move to substitute with the version C.

Okay, thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

So we are going to move to consider approving item that was removed first, and then we would move to substitute it?

Correct.

That's correct.

Okay.

Council Member Morales, so you're going to move to approve your original item that was removed.

So if that item was number 72, is that correct?

Yes, and I apologize.

My understanding is that Councilmember Herbold goes first since it was her item that was removed, and then I moved to substitute it.

All right, we're going to get this right.

Our first one of the day.

Let's try again.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to move the item?

Thank you, yes.

I move item Motion 72 for discussion.

It's been moved and seconded to approve.

consideration of item number 72. Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to the original item before we consider a substitute?

Sure, thank you so much.

So this particular CBA is related to the expansion of the pre-filing diversion program in order to allow the city to have a pre-filing diversion program that serves people who are age 25 and older.

The background is that the Seattle re-entry work report issued in 2018 recommended expanding the use of pre-filing diversion to older individuals.

adopted a statement of legislative intent in the 2020 adopted budget, which requested that the law department evaluate the staffing and resources that would be needed to expand diversion to individuals 25 and older.

And the council also provided funding for the law department to conduct a racial equity toolkit assessing the concept.

The SLY response in RET indicated a need for The CBA, in addition to adding four positions, cutting one position, excuse me, CBA notes that a separate action listed as item 71, still in the consent package, imposes a proviso on all funds related to pre-filing diversion.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Please go ahead, Ali.

Chair Mosqueda, I'm not sure if we heard a second for the motion to move the item.

I seconded it.

OK, great.

Just wanted to get that for the record.

Thanks.

And I'm in my script, so we have that clear going forward.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for summarizing item number 72. Are there any additional comments?

Council Member Morales, would you like to make your motion to substitute?

Yes, I move that we substitute law 2C1 in place of law 2A1.

So Chair Mosqueda, you could call for a second now.

If it's seconded, you may want to ask central staff to describe the difference between this and the original option after Council Member Morales speaks to it.

And just so everyone is clear, when you call the vote on the substitute, if you vote yes to substitute, the original item is off the table.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

It has been seconded.

I heard Council President Gonzalez second the motion.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Thank you very much for making the motion, Council Member Morales.

Council Member Morales, you are recognized to speak to your substitute, and then we will have central staff summarize the differences.

OK.

So colleagues, I do want to clarify that last night I sent an email with what was originally in and with this, which I had described as a walk-on amendment.

Overnight, we learned that this actually had to be presented at the CBA, which is why it is now listed as Law 2C1.

So I want to thank Asha on central staff, who's been working very hard.

as have the entire central staff.

So what we have before you is a substitute that adds funding for two positions rather than the four that Councilmember Herbold's bill adds.

It does abrogate the one strategic advisor three position as does Councilmember Herbold's.

which the law department itself had identified as unnecessary for the work that they're trying to do.

So this proviso imposes a proviso on two existing prosecutor positions and their funding.

It adds two positions instead of four.

And it uses funds that are already in the proposed budget to support those two added positions.

Additionally, it adds $61,275, which is the funding that's needed to fully fund those two positions.

It's basically a pared-down version of Councilmember Herbold's bill as it uses two existing prosecutor positions to fund this work.

And I just want to say quickly, the intent here is to acknowledge that while investments in diversion and in electronic home monitoring are really important, particularly to people of color who are involved in the criminal legal system, the city's overall investment in that system shouldn't be increasing, especially when we know that investing in a system that has a disproportionate impact on our black and brown neighbors is part of the problem that we are trying to address here.

So that is the proposal before us.

Allie, you'll probably do a better job explaining.

Thank you very much.

Central staff, please go ahead, Allie.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm going to ask my colleague, Asha, who I'm certain will do a better job than I would.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Oh, good afternoon, Councilmembers.

Asha Mankatraman with your central staff.

So Councilmember Herbold-Lamarales did a great job describing both, so I'll just provide some additional context here.

The proposed budget had included almost $250,000 for fully staffing the existing pre-filing diversion program.

Councilmember Herbold and Morales' proposal instead proposed to expand the pre-filing diversion program.

And law had previously stated that if that were the case, then they wouldn't need the strategic advisor three position.

Instead, they would need two assistant city prosecutors, an assistant city attorney, and a management system analyst to file the expanded program.

So both of the CBAs do abrogate that strategic advisor three position, but use the funding for that position to support the assistant city attorney and the management system analyst positions.

So the main difference here in law 2A1, Council Member Herbold's proposal, and law 2C1, Council Member Morales' proposal, is that instead of adding two prosecutors and the funding needed for those prosecutors, to the city attorney's office.

the main effect here is that we would be adding less funding to the city attorney's office and

Thank you very much.

Councilmembers, are there any additional questions or comments on the differences here?

And Councilmember Herbold, if you have any additional comments, that would be welcome.

Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I just want to note that, again, the staffing recommendations in the original CBA reflect the recommendations from the law department as requested by the city council.

I'm, you know, concerned that You know, we want to expand the pre-filing diversion program, and as such, we should adequately staff the CAO to perform the work.

As I mentioned earlier, there is a companion item sponsored by President Gonzalez that includes a proviso of $1.1 million for pre-filing diversion in the city attorney's office, worked in conjunction with the original item 72. And I think I would like to I'm going to defer to Councilmember Lewis because he has a lot of experience working in the city attorney's office to talk about functionally how a proviso on these positions is recommended by Councilmember Morales would affect the work of the city attorney's office.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Muscata.

I appreciate that we're having this discussion about the potential for pre-file diversion to transform the nature and the staffing of the city attorney's office.

I think that's emphatically true, especially now that we are on a course to expand the qualifications for pre-file diversion to folks who are older than 25. That makes a really, really big difference in the scope of what this can do to help the city attorney's office equitably get through the 14,000 referrals that the office receives in a given year.

To date, the program that I worked on and that we've mostly been discussing when I was an assistant city attorney over the last three and a half, well, probably roughly four years now, has referred maybe approximately 800 to 1,000 people to some kind of diversion.

That's not necessarily reflecting yet in having a significant impact on the overall workload of the office.

I think that it's possible that this expansion is going to be in a position that the office could abrogate entire positions in the city attorney's office after we demonstrate the effectiveness of this diversion program.

But I don't think that we're in a position where we can Assume that impact before the program has been implemented and we've evaluated the impact it's having on the workload of the office.

So I'm not I'm not comfortable.

diverting existing resources, assuming that it's going to have that impact on the overall workload with this amendment today.

I'd rather we evaluate the program over the course of 2022 and then see if we can make staffing adjustments based on the impact that this has on being able to process referrals and divert them out of the criminal legal system and thereby create less work for the city attorney's office.

Um, so I think that this is, uh, this exact amendment would be, um, uh, more warranted in the next budget cycle when we have information about the impact of the over 25 diversion program.

I think at this time, um, especially given that the office is facing a huge backlog of referrals from the COVID-19 pandemic, um, could potentially tie down, uh, I think we need to be careful.

We need to take some of the resources in the office and create additional bottlenecks.

I think we want to be careful to avoid something like that coming to be.

Today I will be supporting the original proposal which I am a

I'm going to turn it over to you.

≫ Thank you.

One other thing I forgot to mention is that if the intent of the Councilmember Morales' substitute is to, is offered out of concern that the resources for pre-fouling diversion may not be used as intended by the I just want to remind folks that Council President Gonzalez are working on legislation to further define the duties of the City Attorney's Office to include an expectation that the City Attorney's Office continue pre-filed diversion.

We'll be hearing that in my committee before the year's end.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

Councilmember Lewis, please go ahead.

And then Councilmember Morales, she'll get the last word.

Councilmember Silva?

Councilmember Herbold spoke to what I raised my hand for.

I am working on some ordinances to exercise the power that the Council has to policy remedies like that first to address potential concerns and policy changes in the city attorney's office is a better first step than making certain budget changes in advance of some of those policy decisions.

So that is a conversation that Council Member Herbold has graciously offered committee time to address in December.

I think it is a great opportunity for us to be able to do that.

For those in the viewing public, that legislation will be coming out sometime after the budget.

I look forward to that.

I just wanted to be really clear that Councilmember Morales' proposal doesn't abrogate any positions in the city attorney's office other than the strategic advisor position, which Councilmember Herbold would have as well.

So the prosecutors that are provisoed aren't being abrogated.

They're just being put under proviso to work on the pre-filing diversion program, just so I wanted to make sure that was clear.

That is very helpful.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Morales, would you like to add anything else to the discussion here today?

Well, that was the point I was going to make as well, is that this is aggregating just the one strategic advisor position and really is trying to make sure that the work that is being done in the criminal division is more focused on the pre-filing diversion and the expansion in particular so that the resources of the department go toward this move toward a more restorative justice approach to the work that we're doing.

And I will leave it at that and look forward to the next public safety committee meeting.

Thank you.

I want to thank all of the sponsors of the initial proposal and this amendment.

I appreciate the clarification on the similarity in terms of that single position that we're talking about here.

I do want to make sure that the CAO has sufficient staffing to address the multiple needs and community and the desired continuation of serious programs.

So we're going to go ahead and call for the vote.

on, I wanna make sure to get this right.

I would like you to call the roll on the consideration of the substitute amendment that is in front of us for consideration.

That would be substitute item number 157.

Chair Mosqueda, if I may, I think you're calling for the vote on the motion to substitute law 2C1 for law 2B1.

Sorry, law 2A1.

So basically the vote is, would you like to substitute Council Member Morales' option for Council Member Herbold's option?

If you vote yes on this motion, you are saying no to Council Member Herbold's proposal, and then Council Member Morales' substitute would be before the committee for a final vote.

Okay, I'd like to call for I'd like Madam Clerk for you to call the roll on the motion to substitute law 002CA1 for law 002A1.

So again, a no vote means you'd like to retain the language that Council Member Herbold has.

A yes vote means you'd like to see the language that Council Member Morales just described substituted.

Okay.

Peterson.

No.

Strauss.

No.

Gonzales.

No.

Herbold.

No.

Juarez.

No.

Lewis.

No.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Two in favor.

And six opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion fails.

That means that Law 002A001, as originally proposed, is in front of us.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for all of your work on this.

Again, the amendment is in front of us for our consideration as originally presented in the amendment.

Madam Vice Chair, would you like to add anything else to the comments that you just summarized for your original amendment?

No, thank you.

I appreciate the offer.

Okay, thank you, Madam Vice Chair.

Colleagues, we now have in front of us the original amendment, law 002A001.

This is up for your consideration originally, agenda item number 72. If there's no additional comments or discussion, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of item number 72, law 002A001 as originally presented?

Peterson.

No.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Flores.

Yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Schramm-Oskena.

Aye.

7 in favor, 1 opposed.

Thank you and congratulations Councilmember Herbold.

Law 002A001 is now adopted.

Councilmember Lewis, I believe you are the original sponsor of item number 122, that's S.503B002.

Would you like to move your amendment so that is in front of us for consideration?

So moved.

Thank you very much.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to consider S.503B001.

That's originally agenda item number 122. Councilmember Lewis, would you like to speak to this original amendment?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So this amendment really came out of a desire following on our conversations in the spring to figure out ways to broaden the pie for our big transportation needs, to make sure that we were making additional investments in critical Vision Zero projects, as well as making sure that we were squaring our maintenance obligations for bridges that are in critical condition throughout the city.

This amendment sought to well seeks to raise the commercial parking tax to put funding into both of those critical needs and to do so by raising this fairly underutilized revenue source over the last decade.

Commercial parking tax hasn't been raised since I believe 2010 and to seek a fairly modest increase to start making some significant additional progress on these priorities, given there's been very large community demand, both for bridge maintenance and for increasing investments in Vision Zero.

An extensive stakeholder in process with this with advocates in the building and construction trades, as well as with the mass coalition.

To come up with the formula and it's a formula that I stand by and and I look forward to having a discussion.

Are there any additional comments on.

.503B002 before we consider any amendments.

Hearing none, Councilmember Herbold, I understand you have a substitute.

Would you like to move your substitute to this item?

Thank you so much.

I move to substitute CBA S.503C001, which is agenda item 158, in place of CBA S.503B002, which is agenda item 126.

Thank you.

It's been moved.

Is there a second?

Calling once.

Twice.

I think the courtesy second you sure can.

Madam colleagues, I will offer courtesy second here for the purpose of discussion.

Madam Vice Chair, you are recognized to speak to your substitute.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

So this action adds a small increment additional to the action sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

It's an additional 0.25%.

Really appreciate.

The proposal would increase funding for implementation of the sidewalk safety repair CIP project by almost $500,000 for 2022, a million dollars for 2023. This follows up on really important work the council began in 2019 when we adopted resolution 31908, This led to a report that we received in 2020, which included recommending funding a citywide five-year sidewalk gym bevel plan as a first step to mitigate existing sidewalk uplifts and other deficiencies that can create accessibility barriers or trip fall risks.

And they were recommending at that point an annual cost of $3 to $4 million.

Just want to recognize the efforts of the MAS coalition in encouraging this council to adopt Resolution 31908 and their advocacy for increased funding for this program.

The action would provide close to a million dollars in ongoing funding in future years.

Recognizing that the recommendation is an annual cost of three to four million doesn't get us all the way there, but I think it gets us close.

I want to also thank Council Member Lewis for requesting that the city auditor do a report also on this same topic.

Just a couple weeks ago, the city auditor released that report requested by Councilmember Lewis, titled Seattle's Sidewalk Maintenance and Repair Program.

It recommended that SDOT implement the recommendations from the June 2020 report and called out the needed additional funding for the Sidewalk Shim Bevel Plan.

I want to recognize that the action I think it's reasonable to as much of the 1.2 million would be predicated to sidewalk repair.

And so I reached out to the Mass Coalition about this shift.

Folks on council should have received an email from the Mass Coalition this morning.

They came in at around 10.45 a.m.

They are supportive of this amendment.

0.5% increased for the additional funding for the sidewalk repair program.

They note this is a welcome step and quote that there's much more that needs to be done to make our sidewalk really accessible.

And they referenced the recommendation of the city auditor released three weeks ago.

And there has been some coverage of that audit.

and the needs around sidewalk repair just last week in Crosscut.

Really, again, I want to thank Council Member Lewis for requesting the City Auditor's Report.

I was the sponsor of Resolution 31908 at the request of the Mass Coalition, and I'm really hoping that we can, at long last, and that this work began in 2019 makes some additional progress on the acute needs for sidewalk maintenance and repair in the city.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold, your audio got a little bit muffled there midway through, so if you want to...

Check the options there.

That might be great.

Council Member Lewis, before I turn to you, Council Member Hribble, can you remind me what time that email came in from the Mass Coalition?

I have not seen that myself yet.

I would love to take a look.

I think it was 10.45 a.m., I believe.

Okay.

And your voice sounds much clearer.

Thank you.

Go ahead, Council Member Lewis.

Thank you very much, Madam Chair.

And I do appreciate Council Member Herbold's name checking of the audit that I requested several times in her remarks.

I see what she's doing there, which is a good tactic.

I do appreciate that audit and I do recognize that this amendment would make progress towards effectuating some of the recommendations that are in that audit.

My concern here, and I'm just going to be completely honest about being conflicted about this, is part of me does think like what is another 0.25% on top of the 2% that we're already doing.

But this was sort of a stakeholder process that began with an idea for doing a 1% increase.

It then went to a 2% increase with a lot of neutrality from some external stakeholders who historically have not been supportive of increases in the commercial parking tax at any level, but acknowledge the city's revenue problems and also our backlog on critical infrastructure.

I just feel like without being in a position where I can go back and do some broader conversations with some of those folks, I'm concerned for my own personal vote and I'm not necessarily dissuading anyone else here from doing what they feel comfortable on this.

But then for my personal vote, I feel like I would be potentially breaking faith with some stakeholders by going above the 2% level.

So for that reason, I'm gonna respectfully vote no on the proposed amendment.

I would like to continue to work over the course of 2022, potentially looking at commercial parking tax as a source to make some progress on the sidewalk.

I think it's a little unfortunate that the audit was released kind of well into our budget process, making it more difficult for me to insert in the timeline some things to effectuate progress on the recommendations this year.

I'm going to have to vote no on this, but certainly encourage colleagues to vote their conscience on it and not necessarily be bound by the stakeholder process that I set myself out on to bring us to where we are today.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold, you'll get the last word here.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional questions or comments.

Appreciate you flagging the email.

I think it looks like it's from our friends at Seattle Greenways, maybe.

And so thank you for flagging that.

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I do support an increase in the commercial parking tax for some of these transportation needs.

And I just have not had a chance to circle back with folks who would be paying the increase.

And so I know there was concern raised by certain stakeholders.

large nonprofit institutions.

And so I just, I'm not able to support this just because I haven't had time to do the due diligence with some stakeholders, but I do appreciate the desire to raise the tax and to also address some of these issues.

So I'll be a no on this substitute, but sticking with supporting the original proposal.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Herbold.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Would you like to add anything else?

Seeing no comments.

Okay.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

Colleagues, I'm going to try to get this motion right.

Madam Clerk, would you please call the roll on the motion to the substitute, which is S.503C001, item number 158 on our agenda.

Peterson?

No.

Strauss?

No.

Gonzales?

No.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

No.

Morelos.

No.

Chair Mosqueda.

No.

Two in favor.

Six opposed.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Herbold, thank you very much for your work on this and your ongoing work with the original sponsor.

Oops, as well.

I thought I was on mute for a second.

The motion fails.

S.503C001 does not advance.

We now have the underlying the original amendment as proposed in item number 122, that is S.503B002.

Councilmember Lewis, did you have anything else you'd like to add to this?

No, I stand by my earlier comments.

Okay, I'm not seeing any additional hands or additional questions.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of item number 122, S.503B002.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

We have a motion and a second.

All in favor?

None opposed.

Item number 122 is adopted.

That brings us to our last item in this category here that has been flagged for possible substitutes.

of legislation, the amendment in front of us.

Council Member Peterson, you may be on mute.

I'm sorry, I'm just trying to catch up on the parliamentary procedure here.

One moment.

It's okay.

I can also move it if you'd like to second it.

I'll move it.

Looks good.

I would like to move to approve Council Budget Amendment S.504C001. Council Member Peterson, would you like to second that?

Second.

Excellent.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Peterson, your original amendment number 123 is in front of us.

Would you like to speak to it?

Council Member, Chair Mosqueda, if I might, I think the original item, I'm just trying to pull it up, quickly here is budget legislation to approve the LTGO bond ordinance that is typical that would authorize about $120 million worth of bonds for a number of projects.

There was previously, Council Member Peterson's amendment related to issuance of bonds for bridge maintenance is in a separate piece of legislation.

and council budget action that has already been passed in group A.

So this item is just standard budget legislation.

Council members to want had an amendment, potentially just substitute it, but no motion has been made to substitute.

So you can just vote the bill up or vote the original item up or down.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Peterson, apologies.

I see S.

and I want to call on you.

So thank you for for allowing me to get through that.

I don't see a request for a substitute at this moment.

Is there an additional comment that you have, Council Member Peterson?

Just that I do support this standard budget legislation.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

If there's no additional comments or questions, if there's no motion for substitute, we will go ahead and consider S.504C001 as the amendment in front of us.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on the adoption of agenda item number 123?

Peterson.

Yes.

Strauss.

I'm saying.

Gonzales.

Hi.

Herbold.

Yes.

Moraes.

Hi.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Cher Mosqueda.

Hi.

Seven in favor, one abstention, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

S.504C001 is approved.

Colleagues, that does get us through all of the items included in group A here.

I think what we will do is give you an extra 15 minutes for your recess.

And we will come back and start fresh with items in group B.

Does that sound good to folks?

I'm seeing nods, okay.

If there's no objection, we will go ahead and go into recess and we will reconvene exactly at one, excuse me, at 2 p.m., at 2 p.m.

We will reconvene at 2 p.m.

Hearing no objections and no concerns, our meeting is in recess.

See you at 2 p.m., everyone.

Thanks so much.