Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 2/23/21

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

The clerk will call the roll.

Thank you, Alex.

So on today's agenda, we will hear a presentation from the Seattle Fire Department on their 2021 work plan.

We'll also have an initial meeting on Council Bill 119981. This is concerning the Seattle Police Department's budget.

committee members may recall that we held this item at our last committee meeting while the city communicated with the monitor and the court overseeing the consent decree between the city and the Department of Justice.

A little bit more on that later.

We had implemented here today a presentation from the Human Services Department on the results of their community engagement efforts that they have conducted in order to develop request for proposals for community safety capacity investments, along with a proposed spend plan that the council must approve by ordinance.

Council members and the public will recall that this relates to 2020-21.

summer budget discussions and deliberations to add funding for community safety investments.

Those, even though we voted on them during the 2020 summer adjusted budget, because the budget was vetoed, those dollars were not spent.

And instead, when we overrode the veto, we also then voted in this year's budget to move those dollars forward.

So we're, I know, all very eager to get those dollars out the door.

The human services department informed us late last week that they would not be ready for the presentation that we had planned for today, and we expect to hear it on March 9th instead, along with the spend plan itself and the legislation that the council will have to act on to allow HSD to release the dollars.

We will now approve our agenda for the committee meeting.

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

Thank you.

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

And at this time, we're going to move into public comment.

I will moderate the public comment period, allowing each speaker two minutes to speak.

I'll call each speaker by name and in order which they've registered on the council's website.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but you would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the council's website.

This link is also listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt, and once you've heard that prompt, you need to press star six in order to unmute yourself.

Please begin by speaking and stating your name and the item which you are addressing.

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

Once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time period, The speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed a public comment, please disconnect from the line and you're welcome to continue to follow the meeting and doing so by the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

We have five people signed up for public comment, and again, commenters, we ask that you limit your comments to two minutes of time.

And with that, I'll begin calling on folks.

We'll start with Howard Gale, followed by Julia Buck.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7, commenting on continuing police abuse and failed accountability.

For most police officers, there's nothing more important to them than their authority and their ability to use great and sometimes deadly power to enforce it.

So how can we be surprised when police face no accountability for the beating, the gasping, abusing, falsely arresting hundreds of middle class white people last summer?

then come to believe they can kill those who have so much less power and voice and visibility, those who are homeless and or in severe mental health crisis, as was Derek J. Hayden just last week when the SPD ended his life 13 and a half seconds after arriving on the scene.

Half of the 29 people killed by the SPD since they murdered John T. Williams had wielded only a knife, a broken bottle, or no weapon at all.

Of these 14 people, all but three were experiencing a mental health crisis at the time they were killed by SPD.

Words seem to have little effect on your action, but today I will read the names of those who are too often forgotten by us, the 14 people killed by the SPD recently.

Let's start.

Eric Blaine Evans, Mike Kwan-Yoo Chen, Jack Sun-Iwatinawan, Cody Willis Stafford.

Larry Andrew Flynn.

Sam Ishiro Smith.

Shun Ma.

Che Andre Taylor.

Michael L. Taylor.

Charlena Lyles.

Danny Rodriguez.

Ryan Smith.

Perry J. Kaver.

And Derek J. Hayden just last week.

And again I remind the council These are people that were suffering severe mental health crisis and had nothing more than a knife or a bottle with no weapon.

Thank you.

Thank you Howard.

Next speaker is Julia Buck followed by Elizabeth Stanton.

Good morning council.

My name is Julia Buck.

I'm a resident of District 6. In August 2020, the Council passed Resolution 31962, which said the City Council will not support any...

Good morning, Council.

This is Julia Buck of District 6. In August 2020, the Council passed Resolution 31962, which said the City Council will not support any budget increase the SPD's budget to offset overtime expenditures above the funds budgeted in 2020 or 2021. um the revised 24 budget we went for overtime the SPD spent 27 million on overtime the council itself was because it gave officers more paid overtime shifts than their budget would allow offering officers off council member her old herself said cut SPD's 2021 budget to offset the additional 5.4 million is the best way I can think of to hold SPD accountable for its budget overrun, according to the New York Times.

Your own city auditor office identified, quote, significant gap in SPD's overtime control that led to overtime errors and inefficiencies, including duplicate payments of overtime.

I cannot express how disappointing it is that the city council needs three meetings to consider following through on its own promises.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Elizabeth Stanton followed by Bill Anderson.

Beth, are you with us?

Start.

Thank you, City Council, for the opportunity.

I'm here today about contracting with the Seattle Police Department and their budget.

I urge the council to deduct the OPR dollars from 2020 budget from the 2021 budget, and I urge the council to audit the use and accountability of overtime with the Seattle Police Department.

Again, I wanna thank the council for their courage on this issue, and it's a longtime issue, and I would call on the citizens of this city to look at the 13 states around the country that are pursuing a similar program of defunding their police and what the success or lack of success has been in the communities that have pursued this.

And I would particularly urge people to look at Camden, New Jersey.

We have a continued problem, continued problem of black deaths since George Lloyd's death.

I stopped counting at 12 around the country.

And the continued disrespect that the Seattle Police Department has for Black Lives Matter demonstrators demonstrating peacefully in support of their black neighbors.

the recent comments of the leader of SPOG equivocating the Black Lives Matter movement with the white supremacist movement and the demonstrators at January 6th.

So I'm running out of time and I would just again want to urge that we stick to our reforms and the commitments that I believe the council has made.

Thank you, Elizabeth.

Our last speaker who has signed up is Bill Anderson, but I note that it shows that he is not present.

So I'm just calling for Bill Anderson if he's listening and wants to sign back on, but I'm not seeing any evidence of that at this time.

I think we will.

close out public comment.

With that, let's move into the first item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read in the first agenda item?

Agenda item number one, 2021 Seattle Fire Department work plan.

Thank you, Alex.

Good morning, Chief Scoggin.

Thank you so much for being here with us today.

Hello, good morning.

Councilmember Herbold, Council President Gonzalez, and members of the council, thank you for having me.

And the first question I'll ask is, can you see my screen?

All right, good.

So thank you for allowing me a few minutes to share a few slides of looking back at 2020 from the perspective of the Seattle Fire Department and in the direction that we're going in 2021. As we move forward throughout the new year, one of the things we try to do is hit the refresh button on our North Star.

This is a busy slide, contains a lot of information.

But our notes are, you know, the reason why we're here, our why, our purpose, we're here to serve others.

That's very important for us and that ties to our mission of saving lives and protecting property and the environment.

And then reliving our values, our integrity, teamwork, compassion, courage, and diversity.

And we know this is a circular operation.

You know, our values will define our culture.

Our culture defines our operations.

Our operations should reflect our values, our values reflect our beliefs, and our organization defines our values.

So for us, this is really important.

And then hitting the refresh button on our vision as an organization, a commitment to excellence and being a national leader in everything that we do.

What you see inside of the bullseye ring here is the darker gray ring.

It's just kind of another refresh, our goals, ideas, our plans, and our future that we hit the refresh button on the organization.

And then the outer gray ring are our expectations of each other and where we're going as an organization.

So with the department, I took a lot longer than I'm taking right now to go over each one of these, but it's important that each year we hit the refresh button on our North Star and our why that we're here.

So looking back at our incident response over the last five years, we have been tracking down and that is really, really good because we have deployed a number of things.

We have deployed additional aid cars, case managers.

We have revised our dispatch protocols and we had a really good downward trend going and we look from 19 to 20 and we had a significant downward trend.

And what that represented was people not calling 911 for medically related calls.

And we saw that early on, and you may remember back in April, May, June, and July, we did a lot of messaging to the public to let them know that it was safe to continue to call 911 for emergencies, because that's actually where the fall off was.

our fire emergencies remain pretty steady.

Of that 80,000 calls, about a little over 20,000 were fire-related emergencies.

And in 2019, of those 92,000 calls, about 20,000 of those were fire-related emergencies.

So our fire calls did not fall off.

Our EMS calls fell off.

And this is how it reflected.

In the past, our fire-related calls were about 20 percent, and our EMS-related calls were about 80 percent.

So we saw the shift in 2020, and we'll see if that holds true.

We're tracking it from month to month.

But that's a significant shift for us related to our responses.

And one of the priorities of the organization is our operations building inspections.

We have a goal each year of getting to 100% of all of our buildings in the city being inspected.

In 2019, we got to 96%.

We're all completed of that last 4%.

We had been in a number of those buildings, but we didn't gain compliance.

But in 2020, when we saw the city shut down for months on end, Any time that we actually had an opening, our units were out in the field doing building inspections.

And we got to 82%, but the city was closed for at least half the year.

So that made it really challenging for us.

So this year is gonna be really important for us to get back out there and try to make sure we have a touch point in all of those properties that we may not have got in in 2020 for a variety of reasons.

Maybe they closed, maybe they were closed for the pandemic and all of those different things there.

I appreciate it.

to get through the slide, but I want to just say to other council members that if they have questions as we move through this, feel free to raise your hand in the participants panel.

I'm watching.

And we'll slow things down a little bit to allow for that.

I do have a question about the operations and building inspections slide.

Thank you.

Can you just take a little bit more time to explain why the COVID-19 crisis had an impact on the number of completed building inspections?

Sure, absolutely.

As we all remember the city, you know, pretty much the nation was closed for long periods of time, and that restricted our access to a number of the buildings in the city.

And as more of the businesses created a work from home platform, even when they were open, they may have been working from home, so we may not have been able to actually gain access to do an inspection in the different buildings around the city.

So as we had windows of light, and I'll just term it as that, where we had different levels of reopening, that's when our units actually went out and tried to get inside the structures and do the building inspections.

That became very important for us.

You know, one of the pieces of new work that actually wasn't listed was, you know, trying to help the business owners, mainly the restaurants, with the tent compliance issues and things like that.

That's not even tied to this.

But the closures played in mainly to these building inspections.

Not being paid for it.

And that's the part I'm hoping that you understand a little bit.

I mean, you explain a little bit more.

I'm not quite sure I understand that a business not being open, why that would impact your ability to access that business.

Presumably, you have ways to contact building owners and managers, irrespective of their They're being open or closed because of the emergency nature of your work, but maybe I'm not understanding the kind of information that you have available to you about the contact of building owners and managers.

Sure, absolutely.

So what our fire companies do is they call the property owner, the business owner, and they make an appointment so they can get on site to actually do the physical building inspection.

So that's the key to these, you know, when you're checking compliance for Fire and life safety systems, exits, electrical, you know, high power storage, all these different things.

It's all about being on site.

We have access to the common space in pretty much every building in the city through the Knox box key system.

But oftentimes, there are businesses within the building that are not tied to the common space.

So we may not be able to go just door to door.

So this is tied to making an appointment, meeting the property owner or the business owner on site, and then doing a business inspection or a building inspection.

So that's kind of what it's tied to there.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

Hydrants, that's another area where we try to focus.

That's one of the main tools that we use in fighting fire.

And we got to 97% completion rate of all of the hydrants in the city, over 16,000, almost 17,000 hydrants.

And the last 3% may tie to maintenance or hydrants out of service or different things like that.

So that was really good for us as an organization there.

And then since we did not have as many building inspections, we did a shift and we started focusing on training.

We've been kind of reshaping our training program over the last few years and we've become very intentional with maintaining compliance with 296-305 of the WAC, NFPA, our department policies and guidelines, so we became very intentional with how we deploy training, whether it's multi-company drills, whether it's daily assigned training, and actually tracking with our platforms.

Over the last few years, we've become much more efficient at how we track our training hours.

There's a lot of compliance to whether it's our EMT or live fire training or our driver certification platforms and any and everything that we do.

So we really saw an uptick in that area.

So the firefighters were really staying busy in this area, making sure that we were ready to go if the emergency came.

And to highlight some of the items that we're gonna focus on this year in 2021, and this is a busy slide, so I'll kind of walk through it, but behind this slide, we have eight to 12 different committees, projects, or programs that are also working through their own work plans for the department, but these are the ones that I'll lift up for the conversation today.

Our in-web transition team has been working extremely hard to transition the Seattle Fire Department into the city's new in web platform and you know many many hours put into this and we have finally made that transition by the end of March we hope to be complete working through all of the bugs but you know I want to lift up our public affairs team with our public affairs director who led that work Kim Schmanke and our PIOs, and that's really downloading a very old system and then going through all the files and transitioning it into this new in web system.

So we're really happy to have that first step done by the end of this month.

We hope to be wrapped up with that project.

And then our mobile inspection program.

We have been trying to get to mobile inspections for a couple of years now, and that's similar to our electronic health care reports that we actually now do for patients out in the field.

We want to be able to take a tablet or a device, go inside of a property, actually do a building inspection on a tablet, and then be able to send the report electronically.

That creates a number of efficiency.

Once the work is done in the tablet, it is now uploaded into the systems.

If the property or business owner is on site, we can send them a copy of the report immediately.

So this is going to be another technology advancement for the department, and it should create efficiencies.

Because what we do right now is we go out in the field, we do a business inspection, we write a sheet of paper down, we go back to the station, We input that information into a computer system and they will put a notice of violation in the mail.

So we should be able to close that loop and streamline that a bit more.

So that's going to be a really big one for us in the first quarter of this year.

Deployment of help to and help three.

I'll speak to help to we've been really working on that.

There's a number of pieces to this.

So we've been working on the staffing platform with selecting the two firefighters.

We recently had the interview.

So we're starting to.

to whittle that down, hiring a new caseworker, purchasing a new vehicle.

The logistics of the facility, it'll be at Fire Station 2 in Belltown.

So getting the facility ready to go and all the equipment, the training, and the supplies that are needed.

So our target there is just after the beginning of April, we hope to have Health 2 on the street.

So that'll be pretty important for us.

We saw the value of it a couple of weekends ago during the recent snowstorm.

We were able to put a Health 2 unit on the street along with Health 1 on the second night of the snowstorm.

And during that, there was enough work for everyone to do.

And the firefighters really did a great job there.

The next project that we're working through is our work scheduling and timekeeping program.

So that will be our electronic hiring and staffing program.

It will integrate with the city's payroll system.

It will eliminate the use of our paper overtime sheets and all the paperwork that go behind that.

And it'll be a live system that's all electronic.

So we're really looking forward to moving that forward this year.

Probably about the 1st of May, hopefully we're wrapped up with that.

We'll start the launch at the end of March.

The training is already built and we're in the final stages of the user acceptance testing.

So we're really looking forward to get that going there also.

I'm covering a lot, so I'll pause and see if there's any questions up to this point.

Appreciate it.

I see Council Member Lewis has his hand up.

Council Member Lewis?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And Chief Scoggins, thank you so much for that update on the Health 1 expansion to Health 2 and Health 3. I just want to ask a few follow-up questions while that's fresh in my mind.

First off, I want to appreciate the indulgence of the department in letting me ride along on the snow day last Saturday, that you just acknowledged that the team was out there.

I can personally attest to the professionalism, diligence, and the difference that they made on that day.

It was really good to see and was very impressed by that service and the standard the fire department is setting for low acuity response.

want to get that recognition out of the way and specifically give some props to Firefighter Weber and Firefighter Young for their service.

It was really good to see them in action.

Moving on to talk about expanding that service, I just have a few follow-up questions.

So when you say Health 2 is going to be stationed and Fire Station 2 in Belltown, were you saying that Health 2 and Health 3 are are gonna both be there, or just Health 2 is gonna be staged out of that location.

Just Health 2 is going to be out of that location.

So Health 1 is here at SFD headquarters here in Pioneer Square.

Health 2 will be in Belltown but their bubble, their circular area of expansion will be much larger.

Health 3 will be in the north.

We're working through that and so the plan is that will be north of the cut whether it's in the U district or if we have room at the new temporary fire station 31. That's the target area for health three.

These three units will work together to go where the need is the greatest.

But we know there's a great need over in the U district and over in 31st district over in Northgate area.

So just a few follow-up questions on that, Chief.

What do you anticipate to be the service bubble from the Health 2 deployment in Belltown, just as the District 7 Councilmember particularly interested in that, since it's squarely in District 7, would be curious what the plan is for the service area of that vehicle?

Absolutely.

So Health One is covering that service area today.

Health Two will help expand that.

But what we hope when we launch Health Two is we'll also be able to have touch points in Ballard and in the U-District even when we put Health Two in.

We'll have more capacity when we put Health Three in.

But health one, downtown core, health two, downtown core, Ballard, U district, then health three, they'll keep expanding more.

The bubble will continue to get wider in the core of the city, from the core of the city out.

Just to follow up on that, Chief Scoggins, I appreciate the clarification.

Would Health 2 service area then sort of include all points between the U District and Ballard touchpoints?

I mean, I think particularly about Interbay, where we do have high concentrations, particularly along Commodore Way, of a lot of low acuity need, where a Health 2 response would probably be helpful for the folks, particularly the folks living on housed in that corridor.

Would that be included, or would there be an expectation that it would sort of be the Belltown area and then Ballard, but like they'd bypass points in between, or would like Interbay, North Queen Anne area be included in the anticipated Health 2 service area?

No, it would be included.

We're not going to bypass areas.

We're going to go to where the need is.

So our firefighters in the community, they're calling us to those locations today.

Actually, I guess I should have added one of those coverage maps of our fire set platform of where it's actually going.

Health One is actually having touch points in Interbay today in these different areas today, but it's only one unit.

So they're going to all these areas right now.

Health 2 will give us more capacity.

So we won't bypass an area, but we are expanding the bubble.

And maybe I'll send you a map, if that's okay, of the different locations that Health 1 actually is visiting today.

And that will kind of give you a sense of how this expansion will help.

And it's mainly with capacity.

I appreciate that.

I have one last question and then I'll close out this inquiry on the HealthONE expansion.

So, you know, from doing the, I've done a couple ride-alongs now with HealthONE, and one thing I've noticed, and I think this is more this would be something I'd like to maybe see the department, if it's deemed appropriate, to maybe incorporate into something to include in the annual report post-2021 of looking at the HealthONE program.

is maybe an assessment, insofar as you can tell, of the back-end assets that HealthONE has access to.

And I know this has been the case with Councilmember Mosqueda on her ride-along, is that frequently you'll be out there, you know, HealthONE will find some folks, they'll be able to give some immediate low-acuity assistance, you know, socks, a bottle of water, what have you, maybe provide some, you know, some on-site you know, uh, first aid.

Um, but then when it comes time to, um, transport to direct transport to a provider, get in touch with a case manager, um, get in touch with some kind of service that is 24 hour rather than like a nine to five.

Uh, I'd be interested in an analysis, uh, maybe from the department that looks at those backend resources.

Cause I think that what we often do as a council and policymakers is, You know, we spend a lot of time on the first response.

You know, I mean, this applies to what we're doing with the police department, too, right?

I mean, we spend a lot of time on, you know, who is the responder for the point in time to respond to this issue where 911 has been called or help has been summoned.

I think that we need to be evaluating more, tracking data more on the back-end hookups that come on the other side of that response.

where i think that there is much greater need like it seems like health one could churn through a lot more cases and clear calls faster if there were easier warm handoffs to providers, easier warm handoffs to resources, and that the health one benefit could be made more 24-7 rather than 9-5 if there were commensurate services that were open on a more dependable basis on a 24-7 basis.

So this is sort of an early in the year flagging from me that I think that would be really useful information to have in a 2021 annual report where it's like, here's all the great work HealthONE has been doing, and here's some of the hurdles we're running into in terms of those back-end assets.

Sure, we'll put that together for you.

And that's the reason why we targeted the time that it's in service right now is because the resources available for the handoffs are pretty much nine to five resources.

So that's why we targeted the window that we targeted.

But we have the list that we have right now, and so we'll put that together.

We actually have our first four-quarter report because it went into service in November of 19, and we wrapped that up with a one-year report of its first year in service.

So it will actually highlight a number of those resources that are available, but we'll also pay attention to the gaps and maybe add some of that in there also.

Thank you, Chief.

Just one other question about the service bubble issue, and I see Council Member Morales has her hand up as well.

I seem to recall that in our regular briefings, I learned from you that there's a difference between the service bubble and the concept of you going where you're needed.

And could you just talk a little bit more about that?

I seem to recall that you had said that Health 2 had the capacity to go anywhere in the city, although there was a service bubble.

that recognized both the location where you're being deployed from and where the needs were.

But maybe I'm remembering that incorrectly, but I do remember being told that, or I remember hearing that Health 2 did have the capacity to go anywhere in the city and was not limited to the service bubble.

Right, and that is correct.

And that's the same for Health One.

Our focus area is the downtown core.

As we expand the area with Health Two, our bubble is expanding to include, you know, the U District and Ballard and areas like that.

But if there's a need that the firefighters are having in another part of the city, and that generally happens on a more of a one-off type situation, then HealthONE and the case manager is the best resource to help the person, and HealthONE has gone outside of the service bubble.

So they have gone in different places around the city, and that's what the map will show.

But our focus area is the core, because that's where most of the need is.

Thank you, Chief.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for this, Chief Scoggin.

This is helpful to see the plans for rolling out this year.

You've addressed my first question, which was, can we get a map of where these service areas are?

I certainly understand that there is a huge need downtown, but I also know that we're having lots of issues in Soto, in Georgetown, under the Jose Rizal Bridge.

I would be really interested to see as health 2 comes on if that increases the capacity of health 1 to move further south.

I look forward to seeing the map and having that conversation with you.

I also just want to echo Councilmember Lewis's concern about making sure that we have a clear understanding of what the 24 seven, uh, you know, or 24 hour service providers are out who are out there, what is available so that we can, um, really make sure that, you know, if something is happening in the middle of the night, that there isn't a delay in trying to, um, get a handoff to services or to, um, you know, more permanent housing situation for folks.

Um, so forward to talking with you about that and working on that as well.

Absolutely.

And we'll put that list together.

And just like I mentioned earlier, the reason why we put it in service the times that it's in service is because that's when most of the providers that we can actually do a warm handoff with are actually open.

So but we'll put that list together and we'll make sure we get that back to you there.

Moving on to our training division restructuring.

So that's another area where we've been working to try to create more efficiencies in how we do training as a Seattle Fire Department and funding full-time FTEs to really focus on what we're moving towards as an organization.

The way we were doing this in the past and even a portion this year while we're going through the transition is we would bring in people to teach different training programs And next year we would bring in a different person to teach the same training program because we didn't have a funded position to do it.

So it created the lack of consistency.

So now what we're driving towards is expanding our training division staff down at our training, our joint training facility over on Myers Way.

to create more consistency in our platforms on how we do training as an organization.

So that's another big area that we're moving towards this year.

The next one, our driver certification program.

Many of you may remember through our contract negotiations with local 27, we formalized a plan to create a certified driver's training program.

And that's what our team has really been working towards under the leadership of Deputy Chief Melissa Kennedy at our training division and the project lead, Captain Battistelli.

Over the last year, the team has done an incredible amount of work.

And by this summer, all of our seated drivers will actually have gone through the certification process to actually have taken a test, have written on a manipulative test to actually be a certified driver in the Seattle Fire Department.

And now we continue to move towards getting all of our relief drivers trained.

So by the end of this year, our goal is to have all of our seated drivers and all of our relief drivers in a certified capacity.

And from that point forward, any new driver who drives any of our engines and our ladders will actually have gone through a certification process.

So for us, that's gonna be pretty important for us.

The next topic, unless there's a question, Okay, is our continuing education model in our fire alarm center, our 911 fire dispatch center.

So our dispatchers have so many different certifications they have to keep up on.

So every now and again we need to hit the refresh button and make sure that we're still moving in the right direction.

A couple of years ago we deployed a new emergency medical dispatch protocol system.

So now's the time to evaluate our training model to make sure it is in alignment there.

As we also have new programs coming on to make sure our dispatchers are well trained and get the proper amount of training that they need to continue to be efficient and effective in delivering those 911 calls to our firefighters.

and 2021 recruit training.

So on February 3rd, I believe it was, we started a new recruit class.

So they're in training right now.

They'll graduate in the middle toward the end of May.

So it's a 15 and a half week training program.

It's a very rigorous firefighter recruit training program, and we'll see how many come out.

the other end and then we'll start a second class and thank you to all you council members for supporting our second class that will start in August.

So our goal is to hire 60 new firefighters this year and that's really going to help us as an organization.

Last year what we saw is 57 retirements, just pure retirements.

We also have had other people that leave the organization for a variety of reasons.

But the 57 retirements was a pretty high number for us.

We've been hovering between 40 and 60 vacancies.

So this will help us start to whittle that number down.

And with all the different things that we're doing, having enough firefighters is going to be critical for us.

Here's an example.

We're staffing the four community testing sites right now.

So that's staffed with firefighters.

our mobile vaccination team for staff with additional firefighters.

Medic 26 and Ladder 13 in West Seattle are staffed with additional firefighters and we haven't had any community events this year.

So this staffing really helps us continue to support the city in all these new and different ways.

Any questions there?

Thank you, Chief.

Yes, as it relates to the funding the council provided to allow for additional hiring of firefighters, can you share with my colleagues some of the challenges that you have identified in our meetings around having enough testing slots?

I believe that's the challenge that you have identified.

Yeah, I mean, so for us to bring a new firefighter on board, it's about $70,000 for each firefighter.

And so this is a pretty rigorous process.

But our last testing process that we did, we put a new list in play in early 2020, I believe was the last new list.

And on that list, we had 4,400 people that signed up to become a firefighter.

at the end of that process we had about 1,200 people on the list and that's to just to get to the civil service list.

So right now we've hired two classes off of that list and we're already in the three or 400 named range on that 1,200 person list.

We haven't hired 300 or 400 people, but we're already to that 300 or 400 number.

There's a number of steps to actually get there.

You have to pass the physical abilities test, which could be difficult for some people.

You have to pass a medical.

You have to pass a background, a psychological exam.

And then all of those points will get you to recruit training.

And then when you get to recruit training, we generally lose a number of recruits in recruit training.

So 1,200 people sounds like a lot of people, but oftentimes a person may not fully understand the job that they're getting into until they wrap on all the gear, put the SCBA on, put the mask on.

And then we say, now it's time to actually go to work.

Now you're dressed for work.

Now you have to go to work for a few hours.

So our challenge is when we get to our fifth or sixth class off of that list, 1,200 names may not be enough names.

So trying to turn the testing wheel a little bit faster is really going to be important for us in the coming years just to make sure that we can continue to refresh that list and have appropriate names to continue the hiring process.

So Chief, even though there's sufficient funding for hiring a greater number of firefighters than the 20 firefighters that you originally had been budgeted for.

This testing barrier creates a backlog, and it means, as I understand it, that you may not be able to meet the goal for an additional 40 hires.

So it's two parts.

So we partner with Public Safety Civil Service on the front side.

on the written and the oral interview side, and then we take it once we get a certified list from Public Safety Soil Service.

So the front side is the piece that we're working with Public Safety Soil Service and SDHR to try to make sure we can turn that wheel fast enough so we can have a refresh at some point in time so we don't run out of names on the list, because about 25 to 28% of the department right now are retirement eligible.

We know most firefighters don't leave at 53, but somewhere between 53 and 60, they'll probably be leaving.

So that's a large portion of the organization.

So that's why we're really trying to keep up with the hiring process.

Thank you, Chief.

Moving on to the next item is implementing our consulting nurse program.

And that's actually adding in a consulting nurse to our dispatch center and to our dispatch process.

And we think this is a really important addition.

What we've done to date is we've talked to 911 dispatch centers from Copenhagen to Washington, D.C.

to, I think I have a call later this week with DeKalb, Georgia.

We've talked to Texas and different agencies around the country who already have this process in play.

The reason why this is important, of those 80,000 responses that I showed you earlier on a slide, about 60,000 of those responses were EMS related.

And our medics respond to about 12,000 to 15,000 of those.

And then our firefighters respond on the other side because they're BLS calls.

AMR will transport about 30,000.

We'll transport 5,000 to 7,000.

But that means there's probably 10,000 to 20,000 EMS responses we actually respond to every year.

and we leave them where they are for one reason or another.

Maybe it's not an acute life-threatening emergency, maybe they don't need a transport, or maybe we need to have a shift in our 911 protocols and we can actually connect them up to a nurse where a nurse can actually take longer to have a more in-depth conversation about their real needs and then redirect them to actually where they need to be.

That's what agencies are doing around the country right now.

That's a piece that we're really looking forward to adding this member to our team.

So we have case managers on site now.

We have our HealthONE program on site.

So we're doing a lot of things to really try to redirect people to where they need to be.

And we think this is going to be a critical component to our dispatch center in the future.

Any questions there?

Not seeing any.

Madam Chair.

There you go.

Sorry.

Member Lewis.

Yeah.

So thanks for this update on this, Chief Scoggins.

I'm very excited about this particular function with the dispatch nurse.

What's the timeline on getting that going?

And like I'd heard before that you know, there might be contracting with the provider or someone might be hired to come in-house.

Like, what's the way the department is looking to implement that right now?

You know, you know in the next month or so we hope to land the plane on whether it's best to contract for the service so our dispatchers would transfer the call or to have the person in house.

Now if we hire the person in house that can come in a couple of ways.

If we hire a nurse to be staffed at our dispatch center, that's one way.

Or we can contract with a partner taxi staff nurse in our dispatch center.

So in the next month or so, we should be able to land that plane.

But our target for having this position on board is around the beginning of September.

That's the target that we're shooting for right now.

And like I said, our emergency medical dispatch protocol system is called CORDI.

And that system comes out of Copenhagen.

And so in Copenhagen, They have already deployed this type of system, but it's a much more mature system.

So many of the calls actually go to their nurse in that system because it's much more mature than our system.

So we've really been talking to them a lot.

We've also talked to other providers around the country who provide this service also to try to figure out what will work best for Seattle.

But September is our window that we're targeting there.

And chief, what, what's the name of that Danish system again?

The Copenhagen.

Sorry.

How's that spelled?

C O R T I. Great.

All right.

Well, very exciting stuff.

Appreciate the update.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, absolutely.

The next item is our 2021-2022 recruitment plan.

So as we start to ramp up to our next recruitment and hiring process, we'll get our team together and we'll start to put together our plan on actually how we will do recruitment in this next process.

So we're really excited about that.

our King County Fire Chiefs, we commissioned a study with the company called Plum Research, and we looked at the diversity, equity, and inclusion in all of the King County Fire Departments.

We reached out to a number of fire departments around the country, and we really assembled a report with best practices in it.

So our team will start to go through that, and as we start to put together our next recruitment plan, it'll be a really good tool that we can use to help increase our diversity in the Seattle Fire Department.

Let's see, we touched a little bit on Health 2 and we touched on Health 3, but all of the same things apply for Health 3 and our target for Health 3 is the fourth quarter of 2021. So we're really going to be moving forward down that road there.

So we're really excited about it.

It's really working out well for the organization.

2021 recruit training, hiring 20 additional firefighters in August, that would give us our full complement of 60. So if we lose some in this February class, that number 20 for August may grow to 22 or 23 to try to get us as close to 60 as possible.

And then the last item on the work plan is our PSIRN implementation.

I serve as the city's representative on the PSIRN joint board and so this project has been moving along for you know seven or eight years now.

It's a 281 million dollar project of replacing all the radio infrastructure around King County.

We're going from approximately 27 towers to 60 towers throughout the region, replacing all of the radios, about 18, 17 or 18,000 mobile and portable radios, dispatch consoles, and all of those things.

The big piece for 2021 in the fourth quarter of this year is we hope to start transitioning the mobile and portable radios.

Now, throughout the entire county, you can imagine it's quite a project to transition 17 to 18,000 mobile and portable radios.

The hand radios are pretty easy.

It's just the handoff.

But the mobile radios, you actually have to change out the infrastructure inside of the fire engines, the ladder trucks, the medic units, the aid cars, all the response vehicles, not just for Seattle, but throughout the entire county.

So it's a pretty significant project.

But it's moving along at a steady pace.

But that's going to be a big one for us come the end of the year.

Any questions there?

Yes, Chief.

One question on PCERN and then a couple – a question about a couple things I'm not seeing on the work plan.

As it relates to PCERN, do you have sort of a target schedule for this next stage of radio deployment so that we can kind of track your progress as you go, given – like you said, there are – there's a lot of work to be done, a lot of that is being rolled out.

And as it relates to a couple of And then one of the items that the council funded as part of the budget liberation this year was, again, another wellness-related item, and specifically looking to provide funding for a crisis counselor to help keep firefighters safe and increase positive interactions with folks in crisis or suffering with mental illness.

So both wellness for firefighters and training to help them in their interactions with members of the public that have challenges that can also create some trauma in the firefighters that are working to help them.

Sure.

So the first one, PCERN.

So we're finalizing the plans probably in the next month or two.

We have another joint board meeting this week, this week.

We have them monthly.

And then the next month or so, the radio transition plan should, should start to, the ink should start to dry along with the coverage testing and a few other things that we have to start to do.

So as those come forward, I'll make sure I'll, I'll add those to our monthly updates.

So you'll have those but so that'll be coming fire station 31 so temporary fire station 31 We should be starting the process of moving in temporary fire station 31 at the end of q2 Early q3 so end of June early July.

We should start the process of transitioning into the temporary facility on North Gate so it's across from the old fire station 31 at the church and So that's going well right now just to hit the refresh button.

We have units kind of spread out.

Engine 31 is at Station 17 in the U District.

Ladder 5 is at Station 39 in Lake City.

And A31 is at Station 24. And then Medic 31 is at Station 35. So they're all spread out.

We wanna get those units.

back home.

So that's, that's going well.

We're looking forward there.

And then on the crisis counselor position, we're, we're working to kind of see what the final outcome of that is going to be right now.

I know there's some, some work going on behind the scenes on how it is going to work with local 27 and the department.

So I'm waiting to see the outcome of that before I can define a timeline on what it is exactly we're going to do there.

Very good.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions here?

I am not seeing any raised hands.

So my last slide is I'll cover briefly our work on COVID-19 testing and vaccinations.

Just to hit the refresh button on June 5th, we started with our testing, community-wide testing, and we have the four test sites going.

The picture on the left is one of the admission centers.

As of yesterday, we tested over 638,000 people at our four test sites, so we're really proud of that work.

and our firefighters and our registration techs.

We've hired over 100 since June 5th to help us through this process.

We now also have four mobile vaccination teams working out in community.

They have vaccinated over 6,100 people and they're also working through the second doses now.

So those teams are really going well.

We've been in over 130 different facilities around the city and that could, that, that team continues to, um, to do that work there also.

So we're really proud of that going on and, and I don't see that stopping until we can start to, um, come out of the pandemic.

Um, but really proud of the work that the firefighters are doing in, in these areas and all the other areas that I mentioned, and I'll see if there's any questions there.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Yeah, can you talk a little bit more about the mobile units, how sites are selected and kind of who you partner with?

And I'm particularly interested in this in the context of making sure that we are reaching out in an equitable way.

I know we've had lots of conversation as a council about how to make sure that those who don't have access to technology don't speak English necessarily.

can still can be put sort of at the front of the line of getting access to vaccine.

So that's one question.

And then.

How do you anticipate or do you anticipate having more units or kind of scaling up as more vaccine becomes available?

I think I read in the paper this morning or maybe it was yesterday that King County only has a 2% vaccination rate.

And I know that's because of supply, but really wanting to hear more about what our plans are for scaling up as more vaccine becomes available.

Sure.

So two parts to that question, who we partner with and then scaling up.

So who we partner with, you know, we're working with Seattle King County Public Health and we're identifying the population that's actually in the phase that's open right now.

And then we're working with Don and all of our community partners.

to identify those populations that you just touched on.

I believe close to 70% of our population that we have vaccinated is a part of the BIPOC community, so we're really proud of that work and where we're going and what we're doing.

And that work will continue with those community partners and helping us connect us with those populations.

One of the reasons we're going directly to where people are is because sometimes if you're in a congregate living situation or you're an adult family home, or senior housing, you may not have a way to get to one of these vaccination locations.

So that's why we're actually taking the vaccinations out to people.

That work will continue by our mobile vaccination teams.

It's been going probably almost seven days a week since January 14th.

I mean, we gave them four wheel drives in the snow.

And when we showed up in the snow, I think each team had five locations.

The people were surprised that they showed up in the snow.

But that's where we're going to meet that need of the community there.

And scaling up, we're a part of the planning for all of the city's plans to actually scale up in really large ways.

So we're looking forward to that and It's like you mentioned, it's going to be dependent on supply, even in our pop ups.

I was watching a few weeks back as we did the one for the grocery workers and we had.

I believe we had six firefighters doing the vaccinations and 12 registration tax.

I was talking to acting Captain Wallace and I said, hey, if we needed to really turn the wheel on this, how many people could we turn through an hour?

And just with that small footprint, we could turn probably 100 people through an hour.

So we can really scale up as needed.

We're training new people all the time.

We put the notice out to the department.

Many firefighters have volunteered to go through the training that we've developed and many have.

So we're preparing to be a part of the solution.

That first slide kind of said it all.

Here to serve, we're going to do what we need to do to help community reopen.

And just to add a little bit to what the chief says here, as it relates to the vaccination sites that the fire department has been running, when they say that they're partnering with our community-based organizations, what that really means is it's people are going through the community-based organizations in order to get appointments.

And they're not – those are community-based organizations that are not relying on their clients to have access to online appointment setting.

apps or access to the Internet.

These are clients that these organizations have relationships with, and they're calling them to help them set up appointments with the fire department.

And the city has put together a really nice weekly dashboard which I can hand out to folks.

that shows exactly where they've gone, who they've partnered with at those different locations, and the demographics, the vaccination rates by race.

And then on the second question about being able to scale up once vaccine has reached a higher access number of doses, what I'm being told repeatedly and I'm gonna, I'm gonna...

repeat it to the public as well as a way to hold us all accountable is that the city can stand up a max vaccination site within 48 hours of getting sufficient vaccine.

So what that means is they've been doing all the work in the background in order to put that infrastructure on the ground in both the human infrastructure and the physical infrastructure just as soon as we have sufficient access to vaccines.

I make one more comment.

I'm really glad that we are putting that infrastructure in place for the mass vaccination sites and capability.

I think, you know, we've heard from our community members, what we're now hearing in the national media about the equity issue is that the mass vaccination sites aren't going to reach the people that we're talking about in this conversation.

So we do need to be thinking more carefully about, you know, I mean, folks are talking about just a phone hotline going door to door, you know, in some communities.

So these relationships with the community-based organizations that serve those folks are going to be really important to maintain and to stay connected with.

And I think one of the things that the executive is discussing with King County Health and State Department of Health is what level of control does the city maintain as it relates to scheduling for the disbursement of vaccines that we have access to.

And I think because we are so and focused on the demographics of where the greatest needs are, and trying to be so intentional.

Our advocacy has been around allowing the city to maintain control of scheduling of significant numbers of doses.

And when the city is maintaining control, it means that we're doing so in partnership with our community-based partners, as opposed to it kind of going into, you know, something that's much more bureaucratic and much more difficult for folks to navigate.

and you know council member Morales and members of the council I think you're really going to be proud when more vaccines come in on the infrastructure that we actually have ready to go.

By the city actually being able to receive its own vaccines and we've put everything behind that from freezers to infrastructure with PPE, with Director Goins and FAS, and what they've done on the logistics front, I think you're all really going to be proud of the infrastructure that we actually have ready to go whenever we can start to receive large numbers of vaccines.

Do council members have any additional questions?

I am not seeing any raised hands.

I want to really thank you, Ms. Goggins, for taking the time out in your busy morning to share with us not just your successes from 2020, but your plans for 2021. Really appreciate and am proud of the work that you and the Seattle Fire Department do keeping satellites safe.

and increasingly helping to keep us healthy as well.

So thank you so much for that, and look forward to continuing to working with you throughout the year.

Thank you.

All right, moving on to the second item on the agenda.

Will the clerk please read agenda item two?

committee agenda item number two, council bill 119981, an ordinance amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021 through 2026 capital improvement program, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget and adding or modifying provisos.

Thank you, Alex.

Just some quick Thank you.

I have three comments before I hand it over to Greg from central staff.

This item, if you recall, was listed on the agenda for the meeting on January 26th.

We ran out of time during that meeting so the item was held.

It's been a long time for this item to be scheduled in February.

But we had heard that from the law department that they were advising a delay until they had an opportunity to have some conversation about the actions of the council in the 2020-2021.

21 budget deliberations and the contents of this bill, the city attorney thought it would be good to connect with the monitoring team.

Because the court and the monitoring team have expressed interest in the city's efforts to restructure the budget of the Seattle Police Department, the Seattle City Attorney's Office has had an initial meeting with monitor Avtali.

and the city attorney's office is working on a follow-up memo that will provide a description of past reductions made to the Seattle Police Department's budget, and explaining a description of the draft bill being considered by council, and also including in the memo a description of SPD's staffing and other resource needs.

So this is a first briefing.

We will have another meeting following this one where we are asking the Seattle Police Department to present.

You can see in the materials that central staff have provided that there is an attachment of the memo from the Seattle Police Department to central staff.

We're not going to delve deeply into that memo today because we have invited SPD to come and present the contents of that memo, although I think it's completely appropriate if you've already review that memo and you have questions that you want to flag for Greg to prep SPD on in advance of our next meeting, that's fine.

And just want to, again, provide some advance notice to my colleagues that there are items in the police department's memo to us that I am interested in exploring how we can address some of those needs.

particularly the needs around civilian hires and addressing the needs around public disclosure.

I also have an interest in looking to see how we can address the inspector general's most recent recommendations regarding evidence storage, and there's some specific findings around that.

Not all of these recommendations related to public disclosure and evidence storage rely on funding SPD.

There may be a way to direct those dollars elsewhere and still meet the need.

But just wanting to flag for folks that I do believe that the police department's memo to us highlights some things that we do need the time and space to consider in future meetings.

With that, I'll hand it over to Greg.

Morning madam chair members of the committee Greg Doss central staff.

Before I get going I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Ali new chief who will introduce the subject and give you a little background on the bill.

Good morning, Council Members.

I'm Alec Nucci, Budget Manager, Council Central staff.

Before you today for discussion is Council Bill 119981. As Chair Herbold described, it would cut $5.4 million from SPD's budget, and as introduced, would direct those funds to Finance General to be used for the participatory budgeting.

process.

You'll recall that this was introduced in December when the council was considering the fourth quarter supplemental bill for the council that included increasing SPD's budget by $5.4 million.

And I think I will leave my comments there and turn it over to Greg.

Thank you, Ali.

So if you go ahead and flip to the first slide, as you stated, the bill is pretty straightforward.

It cuts 5.4 million from SPD's budget and then adds 5.4 million to finance general to fund recommendations from the city's participatory budgeting process.

It also provide I'm sorry, imposes a proviso on the 5.4 million so that it can't be spent until further appropriation.

more complicated than the bill is the background.

And so I'm gonna go ahead and dive into that now for the public's sake.

I know that members of the committee are well familiar with the background.

Resolution 31962 that was adopted by the city council on August 10th stated that the council would not support any budget amendments to increase the SPD budget to offset overtime expenditures above the funds that were initially budgeted in 2020 or 2021. and subsequently reduced as part of the mid-year budget process last year, and expressed council's intent to reduce SPD's budget in 2021 in phases and to increase funding for community-led research and participatory budgeting.

In late November, the council received the executive's fourth quarter supplemental budget request.

And in that budget request, there was an item that would have provided or did provide SPD with 5.4 million in new authority for three particular things.

The first one was 1.9 million in new authority.

that was backed by FEMA revenues and would reimburse the department for the costs related to the coronavirus pandemic and services that the department had been providing.

The second was 1.9 million to reimburse SPD for costs associated with employees on paid parental leave.

The third was 1.6 million to cover expenditures related to separation pay for officers that had left the department and had to be paid out for their vacation and compensatory time.

While the request, the fourth quarter supplemental budget request, didn't conflict with the resolution that I mentioned earlier, some council members had noted that SPD would not have needed additional appropriation authority had it not overspent its overtime budget due largely to over-deployment of officers during the demonstrations that occurred last summer.

And this is noted in the list.

Sorry, Greg.

It's a real quick question.

Can you explain what you mean when you say the budget for these specific activities was not directly in conflict with Resolution 31962?

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yeah, what I mean is that the resolution specifically focused on overtime expenditures.

And these three particular items that were in the supplemental budget were not directly for overtime expenditures.

One piece of one of them was, but they were for unrelated items.

And as I was saying, the nexus here is that the council believed that the additional authority wouldn't have been needed had SBD not overspent its overtime budget last summer.

And so as it relates specifically to to the items that partially related to overtime, that would be the need to hire, or not hire, but to staff backfill folks who are on parental leave, because you cannot hire to fill those positions.

They used overtime to fill them.

Is that correct?

That's correct.

And there was also 1 million of overtime that was used for planning, staffing, and traffic direction that had to do with first responder testing sites for COVID.

And so in the sense that these were things that I took from the overtime allocation or budget for SPD, there's a nexus there.

So they're actually two of the three items that are directly related to overtime.

Yes, although these wouldn't have appeared in SPD's overtime budget.

These were unplanned expenses.

But isn't overtime by its nature unplanned?

Yes.

All right, thank you.

For the most part.

So anyways, back to, as I was saying, the nexus being that if SPD had not overspent its overtime budget on demonstration costs, then it would have had $5.4 million available to cover these items.

And that is noted in the recitals for the council bill.

The recitals for the council bill also note that the council was expecting that SPD would have significant salary savings in 2021 due to higher than anticipated attrition that was starting to occur in the early fall.

And the council expected that that would continue through November and December.

And as it turns out, that assumption turned out to be true.

Separations for sworn officers were at an all time high last year.

And at the end of the year, SPD indicated that the total of separating officers was 186. That's about twice what they had projected in the beginning of the year.

And as you can see on the slide here, that would result in about 7.7 million in salary savings that is available in 2021. You see the asterisk there, however, some of that savings could be redirected to fund additional separation costs that the department is incurring or may incur this year due to increased separations continuing into 2021. With that, I ask Allie to flip it again.

So to give you an idea about how this looks, the projections you are seeing here, they're based on a central staff analysis of the year-end staffing report for 2020 that SPD supplies.

And this particular analysis assumes that there would be 114 hires and 114 separations in 2021. It also assumes that the distribution of those hires and separations is going to somewhat return to historical averages.

If that doesn't happen and separations continue at the pace that has been seen over the last six months, then there could be additional salary savings available to the department and more money available than the $7.7 million that I mentioned earlier.

Of course, it would work in reverse.

If there were fewer, then there would be less savings.

So the first line that you may be familiar with, fully trained officer actuals, the number of officers that are fully trained and can be deployed to answer 911 calls or can serve as detectives in the criminal investigation unit or for any other purpose.

That wouldn't include recruits or some student officers that are not yet ready to be deployed.

And that's the blue line, the gray line, the lesser number is the number of officers that are in service.

And so what that means is the number of officers that are actually showing up to work every day that you can deploy.

The reason that number is lower is because it accounts for folks that are out on disability or extended leave.

And that number is at a somewhat all-time high in 2020. As you can see, the difference between 1,231 trained officers and 1094 officers that are available for deployment.

And that is something that the department is hoping will return to normal in 2021. You can see that the line, the projected line goes up there and that particular data point was derived from the department's report.

This is the issue of numbers of officers on leave.

It's an issue that I began tracking in early 2020 before the pandemic.

And it looked at the time that there had been a small uptick.

But looking at these numbers now, it's gone from what was a small uptick to a huge, huge jump.

And I'm just wondering what does, and of course, we can hold these questions for next week, but if we know the answer now, it would be really helpful to know what the department attributes these large numbers of officers that are fully trained but not in service.

I am going to take you up on the offer to let them answer next week.

Thank you, Greg.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

I wanted to go back to slide four.

Thank you so much.

So, Greg, in your Ramp up to getting us to this portion of the presentation where it highlights that there could be as much as $7.7 million in salary savings in 2021 based on attrition.

To date.

I want to make sure that we don't walk away with the impression that that this.

Number.

I want to make sure we walk away with a full understanding of this number and sort of variables that are at play as it relates to that $7.7 million projection.

In large part, because my understanding is that the $7.7 million figure that is here may not reflect some of the personnel costs associated with departures, like paid leave, So can you again, so in other words, I'm a little nervous that the $7.7 million is going to be seen as some people as like there's a hard $7.7 million available in salary savings here, when I think that the reality is that this number may not reflect some sort of known and associated costs that would be discounted from this potential projections.

Can you talk a little bit about that?

Yeah, thank you, Council President.

So you're exactly right, and that's why the asterisk is there on the slide.

The $7.7 million is a salary savings figure that is estimated based on the number of folks that are going to require pay in 2021. And there are fewer of those folks because you had all the officers leave at the end of the year last year.

However, salary savings, this particular pot of money, this 7.7 million, is what the department uses in any given year to fund its separation pay.

And so the department is expecting that a number of officers are going to leave this year.

and they would normally dip into this 7.7 million, the salary savings, to be able to fund the separation pay for their vacation payout and for their compensatory payout.

If the council were to remove the separation or were to remove salary savings from the department's budget, then they are effectively unfunding separation pay for the officers that are leaving.

The department's memo notes this, and it notes that the estimate for separation pay for this year would be somewhere between one and $1.8 million.

Thank you, Greg.

And I, sorry, go ahead.

I was going to say, so that, so that one, two, it was what?

1.1 to 1.7.

Or maybe 1.8.

1.1 to 1.8.

So the 1.1 to the $1.8 million is.

Is.

That would need to be.

Paid out of the $7.7 million in salary savings.

That is that is how the department normally handles its separation pay.

It makes some sense from a budget standpoint, because as people leave, the salaries that they no longer have to be paid can be used to pay off their vacation and their compensatory time.

But if the salary savings aren't there, then the department has to look elsewhere for that money.

Right.

Okay.

Thank you.

Okay.

So Allie, would you please jump forward to the table?

So I've been talking a bit about how there were an extraordinary number of officers that left last year and that are creating salary savings in the police department.

The first line of this table, the average annual FTE, that is the funding for police officers and recruits and student officers.

So that's pretty much the swarm salary budget.

And the 2021 budget that you all adopted at the end of November determined that there was going to be a need for 1343 funded positions on average.

So when I did the analysis to determine where they are in terms of need, the salary that they will need to pay their officers in 2021, it turned out that they are going to need only funding to support 1,289 officers.

And this, again, is based on the assumption that 114 leave and 114 come back.

If that doesn't happen, then things might change.

But if that staffing plan is realized, then there will be 54 funded positions that will not be filled because the department will not have officers to fill them.

And the salaries that are funding those 54 positions are what will be available for the 7.7 million reduction we've talked about.

number of 114 new hires.

That is the, my recollection is, is that commensurate to the anticipated number of new hires that we budgeted for in 2020, but of course weren't able to realize that number because of the mayor's hiring freeze in June.

Where does that 114 come from?

The 114 was the department's original projection for their 2021 staffing plan.

So when we went into the 2021 budget season and the council started deliberating the 2021 budget, the SPD submitted a staffing plan that assumed that they would be able to get to 114 hires.

And so that's their number.

It's based on a number of specific assumptions this year, including having a Seattle only academy in Olympia and some other assumptions that they have around hiring.

So that's their number.

So the assumptions behind the greatest number of officers SPD believes they can hire in 2021 are actually changed from the assumptions in 2020?

Yeah, I believe they're a bit higher.

I think in 2020, they were not quite 114, over 100. I don't remember the exact number.

They're higher this year because Seattle is going to attempt to do the Seattle Only Academy.

And again, this is probably something I should flag for the next committee meeting.

But I know a Seattle Only Academy is an idea that's been bandied about for many years and would just like to have a better understanding of the challenges in the past when this idea has come up as far back as, I believe, Chief Gil Kerlikowske.

All right.

Well, let them talk a little bit more about it and just go ahead and move on here.

Um, so, uh, has noted that the.

The reduction in 5.4Million dollars.

that is contemplated by Council Bill 119981 would, to some extent, tie their hands in their ability to be able to fund, as I say, separation pay that we discussed a little bit earlier.

And then also to use that funding to offset some new issues that they want to address.

And one of those is that the 2021 budget assumed a civilian vacancy rate, and this was to address the citywide budget problems due to COVID.

And as such, SPD is now carrying a vacancy assumption that requires them to keep $4 million open in their budget and hold open 40 positions on the civilian side.

And so what that's doing is it's requiring that SPD leave open a number of positions some of them community facing and working directly with communities positions such as crime prevention coordinators and CSOs.

And so SPD has indicated in their memo that if they were left, if the salary savings were not cut, they would use 1.4 million to go ahead and hire some of those positions that they otherwise could not do.

And then the last item that they have requested funding for is funding for technology upgrades.

I'm not going to go too much into that.

I think the chair touched on some of it.

Some of it is for technology that would allow them to continue to comply with the consent decree.

Some of it is for technology that would allow them to do online call processing and potentially alleviate the need for officers to take police reports in person.

They can talk more about that next week.

So I'll just finish up by noting that the council had included in the 2021 adopted budget a proviso that would have restricted $5 million of SPD's appropriation authority and assumed that SPD would realize the same amount of money, $5 million, in salary savings due to the difference between staffing projections and actual staffing.

And obviously, that has happened.

As I have noted, the difference between original projections and staffing is going to create about $7.7 million.

And so that is one question for the council is how this particular bill would relate to that proviso.

And as you can see, there are some other considerations that central staff has identified in the memo.

We've talked a bit about separation pay.

One that we haven't talked about is overtime costs associated with patrol augmentation.

The department has indicated that it would potentially use salary savings that might be cut here to pay for overtime to backfill for staffing shortages.

I didn't go into the detail on patrol staffing, but patrol staffing is down quite a bit.

There was a a large number of separations with officers that had less than seven years of service, typically those that are in the patrol arena.

There were originally last year, if you look back to December, there were about six hundred and sixty eight officers that were reported in 911 response.

And I'm sorry, five hundred and eighty eight.

And that's down from six hundred and sixty eight earlier in the year.

So there was a pretty significant drop in patrol in nine one one response.

They would use some of this over some of this money from salary savings to fund overtime, to backfill that.

The department will also talk about how the The COVID vaccine may create a situation where special events come online quicker than they were expected when the 2021 budget was being written.

And so there may be a need for special events overtime funding.

And then council identified priorities that council member Herbold talked about at the beginning of the presentation, things that SPD needs around evidence storage, around IT and public disclosure.

Those are things that could be explored.

We talked a little bit about the proviso and how that might relate to this 5.4 million.

And Ali, is this the last slide or do we have anything else?

Nothing else.

So with that, I'll ask if there's any questions.

And as Council Member Herbold said, the department will be here next week to talk more in depth about their requests, should they be allowed to retain the funding, the salary savings that would otherwise be cut by this bill, Council Bill 119981.

Thank you, Greg.

One question that I have relates to the question of the separation pay.

If the analysis shows that there is a potential for $7.7 million in salary savings, and the proposed legislation would cut $5.4 It seems like there is sufficient funding to pay for the up to $1.8 million for separation pay built in.

suggesting that, again, I've said numerous times that I am not planning to be rigid on this bill, and I'm willing to consider SPD's recommendations for a number other than $5.4 million to reduce.

But I'm just, I'm questioning whether or not they recognize that there's, you know, there's a difference between of $2.3 million between 7.7 and the 5.4.

I think they probably do recognize that.

I mean, you're right on.

The math is pretty straightforward.

They are estimating at the high end that they're going to need $1.8 million for additional separations.

And that would mean that you'd have a year that would look more like this year, or I'm sorry, like last year than years previous.

So yeah, that would work out.

Yes?

Thank you.

Any other questions from council members or any things that central staff would like to highlight that we may have missed?

Not seeing any.

Any hands raised?

So I'm glad we finally got through the first step in deliberations around this bill.

And I think, Ben, that we have had some time with SPD's memo in response to the bill.

I'm hoping that we can work with central staff to develop some of our questions in advance.

as well as some of the priorities that the council might have, either priorities that we share with the department for funding or priorities that are not addressed in the department's memo to central staff.

So to the extent that we can work to surface some of those between now and our next meeting, I think that would be very helpful and make for a productive committee meeting.

All right, great.

Thank you, everybody.

And that was the last item on our agenda.

And the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting is scheduled for March 9th.

Before we adjourn, any questions or comments from my colleagues?

Seeing none, it is 11 10 and we are adjourned.

Thank you everybody.