Select Budget Committee 6/10/20

Liz, are you on site in Chambers to start?

Yes, Council Member, you are ready to go whenever you are ready.

Wonderful.

Well, good afternoon.

Today is June 10th, 2020, the Select Budget Committee meeting.

Welcome to order.

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

Will the Clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Stroud?

Present.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Thank you.

And Chair Mosqueda?

Here.

Aye, present.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

If there is no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

At this time, council colleagues, I want to remind folks that we have had a temporary halt in our conversations at the Select Budget Committee.

Over the last three weeks, we have been awaiting there to be additional guidance offered from the governor's office and the attorney general as well.

We, like many cities across the state, are dealing with the impact of COVID-19, which has meant that we've had to radically change how we've addressed general governing and dealing with the crisis that has come up because of the public health crisis that is COVID.

We had initially had conversations during the previous month about ways in which our budget and our revenue streams could be addressed to greater support those in our community from small businesses to child cares to individual workers and folks from vulnerable communities like immigrant and refugee communities.

And today we finally have the conversation again in front of us.

So I appreciate everybody's willingness to wait as we sought additional guidance from the governor.

I just want to spend a quick second to say thank you to Governor Inslee for his leadership during this time of COVID and for his recognition that cities like Seattle needed additional guidance and opportunities to take up critical measures.

So we really appreciate his leadership on everything that he has been doing with our public health department and our local governments to respond to the COVID crisis.

And their directive earlier this month has allowed for us to continue the conversation, which we must much appreciate.

Council colleagues, there's three items on the agenda for today that address the revenue bills that we were previously discussing, introduced by Council Member Morales and Council Member Sawant that we will take up on the agenda first.

Hello, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you for joining us.

We will have those as agenda items one, two, and three.

Agenda item number four, we talked about in detail on Monday.

This is the beginning part of our evaluation of the current budget and setting us up for conversations on future budget, including the 2020 supplemental budget to help deal with the crisis that is COVID and immediate concerns in our community.

We will also use this as an opportunity to do an inquest into the Seattle Police Department's budget so that we have a better understanding of where current spending is occurring, where those dollars are going, and who those are serving and not serving, so that we can have an assessment of where we would like dollars to go in the future.

This is in alignment with much of the conversations that are happening in places like Minneapolis, New York City, Los Angeles.

Many cities across the country are doing similar analyses on how to defund and refund community priorities.

So that will be agenda item number four.

Just at the top of the agenda, I wanna say to folks, you all received notification from me that the city budget office, CBO and director Ben Noble are taking additional time to add to the budget that they were planning to send to us yesterday.

Colleagues, I think this is a good sign.

I am hopeful that they are not only using this as an opportunity to include new spending items from the federal and state government to address the COVID crisis, but to also take this moment to address the other public health crisis that is out there, which is the institutionalized racism and the concerns that we see about over-policing or escalated police tactics in our community.

So I see this as a good sign that there's additional conversations happening about the budget.

We expect the budget within a week or two, I am hoping that we get it very soon so we can continue our process, but as we said on Monday, we're not waiting.

So that's what item number four is, to really do a deep dive into what the current allocations are specifically to the Seattle Police Department.

We will keep you updated as we get information about the status of the 2020 Mayor's Supplemental Budget Proposal and make sure that folks get that information in real time.

While we don't have that in front of us, we have some robust presentations from central staff, and we appreciate them being on the line.

Also, for quick housekeeping, we have about 85 people signed up for public testimony.

I have committed to having a full hour of public testimony at our hearing today to also hear from folks who have been waiting to make comments about the revenue proposals that were put on hold.

So we will have an opportunity to get as many people in as possible.

Like previous hearings, we are going to limit that to one minute to get as many people in as possible.

So the three parts of our agenda again are the first hour dedicated to public comment, the second hour to the revenue package as introduced by Morales and so on, and the third hour to specifically look at Seattle Police Department's budget and to do our inquest into where those dollars are going.

We will then next week hopefully see the full proposed budget, and if not, then the following week.

So we'll keep you updated on the documents that we received from the city budget's office.

With that, council colleagues, I want to get into public comment.

I know folks are anxious to have this conversation.

Item C on our agenda is public comment.

At this time, we will open remote public comment period, and I ask that everyone be patient as we continue to learn and operate the system in real time and navigate through the inevitable growing pains that we've already experienced.

We're continuously looking for ways to fine-tune this process and adding new features to allow for additional needs of public participation.

I want to say thank you as well.

Council Member Juarez is with us as well, so I want to thank you for joining us, Council Member Juarez.

Council colleagues, it remains the strong intent of the councils to have regular public comment included in our meetings.

In fact, I want to remind folks as we re-begin our select budget committee meetings, a reminder that we will have public comment probably not as long as today, but we will have public comment every meeting so that people have the chance to share their input.

And we also reserve the right to make sure that the comments are within the timeframe that we allow so that we can get through as many people as possible.

I'm going to moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

The public comment period for this meeting is going to be until 3 p.m.

I ask each speaker to be given one minute.

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

I know that there's a lot of folks who have testified before.

I'm sorry, we cannot at this point go to folks who have not testified in the past.

I do have to take folks in order.

I appreciate you being patient with us and for folks who are interested in still testifying, you can email, I mean, sorry, you can go online at seattle.gov backslash council and get signed up.

Once I call the speaker's name, I will, we will unmute you and you will have the chance to speak.

Please note that you will hear you have been unmuted.

That will be your cue to speak.

Start by saying your name and then you will also hear a chime at 10 seconds when 10 seconds are left.

And we will ask you to wrap up your comments by then so that you don't get cut off.

We want to hear the last comments that you have.

One second.

Council Colleagues, I'm going to ask support from IT.

I need to go back to the script.

There we go.

Got it.

Once you complete your public comment, you will have the opportunity to listen in on the listening line or watch us on Seattle Channel or online streaming.

I thank you for your participation and for those folks who've been eagerly waiting to testify on the topics that are in front of us today.

Again, revenue, you are welcome to talk about the proposed budget because we did talk about having that on the agenda that we don't have the document in front of us and you're also Welcome to share your feedback on the concept of Seattle Police Department's inquest today on their budget.

Okay, with that, the public comment period is now open.

We will turn it over to the first three speakers who I see are present.

The first speaker is John Manella, followed by Ava Mintz and Bryce Moore.

John, you should be live.

Hello, City Council.

My name is John Manella, and I'm the board treasurer of the Tenancy Union of Washington State.

I support the calls to defund SPD.

At its heart, this is about freedom, but let's talk about what this would actually look like.

Right now, we pay SPD hundreds of millions of dollars every year to respond to calls about homelessness, drugs, property crime, and violence.

And this has been a failure.

Ask anyone.

Ask our communities if they feel safe, or small businesses, or homeowners, or the construction worker who finishes a 12-hour day only to see that someone broke into their car.

We need solutions, not police.

And there are more effective, less expensive alternatives to policing.

What if I told you that three months of jail costs the same as a full year of permanent supportive housing?

The person gets the care they need and is off the streets forever, and we save a lot of money that we can then use to help more people.

And that's just one example.

There are lots more better, more cost-effective alternatives to public health and safety than policing.

We can be a lot safer and save a bunch of money if we defund police.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Eva Metz.

Hi, my name is Eva Metz and I'm a renter in District 2 and I'm here speaking in support of defunding the police by cutting the police budget in half and reinvesting it into our communities.

Also to support banning the use of chemical weapons and chokeholds by the Seattle police and Finally, I think City Council needs to schedule a vote on and pass Council Member Suantin Morales' Amazon tax legislation.

I think we're seeing a lot of Democratic Party politicians making radical-sounding promises, both in Seattle and across the country, and it's really important that we don't just rely on the same political establishment that got us here.

It was protesters that forced Seattle police to leave the East Precinct, but a number of Democratic establishment politicians have consistently voted in support of more police funding, voted against our tax Amazon legislation, except for Sean LaFont, voted against the SPOG contract in the past, and we need to keep organizing and fighting to win substantial police reform.

Thank you.

Bryce Moore, the next three people will be James Cooper, Josh Castle, and Naomi See.

Bryce, please go ahead.

Hi, my name is Bryce Moore.

I was born and raised in the greater Seattle area.

Imagine perceiving the phrase Black Lives Matter as your opponent and not as an obvious objective truth.

This is what the SPV has done.

Your officers went onto their radios, well aware that the protesters were listening, and lied about witnessing the presence of white supremacists in downtown Seattle to try to worry the protesters.

No photos of them have arisen from Seattle at any point, which seems odd when you consider reports of 25 to 30 armed men walking through busy streets.

They weaponized black fears of white supremacists against them.

Imagine the amusement of Carmen Best when this happened.

My toe was broken and my leg was shredded when a flashbang exploded on it.

I've seen other protesters who've been riddled with bruises, cuts, even issues of life-threatening asthma attacks and pulses stopping in your streets.

Darth Sidious, sorry, Jenny Durkin and Darth Vader, sorry, Carmen Best must be impeached and resign.

Defund the Seattle Storm Trooper Department.

I thank the council members who have made it to the front lines and especially thank the surrounding Capitol Hill neighborhood for its continued support of this.

We know this hasn't been easy for you and we appreciate your sacrifices.

Thank you.

James Cooper.

Last week when Minneapolis.

This is James Cooper from District 2. Last week, when Minneapolis City Council announced a commitment to disbanding MPD and replacing it with a new public safety agency, I was inspired to start a campaign to follow their lead in Seattle.

Our group, DisbandSPD.org, began tabling on Pine Street last Friday.

Since then, we have had hundreds of conversations with people of all walks of life.

The feedback we've heard has been consistent.

Seattle citizens no longer feel SPD served the city, and they are ready to start having a conversation about how to address public safety in a way that harmonizes law enforcement with the community.

We propose that the replacement agency be designed via a citizens assembly convened in each of the seven city council districts.

Each district would convene an assembly that would conduct hearings and deliberate to produce a proposal.

The seven proposals will be voted on by Seattle voters in a citywide election and the most approved option would be adopted and SPD would be disbanded.

We ask council to lead the country on this issue by rejecting narrow reforms and instead committing to a binding process by which the citizens of Seattle design the future of public safety.

British Columbia used a similar citizens assembly model in 2004 to select a new voting system.

Thank you.

Josh Castle.

Hi, I'm Josh Castle with Lehigh.

We support the three ordinances being considered today and urge you to vote yes.

Thank you, Council Member Morales and Swamp for sponsoring.

We believe Black Lives Matter.

We ask you to implement the initiatives in the faith leaders letter you received June 2nd.

that outline concrete steps the city can take to address the impact of racial injustice and racist policies in Seattle, and in particular, the central area regarding homelessness displacement, economic security, and more.

SPD should be demilitarized immediately and funding from their $400 million, 25% of the general fund they receive should be reallocated to community-based alternatives and interventions and housing and homelessness programs.

The sweeps of homelessness needs to end now.

These are inhumane.

and worsen homelessness, desperation and trauma.

It continues to be a huge lack of shelter.

More tiny house villages would help change this.

We can send up more villages quickly and cost effectively as we did recently with amazing volunteers.

With the federal COVID funding, we could set up 15 villages with $15 million in funding and quickly get 1,000 people inside.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

The next person is Naomi C., followed by Aaron Whitlatch, Rachel Setzler, and Bennett Ron.

Naomi please go ahead.

My name is Naomi See and I'm a student at the University of Washington.

Today I'm urging you to invest in community based initiatives that combat displacement center community led organizations and support community sponsored programs.

Specifically I ask you to set aside funding to support faith based and community organizations developing affordable and low income housing in the central area under a central area housing plan.

These funds would allow community institutions to realize the equity from their land in order to develop affordable housing to combat displacement.

We also ask that you redirect funds from a justice system that criminalizes lack of opportunity and targets cash poor individuals, and instead provide resources for pre-apprenticeship programs that focus on students of color, sustainable shelter solutions like tiny house villages, and community-led approaches to peace.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Aaron Whitlatch.

Hi Aaron can you hear us.

You might be on mute.

Hi.

My name is Aaron Whitlatch and I live in District 6 and I'm calling in support of defunding the police.

So I sent an email to everyone on city council.

Right now, I'm just going to quickly reiterate.

I'm asking that each council member posts weekly town halls or something of the like with their constituents to specifically update us on the status of the process of defunding the police and of reallocating the funding toward community well-being.

I know that on Monday there was some hesitancy from a number of council members on this issue.

And I understand, you know, that while the discussions are moving extremely rapidly, and you nine are also tasked with running a city during a pandemic, you know, that it's difficult, but this is even more of a reason to keep this process as open as possible with your constituents.

I think that it's a good platform to provide and request additional educational resources And it really just demonstrates transparency and accountability for each of the council members.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Erin Setzler.

Setzer.

Sorry about that.

Rachel.

Rachel can you hear us.

Hi my name is Rachel Setzer.

I live in District 5 and I'm calling in today to support the proposed 50 percent cut to Seattle Police Department funding.

Speaking as a private citizen and a member of Seattle's vibrant arts community I support the demands enumerated by COVID-19 mutual aid Seattle and funds cut from SPD must be allocated to Black and Brown and Indigenous communities in Seattle to provide for the health and well-being of our people.

Further those arrested while protesting the actions of SPD must be released and the city must decline to charge protest charge or prosecute them or retaliate against them in any way.

The momentum of Black Lives Matter movement was built by Black and Brown and Indigenous communities and the material needs of our communities must remain centered until those needs are met and changes to our society have been finally substantially realized.

Black violence against Black and Brown people can no longer be permitted and no longer be permitted or ignored and Seattle will continue to pressure you our elected representatives to either do the work

Thank you.

The next three people are Bennett Rahn Chris McDaniel and Sydney Porter.

Bennett you should be live.

Good afternoon.

My name is Bennett Rahn.

I'm a renter in District 4 in occupied Duwamish Territory.

I would like to speak in particular to dismantling the SPD.

I stand in solidarity of the Black Lives Matter protests and wish to echo their demand that we reallocate all of the four hundred million dollars in funding for the STD into other areas of public good including but not limited to public public mental health infrastructure public housing initiatives specifically trained domestic abuse responders de-escalation public health officials and other initiatives to help support those in need in our community particularly those of Black and Brown bodies.

I believe that defund defunding the STD will allow for a more just and peaceful Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Chris McDaniel, you should be live.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you.

It gladdens me to see that your councilmen are getting their early start on the budget you are going to have to come up with, with the shortfalls in every department.

I don't envy you your task.

Allow me to make a few suggestions.

Fund the tiny house villages to the limits of your ability.

They save lives, the lives of the residents who live there and the people that weren't contaminated with the virus because they had some place to go.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Chris.

Appreciate your words.

Sydney Porter, then Jaslyn Huerta, and then Emily MacArthur.

Sydney, you should be live.

Hello, my name is Sydney Porter.

I am a white student at the University of Washington who is tired of seeing my black and brown peers having to fight against centuries-old systems of oppression, including the system of policing.

Today, I will be speaking on the demands being made by the protesters.

These demands include the defunding of the SPD by at least 50 percent, increased immediate and long-term investment in Black communities, and to end the prosecution of protesters.

The Seattle Police Department's budget has continued to grow over the past decade as people have called for police reform.

This budget was supposed to fund practices that would make our communities safer and reduce the police brutality of which the SPD is infamous for.

Yet our communities have not become any safer and the police have only continued to be a threatening force that thinks de-escalating a situation means shooting to kill.

If we really want safer communities we need to decrease police presence and invest in programs in Black communities.

I'm here to amplify this call for the City Council to propose and vote for a 50 percent cut to the SPD's $363 million budget.

This should go to education mental health care and other community services.

Thank you.

Jazlyn Huerta.

Hi my name is Jazlyn.

Hi my name is Jazlyn Huerta.

I'm a queer Mexican woman living on Capitol Hill for the last nine years.

I'm calling to demand that the Seattle City Council completely defund and disband the Seattle Police Department.

The SPD is a rot in our city rooted in racism and we need to remove it completely.

I request that the four hundred and seven million dollars be reallocated into community programs focusing on the Black community.

When we marched to demand that the SPD stop beating and murdering Black satellites they responded with more violence wreaking havoc on our neighborhood for two weeks.

I believe they have proven that they are overfunded and violent occupying force.

They do not protect in service and we need to fund the programs that do.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you very much.

Emily MacArthur.

Hi, my name is Emily MacArthur.

I'm a renter and I live in District 2. And I'm calling in to support defunding the police by at least 50%.

I think that this inquest into the budget is a day late and a dollar short.

I think the fact that the police budget up until this point has been a black box where working class people don't get to know what the money gets spent on is completely unacceptable.

And this is something that Council Member Sawant has brought forward at every budget hearing since she's been a council member through her people's budget movement, knowing what's inside of that budget.

And I think we do know what that money is spent on It's spent on weapons of war that are not even allowed to be used under the Geneva Convention to gas and flashbang our community.

And I think that this inquest is just a stalling tactic, hoping that, you know, the movement will go home and that these two lists of reforms can kind of be done under the cover of night while everyone pats themselves on the back.

And the reason that I believe that is because most council members is voting against the interest of working class people, including approving, except for council members, the recent contract which rolled back important reforms.

So our movement will need to keep turning.

Thank you so much and I can assure you that it's not a stall tactic.

We are moving quickly here and that's exactly why we made it the first thing on our agenda as we looked at the supplemental budget.

I just want to make sure that that's very clear to folks.

The next three items the next three people are Jennifer Cooper, Shujaata Romney and Charlie Rintzler.

Hello fellow Seattleites.

I'm a central district resident and I'm here to ask my city to make sure that our budget reflects systems of care support and trust that allow us all to thrive.

That means drastically reducing budgets for our policing and punishment systems that perpetuate harm.

We must invest our resources in education and community based health and safety programs.

Until recently I didn't think much about the police budget or even about the police and that reflects a blindness born of white privilege and white supremacy.

because it's not like people of color haven't been telling us.

But I am not blind about this anymore.

I stood in the streets in peaceful protests and saw police who looked like soldiers.

They were going to war armed with weapons against the people they're supposed to protect.

And I watched the live streams and read the articles, saw the videos with police gassing and beating the people they're supposed to protect.

They were armed in battle against us, not going to battle for us.

So if they're not going to protect us they're not who are they trying to protect property power structures and privilege and it's time.

Thank you very much Jennifer.

Sujata Romney.

Hello.

My name is Sujata.

I'm representing the coalition of Seattle Indian Americans today.

Our community strongly supports and follows the lead of Black Lives Matter movement and is opposed to the militarization and violent techniques used by the Seattle Police Department.

We want the council members to bring legislation to entirely defend the police department and use the funds for restorative justice that are led by the black community in Seattle.

Use the priorities of the Aid to Abolition campaign to guide your defunding strategy.

Reject any proposed expansion to police budgets.

Demand the highest budget cuts each year until it gets to zero.

Slash salaries, police salaries across the board until they are zeroed out.

Immediately fire police officers who have excessive force complaints.

Do not hire new officers or replace fired or resigned officers.

Cut funding for public relations for the police department.

Deplatform white supremacist public officials.

Suspend the use of paid administrative leave for cops under investigation.

Reduce the power of police unions until they are fully defunded.

Thank you very much.

Charlie Rensler.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Go ahead.

Thank you.

My name's Charlie Rinsler.

I represent Solidarity Unity and Peace Seattle.

I'm here to talk about revenue from the sale of the Mercer Mega Block.

With an estimated 42 million dollars set aside in finance general waiting to be allocated we must use all of this money for low income communities.

Why why why did they not make a decision initially to set aside this money for low income communities.

And that how is the 50 million dollars that has already been set aside for transportation being used to benefit low income communities.

Thank you.

Thank you so much Charlie.

Great questions and we'll make sure to mark those for our upcoming budget conversation.

Jen Musia followed by Valentina Warner.

Victor Kipping.

Jen you should be live now.

I'm Jen Musia.

I direct the Ballard Food Bank and today I'm speaking on behalf of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

This year instead of a portfolio with a list of new activities to fund SHSC recommends a framework for re-envisioning the whole budget with new priorities for an equitable recovery.

Human services are essential to build and support well-being.

Yes, the COVID-19 pandemic storm hit all of us, but we weren't all in the same boat.

We must ask, what kind of system do we want to build for our future?

First, make no cuts to community health and human services.

Second, re-envision the use of city resources, rebuilding to remedy inequities that have been built into our systems, including new progressive revenue and examining the SPD and criminal justice budgets, reducing funding and reallocating resources to community-led housing, health and human services.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Jen.

Valentina Warner.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, thank you.

Can you hear me?

Okay, I'm a family practice doctor in the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

I've worked at the same clinic for 21 years and I'm in district two.

And I'm asking for you to defund the police to put those funds into desperately needed things for our patients.

We aren't able to do our jobs as physicians to take care of our patients because they're homeless.

They don't have access to healthy food.

They don't have access to their medications.

They have no access to meaningful mental health care.

Our mental health system is a disaster.

And that disastrous mental health system is what the police calls are being done to.

And then the police don't have the skills or resources to deal with it.

So it's just only a logical conclusion to reduce funding to the police and increase funding for social services so that we don't need police.

In addition, I was in the Rainier Beach March at Othello this weekend.

There were no police to be seen.

It was entirely peaceful.

It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

We will not suffer with reduced police presence.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And as a health care provider, thanks for everything you're doing during COVID.

The next three people are Victor Kipping, David Colmeres, and Adrian Corcon.

Victor, you are up.

Yeah.

Okay, hello.

Thank you, council people for allowing me to have a voice on this council in this public meeting.

I am from Georgetown Tiny Houses Villages.

I'm also the safety advisor.

And I do have an idea if we could build some more tiny houses that can cure the homelessness problem.

It's a small step, but it's a giant step in the long run.

If we all could just get along and have a program where the people, public people could just meet up with the police or, you know, law enforcement in some kind of way where we could stop these type of situations as far as killing people.

Not only does black lives matter, all lives matter.

And the new situation, I just, through the COVID situation, it's just been a really, really stressful thing for everyone.

But I just want to thank you folks for allowing us just to have a voice in this meeting.

And thank you once again, folks.

The next person is David Colmenares.

Hi, my name is David Colmenares, and I am a small business owner in District 7. I have personally witnessed the brutality that the police inflicted upon us while standing in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

I watched my friends get shot at directly with 40-millimeter rounds.

These war criminals that are filling our streets and we are giving hundreds of millions of dollars to, we need to defund them and take that money and invest it in our communities.

When I look at the Seattle budget, I see how it reflects the corporate interests that are controlling and have a stranglehold in our city.

We need to start investing in education, housing, and things for the community.

And everyone needs to pay their fair share.

As a taxpayer, I support the city with sales tax card caps in other ways.

Amazon and other profiteering corporations have been, we've seen how their, the wealth they've been bringing to our nation has been disproportionately affecting our communities, and they need to pay their fair share so we can have equitable housing and a community for everyone.

Thank you.

Wonderful.

Thank you.

Adrian Corcon.

Hi my name.

Hi my name is Adrienne Corcoran and I am a property manager in Seattle and I'm referencing the faith leaders letter that was sent to the city council and giving testimony to please put funding towards the tiny house villages as a cost effective way to handle homelessness.

Also to put funding towards the central area housing plan so that people in the community can stay in that community and not get displaced.

And also put money into the pre-apprenticeship training program so that people can have training for livelihood and being able to stay in their houses.

Also, as a community manager, I want to note that in the last five years, I've seen an increase in theft.

And so I hope that with the funding of the police, that's taken into consideration that theft has gone up.

by a large percentage in the last five years.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

The next three people will be Logan Swan.

Andrew Constantino and Cyndia Stringer.

Logan are you with us.

Hi my name is Logan Swan.

I'm a Vancoufal union iron worker in Seattle.

I work in Seattle.

Yeah I mean I don't I don't.

I think there needs to be a whole lot of research done into the, I mean, there should be research done in the SPD budget, but I don't think that should hold up cutting their budget.

You know, especially with the shortfalls because of aggressive taxation.

There's not, you know, working people don't have time for that.

You have a choice to make between, you know, if you cut the budget of the SPD or if you cut social programs that working families rely on.

Um, and yeah, this kind of, you know, waiting around to find out, you know, it's cost $46 million lost while stalling over the Amazon tax.

Um, I think you guys need to schedule a vote for it immediately and don't water it down.

Um, and yeah, I don't know if you, uh, guys were watching the news last night, but, um, yeah, a bunch of us, we occupied the city hall.

We're going to be back.

Durkin's got to go.

Andrew Constantino, Cyndia Stinner, and then Brendan Walsh.

Hi, Andrew.

Hello, I am Andrew Constantino, site coordinator at Georgetown Tiny House Village.

I have seen firsthand how the model of tiny houses has offered safety, community and services to hundreds of homeless men, women, families and pets.

The creation of new tiny house villages may preclude the need for sweeps as they are by far the preferred shelter option for many still camping on our streets.

We received countless inquiries from other cities, states, and countries looking at tiny houses as a humane, effective way of addressing homelessness.

Villagers find themselves again, feel safe again, regain a sense of privacy, stability, and are able to rebuild their lives.

We all deserve to live in dignity.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Cinda Stenger?

Hello, my name is Cinda Stenger.

Can you hear me?

Yes thank you.

I have been part of the leadership team that has been building tiny houses at Camp Second Chance since spring 2018. A member of Westside Interfaith Network and live in District 1. Thank you for this opportunity to speak to you today and thank you for your leadership in these troubling and challenging times.

And it is time to reevaluate our priorities of how we use taxpayer money to run this city.

I ask that you adopt a people's budget one that puts people and community well above all else.

This means shifting funds away from the police as they are woefully disappointing us in their priorities.

And instead fund the human services department and affordable housing.

You think we have a homeless problem now.

Just wait till the true economic calamity hits us.

We need to be ready to house the thousands that will be unemployed and homeless.

We need to fund 15 more tiny house villages.

A model that has proven to work.

I've seen it with my own eyes.

And it is a cost-effective investment for the long term, much better than short-term hotel stays.

This is a very effective way to use the 15 million federal CARES funding.

Thank you.

Brendan Walsh, welcome.

Hi, I'm Brendan Walsh.

I am a District 3 renter and a Microsoft employee.

And I want to say I stand in solidarity with the demands from King County Equity Now Coalition.

I believe we should redistribute $180 million from the Seattle Police Department budget and put it into affordable housing and community health programs.

I moved here from New York, where year after year, we just kept cutting and cutting education and cutting housing, cutting everything to just pour money into the NYPD.

And all we ended up with was this paramilitary that beats everybody who lives in the city and then goes back home somewhere else.

We can't fall to that same thing in Seattle.

I know we can do better.

I know we can take care of our citizens and I hope we can use our budget responsibly for that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Samantha Fogg followed by the Reverend Angela Ying and Kels Lund.

Samantha welcome.

Hello this is Samantha Fogg.

I live in District 4. I'm calling specifically with an ask that you defund the Seattle Police Department by at least 50 percent in line with the request by King County Equity Now.

And also as a PTSA parent I want to state that I see the need for family support workers in all of our schools especially now that we have so many students who have been traumatized not only by the COVID-19 pandemic situation but more specifically by their interactions with the Seattle police.

I know too many children who have now experienced tear gas just because they were in the vicinity of a peaceful protest, or they were at a protest that they expected to be peaceful.

It's not okay, and we need to defend the police now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Reverend Angela Yang, welcome.

In District 2, With members in all of the districts, Black Lives Matter.

Eight minutes, 46 seconds can change the life of a human being and our world forever.

We urge you, the city council, to one, pass the Sawant Morales legislation to tax Amazon and the top 2% big businesses now.

Tax Amazon is about Black Lives Matter.

Two, pass progressive revenue, not an austerity budget.

Three, Defund the police budget, as others have said, by 50% or more so they cannot use excessive force and violence or anything to hurt our peaceful protesters and people standing for an anti-racist world.

Four, reverse the trend of disinvestment and displacement in our city and support affordable housing, jobs, and the Green New Deal throughout our city.

Five, build more tiny house villages, keeping our homeless off the streets, 6 provide public health and housing to the most vulnerable.

It's time you the City Council take action for restorative justice for all.

Please stand with the people.

Thank you.

Thank you Chris.

Kels Lund welcome.

Hi my name is Kels Lund and I'm a renter in District 5. I'm just calling to echo the calls from my fellow citizens to defund the Seattle Police and in and take that money and invest it in resources like building tiny house villages immediately especially as a reaction to the devastation of COVID-19 along with other programs like taxing Amazon to create better health and human services in Seattle Washington.

Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you for your time.

The next three people will be Helen Lee Munya Shibro, and Caleb Magee.

Helen Lee, thanks for being with us.

Hi, my name is Helen.

I'm from District 3 and I'm just joining in with everyone calling for the Seattle Police Department to be defunded by at least 50%.

In the next budget, I work with teenagers and one day I came to work and then the teenagers came in and they were like, sorry, my voice is gone because I went to a protest and I got tear gassed.

And I think that's absolutely heinous.

I also want to join in with the other demands that the funds from the Seattle Police Department be reallocated towards community funding and also for all charges for protesters to be dropped.

And that is all charges for all protesters.

There are some who are still in jail and they need to be let out right now as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next person is Munya Chiro.

Munya, welcome.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Hello.

Okay, perfect.

Hi, my name is Mungun Tiro.

I'm a renter and tech worker from District 7 and the treasurer of Seattle DSA.

I fully support the calls to defund the Seattle police by at least 50%.

The behavior by the Seattle Police Department violently responding to peaceful protests against police brutality was horrifying yet predictable.

Seattle police have been terrorizing our community for as long as I could remember.

They are agents of incarceration.

They destabilize communities.

And as a Black man their presence put my life at risk.

As police are the leading cause of death among young Black men in America today.

That is unacceptable.

It is time to defund the Seattle Police Department by at least 50 percent and reallocate those funds to community-based health and safety.

Stop the sweeps and increase public housing.

Thank you.

And Maggie, you should be with us.

Are you with us?

Caleb?

Just waiting for IT to let us know.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, Caleb.

Go ahead.

Hi.

That wasn't my name.

That's why I was confused.

My name's Caleb Frazier.

Hello?

Hi.

Let me just double check.

We have- Okay great.

Caleb Frazier if you could hold for one second.

Caleb McGee please go ahead.

Thank you.

First thing that I want to say is I I want to hold City Council accountable for hearing everyone for the vast majority of people that's saying that we want to defund the Seattle PD.

And I want to echo that sentiment and we want to make sure that the that the City Council is no longer doing homeless sweeps or and taking more money from the Seattle PD and introducing those into more social programs specifically around housing education and supporting the underrepresented minorities that we have here in the city of Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

We have Kayla since we called you I think you are with us still.

I'm just going to go to you and then we'll go back real quick.

Kayla go ahead if you're still with us.

My name's Kayla Frazier.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, we can.

Okay.

Kayla Frazier, Concerned Citizen.

I'm pro-defunding the police by 50% whose budget is grossly larger than that of other more helpful programs.

In March 2019, Mayor Durkin and all city council members except one approved a $15,000 signing bonus for trained officers to join the force and $7,500 incentive for new recruits.

This funding was an effort to sell 1,467 full-time jobs, which would more than double the amount of police we currently have.

We are consistently hearing that council members vocally acknowledge the police brutality issues.

and SPD needing to reform and that they have known for a while.

If you all acknowledge that police brutality has been an issue over just the past year, why would you elect to use funding for an ineffective incentive program instead of using taxpayer dollars to provide proper training and de-escalation tactics?

I should mention versions of this incentive program were also adopted in Everett and Bellevue.

Now is an opportunity to correct that wrong and reallocate those funds.

What kind of system can justify to continue to give more and more money to a police force that has been openly under federal oversight since 2011.

Thank you so much.

We're going to go to Mahinka Rao and then the following three people after Mahinka is Stephen Grego Grego sorry Stacey Johnson and Pastor Willie Seals.

Mahika are you with us.

Hi can you hear me.

Yes we can.

Hi I'm Mahika Rao and I attend the University of Washington.

I would like to first acknowledge that I'm not Black nor is anyone on this council and we should be looking to Black voices for leadership and direction at this time.

Thank you to the council members bringing forward the bare minimum legislation to eliminate police brutality and abuse from the SPD.

The SPD has been under investigation by the Department of Justice for four years for excessive force.

Mayor Durkan needs to hold her police accountable.

Jenny keeps saying that there are some good protesters and some bad protesters.

The only bad guys in this situation are the Seattle Police And I would like to hear Jenny acknowledge that.

She must immediately commit to entirely defund the police and invest that into our community.

And I want to end by saying every time I hear Jenny Durkan speak I lose a little more faith in local government.

Over the past week my friends and family from all over the country have been contacting me showing me videos of the SED saying is this your city.

This is what we are known for.

I hope you know that when people think of Mayor Durkan and Seattle they think of youthless leadership horrible police violence and the power of the people.

You work for us.

I push for the council to defund the police department and impeach Jenny Durkan.

Thank you.

Stephen Griego.

Stephen Griego.

Wonderful.

Please go ahead.

Hi.

Sure.

My name is Stephen Griego and I'm a high school teacher.

So I'm coming at this from a very emotional place.

I've seen firsthand the effect of brutality on the Black community.

And I'm calling to demand an immediate defunding and dismantling of the police department and especially the SPD which has a long history of racism and violence against the people of this country and the city.

Thank you very much Stephan.

Appreciate you being with us.

Do you have anything else.

You still have some time if you like.

And just that we need to listen to we need to listen to the voices of Black people.

These are this is the community that has to experience this every day.

So as White people it's important to listen to the Black community at this time.

Appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

The next person is Stacy Johnson.

Hello.

Hello, I'm Stacy Johnson, bookkeeper at the Georgetown Tiny House Village.

Safety, dignity, and community.

These are necessary things to be a human again, to be able to continue to progress in a thing we call society.

Tiny House Villages are that progress.

There's been no plague here.

Not one single person has had COVID in any of the villages.

We don't need to sweep them and force them to go to the villages.

People will come here willingly.

Every day we have to turn people away that want uh, to get in here.

And so maybe if you're going to take the funding away from the cops, uh, build more tiny house villages and people will come here.

Like they'll get, they'll come or if not, get the money to the library.

So it's going to be open 24 seven.

Okay.

That's about it.

We appreciate your time.

Thank you.

Pastor Willie C sell seals Jr.

Thank you so much, Council, City Council members.

My name is Pastor Willie Seals, the pastor of the Christ Spirit Church.

We are one of the sponsors of the Tiny Howe Village located on 22nd and Cherry.

I might say that it was put up in record time and it has served many purposes.

And it has been a highlight for the partnership and collaboration of the city of Seattle as well as Lehigh as far as what has been done.

I echo the sentiments of many who have already spoken before me.

I'm one of the sponsors of the letters that was sent to the mayor and the city council.

One of the things I want to highlight is that we are living in the time of 2020 where a perfect vision And city council, I appeal to you that what you're seeing is actually what you're seeing.

And please do not allow to go unnoticed the effect that it's having upon the black community, especially the central area.

So I- Pastor, I'm sorry, the time expired.

I will be following up with you.

I look forward to hearing what that last comment was.

And we really appreciate your support of the tiny house village in your words today.

trying to get through as many folks as we can.

Apologies for the short time, folks.

Dinathan Trihi, Andrew Kennard, and Teal Sean Turner are the next three people.

Hello.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, City Council.

My name is Dinh Thanh Trinh.

I'm a Vietnamese resident at Seattle in the 98118 Zip Code District 2. I'm calling to support COVID-19 mutual aid demands and defunding the police department in order to work towards keeping our residents especially Black residents safe and also condemning the prosecution of protesters.

If the city truly acknowledges that racism exists and cares about true equity it should be investing instead in programs that support Black and Indigenous communities.

It should fund programs that elevate Black and Indigenous voices.

programs that support Black and Indigenous children's education and thriving in schools and it should fund programs that feed their families sufficiently.

It should especially be building housing that keeps them housed permanently.

This is a possibility of what the beginning of equity and hopefully reparations could look like.

I'm a children's advocate at a domestic violence shelter and I see the need for more investment in community resources.

What we need.

Thank you so much.

And again, I hope that you do send in your last comments there.

Very powerful words.

Andrew Canard, followed by Teal Swan-Turner and Nicholas Ponverd.

Andrew, welcome.

Hi, my name is Andrew Canard.

I'm a Wallingford resident and a District 4 voter.

I support the budget inquest you're doing today, and I also support the Seattle City Council members seeking to defund the Seattle Police Department.

As we can see from the budget documents that you included, this is much more than just demilitarizing the police because eliminating the budget for the weapons used on the protesters is pennies in terms of the whole police budget.

To make a meaningful dent toward defunding the police, we need to reduce police personnel, especially sworn officers, and redirect funds to alternative community approaches.

An evidence-based way to do this would be based on an inquiry into how residents are using 9-1-1.

Seattle residents use 9-1-1 against other members of their community.

In our budget, fully 34% of sworn officers are 9-1-1 responders.

The Willamette Week newspaper found that over 50% of 9-1-1 calls in Portland were not crime calls, but disorder calls in which the caller was merely inconvenienced by something and requested police to solve the situation.

Do we know how many 9-1-1 calls in Seattle are disorder calls?

Or do we know how many of those calls are about unwanted persons?

We could redirect those resources to other services instead of the police.

Thank you for that specific question.

We will actually be asking that later because you raised it.

I really appreciate that.

I wrote that down.

Teal Sean?

Hello.

So my name is Teal Sean Turner, and I'm a member of Local 242, and I'm also a Black Seattle native.

And I support defunding the police and taxing Amazon.

Because I've personally, myself, have been a target of the Seattle Police Department's harassment.

And I've had friends and family members that have been brutalized and murdered by the Seattle Police Department.

So defunding them by at least 50% is generous, because we could take all of it.

And we deserve to take all of it.

Because they have brutalized black and brown communities for as long as time.

And it's not right.

And it needs to stop.

So by defunding them by at least 50%, we reallocate those funds back into the black and brown communities, into their education systems, and into their social systems.

Because they need the same opportunities as a kid that grows up in Bellevue.

And that's how we get it, is by taking that money and reallocating it back to those black and brown communities.

Thank you very much.

Appreciate your words.

Francesca Favarini, Kostrova, Samantha Scher, and then Roshyla Levitt.

Sorry, Francesca.

Please go ahead.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Is that Nicholas?

Who do we have unmuted?

Francesca, I see you.

Go ahead, please.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay.

My name is Francesca Favrini-Chorba from West Seattle.

I'm calling today in support of fully defunding and dismantling the police.

I would also like to amplify the voices of those on the ground in Free Capitol Hill who have created a set of demands.

While there are many demands and all are worthy because this is the budget committee meeting, I will focus solely on the economic demands.

We demand the de-gentrification de-gentrification of Seattle starting with rent control.

We demand the restoration of city funding for arts and culture to re-establish the once rich local cultural identity of Seattle.

We demand free college for the people of the state of Washington due to the overwhelming effect that education has on economic success and the correlated overwhelming impact of poverty on people of color as a form of reparations for the treatment of Black people in the state and country.

We demand that between now and the abolition of the SPD that the Seattle Police be prohibited from performing homeless sweeps that displace and disturb our homeless neighbors.

And on equal footing we demand an end to all evictions.

We demand a decentralized election process to give the citizens of Seattle a greater ability.

I'm sorry that your time expired.

Please do send in the rest of your comments as well.

Samantha Schur are you with us.

I'm sure you guys think that the Geneva Conventions they have repeatedly violated don't apply because this isn't active combat.

So then explain why you've outfitted police officers like combat soldiers and given them weapons we don't even use in war.

And if we are not at war, then the dictionary definition of a terrorist becomes relevant, which is, quote, a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation against civilians in the pursuit of political aims.

That sounds like SPD to me.

We will not be silenced by terrorist tactics, and as elected officials, you should know that if you continue to abandon us to them, we will not forget.

Therefore, I demand that the council defund the SPD, permanently end the use of chemical warfare on our streets, call for Durkin's resignation, and drop all charges against protesters, because make no mistake, protest is patriotism, and it should command your respect.

Black lives and our constitutional rights matter, and it's time to act like it.

I yield the majority of my time.

Thank you.

Richyla Leavitt followed by Nicholas Ponvert.

Can you hear me.

Yes we can.

Okay.

My name is Richyla Leavitt and I am a facilitator of Washington Solidarity Unity and Peace.

Today we want to know what the plans are to reduce the Seattle Police Department's budget.

We want to know what the expected amount the expected timeline of those funds being reduced is and Can we expect to see all of those funds being redistributed into our communities?

And if that money is being reallocated into our community, where specifically is it going?

And when can we expect to see outcome of that reallocation?

The community is asking, based on what we've heard, that our city council take those funds and financial resources and immediately recirculate them back into our community by funding housing opportunities to prevent gentrification and increase funding to low-income school districts.

Distributing citywide taxes to schools evenly so that lower income areas aren't left with less education resources.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you.

Nicholas Ponvert.

Thank you Council.

My name is Nick Ponvert and I live in District 4. I fully support the call to defund SPD.

The recent behavior of the Seattle Police Department has indicated that they have only one real conflict resolution tool at their disposal.

The application of violence.

This violence is dispensed in a way that perpetuates systemic racism.

This is unacceptable for the public servants that we rely on for so many emergency responses in this city.

We need to rethink what it means to keep the public safe and respond to emergencies.

Also, importantly, we need to make sure that the public safety officials of this city are accountable to strong oversight and that every single use of force, including non-lethal force, is documented and investigated for racial bias.

I believe that Seattle can dream big and can innovate and can forge a new system of public safety that helps all people instead of being an oppressive force in the lives of many.

Thank you.

three more people here and then we will have to close out.

I apologize for all the folks who called in today.

We will have public testimony every day of our budget meetings going forward so there will be more opportunities.

The last three speakers are Christopher Papetti Donate Cruz and Sasha Anderson.

Hi my name is Christopher Pappetti from District 7. I request this committee to drastically reduce the Seattle Police Department budget and reallocate that money fund communities of color and addressing homelessness.

I've witnessed the Seattle Police Department use violence and terror against legal demonstrations of Seattle citizens including myself and your fellow council member thus perpetuating the very brutality that we were actually there to protest.

I saw some of you council members on that front line of the protest in Cap Hill.

Please back up your public demonstrations by taking actions to defund the police for the sake of Black lives and people experiencing homelessness.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Dionte Cruz.

Hello Council.

Thank you for having me.

My name is Dionte Cruz.

I'm speaking today as a constituent from Capitol Hill District 3 and as an employee of Away Home Washington where we're dedicated to ending youth and young adult homelessness.

The Black and Brown communities who are disproportionately affected by police violence are also disproportionately affected by homelessness including those in the youth and young adult population.

And the solutions that we've seen organizers propose to end police violence will also help our populations, specifically investing in community resources rather than policing.

As a way home Washington, we stand with the community organizers request to reduce the police department budget by 50% and reallocate those funds and the resources that can help our communities flourish.

And when it comes to homelessness, we need to invest in diversionary and therapeutic approaches as opposed to policing and punitive measures.

The National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty found that increased policing does not lead to a decrease in homelessness.

In fact over the past three years unsheltered homelessness has increased by 10 percent around the country.

Even when the city's increased punitive measures against people sleeping in public.

The city's greatest asset is its people.

The people have risen up to denounce injustice and we need our leaders to pave the way for change.

Thank you so much Deontay.

Sasha Anderson.

Hi my name is Sasha Anderson and I'm an owner in District 3. I'm speaking in support of reducing SBD's budget by 50 percent.

For me this is just a start.

I'd like to see a drastic reduction in resources and reallocation to non-policing community interventions.

The murder of Charlena Lyles is a perfect example of why police are not the right response for most situations.

We need to recognize what actually keeps us safe and the police aren't it.

I work in tech and I teach at the University of Washington's Information School and I wanted to raise a caution I haven't heard articulated yet.

This is not a call for efficiency.

It's not an opportunity to replace headcount with policing technologies.

It's not about how do we maintain the current system with fewer resources.

I do not want to see a budget reduction that exacerbates existing violence through surveillance and abusive technologies.

We need a new system for community safety.

Police should not have access to military-grade weapons.

They should not be allowed to use tear gas and rubber bullets.

They should not be allowed to predict criminals with data science snake oil.

They shouldn't be shielded from legal action for abuse on the job.

And certainly, no one should be hired with a record of domestic or sexual violence.

Thank you so much.

Sasha, I'd love to see the rest of your testimony as well, if you could email that to us.

Council colleagues, we have done a full hour on public testimony.

I want to thank everybody who has signed up for public comment.

Again, every committee meeting, you have a commitment from me that we will have public testimony at the beginning of the meeting, especially because we know a lot of folks have had to already log in and wait to testify given our remote access challenges.

So we will have that at the beginning of every public comment at the beginning of every committee meeting.

Today is a continuation of the conversation that we began I'm going to turn it over to the sponsors to provide a brief update to frame the conversation today.

I would like to have the clerk please read items 1, 2, and 3 into the record for us.

Agenda items 1 through 3, Council Bill 119772, relating to taxation and imposing a payroll expense tax on persons engaging in businesses in Seattle.

Council Bill 119773, relating to the financing of responses to the civil emergency, authorizing the loan of funds from the low-income housing fund to the general fund.

Council Bill 119774, establishing a spending plan for the proceeds generated by the payroll expense tax authorized by the ordinance introduced as Council Bill 119772, to fund immediate cash assistance for low-income households impacted by the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 and the development of social housing that is permanently affordable high quality and energy efficient to fund housing related components of Seattle's Green Green New Deal as articulated in Resolution 31895 and to fund other investments.

All three items for briefings and discussion only.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Council colleagues, again, at the beginning of the meeting, we expressed our appreciation to Governor Inslee for amending the guidance that was offered to cities and local municipalities so we could continue this conversation.

In terms of good governance, we need to make sure that we're responding not only to the crisis that is COVID, but also planning for the crisis that will come, both in terms of the public health and economic crisis that is going to be imposed on our city.

And as we do so, we know that there is going to be a shortage of revenue and there's going to be a need for additional investments in housing, social services, human services, small business support, support for immigrants and refugees, and many are in our community who need rental assistance and mortgage assistance.

These are the conversations that we began over a month ago.

And while we were on hiatus, there were a few town halls that council members held.

I held a economic forum, and again, if you haven't had a chance to listen to that, to hear from national and local experts, including community organizations right here in Seattle who are talking about what impact COVID will have on them, not just the physical health of the community, but the economic health of the community.

I would encourage you to take a listen to that and the national partners as well.

We tried to do that as a way to continue the conversation and to keep the momentum going as we waited for the new guidance from the governor's office to come down.

I know that there's a lot of interest in continuing this discussion.

And first, I will turn it over to Council Member Morales to remind us about the legislation and tee up today's conversation.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

We have a lot to talk about, so I will be brief.

But I appreciate the opportunity to frame a little bit about, remind folks what we're doing.

I want to take us way back to 2019. If my colleagues will remember, we had hundreds of community conversations and forums where many of us were asked one question over and over again.

What are you going to do about homelessness?

We had many conversations and many questions from our constituents, from our community asking over and over again, what are you gonna do about the lack of housing for average workers?

What are you gonna do to stop the displacement of our black and brown neighbors?

So whether we're talking about housing first or building community wealth or anti-displacement strategies, a key element in answering all of these questions is housing.

We need more of it and we need it now.

So I wanna acknowledge before we begin this process again, and I'm looking forward to the discussions that we have today and in the next few weeks, I do wanna acknowledge that this proposal is not gonna solve all of the problems that we have in the city.

You know, since we even originally offered this bill, the world has shifted in more ways than one.

And so we acknowledge that there are a lot of issues that we need to have a conversation about.

And I'm looking forward to having the conversation this afternoon about the police department.

But this is an important step toward funding the solutions to longstanding problems that we've been talking about.

Thousands of homes for people who need them, services for neighbors transitioning out of homelessness, and especially right now, community-led development that is rooted in racial equity.

These are the issues that Council Member Sawant and I have brought for us to discuss.

These are the problems we're trying to solve and the reason why we're looking for a more equitable way to fund the services that we need in this city.

And I just want us to keep in mind the reason we're doing this.

We are looking for solutions that our community and our constituents have been asking for, And in order to solve some of these longstanding challenges, we have to have new sources of revenue to do it.

And this is what we are about to embark on as we discuss how best to do that and how to provide some security and stability for our neighbors.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

Appreciate it.

Council Member Sawant, would you like to say a few words before we turn it over to central staff?

Absolutely.

Thank you, Councilman Mosqueda and thank you, Councilman Morales.

As I've said before, I am really glad that our two offices have brought this very important legislation forward and it's been many, many weeks.

The COVID crisis has already taken its toll and is going to continue to take its toll.

And the pandemic and the longstanding crisis, the endemic crisis of the capitalist system, both together have resulted with COVID as just the proximate cause, but not the fundamental cause, have resulted in a recession that is very quickly turning into, in many aspects, turning into worse than the Great Depression.

This is going to be a massive economic devastation for ordinary people, for working class people.

But as always, we see that the disproportionate cost of the COVID crisis, the COVID deaths, the lack of health care, the lack of access to food, the incidences of joblessness, and ironically also the people who compose our essential workforce without hazard pay and without adequate of protection against the COVID pandemic.

Disproportionately on all these fronts, we see black and brown working class people and their families and children and elderly being affected.

And it is so crucial that after all this delay, the city council actually take some action on this.

We are in a city with the nation's most regressive tax system.

This is not This is not only an overall crisis for working class families, the majority of people, including the middle class, because we, those of us who are in the working class and middle class, we shoulder the brunt of the tax burden.

while the wealthiest people pay 2 or 2.5% of the income in taxes.

And when you look at the executives of top corporations like Amazon, Microsoft, Boeing, and so on in our state, then they pay little to nothing.

And sometimes when you add up the subsidies that they get, they are paying negative taxation.

That's a stunning, stunning injustice and a status quo that we have had for decades.

And it is not only that we have had a momentum for the tax Amazon legislation for a long while, especially flowing from the results of last year's election.

It is absolutely at this moment when we have an uprising, a rebellion by young people with, as we have seen in our movement in Seattle itself, but also in Minneapolis and Atlanta and Los Angeles and Oakland and other cities, multiracial, working-class young people fighting back, demanding an answer against racism and against police violence.

But those activists and that movement has also pointed out that, and as Reverend Angela Ying said, it is not going to be enough for politicians to say that Black Lives Matter.

We have to put dollars on the line Brother Viking Garrett from the Central District in Africatown and his sister Nikita Oliver have said the political establishment and the big business establishment has to pay the fee, meaning we need to see dollars on the table to actually address the issues that black people are facing, our black community and neighbors are facing and obviously A paramount in that is the defunding of SPD by at least 50 percent.

And I agree with the people who spoke in public comment that this is absolutely starting with demilitarization and taking away their right to purchase weapons.

And so, as many of you know, my legislation and our movement's legislation to ban chemical weapons and all so-called crowd-controlled weapons is going to be coming for a vote on Monday.

We absolutely want a yes vote without watering down on that bill.

But it goes beyond prohibiting the purchase of these devastating weapons.

We also need to go beyond that and cut, actually cut the SPD budget by at least half and use those funds for grassroots initiatives, not big organizations, but grassroots initiatives, people who are already doing the work in the community for restorative justice.

And along those lines, I just want to make a few points because we are in such a unique moment.

This is not just about a committee meeting.

This is about the city council actually showing that we are not tone deaf to the movement that is going on outside.

And it's not just any movement.

It is a historic moment that we are experiencing.

And I wanted to take this opportunity to thank.

I did this last night as well, but I wanted to do it again.

Thank all the young people, hundreds of young people, who have been on the front line facing the police violence and brutality at 11th and Pine.

It was my honor and my duty to be able to stand with you and get maced and tear gassed, but it is absolutely unacceptable that the mayor has allowed this to happen.

She has been gassing her own people.

And the kind of courage it takes to face that cannot be described in words.

And it is important for us to recognize the victory that this movement has won by driving the police out from 11th and Pine and from the East Precinct.

But it's also important to remember that we are not going to be able to stay there permanently in tents.

We will need to convert this into political demand.

We need to permanently take each precinct away from the police, but we also don't accept that it should be boarded up permanently either.

We need the city council and the mayor's office to convert this into a community center for restorative justice and creative arts, you name it.

But we are so spoiled for choices because so much of our needs in our marginalized communities are underfunded.

I also wanted to say in relation to the budget, in addition to defund SPD by 50%, in addition to the East Precinct being converted to a community center, in addition to the tax Amazon legislation, which is incredibly important, which I'll come to in a second, we also wanted to echo, my office wanted to echo the demands of the King County Equity Now Coalition.

which is demanding that the decommissioned Fire Station 6 on 23rd and Yesler become the William Gross Center for Enterprise as designated in the City of Seattle Equitable Development Plan.

We need to bring that forward as well because these are concrete initiatives that will begin to make a dent in the gentrification and the displacement and racism that our black and brown families have faced in the Central District and in South Seattle.

I also I need to mention that the tax Amazon legislation is very much, as Reverend Ying said, is very much related to the question of the inequities and racism towards our communities of color, because the people who have been most disproportionately affected by the skyrocketing rent, by the lack of affordable housing, by the complete domination of the private housing market, the property management corporations, the big developers like Vulcan, all the land prices that have shot up because of Amazon.

All of this is going to, it has disproportionately badly affected our communities of color, which on the flip side means that if we are able to win taxes on big business to create the revenues to build social housing, which is publicly owned, permanently affordable rent control housing, it will disproportionately also help our communities of color to come back to Seattle and live in the neighborhoods that their ancestors lived in and live in the neighborhoods where they have created community, where they have helped build this city.

And that is why it is very important that we really push for this to happen and I'm happy that we are going to be continuing discussions now.

I also want to echo all the community members who are saying, and I've already said this before, but I wanted to say it again, that absolutely none of the activists or protesters who have been arrested during the George Floyd protest should be prosecuted.

It would be shameful if the city brought any charges against them.

The charges should be dropped immediately.

In fact, as the others have said, we should be thanking them for their courage.

It's an honorable thing that they've engaged in, and we absolutely should make sure that We have community meetings as well as others have said.

And so the last thing I wanted to say is that I will be hosting People's Budget Town Hall, as I do every year, on the 16th of June, so that we can discuss, our movement can discuss, defund SPD by 50%, discuss the demand from the Central District and from Capitol Hill for community development and for the tax Amazon legislation.

Thank you.

Okay, with that, I want to thank the folks from central staff that are on the line with us.

I see Dan Eater, Ali Panucci, Tracy Radscliff.

And do we have anybody else on these first three items?

Tom Mikesell?

Anybody else here with us?

Okay, I wanna thank you for all of your work.

Central staff have been busy preparing issue identification memos and a PowerPoint presentation.

All of those are linked in today's agenda and council colleagues, you should have also received those in your email and they are online.

Tracy, Tom, Allie, Dan, thank you for waiting with us.

We will turn it over to you to walk us through the presentation that you have in the issue identification memos.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

As the first bill on the agenda, Council Bill 119-772, I'll tee this off for my colleagues.

It'll be me discussing the tax bill first, then Dan Eder covering the Interfund Loan legislation, and then Allie Panucci and Tracy Ratcliffe will follow up with the spending plan legislation.

With regards to Council Bill 119-772.

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So as we've had a series of Council Select Budget Committee deliberations on this legislation that were delayed, but we did have a fairly robust overview provided in those prior meetings We are just going to give a light touch to the overview of what the bills are doing and then dive into the issue identification and those amendments of which we are currently aware.

With regards to the corporate payroll expense tax, this tax is designed to generate an annual revenue of $500 million from corporate payrolls.

The structure of the tax is a rate of 1.3% on generally on business payrolls above $7 million per year, though there are some specifically exempted businesses that are included.

Those businesses would be nonprofit businesses, educational, government employers, grocery stores, and businesses that the city is otherwise not legally eligible to tax.

The legislation as introduced was to have an effective date of June 1st, 2020. And I'll touch on the implications of that in the issue identification.

Next slide, please.

So there are generally three topical areas to cover for this issue identification.

The first is with regards to technical clarifying corrections.

And as I mentioned just prior, the effective date of this bill, which was introduced in early April, was June 1st.

Given the delay with the governor's order, we find ourselves now in June after the effective date of the legislation.

So staff has prepared an amendment which would revise the effective date of this bill to July 1st of 2020. From a meaningful standpoint, what that means is one month's less collection that will eventually be received.

from the tax.

And so that would essentially revise the first year, the 2020 tax liability from $286.4 million to $245.5 million.

And again, the options would be to take no action and have the legislation proceed as introduced or adopt the technical amendment, which is attached as attachment A to the staff memo.

So the next larger category of issue identification is with regards to exemptions.

I went through the list of exemptions prior.

That list can be expanded, reduced, or otherwise modified.

And there are, in fact, two amendments that have been proposed that do just that.

First is Amendment 2, which is introduced by bill sponsor, one of the bills co-sponsors, Council Member Sawant.

This bill would, this amendment, my apologies, would increase the list of exemptions to include consumer-directed employers and home care agencies as defined in Washington state law.

Consumer Directed Employee, our employer, would include a private entity that contracts with the State Department of Social and Health Services to be the legal employer of individual providers for purposes of performing administrative functions.

And a home care agency would include a person administering or providing home care services directly or through a contract arrangement to individuals in places of temporary or permanent residence.

The second amendment would make a revision to one of the current exemptions in the bill.

This is with regards to the definition of grocery store.

As introduced, the bill sets the threshold for what determines whether a business is a grocery store or not at 75%.

So the annual sales of the business would be 75% from the sale of tax-exempt food products as defined in state law.

Based on feedback from stakeholders, there was some concern about the scope or whether the threshold was capturing what the intent of the legislation as introduced was.

So there is under consideration a reduction of that threshold amount, which would include a larger set of businesses in that exempt category.

However, at this time, the exact percent is still being developed.

A placeholder amendment has been proposed, and it will be updated in time for actual introduction with more data as we receive it.

And then a final issue is with regards to the business structures and how the definition of Seattle payroll expense in the bill is defined.

There were a few different alternative business arrangements to which the bill was silent, but was expanded upon by staff in the presentation.

Those included franchise businesses, which are businesses that can operate through some licensing arrangement with a larger national or regional organization, but there are in fact discrete individual businesses for the purposes of determining tax liability.

And then next would be integrated business, sorry, integrated enterprises, which are separate discrete businesses that are identified themselves or otherwise controlled by a larger organization or interest.

And for the purposes of this tax, each of the individual, each of those individual businesses would be treated separately for determining whether or not they met the $7 million threshold.

So in both the case, as introduced in both cases of franchise businesses and integrated business enterprises, there is no aggregation in the bill.

An amendment which is included as attachment D to the staff memo, would in fact revise the legislation such that integrated business enterprises would be aggregated and tested against the $7 million threshold, which would have the effect of increasing the coverage of the tax to a larger set of businesses.

Those are the issues and amendments that have been raised and that staff is aware of at this time.

And that concludes my statements.

I'm open for any questions from the Select Budget Committee.

Thank you very much, Tom.

Council colleagues, you also have a central staff memo that provides more information and detail about these options here.

I want to thank central staff again.

We know that you have been tremendously busy with everything that's occurring, so thank you for doing this robust walkthrough.

Council colleagues, are there any questions on the information that Tom has shared on this portion of the presentation?

I'm just going to scroll through here because of the viewing options.

I need to see if folks have their hands up and feel free to email or send me a message.

Okay, I see no hands up.

Let's continue with the presentation.

Oh, so sorry.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

I was trying to get, trying to wave and trying to do the hands up function.

Nothing, nothing very, very helpful.

I thank you for calling my attention to it.

Yes, please go ahead.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

So just a clarification, Tom, the payroll tax is based on payroll in 2019, correct?

Yes, Council Member, that is correct.

For 2020 purposes, we would be based on 2019. So then when we move into 2021, it would be based off of 2020 payrolls and just move down the line.

So every year, it's kind of casting backwards to the prior year to see what that payroll was.

And given that the reality of businesses that were eligible in 2019 because they had more than $7 million in payroll, might be very, very different in 2020. Some of those businesses, I mean, it's feasible.

It's not likely, but some of those businesses might be filing for bankruptcy this year, or having some other sort of extreme economic reset that would mean that their payroll might be drastically reduced in 2020 from where it was in 2019. Um, is there, has there been any discussion about how to deal with that, that potential, um, um, the potential outcome of the COVID-19 crisis on the economy and on individual businesses that may have been doing very well, uh, in 2019 and may not be doing very well in 2020.

Uh, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

So, um, there are two questions and I guess two Two ways to answer that.

One is with regards to the tax liability.

So first, if a business has a lower payroll in this year due to COVID-19, they would indeed be paying tax based on that lower payroll.

So if they were in 2019 above the $7 million threshold, But then in 2020 below, they would still be eligible.

They would be, however, paying the tax off of the lower amount in 2020. So that's just from a technical perspective how it would work.

With regards to the larger economic question of how does revenue look like after taking the large set of the business response to the tax and consideration, their staff in doing the setting of the rate based on the revenue target did apply a 12% reduction to the total payroll estimate that we would have otherwise expected this year to account for those individual economic circumstances.

So a business that had $7 million in payroll in 2019 but might only have you know, $5 million in payroll in 2020, they'll still have to pay the tax, but they'll be paying it based on their $5 million payroll that they'll have in 2020.

Yes, Council Member, that's correct.

Would there be a way to establish some sort of a hardship clause?

It just doesn't seem like it's in the spirit of my understanding of the purpose of the threshold to make a business that is that is seeing a reduction in staff and likely a reduction in their profits in those instances to still have to pay.

the payroll tax when they're having to potentially lay people off.

So I'm wondering, would there be a way to structure some sort of a hardship clause that if your payroll is reduced X percent over what you reported in 2019, that it would be a different tax rate or that you would be exempt from having to pay?

Because at first blush, it seems that the legislation could be structured in such a way to account for those types of provisions.

Kind of refreshing back to our earlier discussions on the tax, even though the liability does go into effect this year, there are no effective payments until, you may recall, February of 2022, which was then accrued back.

The implementation will be over a number of months, extending through to 2021. So there could be, at least from an implementation standpoint, a way to structure that, though we staff would need to work with the law department to find the correct language to use to affect that change.

And we can work with you or others to put together an amendment that would do that if desired.

Thank you.

Council colleagues, due to the, I see Council Member Sawant, just real quick, Council Member Sawant, I just wanted to ask one more clarifying question, if I might.

I think you mentioned nonprofits.

Can you tell us one more time how nonprofits as a whole are categorized in this bill?

Yes, Chair Mosqueda.

The categorization of nonprofits is fairly broad in the legislation to include a number of different categories within federal tax law.

I don't have those at my fingertips, though the net was cast as fairly wide in that categorization.

So it's larger than the traditional 5013Cs.

It's a larger and larger net than that.

But I don't have any more specificity done that.

Okay, colleagues, since I cannot see everyone at the same time with the shared screen, I know Council Member Sawant raised her hand.

Please message me or just go ahead and chime in if you have a question that you'd like to ask as well, and I'll get you in the queue.

Council Member Sawant, did you have a question?

I don't have a question and it's my legislation so I have clarifications to add to what Tom said.

Thank you for asking those questions council members and Tom gave a lot of clarification.

I just wanted to add a few points to that but also just to give a little bit of context to whether this is hardship that we are talking about.

Actually, that was on Council Member Herbold's question, but before that, Council Member Mosqueda, you asked an important question about nonprofits.

I think we can say it very simply that this, I mean, Tom said that we're casting a wide net, but to put it in another way, which is, I think, simpler to understand, is all nonprofits are exempt.

And we did that very intentionally in the draft.

because we don't think that non-profit organizations should be paying the tax in any way.

I mean, it's meant to be a for-profit big business tax, so rest assured that no non-profits are going to be taxed if this legislation goes into effect.

And also, I mean, just to go back to the questions from Council Member Herbold, I mean, the word hardship was used.

I think we need to put this in perspective.

We are talking about companies that have, as Tom mentioned, at least a $7 million threshold of corporate payroll, $7 million of corporate payroll.

And we're talking about a 1% tax on those.

These are the largest businesses.

And it's only a 1% tax on the corporate payroll.

So if you look at the overall of earnings of that corporation, it will often come out to less than 1% of the overall earnings.

So we're talking about a very, very minor component that would be taxed from them.

And so I would say it's quite different.

I would say the tax burden is actually quite light to begin with.

And that the hardship that we are going to be seeing and that we are already seeing is almost entirely being experienced by working families and small businesses, neither of which are going to be taxed even remotely in this legislation.

The whole point is to address the regressivity of the tax system that we have.

So for instance, if a company that had $7 million in payroll in 2019 but saw a reduction in 2020, would have a tax bill of $91,000.

Yes, even if they had a reduction next year, they still have to pay the tax on the last year's payroll.

In the previous year, they had $7 million in payroll.

They will have to pay, but they would have a tax bill of $91,000.

I mean, just put that in perspective.

That is nothing.

And as Tom just noted, they would have a full 18 months to pay.

Compare that to the kind of conditions that the majority renter city is facing, that renters, once eviction moratorium is lifted, you're not going to have that kind of leeway to start honing up the rent, back rent, debt, and so on.

And also, again, another thing to put this in perspective, we were talking about Amazon, obviously, is one of the corporations.

It's a pandemic profiteer, which has seen its revenue go up as a result of COVID.

But we're also talking about major downtown law firms.

For example, we're talking about New Course Steel, which is the biggest steel firm in the country and is located in District 1, Councilmember Herbold's district.

We're talking about Wells Fargo, which has exploited communities of color for years and was also, you know, prosecuted by the Department of Justice.

And we're talking about, for example, the billion-dollar construction firm named Lee's Crutcher Lewis.

These are just some examples of corporations that would be taxed.

We're not talking about small or medium-sized businesses by any means, by any stretch of the imagination, and we're certainly not talking about We have brought this legislation forward because this was a technically and legally feasible way to measure the largest businesses.

Looking at the previous year's revenue is the best and most accurate thing we have found.

And if Councilmember Herbold or any of the other Councilmembers have a better way of identifying the largest businesses, then I'm really, I would welcome those suggestions, you know, so that we can pass a progressive revenue legislation.

Councilmember Sawant, I appreciate your comments and I see Councilmember Herbold nodding as well.

I know for our viewing audience, it's hard to see all the council members when we're doing one video at a time.

I am going to ask if there's any other questions on this legislation because we have two more pieces to get through.

I'm pausing here just in case anybody's on mute.

Okay, great.

Let's continue to go through the PowerPoint presentation in front of us and go back over to central staff.

Okay, this is Dan Eder, Deputy Director of the Central Staff Team.

My portion of the presentation addresses the Interfund Loan Bill.

At the April 29th Budget Committee, the committee will walk through a detailed discussion of the Interfund Loan Bill.

Today, I will provide a brief overview and summary of the bill.

And then I'll tee up three potential issues for your consideration and address any questions you may have.

As you just finished discussing, the revenues from a proposed tax bill won't be available to spend until the 2021 budget.

The Interfund Loan Bill is therefore proposed to serve as a bridge between the revenues from the tax bill that Tom just talked to you about and the planned 2020 spending that would be authorized through a separate bill that Allie Panucci and Tracy Ratzliff will talk to you about next.

The Interfund Loan Bill would authorize the city to borrow from the city's consolidated cash pool and name specific source funds, and that would allow the city to pay for the 2020 spending.

In particular, the Interfund Loan Bill would authorize up to $50 million from each of six source funds up to a cumulative total of $200 million.

The borrowed amounts plus interest would then be repaid with a future flow of tax revenues.

The six source funds were selected to provide a range of options that minimize or eliminate impacts on the city's planned spending for projects and programs.

And like the tax bill and the spending bill, the Interfund Loan Bill includes an emergency clause that would require a three-quarter supermajority of council members to vote for it and for the mayor to sign the bill.

Next slide, please.

This slide highlights information which is included on your agenda in a staff memo.

There are three issues which I have teed up for your consideration.

The first is source funds.

The as I mentioned just a moment ago the bill identifies six separate funds that would serve as potential sources for up to $200 million in accumulative loans.

Those funds are the Low Income Housing Fund, Move Seattle Fund, the Families Education Preschool and Promise Fund, the 2019 Library Levy Fund, the Parks District Fund, and something called a Housing Incentive Fund.

We have discovered in the weeks since our last discussion that the Housing Incentive Fund is actually a sub fund that supports the Low Income Housing Fund as a technical correction, the council should consider removing that sixth fund from the list of authorized source funds.

So that's the first issue that I bring to your attention.

The options are do nothing essentially, no action or to remove the housing incentive fund from the list of source funds.

Are there any questions about the first issue or I'll move to the second?

Maybe I'll just, I'll walk through all of the issues and then answer any questions at the end, unless you have.

The second issue is the authorized source fund amounts.

Again, hearkening back to our discussion on April 29th, the last budget committee meeting, CBO updated the low-income housing funds projected 2020 ending fund balance.

It had been in the range of about $146 million.

The updated estimate is that that fund alone will have approximately $257 million at the end of 2020 available for an inter-fund loan.

The action that is teed up here in this issue would be to consider amending the authorized loan amount from this funding source to to be for the entire $200 million cumulative inter-fund loan.

So in conjunction with this potential change, council members could either leave intact the other remaining source funds or drop the authorization from the other funds and lean entirely on the low-income housing.

The third issue is the cumulative loan amount As I mentioned, the cumulative Interfund loan amount from any of the subsidiary sources is $200 million.

Council members could leave this amount as is as a matter of a policy choice.

You could increase that amount or you could authorize a lower cumulative Interfund loan amount.

If you were to change the cumulative loan amount to something other than $200 million, That would, of course, affect your ability to spend.

Either you'd have more money if you increased the cumulative amount, or you'd have less money in 2020 if you have a lower cumulative interfund loan amount.

That concludes the issues that staff have identified, and I'd be happy to address any questions you may have.

All right.

Thank you very much.

Dan.

It's a little echoey on that end.

OK.

Looking through council colleagues.

Any questions.

OK.

Let's go ahead.

Oh Council Member Herbold please.

Council Member Herbold you are on mute still.

And I saw your note requesting a question, so I'm sorry I didn't see that earlier.

Please go ahead.

All right.

Thank you.

So one question as it relates specifically to the Interfund loan is, I should probably qualify this.

It's actually not related to the Interfund loan.

It is tangentially connected to it, but it's more a, How are we in the future going to pay?

Are we going to have another Interfund loan in the future?

Basically, the way I see it is we're contemplating taking an Interfund loan of $200 million so that we can spend some of these funds in 2020 where there is great need.

We are not going to be collecting funds until 2022. So we're going to be spending $500 million of funds in 2021 that we will not have collected again.

So that creates a need, it seems, to pay back $400 million of funds, the $200 million that we've spent this year and the $500 million that we'll spend next year before the collection of funds in 2022. I know I've asked this question of central staff before and there's been sort of reference to the fact that it's not unusual for the city to spend budgeted funds at the beginning of the year before they've collected them and that there is some accounting magic that's done that allows us to do it.

I have asked for and not received an explanation of exactly how that works and whether or not we We have, as a practice, done it to this scale, $700 million that we are basically looking at sort of fronting, as I understand it, at the beginning of 2021.

Council Member, my read of it is similar to yours, but a little bit different.

The $200 million loan would, in 2020, would not be repaid until the very end of the budget year for 2021, which includes some month or so of 2022. And the way that our books work is that some revenues come in after December 31st of a calendar year and are still counted towards that same calendar year.

So you are correct that the flow of tax revenues from the tax bill, the new payroll tax, would begin effectively February 1 of 2022. entirety of the funds received by that date would accrue back to the 2021 budget and be available for spending in 2021. It would be at that time that we would repay the $200 million Interfund loan from 2020, and we would also have, for the first time, the cash expected to cover the expenses that are incurred in 2021. My understanding is that that's similar to how our several property tax measures work, where there is typically a chunk of money received in April and October of the same calendar year that we're talking about spending the money, but there is an uneven flow of funds, and it's many times higher than the $200 million that we're talking about.

It is on a par with the $500 million that we're talking about supporting spending in 2021. So I can't speak with authority because I don't personally do the balancing of the books, but my understanding is that this is not an unusual kind of a balancing act and that the consolidated cash pool is even in the post COVID economic climate, expected to be sufficiently healthy to allow for this kind of float.

Thank you.

I would also just add that a large percentage of the funding, the spending in 2020 21 is for investments in social housing and generally speaking those financing commitments would be made likely towards the end of the year and typically don't go out the door immediately.

So wouldn't necessarily be a lot of actually writing checks in in 2021 with 75 percent of the funding going to investments in new new housing.

I would suggest that that's a great segue to look at the spend plan.

If we could get through those last slides and then see if there's additional questions.

Thank you.

This is Ally Pnuchy with your Council Central staff.

Good afternoon Council members.

Today I will walk through a brief overview of the proposed spending plan and then walk through five issue areas and potential amendments to the proposed legislation and answer any questions.

And then Tracy will provide additional information, particularly in response to any detailed questions you might have.

So generally speaking, as proposed, Council Bill 119774 would establish a spending plan for the revenue generated by the proposed payroll tax.

More specifically, the bill would authorize $200 million in spending in 2020 made available through the Interfund loan that Dan just described to be used for emergency cash assistance for up to 100,000 low-income households impacted by the COVID-19 emergency.

The bill also outlines the intended use of tax revenue in 2021 and beyond.

As Dan noted, after accounting for startup and ongoing administration costs, $205 million in 2021 would be used to repay the principal and interest on the inter-fund loan.

And then all remaining funds in 2021 and in all future years would be allocated as follows.

75% of remaining revenue would be used for investments to build or acquire new social housing and to support the ongoing operation and services needed for permanent supportive housing developments.

And 25% of the remaining revenue would be invested in housing related strategy called for in Seattle's Green New Deal Green New Deal resolution.

In addition the proposal directs the executive to submit an implementation plan for the council to the council for the new tax.

It also establishes a new social housing board that would provide recommendations to the mayor and the council on implementation of the social housing investments.

It modifies the duties of the yet to be established Green New Deal Oversight Board which includes adding a responsibility to coordinate with the Social Housing Board and specifically calls out oversight of the proposed Green New Deal investments that would flow from this new tax revenue.

And because the spending is proposed to respond to public needs resulting from the COVID-19 and homelessness civil emergencies and to address climate change, the proposal includes an emergency provision and would have an immediate effective date if passed by three quarters of council members and signed by the mayor.

So with that, I will move on to the discussion of issues and just bear with me while I learn how to flip between screens.

There we go.

Okay, so the issues and options that I'm gonna walk through now, and potential amendments are not necessarily exhaustive and additional amendments may be identified during the course of the committee's review discussion and public engagement.

I'll also just note that the specific amendments attached to the memo are still drafts and may be modified prior to final council action.

As an example, amendment one will need to be revised to update attachment one to the council bill to reflect the later effective date of the tax, which would result in slightly lower tax revenue estimates which will impact the proposed number of housing units and that sort of thing.

Those changes will be described in future committee discussions.

So with that I'll turn to the first issue identified by staff that really is just describing some technical and clarifying corrections that are needed.

As introduced the bill includes references to certain figures that are now outdated In addition, we've identified a few technical errors that should be corrected and a few places where the sponsor's intent needed clarification.

Amendment one, attach the memo, is sponsored and sponsored by council member Swann, would address the technical errors and makes a few additional changes to better align the draft legislation with her intent.

This includes reorganizing and adding to the proposed findings in section one of the bill, and updating the CPI index that would be used to regulate the maximum annual rent increases that could be imposed on the housing unit supported by the social housing investments and sets an absolute maximum for annual rent increases to not more than 3%.

So that, and then there's a series, like I said, of technical corrections.

The second issue is related to the proposed process and use of emergency assistance in 2020. As I noted in the overview, the bill authorized spending $200 million in 2020 for emergency cash assistance to low-income households impacted by the COVID-19 emergency.

As proposed, 50% or about $100 million of the funds would be distributed to low-income households enrolled in existing city assistance programs or state programs administered by the city.

The second half of the funding, about $100 million, would be distributed to those impacted by COVID but are not already enrolled in existing city programs.

That process would be developed by the executive.

The proposed distribution process prioritizes providing financial assistance to low-income households as quickly as possible.

The trade-off in such a process is designed to move quickly is that it could reach some people who are less in need and not reach all of the priority populations or households most in need who aren't already receiving assistance.

Page 5 of the central staff memo posted to the April 29th select committee agenda outlined some other models that could be used to distribute the emergency cash assistance.

The primary difference we found in looking at other programs is that those programs relied more on partnerships with community-based organizations to identify recipients of the assistance, and in some cases, to determine the mix of services that would best serve the community.

While the bill as introduced would not prohibit the executive from partnering with community-based organizations to distribute the second half of the emergency cash assistance, Council Member Swant has proposed an amendment to make it very clear that this is an option and this is reflected in amendment two, including an attachment B to the memo.

So that just clarifies that the second half of the emergency cash assistance could be distributed through partnerships with community-based organizations.

So while partnering with the community-based organizations may take more time to get the assistance out the door to households compared to sending checks to households who we've already identified through enrollment in existing programs, CBOs are likely better positioned to ensure the assistance is reaching the priority populations and may better be connected with the types of assistance that those communities need.

Council Member Morales has proposed an amendment listed as amendment three and attachment C to the central staff memo that would require that this assistance is distributed through partnerships with community-based organizations and that it could be used for a variety of relief services such as food assistance, rental assistance, help with medical care or direct financial assistance.

So the options provided for the committee's consideration include no action adopting amendment two, as proposed by Council Member Sawant, or adopting Amendment 3 as proposed by Council Member Morales.

The third issue area is related to the proposed spending categories.

As noted previously, after repayment of the Interfund Loan, 75% of the funding would be allocated to develop and acquire affordable social housing and provide services for permanent supportive housing units, and 25% to support Green New Deal strategies.

understanding there are various ways this new revenue could be allocated, council members may want to consider other spending priorities.

The attachment four included in, excuse me, amendment four included an attachment D to the memo sponsored by council member Morales would modify the spending categories to include support for the equitable development initiative by allocating 10% of the funding to EDI projects and reducing the allocation to social housing and green new deal investments by 5%.

So 70% would be invested in social housing, 20% in Green New Deal investments, and 10% to support projects funded through the Equitable Development Initiative.

And I think it's worth noting that the Equitable Development Initiative projects often include an affordable housing component.

but those projects are not yet all identified to date.

So the options provided for the committee's consideration are taking no action, adopting the amendment as proposed by Council Member Morales, or to propose other spending categories.

Thank you so much, Tracy and Allie.

Oh, I'm sorry, please continue.

There are two more.

The fourth issue is related to the income level served by the proposed social housing investments.

The proposal would be to provide housing serving households up to 100% of area median income.

City housing funding policies have historically prioritized investments in rental housing that assist households at or below 80% of area median income with the majority of funds targeted to assist households at or below 30% of area median income.

Council members could consider modifying the income level served to prioritize investments to support households with lower incomes.

Council member Morales has proposed an amendment as shown in amendment five and attachment E to the memo that would modify the proposed income level served by the new housing investments.

That would reduce the maximum income served from 100% of area median income to 80%.

And it would prioritize funding for housing that is serving households at or below 60% AMI.

So the options provided for the committee's consideration is taking no action or adopting Amendment 5 as shown in Attachment E. And of course not listed here but you there there are a range of other income levels.

You know anything I would say you know 80 percent or below is an option available to the committee.

And then finally the 5th Amendment or excuse me 5th issue identified for discussion is related to the implementation plan and submittal date and the process that would inform development of that implementation plan.

As introduced, the bill would require that the executive develop an implementation plan consistent with the legislation authorizing spending, but it doesn't establish a firm timeline for submittal of this plan.

Both in the technical amendment described as Amendment 1, And in this amendment, an amendment proposed by Council Member Morales, the submittal date would be February 1st of 2021. In this amendment for Council Member Morales, this implementation plan would inform investments for the years 2022 through 2025. But because the council will have to make decisions about 2021 spending in just a few short months, it would request that the executive seeks input from stakeholders in developing that proposal.

And so the options available to the council that are laid out in the memo is no action adopting Amendment 6, including an attachment F to the memo, or proposing an alternate schedule or plan for how to move forward with developing an implementation plan and proposing investments in 2021. I agree.

And just noting for the slides, I think it says Amendment 5, but we just want to note that's Amendment 6, correct, Allie?

is, yes.

Okay, no problem.

That's no problem.

We're working night and day right now, so I just wanted to clarify for the viewing public in case there was a question when we go back to the film for any reason.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

That concludes my statements.

I'm happy to take questions.

Okay, great.

I didn't mean to cut you guys off.

Any other statements from you, Tracy, on this?

Nope.

Here to answer questions today.

I'll be looking for council colleagues who have their hand raised or if you have a question Please just go ahead and let me know.

Any questions?

Council Member Herbal.

Oh, so sorry, Council Member Herbal, you're on mute.

You think I'd have this down by now.

So as it relates specifically to the direct payments to households in the first year, just a concern about how that interplay is anticipated with other social service programs that have income eligibility requirements.

I don't know if these direct payments have the potential of making households ineligible for other services or programs that they depend on.

Council Member, that is a question that has come up that we don't have a firm answer for yet.

It somewhat varies by programs and we're trying to sort this out real time with some of the other assistance that's going out the door for right now through the city.

So we will follow up with more information when we can.

I will say that in some cases, providing not direct cash assistance may mitigate some of those concerns.

So the proposal included in Council Member Morales' amendment may address some of that, which is modeled, I should say, in part off of the program that the City of Austin stood up early on in the COVID crisis, which I think it was maybe just two months ago, but feels much longer.

Yeah, so we will follow up.

Thank you.

And then as it relates still to the immediate direct payments, does the spending plan provide help to folks who are experiencing homeless find homes or at least find shelter during the pandemic?

Is that contemplated either in the direct payments or another part of the spending plan?

It's not contemplated directly.

So if the legislation moved forward as proposed, I believe it was the sponsor's intent and would be to be able to allow people who are experiencing homelessness to receive those payments.

And then they could use the money for whatever they needed, including hotel rooms or other housing options if they could find any for $500.

would be one strategy.

If the, if Council Member Morales' amendment is adopted, then certainly service providers, community-based organizations that provide and work with people experiencing homelessness could provide assistance for a variety of housing assistance.

So that could look a number of ways, but it would not be prohibited from the, based on the plan.

the future spending is really focused on long-term housing and with a, you know, prioritizing investments or investing a significant amount in permanent supportive housing, which is designed to serve, you know, people coming out of homelessness.

So there wouldn't be, there's not direct spending on homeless, you know, sort of the intermediate steps, like tiny home villages and that sort of thing.

It's focused on the longer term housing.

Thank you.

And that just segues into my last question as it relates specifically to permanent supportive housing.

Several council members have signed on to the third door coalition proposal to scale permanent supportive housing over the next five years.

Just want to confirm that the spending plan not only includes allocation for capital costs for permanent supportive housing, but also the supportive part, the operating costs as well.

That's correct.

And in fact, the spending plan assumes that the city is paying the full cost of all new permanent supportive housing units.

So if instead that money was invested in a partnership with other, you know, with other regional partners and those dollars were leveraged, it would likely produce additional housing or some of the, some of that money might be directed towards housing that serves other income brackets.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

The Sponsor Council Member Morales has a comment.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I do want to come back to this question about the emergency assistance that we intended.

Again, I want to acknowledge that, you know, the crisis, first of all, is far from over for many people.

You know, the financial burden that COVID has placed them in still exists.

People's savings are running out.

We know that the state unemployment insurance system is not working for people.

And so, you know, support for families is just as important now as it was when this crisis first hit.

That said, you know, when we originally contemplated including this provision in this bill, you know, the circumstances were felt more urgent in terms of trying to get cash assistance out.

Since that time, as Ali mentioned, as I know we've talked about before, other cities have had some experience with trying to get emergency assistance out quickly.

And, you know, so that is still a goal.

I will say that if there is a different way to do it besides this inter-fund loan, if there is federal assistance that is coming through that we could use to provide this sort of rapid assistance to folks supported through community-based organizations, I think that is certainly something that we should talk about and consider.

And the reason that my amendment is really saying that we focus on community-based organizations excuse me, is because they have the kind of trusted, deep relationships with folks who are in community, who are their clients and the people that they serve.

They have the contacts, they know what kind of assistance is needed.

And particularly as we talk about the need to include folks who are undocumented, who are perhaps unbanked, The idea of just sending a check is not necessarily going to achieve the goal that we have.

And so what my amendment is trying to address is this question of how we provide financial assistance that isn't necessarily cash.

Maybe it's a prepaid debit card.

Maybe it is housing assistance or rental assistance or food security assistance.

And some people may need less than the $500.

That seems unlikely.

I think the point here is that if we give the organizations that already have relationships and know how to reach people the flexibility to do what is needed, it might take a little longer for us to step that up, but I think in the long run it would serve people better.

And then the last thing I want to say about it is that when I did have a conversation with an Austin City Council member about how they stood their program up, one of the reasons he gave for working directly with community-based organizations instead of, for example, through their utility discount program, is that in some places, if a resident is in arrears with a city department and this kind of emergency assistance comes through to them, some city departments are keeping the assistance from clients who are in arrears rather than just being a pass-through for support.

And we really don't want that to be happening right now.

So I'll stop there, but I just wanted to make those few points about the rationale for the amendment that I'm offering.

Very helpful.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

I also just wanted to double check to see how You don't have to answer right now, but given the cash assistance at the federal level has, I'm sorry, I don't know if I was glitching out.

Given the cash assistance at the federal level, perhaps there's some way that we can replicate language to make sure that those dollars didn't kick people off of other programs.

Maybe we could do something, Sam.

I see Allie nodding her head, so I'm assuming you're already on that, but just wanted to flag that.

I don't see any other council members with their hands up.

I'm going to turn it over to you.

Council colleagues, this has been a conversation that we have all been anticipating and really appreciate your feedback for central staff.

There's a few, I think, ideas that people are probably still percolating on.

I know that I have a strong interest in working with every one of you to make sure that we pass really assess those who are continuing to potentially do well in a post-COVID world and to recognize that the need is urgent.

It was urgent when the bill was introduced.

And so we have a real call to action here.

The next meeting that we have, as you see in our agenda, we are going to devote the full first part of the day next Wednesday to talking about revenue proposals and questions.

And so really, really urge you to send any questions or comments to central staff and for the council members who are the sponsors here.

I'm going to encourage folks to send questions, ideas, amendments, I would say by noon on Friday.

Okay, seeing a nod from central staff that that would be ideal.

Council Member Swamp, please go ahead.

I just wanted to second your comments, Council Member Mosqueda, that we have a shared interest in recognizing the urgency for the progressive revenues.

It was urgent and continues to be urgent.

If anything, it's more urgent.

And I also wanted to use this opportunity to I also say yes, I welcome any questions or amendments from council members for us to look at.

I appreciate you also underlining the need for that to be done sooner rather than later.

And also just to thank central staff for their incredible work.

I think they've basically given up every weekend as far as I know.

So thank you so much.

Council Member Morales, any additional comments from you?

I just want to thank the chair for rebooting this conversation.

I think we all agree that this is incredibly important right now.

And this is a moment in time where I do think that our community, our constituents are calling on us to find some answers and some solutions to these longstanding problems.

So I'm hopeful that we can move through this and you know, happy to answer questions, uh, you know, field questions from folks.

And I also want to, um, echo council members.

So once, uh, thanks to the central staff, who's been incredibly helpful and diligent in helping us think through alternatives and, um, and really prioritize our, our goal around serving our community and making sure that, um, we are addressing the, the many crises that we have right now as best as we can.

Thank you.

All right.

Central staff, we appreciate the joint presentation on this for these first three items on the agenda.

Thank you so much.

And we have another presentation, item number four.

I'm going to ask central staff to read that into the record, and then I will have some comments as well.

And we will introduce our central staff folks.

Madam Clerk, could you please read item number four into the record?

Madam Clerk I'm sorry we do not hear you.

Agenda Item 4 excuse me.

Agenda Item 4. Inquest on Seattle Police Department budget for briefing and discussion only.

Okay, council colleagues, just to frame up this conversation, as you heard on Monday, we are using today as our first opportunity to initiate an inquest into Seattle Police Department's budget.

We stated on Monday that our intent as a council is to provide a full, thorough, transparent, deep dive into Seattle Police Department's budget simultaneous to our ongoing revision and review and amendments to the mayor's 2020 revised budget.

We were told that the budget is still being worked on.

They have asked for additional time, at least a week, potentially more, for them to respond to the crisis that I think everybody is seeing in the street.

And I am looking forward to receiving that budget.

I think that that's potentially good news that the words and the call from community have been heard.

and they've held on to that budget to do some additional amendments before they send it down.

That does not relieve us as a council of our responsibility and our duty to provide not just amendments around the edges, but to really assess whether or not the budget is meeting our values as a city council as a whole, and specifically to the Seattle Police Department's allocation.

The community has been calling for or has been demanding of elected officials that we look at how we spend into the Seattle Police Department's budget for years.

The public safety system that we are trying to create is new, so I want to lift up the words, I think, from Councilmember Juarez and others on Monday who said, you know, we need to make sure that this is a thorough process, and I think it's really important that we also lift up the words of community that says, as we try to create a new system, We also need to be really gracious with each other to figure out what the next chapter looks like, because if we don't do this in a thoughtful way, and if we end up recreating the very systems that we are trying to dismantle, we have not actually accomplished change.

And our intent is to accomplish change.

Our intent is to use this tool that is the budget process to initiate that change.

And we're going to make sure that we do it with urgency.

We're not going to drag our feet, but we do need to be intentional about moving forward and to ensure accountability and transparency.

We're going to do this together with community organizations, especially Black-led community organizations.

This next chapter includes a city where we can imagine having community safety and strength that comes from these strong relationships, vibrant neighborhoods, healthy and equitable economies, and having housing as a human right, and really investing in our environment so that we are not creating toxic communities where, depending on your zip code, your life expectancy or your health outcomes are determined.

That's part of the message that we've heard from community as we think about decreasing funding in the Seattle Police Department's budget and reallocating it.

We need to assess where those dollars are going to go and that message is truly going to come from community.

We've seen other examples across the country where they have done similar efforts and Camden, New Jersey is often lifted up.

I think as we look at other models, it's important for us to remember that since 2010, the Seattle Police Department has seen about a 43% increase in Seattle funding, while we've seen other social services desperately trying to meet end meet.

And we're not isolated in this problem.

The Center for Popular Democracy, Black Youth Project 100, and Law for Black Lives released a groundbreaking report in 2017 entitled, Freedom to Thrive, Remaining Safety remaining safe and secure in our communities, which reveals how cities and counties continue to spend overwhelmingly on punitive policing and incarceration while neglecting infrastructure and social programs.

They provide examples in Minneapolis.

For each dollar spent on police, less than one cent goes to transportation and youth violence.

In New York, which spends nearly five billion on its police force even as homelessness and affordable housing crisis continues to increase.

In Baltimore, where 28% of the black population lives below the poverty line, Baltimore spends $772 per person on policing.

And for every dollar the city spends on the police, it contributes just 55 cents to the Baltimore public schools.

In Oakland, which spends the highest percentage of its general fund expenditures on policing of the jurisdictions that they examined, 41% overall, every dollar it spends on policing from its total budget, the city just spends eight cents on housing and community development.

So these are some examples to say that we're not alone in our overinvestments in policing as we know it currently, and we're also not alone in asking for a real fundamental change in how we do policing in this city.

As we mentioned on Monday, Minneapolis City Council jointly announced that they're dismantling and reinvesting the dollars and they're doing it through community process that will take a year, they announced.

We also know from the New York mayor and the Los Angeles mayor and city councils that they are decreasing funding as well.

So we are not alone in the need to do this.

This is an institutional issue across the country.

Somebody asked me today in an interview, you know, what are they doing wrong specifically?

And I think as we saw the response in the last two weeks, it's not just our departments, it's the institution that is policing across the country.

So I wanted to lift up those other cities as examples that we will continue to learn from and lean on as we engage in this process and really taking direction from community organizations that are black led and black and brown communities who've been calling for this for a very long time.

Councilmember Herbold, as chair of the Public Safety Committee, has some comments as well, as she has been collecting feedback and questions for a very long time, but especially after last Wednesday's committee meeting that she led.

And while Council President Gonzalez could not be here with us today, she also sent powerful remarks on Monday in support of this effort.

We appreciate her comments and her ongoing past efforts to really call out police violence and the need for change.

But we all know we're here to do much, much more than we've done in the past.

And thank Council Member Herbold for chiming in at this moment.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I just want to really show my appreciation to you for your framework for this discussion, calling it an inquest for the Seattle Police Department budget and a forensic look at the black box that is the $409 million budget of the police department.

I think that really shows the approach that we intend to take.

And I appreciate your recognition that what we're doing here in Seattle is happening also within the context of cities all over the country.

According to our recent analysis, the amount of money the United States spends on policing across the country is $115 billion, which is bigger than nearly every other country's military budget.

Police departments across the country consistently have lower rates of solving crimes, even as their budgets are increasing threefold over the last 40 years.

On the other hand, when police investigate a crime involving a black victim, evidence shows that the clearance rate is still lower.

We've heard that some folks are demanding that the council defund the police department, which could mean a lot of different things.

One specific target we've heard is 50%.

Others are just demanding that we dismantle the police department altogether.

The murder of George Floyd is spurring the conversation across about the history of law enforcement in this country as a slave catching institution and what the history of this institution should be today.

In light of these national conversations, the police response to demonstrations over the last nearly two weeks, and the disparity in law enforcement that we see here in Seattle as well, brings us to the table that Chair Mosqueda is setting for these budget discussions.

As it relates specifically to some of the disparity that we see here in Seattle, A 2019 study found that black suspects were searched most 26% of the time and only 16% of the time were they found with weapons.

Whites were searched least 18% of the time and were found with weapons.

25% of the time.

So blacks were searched most, were not found with weapons at the rate at which they were searched, and whites were searched least, and were more often found with weapons.

A 2019 study found that Black people account for 32% of all uses of force with firearm pointing rate of 26.6%.

White subjects had a firearm pointing rate of 16.6%.

The use of force report issued in January finds that even though the number of force incidents has decreased, the use of force against black people is still 28% significantly higher than Seattle's black population.

Today's presentation will go into greater detail than we've ever seen before.

It's an opportunity to take apart the budget and reimagine what a public safety department for this city might look like.

as Councilmember Mosqueda mentioned, in Camden, New Jersey a few years ago, they let go of all of their officers, including the police chief, and made them reapply with a new reimagined police department.

Though the council will be looking for cuts to make in the budget to reallocate to community-based alternatives, I think we have to, We have to realize that we have to have two different conversations here.

We have to have a conversation now about reductions in the police department budget and reinvestment in community-based alternatives, but then we also have to create a roadmap for how to re-imagine, take what is now our police department and re-imagine it to be a real public safety apparatus for the city.

In Minneapolis, they've committed to a one-year process.

They are not abolishing the police department today.

The Minneapolis City Council members are saying they'll gradually dismantle the department and replace it with one that uses healthcare workers and social workers instead of police officers to respond to substance abuse, homelessness, or mental health calls.

Violence prevention would be the work of community-based counselors.

What I hope we can have is a systematic questioning of the specific roles that police currently undertake and then develop evidence-based alternatives so that we can dial back our reliance on police officers and identify the most effective approaches.

For instance, we should do an analysis of 911 calls to see how many of them are for mental health distress or overdose or disorder so that we can begin to determine whether or not we need SPD response in all cases or with social workers.

and substance abuse disorder professionals and conflict dispute resolution experts be more appropriate.

One example that's already taken place in response to youth protests on Friday in the position of the Seattle Teachers Union, the Seattle Education Association and the school board have expressed an intention to end the practice of having armed school emphasis officers stationed across Seattle schools, South Shore, Aki Kurose Middle School, Denny Middle School, and Washington Middle School, all schools that are predominantly children of color.

In the next six weeks for the 2020 budget to address a $300 million revenue shortfall, we will be focused on reducing the SPD budget used for militarized police response and looking at the funds allocated by the budget for new hires but not spent because of the difficulty meeting hiring goals in the COVID-19 crisis, and other funding in the black box that doesn't best serve public safety needs of the community.

I think we'll also, as I said, begin a conversation about the hiring goals moving forward and whether or not reliance on growing the size of the department is really the best way to make our city safer.

More importantly, commit to investing these funds into people and communities most harmed by historic involvement with law enforcement, black and brown people in communities.

One step that the council has taken in recent years is to create a community service officer program that went into effect later this year.

CSOs assist with mediating disputes, following up on calls for non-emergency services, helping residents navigate services, support programming for at-risk youth, and attending school and community-hosted events.

Some of the work involves assisting homeless people and individuals struggling with substance abuse to access programs like diversion opportunities, housing, and behavioral health services.

One study shows that law enforcement spends 21% of its time responding to and transporting people with mental illness.

That can't continue.

As noted in the press release announcing the CSO jobs, it said, SPD seeks to fill open CSO positions with individuals from demographic groups currently underrepresented in the police department, including elders, immigrants, individuals with past involvement in the criminal justice system.

When the job application was posted, the response was overwhelming.

It was thousands of people applying, eager to participate in a different model of public safety in our city.

I read an article recently, I'm gonna close out with this quote from a Dallas chief, David Brown.

He writes, every societal failure we put on the cops to solve.

This was several days after a sniper killed five officers in his city.

Not enough mental health funding?

Let the cop handle it.

Not enough drug addiction funding?

Let's give it to the cops.

Schools fail?

Give it to the cops.

That's too much to ask.

Policing was never meant to solve all of those problems.

I just ask that other parts of our democracy, along with the free press, to help us.

Just closing out, I want to just again highlight the questions that we are going to be asking relate specifically to how much funding is available due to SPD not meeting prior hiring goals, how much of the adopted 2020 budget has already been spent, a breakdown of 911 calls and categorizing SPD's work, the cost of school emphasis officers, Related to the militarization of SPD, these are the questions that council members have sent earlier this week.

How much does SPD spend annually on riot gear, tear gas, and pepper spray, other chemical agents used against protesters, rubber bullets, flashbang grenades, blast balls, and any other less than lethal expendable weapon that has been used against protesters?

What is the per unit cost of each weapon?

And where are such weapons sourced from?

approximately how much has been spent on these items so far this year.

We've also asked for the number of officers deployed in the recent protests, the breakout of how much overtime has been used, how much in overtime SPD expects to spend this year.

We've asked whether or not SPD is planning to restock any of the non-lethal expendable weapons that I mentioned earlier, given the amounts that have been used in the last several weeks.

And if so, how much?

How much has the city spent on supporting National Guard members who have been working in the protests?

How much has the city spent on supporting other law enforcement agencies who have been working at the protests?

And then we also are going to have another conversation that has been queued up before in, I think, in the Select Committee on Homelessness on the funds that are being used with Seattle Police Department involvement in encampment removals.

How much does SPD spend on NAV team activities annually?

The number of officers, the number of hours on outreach, the number of hours spent on obstruction mitigation, the number of hours spent on encampment removals, and the number of encampment removals.

And then just lastly, on the questions, I'm really interested to know whether or not we can approach this budget as what has been called a zero-based budget.

And using, again, the lens of racial equity to build it back up.

Zero-based budgeting means that all expenses must be justified.

for each new period based on need, and the process starts from a zero base, and every single function would be analyzed for its need to achieve stated goals that we all agree on, and the cost for those goals.

And I'm hoping that in the short time that we have, that we can use that sort of framework.

We've been joined by Greg Doss of Council Central Staff, Cara Main-Hester of the City Budget Office, and Angela Sochi of the Seattle Police Department.

Greg will be making the presentation, and Cara and Angela are here to answer budget-related questions.

The presentation is about the SPD budget, and Greg Doss has done an exemplary job of preparing this on very short notice.

If you have policy-related questions, central staff can compile those and get back to you.

Our discussion for today is not about policy-based questions.

It's about the dollars that we are going to be deliberating and the use of those dollars.

The presentation is very dense.

It includes a lot of information.

So I'd like to allow for council member questions after staff presents each slide.

And in the interest of time, again, I guess I would request that you keep your general comments for after the presentation.

Council Member Herbold, I would want to speak right now, and I think my record on these issues speaks for itself, so I am going to go ahead and make my comments.

Yesterday, we had an incredible rally.

Sure, because you did say some comments at the very beginning, so I really appreciate it.

No, but 500 people are watching.

But central staff have asked us that we hold our policy-based comments and questions.

But council members, you both made your general comments, and my office has the strongest record on these issues, and I absolutely insist on making these comments.

I'm going to go ahead and make them.

Yesterday, we had an incredible rally of 2,000 community members, many of whom have been on the front lines for the last 10 days in this movement that was immediately set off by the George Floyd murder, but reflects longstanding issues of race, endemic racism and police violence.

We had incredibly dynamic speakers from the central district, black community leaders who've been leading the community for decades.

We had speakers from the Seattle Education Association, the union that has just voted to remove SPOG, Seattle Police Officers Guild, from the King County Labor Council.

And the speaker, in fact, was a Bruce Jackson, who is an African-American member of the Educators Association, and he is an educator at Akai Karuse, or Aki Karuse Middle School.

We had iron worker Logan Swan presenting a petition from rank-and-file workers to remove the Seattle Police Officers Guild from the Labor Council.

So as we have, as my office has said before, we stand with local community in demanding that the SPD, the Seattle Police, be defunded by at least 50%.

I won't say more about that because I already said that before, but we also are demanding that the east precinct be taken away permanently from the police, not be boarded up, and a community center be organized there.

We also support the King County Equity Now Coalition to to convert the decommissioned fire station six to become the William Gross Center for Enterprise.

But we also need an elected community oversight board with full powers of the police.

This is not what we have right now.

We don't want a commission or committees that are appointed by the city council and the mayor and the same politicians that have failed black and brown community members.

We need a community oversight board that is directly elected by voters.

We have seen the statistics.

30 people have been murdered.

30 black and brown community members have been murdered by Seattle police since 2011. Not one of them has been prosecuted.

Out of them, eight people were murdered since Mayor Jenny Durkan was elected.

Not one single police officer prosecuted.

We absolutely have to educate our movement by looking at the history of many of the council members here.

As was reported before, two years ago, the police contract, which was going to roll back police accountability measures and was opposed by the black community, the council that stood then, some of the council members are here today, voted for the police contract.

On a majority people of color council, I was the only no vote on that contract.

Before that there was, or maybe right after that, there was a vote on hiring bonuses that is meant for, you know, as money allocated to attract more cops.

That was just last fall, actually.

Again, I was the only no vote on that.

And my office said, where are the hiring bonuses for social workers?

We do not need more cops.

We need to combat inequality.

and repeatedly the council members, council after council, has voted against people's budget proposals for defunding the police department.

Now, I never brought forward something bold as 50% defunding.

Council members are talking about dismantling the police.

These are council members who have voted against even very modest defunding of the police department.

vote after vote against the people's budget proposals for stopping the sweep.

So we have to make sure that our movement does not develop illusions in establishment that has failed us before and, as public comment said, cannot put faith in the same establishment that brought us here in the first place.

We need to fight for public sector union living wage jobs in construction and other industries with priority hire and pre-apprenticeship programs that will prioritize our marginalized communities.

And as I said, we will be having a People's Budget Town Hall on the 16th.

But it's important to address this debate in our movement that should we defund by 50 percent or so, or should we abolish entirely?

And we see this language being co-opted by politicians that will dismantle, will eliminate, will abolish.

But what does it all really mean?

I want to clarify my position.

As a socialist, I am absolutely fighting for a society free of police, free of racism, sexism, and all oppression.

But we have to recognize that the police forces, by any name, cannot be reimagined or rebranded out of existence.

In Minneapolis right now, the promises that were made along those lines are being walked by the council members, and the grassroots community activists who are on the ground there, they will tell you that there's a big element of happy talk from the council members.

These are not real discussions.

And as I said, the council members themselves have had to admit two days ago that they did not actually vote to disband the police.

This discussion What it shows is that politicians in city after city are under pressure from the movement, and that is very important, but we have to recognize what we are up against.

The Los Angeles Times reported, and there's a lot of talk about Camden.

To quote the Los Angeles Times, quote, the new Camden police force is run by the county, not the city, and some residents complain that they don't have a voice in its operation, nor does the new force reflect the community.

Roughly half the officers are white, while the city is more than 90% non-white.

LA Times continues to say about three-quarters of the old force were rehired to the new one, and Thompson, who was the old chief, remained in charge.

The department now has nearly 400 officers, more than before.

So let us not mislead ourselves in the movement.

Sisters and brothers and siblings in the movement, I'm speaking to you.

I'm not speaking to political officials.

Let's not be misled by this illusion of dismantling police departments.

It has not happened anywhere.

The police exist under capitalism for a reason, just as the FBI exists, the CIA, the NSA, and all the other forces of the repressive state apparatus, they exist to defend capitalism, which needs repression.

It's a system that needs repression to enforce a deeply unequal and unjust society in which hundreds of millions of us face hunger, joblessness, and economic and other social stagnation, while the very few at the top rake it in.

This kind of deeply unequal society needs repression to defend itself.

We need a different kind of society.

And that's why I'm a socialist, because I think we need to fight for a world based on solidarity and equality, in which the world's resources and the major corporations are democratically owned and controlled by workers, which is the only basis on which we can create a world where no police and repressive forces can exist.

And as Black Panther leader Stokely Carmichael said, if a white man wants to lynch me, that's his problem.

If he's got the power to lynch me, that's my problem.

Racism is not a question of attitude.

It's a question of power.

Racism gets its power from capitalism.

Thus, if you're anti-racist, whether you know it or not, you must be anti-capitalist.

So we need to continue a political struggle to dismantle capitalism itself.

But at this moment, we need to understand that our movement needs to be independent of the corporate political establishment, and we need to fight hard to win defund SPD by at least 50%, to fund community programs.

We need to win the tax Amazon.

Can you please wrap up?

It's been five minutes now that you've been speaking.

So that you can win housing and jobs.

and the Green New Deal, and we should keep fighting, and let's attend the People's Budget Town Hall.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

And thank you to central staff and SPD folks on the line here.

Greg Das did send a PowerPoint presentation, so Greg, are you going to be sharing your screen as well?

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Yes, I am going to attempt to share it right now.

All right, can everyone see the PowerPoint?

We can and just a huge amount of appreciation for all the work that you did on this.

I know Council Member Herbold had said that and she had told me how much work you were doing.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, and thank you for the introduction, Councilmember Herbold.

As you mentioned, I am joined today by some colleagues from the City Budget Office, Dr. Cara Main Hester, and then also by Angela Sochi, who is the Executive Director for Budget and Finance for the Seattle Police Department.

Before I get started, I want to thank Angela and Cara for the work that they have done on this presentation over about the last 48 hours.

It's really a monumental feat because the city's accounting and budget systems do not always provide in a way that is easily understandable or presentable complex data like the Seattle Police Department budget.

It's fantastic that they were able to devote the time to do it, and I am very pleased to work with them.

They're two of the most competent and hardworking colleagues I've had, and I just want to thank them for the work in the last few days.

Finally, I want all of you to know that the three of us stand by to provide you with whatever information you need as you undertake the process of examining the police department and the kind of work that is done by police officers.

I think just before you begin, if you toggle to the screen share icon there, I think I'm not great at technology, but that might make our screens a little bit bigger.

It looks like the monitor that has it going from small.

I think that's it.

That work?

OK, maybe somebody else might be able to help us.

But I think, well, let's go ahead.

I see some.

Go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Here, Busqueda, yeah, I just wanted to figure out, because I don't think we connected on this portion.

As we have Council Member questions after each slide, is that something that you want to manage or should I manage it?

You're welcome to, Council Member Herbold.

Okay, so what I'm going to ask folks to do is, to the extent that they can, either use the raise hand function or shoot me a text.

I'm having a hard time getting everybody's heads on the screen here, so I won't be able to see you actually raising your hand.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, I'm also happy to identify folks in the queue, because I know you have a lot of questions.

If that's helpful, I can help to manage the folks who are raising hands.

Thank you.

Alright, so is this is this a better view of the presentation?

No, I don't not not from my perspective that for some reason it's it's up on the right.

It's a column with.

Your your picture and it's cutting off half of the presentation.

OK, so when I when I expand it.

Like such, you can see the whole presentation, but it's smaller.

I'm guessing.

Yeah, I can I can manage with this.

I don't know about other council members.

I think it looks good.

Let's go for it.

Okay.

All right.

Well, I'm going to go ahead and start with the 1st slide and.

Hopefully you can see this.

What you're looking at here is an overview of the entire SPD budget.

And I'm going to spend a few minutes familiarizing you with the various expenditure categories.

And then as we move further into the presentation, you'll find that I will have slides for line-by-line detail for each one of these categories.

And so I'm going to start out with personnel.

I don't know if you can see these numbers, so I'm just gonna read them.

You've got personnel here, which is just salaries and benefits.

And that total for the Seattle Police Department is about $306 million, and it represents about 75% of the entire budget.

And so those are salaries and benefits that support about 2,000 employees.

And we're gonna be going a little later into how those employees are broken down in the department.

That is by far, as you can see, the largest expense.

The next largest expense is overtime, and that figure is about $30 million.

And so here, in this case, that is about 7%.

That's this chunk here.

And when you take the entire overtime and salary and benefit budget, this piece right here, you have now covered about 82% of the Seattle Police Department budget.

So put simply, 82% of the $400 million is paying for salary and benefits and overtime salary for 2,000 city employees.

Then we'll get into some of the non-personnel charges.

The largest non-personnel charge is what we would call inter-fund charges.

Inter-fund charges, as you can see here, are for fleets and facilities.

That's for the vehicles.

For Seattle IT, all of the Seattle IT professionals at SPD are technically part of the Seattle IT department.

for HR, for judgment claims, for all of the citywide functions that SPD has to pay for.

These are functions that are provided to SPD but not part of SPD per se.

And as you can see here, that amount is $57 million.

And so just working my way down, if you take personnel, the salary and benefits, and you take the interfund charges, again, that's fleets, facilities, IT, you are now up to about 96% of the Seattle Police Department budget.

And then what you have left, a very small fraction of the budget, is the money that is used for equipment, for professional services, for travel, for training.

You can see that I have these categories here.

Discretionary purchase accounts come to about $5 million.

Professional services come to about $6 million.

And travel and training comes to about $1 million.

And so what you're looking at here, the money that SPD actually has control over spending, besides the salary benefits and overtime, is about $12 million.

And it's about 3% of their budget.

And so as I said before, I have later in this presentation for each one of these line items here, I have detailed line by line budgets that will show you exactly how this money is spent and distributed by section and by personnel throughout the department.

And so with that, I'll stop and ask if there are any questions on this particular slide.

Thank you, yes, I have council members Tamim Morales and Andrew Lewis in the queue.

Council Member Morales.

Yes, thank you.

Can everybody hear me?

I got kicked off my computer, so I'm on the phone now.

Another reason why we need municipal broadband, but that's a different conversation.

I can hear you.

Thank you.

So yes, I do have a question about the information on slide one, particularly the Interfund charges.

We've heard the last couple of mayors, I think, talk about becoming a smart city.

I'm wondering if you can break down the IT line here in particular.

I'm interested in what kind of technology is in this item.

What's the data being collected?

How is it collected?

Who has access?

What's done with it?

And then if there's a percentage of that that includes surveillance, or if that is somewhere else in this budget.

Well, I can start by answering your question to say that we do have a breakdown of the Interfund charges, and I can skip ahead and show you a breakdown if you want now.

unless you prefer.

If it's okay with Council Member Morales, let's stick with the starting with the snapshot and going deeper on that item, particularly considering it sounds like it's covered.

If that's okay with Council Member Morales?

That's fine.

I don't see that it is covered further in, but I'm happy to wait.

That's fine.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

So moving on.

And Council Member Lewis had a question as well.

Thank you.

And Greg, this might be something that you're going to cover later, too.

So feel free to just flag that if that's the case.

But I was kind of curious in these categories.

You know, I know like one of the recent big equipment purchases for SPD has been body worn cameras for all patrol officers.

I'm just kind of curious sort of where that if that lives in this budget or if that's how it's somewhere else.

And if that's coming later, that's fine.

But I was just kind of curious of

those.

Thanks, Councilmember.

I think for that, I'm going to have to turn to SPD's budget director.

I'm not sure if that lives with the IT allocation or if that lives with SPD.

So, Angela, is that something you might know?

Yeah, so just to bring some clarity to this particular line, the inner fund charges, those are all these are all set by the central cost manual.

And so specific IT items, well, things like the body-worn video are built into our IT rates, just like they are for every city department.

In the case of the body-worn video system, there was a project for the rollout and implementation.

We're now into maintenance.

So in that case, Seattle IT, actually, we don't have a capital improvement project.

budget in our department.

And so that was funded in Seattle I.T. The subscription costs associated with the program.

Also the budget for that also lives in Seattle I.T.

and is paid for them by the I.T.

department.

So just as a follow up then does that come in then on the on the Interfund tab.

Is that how I'm hearing that.

Kind of.

The The Interfund rates are set, again, the central cost manual I think is about 100 pages long and it describes kind of how they do, they count device, total number of devices.

And in the case of body-worn video, I think 100% of the subscription costs are likely built into that number because it's an SPD.

system and not used by any other department.

So my guess is I can confirm that for you, but my guess is that the subscription costs would also be included in that, in our IT, in our funds.

Great.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales has another question, please.

Yes.

Can you just tell me where these categories would be school resource officers in the expenditure and then is that funded by general revenue?

We're going to get into some of the more detailed level categories a little bit later, but the school resource officers are part of the personnel cost, that $306 million, and they are technically part of the The bureau name is escaping me.

Part of the, I want to say it's a Community Outreach Bureau.

Angela, what's the name of that bureau?

Collaborative Policing.

Thank you.

Collaborative Policing.

It used to be Community Outreach years ago.

So they're part of the Collaborative Policing Bureau and we're going to get it.

Okay, thank you.

Okay.

All right.

So going to move on to the second slide.

So, uh, as you saw, um, the largest chunk of SPD is budget is salaries and benefits.

And so I wanted to show you in this slide, how that breaks out between civilians and sworn.

And so you have here in the first column, the sworn numbers, and then in the second column, the civilian numbers, and then the total at the end.

And so starting with the sworn, the FTE count, there are 1,424 positions that are sworn positions that are funded.

And that's about 71% of all personnel in the department.

The share of the salaries and benefits, as you can see, is about 77%.

The 1424, I'll talk about a little bit.

The 1424 is funded FTE for sworn, and it's a little bit misleading because it also includes recruits and student officers, and recruits are technically not sworn, but that number includes all the folks that are either sworn or going to be sworn.

Um, and, uh, regarding, uh, Councilmember Herbold's question about, um, money for sworn and whether or not that has been affected by the COVID crisis, I'll go ahead and address that now.

Um, it has.

The department is now bumping up against its funded number of 1424. What has happened in the last several months is that, and this is expected in any recession, recruiting has picked up dramatically.

separations have stopped, or not stopped, but very much slowed down.

So if you were to look through the month of April in this year, you would see that SPD has made 40 recruit hires, two lateral hires, for a total of about 42 hires in this area here, and they've only had 17 separations.

And so that kind of disparity is unseen in a very, very long time.

I think that it likely reflects the recession.

It's hard to know for sure.

But what it is doing is it's creating a situation where SPD is essentially it doesn't have any more money to hire any more people.

And so what the department is going to be doing over the next three months is going to discontinue hiring recruits.

That is happening partially because, as I say, they're bumping up against their funded FTE level.

It's also happening because of sort of practical COVID reasons.

The test that officers would take to move them into the recruitment system, there are, of course, problems with getting hundreds of people together taking a test.

So the department expects it's going to have to take a break on hiring recruits for a few months.

If things are to return to normal, according to the staffing plan this fall, then SPD would resume hiring of recruits and it would have enough money to hire seven recruits in each of the last three months of this year.

So if everything returns to normal, they are able to test and get recruits, then they'll be looking at making about 21 sworn or hires towards a sworn force.

So that's sort of a high-level overview of the hiring situation.

I think what's inherent in my comments is that there isn't money left over right now because the department hasn't been able to hire.

That was certainly 100% true until the recession, and now it's completely upended.

And so, Greg, are you, when you say that the department is bumping up against its funded hires, are you talking about for this period of time?

Are you talking about for the entire year?

Are you talking about through the second quarter?

Or are you talking about for the full year?

I'm saying that at the, according to the staffing plan, this month at the end of June, they will have 1424 filled FTE.

And if they don't hire for the next three months and there are a few more separations, then they will be able to start hiring again.

They'll have the money to hire again in the fall.

Angela, jump in here if I've portrayed this wrong.

I'm sorry.

And I just want to re-ask that question because I didn't hear an answer.

The 1420 is the goal for what period of time for the through the end of this year, or up just up through this the second quarter of 2020.

That is a number of funded FTE.

It's an annualized number of funded FTE.

It is an annualized number, but we break it down for purposes of tracking recruitment.

So I didn't know if you were using the number that we break down by quarter for purposes of tracking recruitment or if you're using the annualized budget number.

So thank you.

Anything to add, Angela?

No, I, well, yes, I guess.

Um, so we, this represents a departure from past practice where we try to anticipate attrition and hire in advance of that.

Um, given the, our financial constraints this year, um, we, we opted to, and it actually ends up being, I believe a four month hiring freeze for sworn.

We've opted to, um, instead of pre hiring and anticipation of separations, We felt like from a budget standpoint that we ought to, we do have a pool of approved candidates that we are holding on and felt it wise to monitor attrition and see that we weren't hiring over and above what we were actually separating, primarily for budget purposes.

Any other questions?

Thank you, Angela.

Any other questions on this or shall I move on?

I do not see any raised hands, and I have not received any texts from my colleagues.

So let's please move on.

Thank you.

Council Member Sawant.

And when I say raise hand, I mean on the app.

I haven't figured out how to get everybody's heads showing, so.

I will do that in the future.

I sent a chat message, but I'll do that.

Oh.

I figured it out.

Oh, no problem at all.

No, no problem at all.

Just one quick question on this one, just to clarify some information and to make sure I've got it right and just to understand moving forward.

Did you say that there were 40 new sworn officers that were hired in April?

And during that time, there were 17 who quit.

So basically a net expansion of 23 sworn officers.

First of all, that's one question.

Did I get that right?

And also, I'm not clear because I'm not clear how the hiring is going on for new sworn officers, because hasn't there been a hiring freeze that has taken effect for all the other City of Seattle departments?

And just to put a point on it, the Office of Labor Standards, which does really important work, actually has been understaffed for months.

I mean, and that doesn't even have anything to do with the recession that much.

So the Office of Civil Rights, for instance, has opened positions that they haven't filled.

So it just seems like quite a stunning contrast that other departments have now had a hiring freeze instituted because of the recession.

And many of those same departments have had long-time hiring problems.

And yet the Seattle Police Department has hired in the net at least 23 new sworn officers in April during COVID.

Just to clarify one point, it's the entire year through April.

Those are the actuals that are in the last staffing report.

It takes a while for the actuals to catch up.

So the last staffing report that was transmitted to the council, there were a net of 40 officers hired.

Actually, I should say 40 recruits hired, two lateral officers hired, and then 17 separations.

And so that's for the first several months this year through April.

And my recollection is that I actually thought I heard from the Public Safety Service Commission that they were suspending testing because of COVID-19 concerns, but I may be remembering in error on that.

I thought I remembered hearing from them sometime in like maybe the last month or so.

I think that's entirely possible council member and I think that you know as I alluded to earlier I I have heard from the department that the testing is going to be a problem and that of course is another reason potentially why they are going on a four month sort of hiring recruit hiring freeze.

In terms of the folks that have been brought on board since January, the way the hiring system works, the tests happen only a few times a year and they get a great big bunch of candidates.

My guess, and I'll ask Angela to tell me if I'm wrong, is that the folks who have been coming on over the last few months came from the last test.

pre-COVID and have been, you know, it takes a while to get them backgrounded and it takes a while to get them interviewed.

And so I think that the 40 and the two that came on anywhere between the beginning of the year and April, I suspect, came from tests that happened prior to COVID.

Thank you.

I have a question from Chair Mosqueda in the queue.

Thank you.

This might be something that we can look into later.

But Greg, I want to flag I'm concerned about the overall recruitment strategy.

I understand that there's a heavy emphasis on recruiting from military events and things like that.

And perhaps we don't need to get into that question right now.

It's more policy oriented.

But if there is a budget element that is tied to recruitment and it does involve training to places like that, that would be helpful for me to know.

Okay, thank you Councilmember there is a budget element that is.

Tied to recruitment, I think that the department would and probably should answer the question you're asking separately from this presentation.

I know that they've been boasting that they had the highest level of recruits of people of color in this last year, but I don't know that that speaks to your question as to whether or not they are mostly going to military events.

That's something that I think that they'll need to answer.

Appreciate it, we can do that later if you'd like.

Okay, we'll get back to you on that.

I've got another question from Council Member Morales.

Nope, sorry, I'm looking ahead to slide nine, thank you.

Let's move ahead to slide nine then, perfect.

All right, so going to slide three, unless you want me to skip to nine.

Oh, no.

No, no, that's OK.

I can wait.

I'm just trying to get in the queue.

Sorry, everybody.

Okay.

Uh, this is one that, uh, um, we threw in to give you a flavor of how much it costs to pay for all those folks that, uh, are, um, responsible for 75% of the salary and benefits, uh, or 71st, 75% of the budget of SPD.

Um, and so what you can see here is sort of the top 10 job titles and, um, the number of FTE here in this column for each title.

the salary and the benefits for that particular category of employee, and then the average cost of that particular category of employee.

And so what you're looking at here in the green, these are civilians.

And the blue, of course, is the sworn.

And just to give you an example of the kind of cost disparity that you'll see here, you'll see that the civilians are obviously in the low 100s.

You've got, for the parking enforcement officers, about 100,000.

You go up to about 113 for the dispatcher two level.

As opposed to police officer patrol, the smallest rung in the ladder is 150. Of course, that's the highest group.

And then as you work your way down, you've got lieutenants, and a lieutenant will typically cost a couple hundred thousand dollars per lieutenant.

And this, of course, is both salary and benefits.

So this is the cost of the city of, say, one lieutenant.

And Greg, can you say sort of just ballpark what percentage of that average cost is salaries alone?

I can't, but Angela can.

We talked about it earlier.

So Angela, you're up.

Yeah, so on average, it's about 30% to 35% if you were to look at all of our employees.

But because the benefit structure for sworn is so different from civilians, it's definitely worth calling out those.

So for a sworn employee, you're looking at about 25% on average for benefits.

And for the civilian employees, it's actually about 48%.

And what accounts for that difference?

So the sworn are different in that they don't pay into the same retirement fund.

They don't pay into Social Security, their health care Um, costs is their health care is different than most city employees.

Um, and so the, their, well, their health care is less, um, the, just the, I mean, it's just the structure of the benefits.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Mosqueda.

Sorry.

Just on the health care piece, I want to double check.

Is there a line item that we've seen grow over time for access to mental health services, suicide prevention?

We know that like many first responders, there is a high rate of suicide and that's a very serious issue.

Obviously, I condemn the comments that are made to make it sound like anybody should be not doing their best to get access to healthcare, to get mental health services and to reduce suicide.

We have to make sure people have access to those services and recognizing the high rates, especially among firefighters, for example, that's something that I've worked on for a very long time to make sure that folks who are on the frontline responding have access to mental health services and trauma treatment.

I'm sure that there's a lot of folks who've seen a lot of trauma and heard a lot of traumatic things and maybe done some traumatic things that they regret Is there a specific line item that we have seen grow over time to increase funding for mental health services and suicide prevention strategies?

And it sounds to me like you're speaking about mental health and suicide prevention strategies for officers.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

I, I think that that's a, um, I think that that's a city service.

And I think that SPD also has, um, peer counseling available.

Angela, is there any money that's specifically set aside in SPD or is it, is it citywide?

Yeah.

So there's the employee assistance program, um, which, um, all city employees, we pay, um, a small amount for all city employees.

Um, that is a central service.

We do have dedicated peer support employees embedded within the police department, and then a cadre of others who are specially trained to respond and direct people.

A lot of it is we don't have a specific budget line for that outside of the employees who work either full-time or part-time on that topic.

Our officers do have access, however, I believe primarily nonprofit organizations targeted at law enforcement.

I want to say it's Code 4 is a service that we utilize where they have access to counseling services and whatnot.

But within the budget, you're not going to find a large dollar amount associated with that specific issue.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis, you have a question, please?

Yeah, thank you so much.

And Greg, maybe this will come later, but I just want to ask it now just for purposes of comparison.

You know, obviously, you know, community service officers are not a are not one of the top positions in the department.

But I do think as Chair Herbold, Public Safety Chair Herbold kind of highlighted in her opening remarks, the sort of model of kind of the unarmed community service officer and the kind of interventions they provide.

I might form a big part of some of the reform decisions we might want to take on as a, as a council.

I'm kind of curious where they fall in the scheme of this.

And I also, I don't remember from January when the committee did a little bit of work, kind of just hearing about the rollout of that plan on, on if they are or aren't sworn.

I think they're not sworn, but if you could clarify that as well.

They are not sworn.

And in the last budget round, we added six more, I believe, for a total of 18. And gosh, I am blanking on the per person salary and benefit rate.

I'm hoping that Angela might know.

Yeah, so for the community service officers, you're looking at about $100,000 per employee.

For the community service officers, the supervisor is obviously slightly more.

Is that inclusive of the whole package?

So it would be about the same as a patrol officer in terms of the cost?

So the $100,000, that includes salary and benefits.

Obviously, there's going to be some overhead involved in terms of vehicles and office space and whatnot that would increase that cost.

I don't have that on hand right now.

an expansion, if you're just talking about the individual employee, it's about $100,000, whereas a patrol officer is about $150,000.

Thank you.

All right, thank you.

I don't see any more questions for this slide.

All right, so this slide is designed to show you it show you where the civilians are and where the sworn are in the department and sort of give you a visual understanding of the ratio.

There's really probably not a lot here that isn't intuitive, so I won't spend too much time on it.

But what you can see here with the green is the civilians and the blue, of course, is the sworn.

Taking a look at this particular column, you're looking at patrol operations, which is all the precincts.

You can see the five precincts here.

And so it makes sense that you have 865 officers and you'd have 19 civilians.

The 19 civilians are pretty much support personnel at this point.

These numbers here, I should note, are the authorized positions, which is, it gets a little confusing.

They're not all completely funded.

because the council and the executive have taken advantage of some vacancy rakes, but if they were fully funded and the department was fully staffed, then this is where the positions would be.

And, you know, just going over these at a high level, The chief of police, of course, that's the BSL that has the public disclosure unit.

That's a rather large civilian unit.

I think it was in 2017, they were taking about 6200 public disclosure requests a year.

records files those are primarily civilian civilian sections office of police accountability you're pretty familiar with actually it's it's more civilian than it is sworn leadership and administration You've got education, data center, human resources.

You have some more, actually, I'm sorry, that's where records files is.

You've got some more administrative functions there, and that's why, again, you have more of the civilians.

And as I said, I'm not going to go through this column by column.

I think most of it's intuitive.

The special operations, you've got sort of a combination of traffic and parking enforcement officers.

more of an equal share there, but wanted to give you a visual.

Actually, Angela put this together.

I think it's a super helpful piece on where the civilians are and where the sworn are.

So I'm gonna head, move on.

So this is a slide that you have seen before in my annual budget presentations.

And what you're seeing here is, of the sworn force, how they are broken out.

And as you can see, the patrol, which is these first first three categories here, uh, it's just under half.

It's, it's 48.7%.

And so, um, if you're looking at the department in the sworn, you've got about a 30, about a third, uh, 34.3% that respond to 911 calls.

And then you also have, uh, sergeants in patrol and you've got, um, some specialty units in patrol.

These are your, community police team or other bikes and beats officers that are out on the street.

And so that gives you a sense of how many are working with the public.

And then you have non-patrol.

And in the non-patrol section, you've got examples here of investigative units.

And I think we probably all understand what we're looking at there.

You've got criminal investigations.

You've got vice, narcotics, special victims, all of the criminal investigations sections you might expect.

specialty units.

This one is the units that are specifically focused in one area.

In this area, you have SWAT, K-9, arson bomb.

And then, as I've said before, each one of these units that I'm pointing out, later on in the presentation, we have specific detail on how much, how many people are in those units and how much those units how much, how many FTE are in those units, and we even have a budget breakout by how many discretionary dollars that those units have.

And so we can dig into all of that today, or you're welcome to dig into those tables later and ask us questions at another time.

Just to finish out with this slide, operations support is training and Training folks, there's a lot of folks involved in training.

You've got policy, leadership being command staff, and then administration, a very small category.

That is officers, say, for instance, stationed in human resources or in other places.

And so this is really a statement of policy that the department is making when you look at this slide.

They are saying that this is how they choose to split out and dedicate their sworn force.

And this has everything to do with performance measures on the 911 side that have to do with call response times.

It has to do with proactive contacts that are made with the public to the investigative side where you've got case clearance on murder cases, rape cases, et cetera.

So again, this is very much a policy statement and this is why I put the slide before you.

Greg, as it relates to this being a reflection of SPD policy on how to allocate its resources, are there sort of best practices for departments that are embracing of community policing models.

Everybody says they're a community policing department, but I think it's really whether or not you really are is about how you spend your resources and what you have officers doing.

And so I'm wondering if there is something we could compare these percentages to as it relates to how a department would allocate its resources if it was truly doing community policing?

That's a good question, Council Member.

I think that's something that we're going to have to get back to you on.

Community policing in the sense that officers would come into contact with the public.

There are some metrics around 911 responses and proactive time.

But I think the larger question you're asking about how resources are divided so that community policing objectives can be achieved, I'd want to give that one to Dr. Fisher at SPD.

That works for me.

Thanks.

So I'm not going to spend too much time on this one.

I just want to show you that this is the precinct staffing report you've seen before in case you had any, in case you were curious as to how these folks were broken out by precinct.

These are the numbers as of the last staff report, but it's not really budget related.

I just, again, doing sort of a dive into SPD's personnel.

And then along with that, I had been asked by council members to talk a bit about nine one response and service call data.

And so I'm throwing this slide up again.

It's not necessarily budget related, but.

In the overall picture of examining SPD's metrics and in terms of what they're trying to achieve from a public safety standpoint, these are good numbers to look at.

As you can see here, there were in 2018 138,000 proactive call counts, times that officers made a proactive engagement with a citizen.

I can tell you that in each year there are about 222,000 9-1-1 responses.

That's not on this slide.

But the time that it takes folks to respond to 911 is on this slide.

As you can see, in 2019, it was about 8.77 minutes.

And so the number of folks that you have on the street is in cars that are available to respond to 911 calls obviously will impact these numbers.

The numbers of folks that you have either on the street or on bike or on beat will impact the proactive call counts.

Council Member Herbold, you brought up that you have asked for a breakout of calls by type.

I think that would be some really good data, especially when you're considering the role that police play in answering 911 calls.

As you note, not all 911 calls are crimes in progress.

Some of them are, quite a few actually, are about folks that are in distress.

One number that I would throw out, and I think it's kind of an old number, but back in, I believe it was 2018, the CRT team, a team of police with a mental health professional, went out on 1,476 calls.

That's an example of a situation where a 911 call came in and it may have been a person in distress.

And the mental health professional that went along with the CRT team was obviously of some help in that situation.

So we are absolutely going to get that data for you.

Thank you so much.

Just to restate what we see on the slide, the number of calls have gone down between 2016 and 2019. The number of hours spent answering those calls have also gone down.

And the response time has gone down as well, which is great.

We want to see that there is a good response time, and this is an area that I know councils in the past had had concerns about, is about reducing the response times.

Noting, of course, that there is a difference between the median and the average response time.

But yes, thank you for flagging my strong interest in drilling down on the different types of 911 calls.

And I think what would be really helpful before you get us that data is just maybe letting us know what the categories are that we can expect to see so that we know if there are other questions that we should be asking.

Okay, we'll do that.

And here the call count is proactive.

So this is a situation where officers are engaging with folks.

I'm not sure if they keep track of the issues they were engaging on, but we will definitely ask that question.

So the top part of the chart is not 911 calls?

No, the top part is proactive call event count.

Okay, so where we don't have a 911 call count,

No, I know that it happens to be $222,900.

I said it, so that's why you're thinking about it.

Yeah.

Well, but I'm also interested to know, has it gone down or gone up for the period of time that you're reporting it out for a proactive call?

Yes, I will.

And I should clarify, the 222,000 that I'm talking about is just the police calls.

The actual call center for medical and the rest of it is more like 700-some thousand.

But we will get you all that data.

Thank you.

All right.

Let's see.

Anybody else here in the queue?

I see no raised hands.

And I see no notes in the chat function.

And I see no texts to me.

So let's go.

I've got three different places I'm looking.

Okay, so now we're getting into a little bit more of the detail and.

What you see here is the overtime budget, and I'm going to start by pointing out that overtime as a whole.

Well, let me back up.

Overtime, $30 million.

And so that was, as you remember from the very first slide, a huge chunk of the personnel expenses for SPD.

When you take that $30 million and you add it to salary and benefits, again, you're at 82% of the entire budget of the department.

So obviously, it's a big area that the budget office watches very closely.

Just to give you a high-level overview, When you're looking at overtime, you have about 88% of the overtime is sworn, and about 12% of the overtime is civilian.

These are estimates that the budget office came up with.

It's difficult to get this data, and so they did the best they could to triangulate to get these numbers.

And this is a sense they have about how it's broken down.

This is an overall picture on the left in this table about how overtime is spent.

And I think as you move down and you look at the various categories, what you can see is that there are places where there's a lot of overtime spent.

And obviously what will jump right out at you is events.

$6.8 million for sports at $3.3 million.

giving officers mostly overtime to provide security and emphasis.

With sports, I should note that that is a category that is often largely reimbursable, like the Seahawks or the Mariners.

But when you get to events, the $6.8 million, That is, the city receives some money for events through the Special Event Permitting Office, but it is nowhere near the cost that the city has for patrolling events.

Here again, it's a policy choice of the city to use sworn officers for events, for traffic, or for security.

It is absolutely within the department's purview to do things differently there if they chose to use more PEOs for events and fewer officers.

I know that that is something that they are constantly taking a look at.

But again, showing you sort of where a lot of the expenses are.

And most of the expenses here in the top categories I think are fairly intuitive.

The Criminal Investigations Bureau, the $3.4 million that they spend in overtime.

What we're talking about there is largely extra time that's needed on a case.

So if they work another four hours past their workload to try and clear some cases, then that gets logged into that overtime.

So this is a pretty good breakout of the overtime for each one of this.

We have more detail if you would like it.

I don't have it here in this table because the more detailed table is very, very long.

But we do have it if you'd like to see it.

Greg, I just want to flag my interest.

This is something I think I ran down before, but I don't remember the outcome of the question.

The director of the Office of Arts and Culture had raised the issue of the cost associated with flaggers at events.

And I remember he had raised that there had been a problem in state law that requires that prohibits basically events from allowing private security to do the flagging.

And so the costs associated, even though, as you say, they're not fully compensated when there are community events that the city is partially subsidizing, it costs the city money whether or not, they are, it is being compensated, or it either costs the city money or it's going to cost the event sponsor more money, being that currently they have to be sworn officers.

You mentioned that they don't have to be sworn officers.

What I had heard is that they have, not only do, that not only do they have to be sworn sworn officers, but they can't actually, they can't go the non-SPD route altogether and have private security.

So that's something I'm interested in finding out more about.

Sure.

What I can tell you is that Uh, we did a little research a few years back and I have a memo from the law department that says that there's no state law or SMC that requires, um, officers to do, um, street closures or traffic control.

Um, there would be bargaining issues if that body of work was given over entirely to, uh, to another group of employees because, uh, there would be a potential skimming issue, um, taking work away from SPOG.

but the department uses where it can PEOs because they are cheaper from an overtime rate.

Certainly the issues that you're talking about are ones that we can explore.

I think you might be on mute Council Member Provo.

Thank you.

What I would be most interested in exploring given what you have just unearthed from that old memo is whether or not there'd be bargaining issues by just simply by the city changing its policy and not using other city employees to do the function, but allowing folks who are hosting community events to not use city employees at all, but to hire separately private security.

We'll look into that for you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Yes.

Thank you very much.

Uh, the comment that you made about it is reimbursable.

Are we getting every dollar back from sports events?

the city auditor did an audit a few years ago and identified how much of the city's costs are reimbursed as it relates to the special event permitting process.

And as mentioned, police department are some of those costs, but there are other across all departments.

And there are different results in our success at doing full cost recovery, depending on what kind of event.

There is better cost recovery, generally speaking, for sports than there are for community events.

But the analysis that the city auditor did kind of broke it down according to different types of events where our goal is to have cost recovery.

And if it's OK, I want to give Angela a chance to say a little bit about this to see if there's anything that I might have misspoken about.

It's, again, been a long time since I was deeply, deeply involved in overtime.

Please, Angela.

Greg, I think you did a good job at capturing it.

You know, we know that the city is subsidizing events specifically.

I think sports is those the sporting events are governed by a separate set of rules and contracts, and so we are recovering more of those costs and see a greater reimbursement percentage for those.

That's all I have to really add on the event piece, but happy to answer any other questions about the overtime budget.

Just to close the loop on the events for sports, I would like to know what percentage we're not getting back from the sports events and the total cost there.

That seems like that should be 100% reimbursed.

And then the second question that I have, I believe, for central staff or the police department is, in our emphasis patrol line, $2.248 million.

Is this a completely new line item given the new emphasis patrols that the mayor had before?

If it's not completely new, if we had done that in the past prior to Mayor Durkan's announcement about emphasis patrols, how much has it increased over the last two or three years given the renewed um, policy of the mayor to do those emphasis patrols.

Go ahead, Angela.

Yeah, so we have seen an increase.

Although we didn't get a specific appropriation for emphasis patrols, we did redirect some of our budget to that line item existing budget to that line item.

Um, I should say we did.

Sorry.

We did get a specific appropriation in the 2020 budget process for emphasis patrols.

But prior to that, we didn't have a specific ad, we were self-budgeted around 1.4 million.

This year, it's increased to about 2.2 million.

That number can be fluid depending on the operational need for emphasis patrols.

But historically, we've been able to operate within that budget more or less or within our existing budget more or less.

Yes, yeah, no, it went up.

It went up about $800,000 in 2020 specifically.

And then as far as the sporting events go, I can get back to you on the percentage of reimbursement.

Just one more note on that topic.

For the most part, the part that we're not getting reimbursed for is The overtime that's worked, if you think of it as a domino effect, you have traffic needs in and around the stadium.

And when you have thousands of people congregating to a specific location, that's gonna have impacts outside of what we would consider to be kind of that working area or that stadium area.

And I think it's, reluctance to pay for, say, traffic control services five blocks away, even though as a city we feel like we need to make sure that the flow of traffic through downtown on game day works for everyone, the stadiums aren't.

There's some disagreement on who should shoulder those costs.

Thank you.

And before we move on to the next slide, I'm just gonna make sure there's nobody else in the queue.

I wanna also, oh, Council Member Strauss.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I just wanted the record to reflect that I've had many questions and that you have asked them.

So just not that I'm sitting here in silence.

I oftentimes have gotten ready to ask a question, you've asked it.

So I just wanted to let the record reflect.

Fantastic, thank you.

As it relates to, before we move on, I just want to note that it's my recollection, and Greg, you can confirm whether or not I'm right, and don't hold back and tell me I'm wrong, that it is a pretty typical practice that even though we pass a budget with very large number of dollars committed to overtime.

It is a pretty typical practice that we revisit throughout the year to add more overtime to the police department budget.

So given even that our budget is $30 million for overtime for the police department, it would not be surprising if there was a request or a need to backfill overtime dollars that they've already spent, basically.

councilmember I would I would answer your question by saying you are absolutely right for the large history that that you have been with the city up until very recently the SPD overtime budget was the budget that was provided to the department was was inadequate to be able to cover the expenses and the and the activities that were required of the department within the last couple years they have they have turned that around a bit.

And I think Angela is probably one of the very few budget managers in the history of the department that has, to my knowledge, not had to come to the city council with a supplemental request for more overtime.

It's a different world when it comes to overtime these days.

And in fact, it is going to make it a very different world.

A lot of the overtime that that you see here, obviously around things like events.

isn't being expended right now.

Most of the summer events are just not going to happen.

And so I think what you're going to see next week when the executive transmits its rebalanced budget so that it can address the revenue shortfalls for COVID is likely some expenditure reductions in the overtime budget because SPD is not having to deliver as many services there.

And the council will have an opportunity to review that budget, of course, next week.

So I don't at all want to disagree with you.

You are 100% right about the supplementals over many, many, many years, going back decades, actually.

But within the last couple of years, they have really turned it around.

Well, thank you, Angela.

So I'm going to move on to this next one.

part of a request that you had made for this presentation.

And the department has put forward the cost for demonstration equipment.

And basically what I did was I took that picture out of the paper.

Actually, I think it was Como that had it.

And I asked the department to give me a list of everything that they are wearing.

And then I said, I think shields are also used, but they're not in the picture.

And so this is what the department put together.

And what you can see here, line by line, is each item that the officer is wearing, and the subtotal for the unit cost, adding the tax, and then the 2020 cost.

And I'm guessing the multipurpose gear, the uniforms down below, that's something that probably is used all the time, not necessarily distinct to presentations.

But, um, I, I'm going to have Angela talk a little bit about how equipment demonstration equipment is, uh, paid for on a regular basis.

Um, I, I, I believe that it is, um, that new officers receive it, uh, and then, uh, have her speak to, um, when those items wear out, how they're reimbursed or paid for.

Thanks, Angela.

Go ahead.

Yeah.

So with all uniform or standard uniform equipment, including the demonstration equipment that you see listed here, the majority of that is issued by our quartermaster, which is, for those of you who aren't familiar with the term, we have a warehouse, essentially, of equipment and things that are purchased centrally.

One for efficiency sake, but also just for tracking inventory and stock and asset, you know, the asset management piece.

So as you are on boarded as a sworn police department or sworn police department employee, you are issued equipment, some of which is listed here for demonstration purposes or when you are deployed to demonstrations or crowd management incidents.

In the, I mean, in the course of your career at SPD, you know, some of these things may get more use than others, but over the course of your time with SPD, if that equipment wears out or needs to be replaced, we have a process whereby you submit request authorization to receive replacement equipment.

All of that is handled centrally through the Quartermaster.

So when you see the purchase budget later in this presentation, there is a line specifically for that equipment warehouse.

They, pretty much everything goes through that unit.

I mean, from printer ink to pens and paper and, you know, notepads.

They are, you know, they are responsible for keeping a level of stock there.

You know, if the, we also have a, I believe it's a $500 uniform allowance.

Some items, like the uniform pants and shirts here, anything on your duty belt, that's expected to be paid for out of your individual uniform allowance, which is built into the contract.

I think as far as, let me see if I'm missing anything.

Council Member Herbold, I might suggest that we try to get through the rest of the slides given the hour and the need to get through the rest of the materials.

That's great.

I do want to give Council Member Morales an opportunity to ask her question on slide nine.

That was the question that I queued up a while ago, but did not sequence it correctly with the slide.

Thank you.

I appreciate it.

So I'm actually trying to look at slides nine and 10 together.

It seems that each officer goes out to a demonstration and about $900 worth of protective gear.

Looks like based on the slide 10, we spend maybe an average of $30,000 in crowd control.

And I know this isn't a huge portion of the budget, but I do want to ensure that none of the crowd control inventory that we've used this year gets replaced.

That's a separate issue.

But I'm trying to understand how this category, particularly the crowd control, is budgeted and how much we spend per demonstration.

So I have a couple questions.

Is there a placeholder in this budget for operating equipment, particularly crowd control equipment, since it seems like it is purchased as it's used, but there has to be a budget for it?

The next question then is where does the crowd control equipment come from?

Does that also come from the quartermasters, just warehouse?

And if so, where does the quartermaster get it?

Let me start with the big picture.

The big picture, just so we're all on the same page, this $67,000 is what is needed to equip the new folks that are coming into the department.

And then as equipment wears out, that's what comes from the quartermaster line that Angela is talking about that we'll get to in just a moment.

And then I'll flip it to the next slide.

Did I say anything wrong there, Angela?

No, that's correct.

All right, so the next slide is Council Member Morales, the one you were talking about.

These are the costs that the department incurs for buying the crowd control devices.

You can see here the amount that was spent in 2017, 2018, and 2019. And of course, the bullet points show what was purchased.

The second bullet point talks about the white smoke grenades, the noise flash devices.

I don't know what an R1 launcher is, but I'm guessing maybe maybe Councilmember Herbold or others do.

blast balls, the noise sponge munitions, gas rounds.

As the item says, these items are replaced using operating funds as they expire.

We're going to see a list of where those budgets are.

They're not particularly large.

As you can see, this is not a particularly large number.

With regard to the question you asked about capturing the costs of the demonstrations, SPD provided me with with some costs but it was a very low number and it didn't capture the overtime that officers are expending or that the department is expending on officer officers for the demonstrations and that's going to be the very largest part of the costs and so I didn't put a number here yet because I think That's something that the department still needs to determine when the payroll cycle ends, how much they have spent on overtime for these demonstrations, and then provide that to the council.

See if there's anything I'm missing here.

Oh, of course, here's the last bullet says that based on an average that you can see in the table above, if the department stopped buying crowd control devices, they would save crowd control up and they would save $40,000 per year on average.

Great.

Just a final point.

Where does this equipment come from?

I don't know where the department buys it from.

Council Member Morales, that is one of the submitted questions that we sent to the executive.

Thank you.

All right, so now this particular table and the next several tables start to get into some fiscal detail.

And so the amount of time that you want me to spend on these, I will follow your lead.

But at a very high level here, this is the Interfund billing.

There was a question earlier about how much is spent for technology.

The ITD is the Seattle IT allocation.

And it's $26 million.

This is what Seattle IT charges the police department through the Interfund billing cycle to provide IT services.

As you can see, it is one of the larger numbers here.

You can see the fleet's maintenance, the fleet's fuel, the fleet's replacement.

All this comes to that $57 million number that we talked about earlier.

I'm just going to move along unless somebody yells at me to stop.

Professional services, this is the budget that is used for various kinds of contracts that the department has.

Probably the very biggest one that you can see at the top is for photo enforcement.

The $3.3 million is the budget that the department has for paying American Traffic Systems, which is the vendor for our cameras.

You can see along the line items that there's, for instance, an item for the mental health providers that are on the CRT teams.

There's five of them now.

And that costs $447,000.

They're contracted out with a community building organization.

As you move down this list, you will see a variety of different kind of contracts that the department has, including its vet services.

So, again, it comes to not a lot of money overall, about $6 million, subtotal And actually, I'm not sure between the subtotal and the adopted budget what the difference is.

Oh, the subtotal is the total of these particular items.

And there's probably a miscellaneous category.

Maybe that's the 239. Anything wrong I said there, Angela?

So the delta there is, I mean, years of incremental budgeting essentially creates, it creates a budget that may or may not be attributable to specific items.

So in this case, what we've done is called out the specific items that are known that comprised or went into the development of that, you know, the adopted budget is $6 million.

We don't necessarily know, and we can say clearly, these are the, you know, this is the $5.8 million of that 6 million.

These are the things that were budgeted specifically for that purpose.

We have a number of other items that hit against this to include the medical testing and pre-hiring tests.

There's some things that hit against this account that don't necessarily have a specific appropriation for.

It's just been past practice or historically expenses hit against this fund, but we wanted to call out specifically the items that we could.

the specific budget appropriations that we could that falls to this account.

The bigger ones.

Yeah.

So I'm just going to keep moving through.

We got a lot of these travel and training.

This is a breakout by Bureau of the dollars that are spent on travel and training.

And you have here, You have here everything from certification requirements that officers are required to fulfill, say like motorcycle certification for the motorcycle traffic officers, all the way to conferences that civilians might attend.

This is just the breakout for a 2,000 person department of the travel and training money, about a million bucks, 1.1.

So Greg, you know, as elected officials, we have a requirement to report when someone pays for us to do travel or conferences.

And what I'm concerned with is that this budget might not reflect maybe portions of training that are being paid for by other entities.

Is there any possibility that there are additional travel or training um, trips that are not reflected in what the city is paying for?

I, that's, that's an interesting question.

Um, my, my initial response is there might be a gift of public funds issue there.

Um, uh, I, I, I would doubt it, but I'll, I'll double check with the finance manager.

Ask Angela.

Yeah, I can, I can respond to that.

We do have some some of our travel training is reimbursed by organizer.

I mean, if if there's a conference that one of our employees is asked to present at, there are occasions where we do accept a reimbursement for that.

However, the department has not historically requested an appropriation to accept that revenue to SPD.

Typically, that has just gone back to the general fund.

So any revenue that we're bringing in for that purpose is going to the general fund and not to SPD specifically.

But Angela, that'd be a service that the department was providing.

It's not as though TASER is paying for a bunch of folks to go to a conference in Hawaii.

That's correct.

Yeah.

There is some sort of exchange there.

It's not free training.

being offered.

It's really in those cases where we're presenting or providing, you know, providing some sort of service.

And specifically to the concern that's been raised about Seattle Police Department using our officers or sending our officers to places like Israel to receive training on police techniques.

If it's not reflected in the 2020 allocation, where would we see that kind of line item?

If there's an expense along those lines, it would hit against our budget here.

This is a representation of the budget appropriations, not necessarily specific expenditures within each of those groupings.

That's certainly something that would show up on an expense report.

But I think the larger point, though, is that if there was a trip to Israel that was paid for, it would need to come out of that $1.08 million budget, unless the department had some savings elsewhere where they could pay for it.

This is traditionally and normally where they would pay for it, and this is the budget that would pay for it.

That's correct.

So this next slide is a purchase slide, and what you're looking at here is by Bureau how much money is allocated for each section.

And I guess what I would point out is that it is, well, $5 million seems like a lot, and it is a lot.

I'm not going to to draw a judgment on the $5 million.

When you get down to the detail level, you'll see that, for instance here, West Precinct has $57,000 of discretionary purchase authority.

And as we were looking earlier at the slide, for the sworn, they have just under a couple hundred people in that area, in that section.

So these are large dollar amounts, but for a department with 2,000 people, they're not necessarily Well, the department does the best it can, at least in my history, to try and make sure that it is managing the discretionary purchases appropriately and efficiently and effectively, I would say.

Chair Mosqueda or Chair Herbold, whoever's operating here.

I've had a couple of questions.

I know that it's hard to see my hand being raised.

I've had a couple of questions over the course of this presentation.

This is a great presentation.

Some of my questions do have to deal with the policies rather than the dollars.

And I'm wondering if we can have another committee meeting where we can go deep into these details again.

And I can also follow up with Greg, Angela, and Kara I have a couple of pages of questions.

Some of them have been asked by Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Mosqueda.

I just wanted to flag a request to have another meeting on these items.

Councilmember Strauss, thank you so much for bringing that up.

I'm sorry if you haven't had the chance to ask questions.

We would love to make sure you get those in before the presentation is over.

As it relates to policy, when we wrap up with this presentation, I'll provide an outline of the next steps as we see them for, as it relates to the interest into Seattle Police Department's budget and policy practices.

Excellent, thank you.

Okay, so these next two items, I'm not gonna, next two slides, I'm not gonna spend a lot on.

These are your budget ads for the 2020 budget, and I just put these slides in so that as you look back at this presentation, if you had any curiosity about what got added or taken away from the budget, these are represented in slides 15 and 16. And so for instance, I'll go back to 15 here.

You can see the expansion of the community service officer program.

There was $1.2 million added in six FTE.

You've got the civilian investigator and OPA for 148,000.

You're familiar with these ads.

Most of you who were here during the last session, had some involvement in them.

So I won't summarize it unless you have any questions on 15 and 16.

I just want to note, it was my recollection that the item, the recruitment and retention item, that whereas there was an ad in the mayor's proposed budget for that item, I believe The council action reduced that.

So this looks like a $1.28 million ad.

And my recollection is that there was a line item for recruitment and retention, and we actually reduced the amount for that item.

That is correct Councilmember Herbold.

It was about 1.6 million and the council took a detailed look at the recruitment and retention initiative and took several hundred thousand or a few hundred thousand out of that and reduced it to 1.28 million.

Some of the changes that were made had to do with how folks pay for tests, for instance.

That was one of the changes.

The executive had assumed that the testing fee would be paid by the department, and the council asked the executive to develop a sliding scale.

Those who could afford to pay the fee would.

Those who wouldn't, wouldn't, and found some efficiency and made a cut there.

There was an effort to spread out the sergeant training over two years.

These changes resulted in a reduction to that initiative from the 1.6 to the 1.28.

And so Council Member Lewis, I see that you have a question.

So the $7.2 million in the adopted budget as an addition, these aren't council ads.

These are the ads over the 2019 budget.

Some of them may be council ads, but it's not $7.2 million in council ads.

Correct.

I'm sorry.

When I said you were familiar, I just mean that these were discussed in depth in the council budget session.

And.

Oh, sorry.

By all of you.