Select Budget Committee Meeting Session II 10-29-26

Good afternoon.

The Select Budget Committee meeting for October 29th will come back to order.

It is 1 p.m.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council Member Foster.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Present.

Council Member Juarez.

Present.

Council Member Kettle.

Here.

Council Member Lynn.

Here.

Council Member Rink.

Here.

Council Member Rivera, Council Member Saka, Chair Strauss.

Here.

Six present.

Thank you.

We are going to move right on into our afternoon session of SPD, CARE, CBO, Ledge and Mayor's Office.

We have 33 CBAs left to go over.

So we're gonna get right on into it.

And let's rock and roll.

First one up is SPD 102 S A.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Greg Doss, central staff, for the record.

SPD 102 S.A.

would require that the department report on non-patrol functions.

And just to be clear, that is functions like SWAT, Canine Harbor traffic, and other specialized operation units, and identify ideal staffing levels for those units.

It is sponsored by Councilmember Kettle, co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

As sponsor of the proposal, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry, and Councilmember Saka is present, and anyone who isn't present is excused until they get here.

Apologies.

Right over to you, Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

and thank you, Mr. Dawes, for presenting on these, and I should have said this earlier, with Mr. Woodson and Director Woodson and Mr. Chao, the Deputy Central Staff, stalwarts here today.

I wanted to start off by noting that in this section that we have 15 items.

If I counted right, 12 CBAs and three slides.

Looking through these, I'm looking through the following elements, SPD staffing and staff support, furthering a functional criminal justice system, gun violence intervention reduction and community safety, also urban blight remediation, related to disorder, graffiti and so forth.

the scene between public safety on one side and then public health, housing, and human services on the other, and then the coordinating with county and the state and so forth to further what we do on public safety.

And I should add that with these slides and CBAs, to varying degrees, all these will be worked in committee.

And I think that's important to note.

This is not gonna be something where we just sit around waiting for and the executive come back.

We're gonna be driving the agenda based on those elements and that will come across these various items in this section, obviously as well with fire and care and the other entities within the Public Safety Committee.

I will note on this budget overall, and thank you again Mr. Doss for your summaries, plus the other summaries.

I think Mr. Mikesell did one, or an overview, which was helpful as well.

And, you know, the talks about the the increase, 49.5 roughly for SPOG and SPEMA in terms of salary increases.

If you put in the others to include SPOG, you know, 58, then we have the FTE bump, you know, this is like FTEs budget-wise as opposed to actuals, from 1184 up to 1250 and that's where you, for the most part, where you get the $68 million.

I think the first thing that we need to say on this is that for those who understand labor relations, a lot of this should have been done years ago.

it got backed up and it was dumped here.

And that kind of gives a false sense because if we had done labor relations right, if we had gotten the SPOC agreement done when it was due and so forth, we'd be in a very different position today.

And I think it's important to note that.

because it gives us a sense that's not actual.

And I should also note too, and I've spoken to this, is that, you know, there's been a lot made of, you know, how the mayor has increased SPD.

Yes, there is a bit of an increase as it relates to the FTE bump, but really no. in the budget, because as everyone here knows, it was already in the budget, because you can't pass a labor agreement unless you have the reserves in the budget to cover that labor agreement.

So the money was transferred from one side to the other, in which there's no choice, by the way.

So this idea that the mayor has increased and this idea that, oh, this is incredible in addition to not having any new taxes, is why I call it the Goldilocks budget.

It was made to seem this way, that everything was perfect, but as I said in other places, related to public safety, this is the bowl of cold porridge.

And this is within SPD, we see this.

The, between the labor agreements, that was already there.

We had to, were obligated to do that.

And those are in reserve, so they're already in the budget.

They just weren't showing up on the SPD accounts.

And I think that's really important to note.

Also to note, and it's in the background, or I think from Mr. Doss, was that, you know, in 2019, in terms of sworn officers, we funded 1,467 FTEs.

1,467 FTEs in 2019. This year, we're down to 1,184.

And I understand it from a budgeting perspective, because our numbers dropped so low, it would have been ridiculous from a budgeteering perspective to have a higher FTE count on the books, because, obviously, we weren't gonna fill those.

But we've been making great progress over the last three years to increase the number of sworn officers on the police force.

and so I welcome the 1250 as an increase from the 1184, but the problem here is if you look at different parts of the budget and different things done by the executive, you know, the 1250 isn't like the V1 speed on a takeoff where they're gonna rotate and go for that, you know, 1400, 1600 number.

No, everything is indicating that they're coming in to land at 1250 and as discussed before related to these FDEs, when you consider Pipeline Academy and everything else, that means we're gonna run short of the runway.

We're not gonna make that 1250, at least on the ground.

And as my colleague, Councilmember Juarez says, you know, talking about bike cops.

We're gonna have bike cops everywhere, but you can't have bike cops everywhere if we're not increasing the overall number of FTEs for the force.

And I note the sworn because elsewhere in the documents, and again, this one was written by Eden Cesic, talking about the 27 FTEs that are basically being dropped.

At the end of the day, we're not able to work these specialty areas as highlighted in this slide to start us off.

And this is gonna show up, by the way, in other items that we're gonna be talking about within this SPD section.

So it's important to note this, and I'd like to thank the chair, too, because when SPD's talking about these different budget actions, they don't want to do it, but they're doing it to help mitigate a projected shortfall in general fund reserves in 2027. That is the standard line from SPD here.

And it's unfortunate that we are where we are, but we are where we are, if you look at the labor agreement, because of actions that City Hall has taken that's put us in a very bad position.

and across the board.

But we have to work through this and the bottom line is we ought to ensure that we have a strong public safety posture in the city for all the points that chairs mentioned earlier before the break.

You know, if we're gonna increase revenue and increase our budgeting ability, we have to do these kinds of things.

And so, colleagues with SBD 102 SA, I would note that this is what we have to do.

We have to understand these different pieces outside the sworn officers and understand the impact across the board to include gender bias violence, which is gonna come up soon.

And with that, colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you, Councilmember Kettle.

Colleagues, any discussion on this item?

Any discussion?

And Councilmember Rivera joined just as Councilmember Kettle started talking, just so the record reflects.

Colleagues, seeing no further discussion, if you would like to sign on to SPD 102 S A, please raise your hand at this time.

I see Council Member Juarez.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Moving on to SPD 104A.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

SPD 104A would increase the department by 792,000 in 2027 and 11.6 million in 2028 to support continued hiring of recruits at a level of about 12 per month.

Current hiring level is about 12 per month and it would impose a proviso.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, sponsor the proposal.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

And quickly, I mean, it's the central staff summary is quite clear here.

But, you know, part of this is because of earlier slides, we do have an insight in terms of SPD staffing, you know, the quarterly reports and looking where we are month by month.

And then looking forward, we could see that the executive was purposely dropping from the 12 down to the 7 and going to the point about landing short of the runway.

That's what is happening with the executive rollout.

and this SBD 104A seeks to correct that.

Also, Mr. Chair, I neglected to mention that it's co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, you did a good job speaking to that right now.

Colleagues, discussion.

Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you chair and thank you Councilmember Kettle for putting this ad in and thank you for your remarks.

I really and I understand that your this year's increase is a smaller amount and then next year you're hoping to get us to a point where we're able to hopefully our budget comes in in a way and though we're working on the biennium now there's always of forecasts that get updated in the current year.

So I understand your interest to be to try to hire more officers.

And I want to say that to the point you made earlier about there being more money in this budget, it was to cover that contract.

And that doesn't mean that we're gonna have the ability to hire the number of officers that we should be hiring to get us closer to that goal of at least as many officers as we had pre-COVID.

And so even though this is a big ad, again, this is a chartered responsibility I know this ad is not going to occur this year, but the point being that we need more officers in Seattle to be able to manage for the public safety issues that we're dealing with.

And I think it is not okay for the city to shirk its chartered responsibilities on behalf of our constituents.

They expect public safety and they expect that when they call 911, someone will show up and will show up timely, but will show up in general, which sometimes can't happen now because of the prioritization that needs to happen.

That's just the bottom line.

So thank you for putting this in and that's why I lent my co-sponsorship to this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Further discussion, Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Wars your mute button is still activated.

Okay no boomer jokes okay can you Mr. Chair direct a question to Mr. Doss regarding and clarifying the 68 million quote-unquote increase that we've been hearing where Katie Wilson, Mayor Wilson is giving $68 million to Seattle Police Department.

This is my understanding and I'm hoping we can clarify is of the $68 million, $56 million of that is for salaries.

If we can have some clarification for Mr. Doss, Mr. Chair, I would appreciate that.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

Thank you, Mr. Chair and Council Member Juarez.

Of the $68 million, the three primary components are salaries for the increases that were provided under the SPOG contract and SPMA contract.

There is also an increase for SPOG, which is the PEOs, for their contract.

And there is about, I believe, $12 million in there for staffing to secure 43 new hires over the period of the biennium, specifically in this year, 2027 coming forward.

And then the last little bit is mostly technical adjustments.

So it really does break down into labor categories and supporting the staffing.

Okay.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Mr. Doss.

I have a follow-up.

So it is fair to say then of the $68, $56 million is for the three categories of salaries in general.

And then the delta of the $12 million would be the delta between 68 and 56. Were you targeting that for the staffing piece?

Is that what I got wrong?

Mr. Doss?

Yeah, I don't have the numbers right here in front of me, but it is...

Actually, I do now.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I didn't expect to get asked this question.

So, of the 68 million, there is One second.

I'm going to get back to you with a complete breakdown, but I believe the chairs...

Oh, here we go.

56.5 million is for the ongoing cost of the officers with the CBA.

It doesn't add 12 million.

It adds 1.2 million for the Parking Enforcement Officers Guild, and it adds a total of 12.6 million to fund the additional new officers.

Okay.

Should get you to 68. Yeah.

Council Member Waters, you still have the floor.

Thank you, sir.

So I just want to clarify that before all the hordes come at me angry.

I think we got to start with the numbers and the facts about where the money is going.

And also to also just clarify, and this may sound odd coming from me, but to support the administration that and some of the concerns that people have that Mayor Wilson is just increasing SPD by 68 million.

Going back to what Council Member Kettle says, who chairs the Public Safety Committee, it isn't an increase because as Council Member Rivera knows and Council Member Kettle and I'm sure many of you know, in 2019 and then in post 2020, money was put in the reserves because long story short in the politicizing of a lot of things that happened there the city council and some other issues could not come to the table on the collective bargaining agreement where all the other unions of the city got their raise and we were stuck with trying to work the collective bargaining agreement with obviously SPOG and for every year that it was delayed that money was set aside because legally, never mind the politics, we owe them that money whether we liked it or not.

So that's where that pot of money was and had to stay there until we could land and I'll go with your analogy, Councillor O'Kettle, I think you set a plane.

and I think it's important to clarify that whether you're whatever you think about police or policing obviously we all want constitutional policing we want it done right but I think that we have to start with those facts and also I'm hoping that we can have a discussion about this without myself or my colleagues being terrorized again doxxed threatened as I have been personally in my family for just doing my job.

So with that, I would just add on this note, I will be supporting Council Member Kettle's, what are we calling it?

You're not calling it a, you're calling it a, what do you call it?

Proposal.

All right, thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

My stomach has got all the blood because I just ate lunch as well.

With that, colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion?

Final discussion.

If you would like to co-sponsor SPD 104A, please raise your hand at this time.

I just have Council Member Juarez.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Wonderful.

Let's move on to SPD 105A.

Thank you.

SPD 105A would increase SPD by 180,000 in 2027. and 210,000 in 2028 and add a one FTE planning and development specialist senior position to work on diversity, equity, and inclusion issues and to lead the 30 by 30 initiative at the department.

It would also impose a proviso.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, sponsor the proposal.

You are recognized.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg, for talking about this and for putting it together.

Colleagues, you may remember last year actually provides owed SPD money to do the 30 by 30 position, which had gotten put in the year before, has not been hired.

I'm disappointed this position has not been hired.

It's really important.

Then there's another position that was supposed to be working on DEI.

on recruitment that also never happened.

This is really important.

I've said this many times.

The police department should look like the constituents that they're serving.

This is really important.

And so this position was to work on recruitment of both women and of course our DEI in support of our DEI efforts.

So that's why this is in here.

we provided it last year, it didn't happen.

My hope in putting the increases because now the budget is insufficient to cover the hiring of new officers as we said.

And Greg, I heard you say that with the current budget, we can hire about 43 new officers over the biennium.

That's what I heard you say.

Chair, is it okay if he- Mr. Doss, that's correct.

That is correct and we've been hiring actually this year alone we hired about 53 and last year 90 something officers so 43 officers in two years is insufficient and that's why rather than proviso it I put it in as an increase so as not to take away from the few officers that we have the ability to hire in the next two years.

if we don't add any additional funding in SPD for more hires.

So I hope you will support this.

This is an important position and my expectation is if this makes it into the budget that SPD and that the executive who actually oversees SPD will ensure that this position gets hired so that we can work on recruiting women and people of color to the force so that the force better reflects the constituency that they're representing.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion at this time?

Further discussion?

Final discussion, Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

May I direct a question, just one quick question to central staff on this one?

Yes, of course.

Thank you.

Quick question for you, Greg.

I know during policy considerations on this topic, I had asked a question as to whether we understood if the Seattle Police Department had posted the 30 by 30 positions.

Did we get an answer on whether or not they posted these positions previously for hire?

Mr. Doss?

I don't believe that they did, no.

Back to you, Council Member Ring.

Thank you.

I just wanted clarification on that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any final discussion?

Councilmember Kettle, over to you.

Thank you, Chair.

First, I was remiss in the first two not to thank my vice chair in committee, Councilmember Saka and also Councilmember Rivera.

And I really appreciate the comments from Councilmember Juarez talking about the pass and the impacts because, again, in answer to the question, the increase is 12.6 million as it takes the FTEs from 1184 up to 1250. Yes, I approve, you know, that is positive in terms of from the mayor.

But this idea that she's given all this is really false and this contributes on the 22nd of September where everybody was praising her for what was essentially a Goldilocks budget when it wasn't.

and that's really a shortfall of what happened in our city, how that was characterized.

And I think now is a great way to correct it.

And to this question, I thank Councilmember Rivera and Councilmember Saka, who've been leaders in this area over the last number of years, really pushing it.

But it reflects two things.

One, as I noted, to help mitigate a projected shortfall in general fund revenues in 2027, that's gonna be the standard, but it also goes to prioritization.

These departments, to include SPD, have been going through these budget drills every year where they're asked to make cuts, and they prioritize.

And their prioritization goes to patrol, to sworn officers, and then to some of these specialty units.

And what's happened is 30 by 30 DEI, A is accessibility, by the way, DEIA, if you will, don't make the cut.

And we've seen this again with, like, the Unified Care Team.

So that's what's happening here with this, you know, proposal, and I support it.

But it also highlights the issues that we have.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Any final discussion?

Seeing no final discussion, Councilmember Rivera to close this out.

Thank you.

I will say, colleagues, that we obviously In our time here, this is my third year on the council and there have been multiple police chiefs in that time.

So what I can tell you about my conversations earlier this year with Chief Barnes is that this position wasn't hired because of the hiring freeze.

So that's what I was told by the chief just to further answer Councilmember Rank your question about why it was not hired.

So again, I want to make sure that, and you're correct, Councilmember Kettle, DEI doesn't just talk about our support to have the force support people of color to join the force.

It's more expansive and inclusive than that.

But I know that that piece is really important, and so is the hiring of more women.

So in any event, colleagues, I will continue to support this.

It's really important if we want a police force to reflect the folks that they are serving on the ground, then we need to work on these efforts and it won't happen necessarily in and by itself.

And that's what this position was supposed to do.

And because they weren't hired in the past, and because of our financial constraints, I'm now putting in this one position to do both efforts.

But my hope, as I said, is if this makes it through, that the executive will work with the police department to hire this physician and actually do this work and prioritize this work.

because we can't just complain about what might be happening at SPD.

We actually have to do something about it.

And that's the point of this position is to actually walk the walk, not just talk the talk.

And so again, I hope that people will support this ad.

Thank you.

Thank you, and if you would like to co-sponsor SPD105A, please raise your hand at this time.

I see, Council Member Juarez adding her name.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, moving on to SPD106A.

Thank you, SPD106A would increase SPD by 400,000 in 2027 for noise suppressors on rifles and impose a proviso.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin has sponsored the amendment proposal.

Sponsor the proposal.

You are recognized.

Thank you, colleagues.

And thank you to co-sponsors, Councilmembers Kettle and SACA.

As you've heard me speak about previously, there's a private training facility run by the Seattle Police Athletic Association.

just outside of city borders, outside of South Seattle.

And residents in South Seattle Rainier Beach and other parts like South Park can often hear this firing range.

It is often confusing and can be traumatizing.

because residents don't know if it's because there's an active shooter in the neighborhood or if it's coming from the gun range.

We visited the gun range, and there's a couple different ways to reduce the impacts of the rifle noise.

One of those is to have noise suppressors on the rifles.

I should point out that this is the primary training facility for SPD, but others train there as well.

This would just be for SVD staff, obviously.

But noise suppressors carry multiple benefits, not just to reduce the impact of noise on the neighborhood, They are also good for supported by officers because if you fire a rifle without a suppressor indoors in a closed environment, it can be very loud, potentially causing hearing loss.

So there are workers' comps claims that can arise out of these.

Also, it makes communication difficult for our officers.

There are multiple benefits to having these noise suppressors.

What we have heard from SPD is that they would probably phase them in over a number of years.

But we are hoping to kickstart this.

And I should also note that we are hoping to find a budget neutral way to pay for this.

We are still working on that.

But we didn't have that finalized yet.

So for now, it is shown as an increase.

With that, I would love your support.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

And Council Member Kettle, I'm going to call on...

Actually, I'm going to pause just because your next one is so similar.

And then, Mr. Doss, if you could read the next item into the record.

Yeah, sure.

The next item is SPD 107A, which would increase SPD by $100,000 in 2027 for noise barriers at the SPD firing range.

And it is also co-sponsored by Council Member Saka and Council Member Kettle.

Thank you.

So council member Lynn, if you wanna add any comments to this one, I'm gonna take comments from all council members on both, and then I will call for co-sponsors individually.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Chair.

So on this one, same issue, but different solution.

They have implemented some noise barriers, berms, other types of noise insulation, but more could be done up there.

We've been waiting for a precise figure, but we think 100,000 should be sufficient to make a meaningful difference in noise mitigation at the firing range.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

I'm going to call on Councilmember Kettle as chair of the committee overseeing the department.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Councilmember Lin and his team for reaching out to me and my team on these two.

By the way, thank you, Councilmember Rivera, for doing the same on the 30 by 30 and the DEIA one as well.

Bottom line, I've been to the range numerous times and and I understand the impacts in the neighboring communities and to be blunt, the kids that live in that area, the families that live in that area shouldn't have to live through that.

As someone who lived in Baghdad with a lot of going on around, I can just imagine like what I used to hear but then have kids hear it.

and that's not right, it's not acceptable.

And so we need to do something.

And by the way, in talking about the various elements, I mentioned my last one about working with the county and the state.

There might be an opportunity, who knows, for the county and the state to step up on this area too, particularly the county.

And so thank you, Council Member Lynn, for bringing these two proposals forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion on both suppressors and suppressors?

the land blocks.

Councilmember Lin, can I come back to you at the end?

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Lin, for bringing this forward.

I just had a clarifying question.

Councilmember Lin, you mentioned that SPD thought they would phase in the suppressors over time, and I just wanted to understand whether or not your $400,000 ad represents the entirety that's needed or the first phase?

Councilmember Lin?

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

We've gotten different numbers and it depends on whether the suppressors are just the suppressors alone or whether they're replacing both the rifle and adding a suppressor.

This certainly should be the bulk of the cost, but it might not be the entirety of the cost.

And certainly it would be more than enough for, I think, at least several years.

What we'd heard is that they would probably phase them in over five years, but this should be the...

at least the bulk of it, if not the entire cost.

Thank you.

Councillor Foster, floor is still yours.

Thank you, Chair.

And then I had one other question that I'd like to direct either to central staff or to the sponsor, which is just to clarify, I see the proviso around the use.

With the proviso and this as described, would it be possible, I guess I want to understand, will these suppressors only be used at this facility?

I'm going to go with Mr. Dawson, then I'll turn it over to Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

The suppressors would not have to be used at only the facility.

Obviously, it's the intent that they be used at the facility, but they could be used in the field as well.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin, anything to add?

Nope.

Councilmember Foster, floor still yours.

Thank you so much, Chair.

No further questions from me.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

further discussion, final discussion.

Councilmember Lin, anything to close us out with?

I just want to comment on Councilmember Kettle's point that we would love support from both county or the state either for on-site noise mitigation or as mentioned other police departments King County do use this site and certainly we can't force this private facility to require suppressors from everyone but I think if we start to make that effort other jurisdictions may follow our lead

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

Colleagues, if you would like, we're gonna call them one by one.

So first is for noise suppressors, SPD 106A, and then the second one is number seven for the noise barriers.

Starting with the suppressors, if you would like to co-sponsor SPD 106A, please raise your hand at this time.

I'm seeing no additional co-sponsors, so we will move on to SPD 107A, the noise barriers.

If you would like to co-sponsor, please raise your hand at this time.

I see Council Member Foster raising her hand.

Adding Council Member Foster.

Thank you.

We're gonna move on to S and Council President Hollingsworth.

And Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

We're gonna move on to SPD 108A.

Thank you, SPD 108A.

The CBA would impose a proviso on $100,000 of general fund in the Seattle Police Department budget for overtime costs for two officers to provide security at all meetings of the Seattle City Council and Public Safety Committee.

The CBA would not change SPD's total appropriations.

It would dedicate a portion of existing appropriations to this activity.

It is co-sponsored by So I'd like to thank Councilmember Kettle and Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin, as the sponsor, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

And thank you to co-sponsors Hollingsworth and Kettle.

When anyone comes to city council to one of our meetings, everyone should feel safe and be safe.

And unfortunately, in today's political environment, we have seen increases in violence.

And knock on wood, that never occurs here.

But this is not, despite what some might say, this is not just about council members.

This is about staff.

This is about anyone coming to testify.

This is about working with our incredible security staff who also assist us.

and again, this is simply to ensure that anyone coming to City Hall or City Council to testify should feel free, should feel safe and be safe.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettles, Chair of the Committee, would you like to add any words?

I appreciate Council Member Lynn's proposal and the points you've made.

They're very on point.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, discussion?

Further discussion?

Final discussion.

I will just say, even in the last time that we gave public, we had public testimony just this week, an individual came back to council that we had received indications that they had threatened another public participant at the last time that they were here.

so this is not just, this is not council members, staff, this is the general public as well, because those threats were not light and actually quite scary.

With that, Council Member Lynn, anything to close?

Nothing to close.

If you'd like to co-sponsor SPD108, please raise your hand at this time.

I'm seeing no additional co-sponsors, so we're gonna move on to SPD109SA.

SPD 109 S.A.

would request that SPD report on recovery of retroactive wage overpayments to include the 13.1 million or specifically the 13.1 million in retroactive wage payments that were issued in error to SPD employees this spring.

Thank you.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Linde and Councilmember Foster.

Thank you.

Councilmember Linde, to sponsor the proposal, you are recognized.

Thank you Chair Strauss, thank you Greg for working with my team to prepare this slide.

Colleagues, I have expressed over the course of the budget process my frustration and concern about the overpayment to 900 employees within the Seattle Police Department on the overpayment amounting to $13.1 million.

This was a $13.1 million mistake.

That means that we have $13.1 million less this year to dedicate to community priorities that we have been discussing over the past couple of days.

It is more than disappointing.

and I believe we should be using our oversight role to be encouraging the executive and the Seattle Police Officers Guild to get back to the bargaining table to quickly identify a remedy and ensure the rightful legal return of the $13.1 million of taxpayer money.

This slide before you is a part of urging that process.

This statement of legislative intent asks the Seattle Police Department in consultation with the City's Legal Relations staff to report on the city's progress for recovering the 13.1 million retroactive wage payments that were issued in error to SPD employees.

This report would include the following, the total amount overpaid and the number of affected employees by bargaining unit and for non-represented employees to the status of bargaining with SPOG Three, the amount recovered to date in the anticipated timeline for recovering the remaining amount and four, payroll controls implemented to prevent similar errors.

SPD may provide portions of the report in executive session to the extent permitted by law.

It is the intent that once we get this whole report for an ordinance to be introduced that would dedicate the returned funds to expanding affordable housing in Seattle.

and I will note for the record, I had originally explored a proviso approach on this.

I wish we could go that route, but I do think this slide approach will help us be successful in encouraging this critical work to move forward.

I believe this is a good governance measure and candidly a necessary one at this time.

And I want to thank my co-sponsors, council members, Lynn and Foster for their support on this.

And I ask for your support as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kell as chair committee, you are recognized.

Thank you, chair.

This was not presented to me and or my staff.

Chair, on this, it kind of parallels the unified care team.

I think this is misplaced.

I think this belongs with the mayor's office.

Even in here it talks about labor relations.

You can throw finance, you can throw CBO in.

There's multiple areas that have to do this.

I think this is better placed in the mayor's office and not with SPD.

I have spoken, I've listened on this as well.

My understanding is that, Spock, is they don't want money that they did not earn, but here we are with labor relations again, state labor relations.

It goes through that process, and then it's a question of double, triple checking if everything is correct, and then the process of that repayment.

and again this is tied up in state labor law, but ultimately this really should be pulled out of this SPD section and put into the mayor's office section and really with their responsibilities of oversight with labor relations, CVO, finance, and to do this properly.

And so I would ask that that would be done, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, discussion?

Discussion, Councilmember Saka followed by Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank Council Member Rink for putting this forward and noting there's a couple proposals here back to back before us and I actually like the spirit and intent behind this one and I have some questions around the next one we'll get to in a moment, but I generally agree with everything that was said to justify this.

verbally and then especially in including the words in the text of the SLI with the exception of like we can figure out if we get that money back and figure out where to best put it because there's a permanent veterans shelter in West Seattle for example but I agree with the broader points and I also agree with the Public Safety Committee Chair that this We could probably tag a few others in this, a few other departments, ideally the mayor, but for me, even in the absence of that, I would support this.

In a moment, I'm gonna raise my hand, but I do think the mayor is probably best positioned to address this, and we could have tagged some of those other departments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Lynn, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair, thank you, colleagues, and thank you, Councilmember Rank, for bringing this forward.

You know, just quoting from a news report that quoted the Guild, says, the Guild's stance is we're not looking to keep money that we're not owed.

And I mention that because, in my opinion, it's not a win.

or it's not if but when this money is returned and I certainly hope that whatever bargaining process can be done expeditiously and what I think is critical is that we get regular updates on that because this money is desperately needed and the sooner we can get reasonable updates about when this money is returned then we can come up with plans on how to spend it.

I certainly support spending this on affordable housing amongst many different needs.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle.

Sorry.

I got out of line here.

Sorry, I see what's going on here.

Air traffic control can sometimes get a little tricky.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion?

Seeing no further discussion, Councilmember Roink, if you'd like to close us out.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and colleagues.

Thank you for sharing your perspective on this matter.

I hope we can all agree that remedying this issue quickly is important and we want collaboration here from all parties involved so we can ensure the rightful legal return of these taxpayer dollars.

And I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Well said.

We do need those taxpayer dollars returned.

With that, if you'd like to co-sponsor SPD 109 SA, please raise your hand at this time.

I have Councilmember Saka.

Adding Councilmember Saka.

Thank you.

Moving on to SPD 110A.

SPD 110A would impose a proviso on $400,000 general fund in the Seattle Police Department that the department plans to use to complete installation of the closed circuit television camera projects authorized by the Council.

The CBA would not change SPD's total appropriation, but restrict the appropriation amount of $400,000 necessary to continue to expand the CCTV program.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Lin and Councilmember Foster.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rink is the sponsor.

You are recognized.

The intent of this $400,000 proviso is to request the Seattle Police Department implement the recommendations from the Office of Inspector General to control the use of the real-time crime center.

The three recommendations are as follows.

First, require RTCC analysts to provide a case number or justification each time they view CCTV footage.

The second, to adopt criteria for integrating privately owned cameras, including where they may be used, monitoring and remediation processes and potential guidelines.

And three, ensure users of the automated license plate reader database provide both a case number and a search justification.

And colleagues just to dive a bit deeper into OIG's annual surveillance review technology assisted public safety pilot program report, these recommendations were made as a result of some findings.

While there is currently policy prohibiting proactive surveillance, the ACTS and FUSA software itself does not process preventing or monitoring this activity.

For example, RTCC personnel can view CCTV cameras without providing any justification as to why, no need for a case number or a cat event.

Because the software requirement does not exist, SPD lacks a way to control, prevent, or even audit for potential improper use of the technology.

Additionally, while the original surveillance impact reports addressed integration of privately owned cameras as a major possibility, the reports provided no criteria for deployment.

Based on the requirements of the surveillance ordinance, criteria for private camera integration should at minimum include guidance on where SPD can accept private camera feeds within the city, guidance for retention periods, and restrictions on visibility into non-private spaces.

SPD also cannot apply digital masking or change the orientation to ensure monitoring of strictly public spaces when it comes to private cameras.

And lastly, the documentation of ALPR search reasons is often found to be insufficient.

In 2025, users of the ALPR database did not provide justification for searches approximately 47% of the time, and without proper justification, followed by a case number of review or audit of user activity may be unable to determine whether or not specific access was proper.

I hope we all agree that these issues need to be addressed.

It is the intention of this proposal to receive a report that indicates the department has implemented the recommendations from the Office of the Inspector General, at which point the proviso will be lifted.

The intent here is not to re-litigate the previous decision made on expanding CCTV, but rather to get our own house in order.

And I have concerns about expanding the system with these issues remaining unaddressed.

So the goal here is to meaningfully encourage the department to get to compliance with the recommendations from one of our or accountability bodies, the Office of the Inspector General.

So thank you again, Councilmembers, Lynn and Foster for your co-sponsorship.

Colleagues, I ask for your support on this proviso to ensure that the guardrails and policies are implemented before any programmatic expansion.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Kettles, chair of the committee overseeing the department, you have anything to add?

Yes, Chair, quite a bit.

First, this was not brought to me or my team, again.

Two, you can imply in this proviso that our committee doesn't do its job, and we do our job.

I've quarterbacked I don't know how many bills, seven, eight, related to the tech program, our real-time crime center, CCTV and ALPR.

We've made adjustments.

We did an implication in the initial implementation and then the follow-ons.

And guess what?

We're gonna continue to do it.

We have an audit report related to SDOC cameras.

We have an OIG report, and this is what we do.

This is the system working.

The accountability partners are doing their part, and the committee will do its part.

We don't need this proviso.

It is our responsibility in our committees to do our job, and that is my intention once we come out of budget, once we start the new year.

We're gonna look at the OIG report.

I understand everything that's in there.

The audit report related to ESDA, I understand everything that's in there.

We don't need this proviso...

at all.

and then here also talking about the different places.

The mid-year supplemental hasn't really been accounted for.

So again, not coordinated, doesn't take into account what we do as a committee that my colleague sits on with me.

Again, it's not needed.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Rank, and appreciate the passion, Council Member Kettle.

You know, I think one thing that has been a common discussion is how do we ensure that departments or the executive branch is basically following when we have policy guidance?

And that's what I see.

We have a lot of these provisos, whether it's something around hiring DEI or in many different areas where we need to make sure that the departments are appropriately incentivized to follow the guidance that we are providing as the policymakers.

And I appreciate, Councilmember Kettle, attention to this matter and commitment to addressing these issues next year.

I do think it's important that SPD concurred with all of these recommendations.

One thing in particular for me as a concern is the privately owned cameras.

As we have this ongoing discussion and balancing public safety with privacy, the choice has been made to have these cameras in high crime areas.

And yet, having SPD have the ability without any criteria or oversight from council to allow integration of privately owned cameras potentially disrupts that balance, which I see is really our role.

And so I think one of those criteria needs to be to make sure that we have a say in the criteria for integration of privately owned cameras, including locations and other safety protocols.

So just want to say that, again, appreciate all the attention and commitment from colleagues across the aisle to making sure that this system takes privacy seriously.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

I am gonna give us just a quick time check that we have not finished eight items.

in about 55 minutes, it's 6.8 minutes per item.

If we continue this rate for the next 25 items, it's two hours, 50 minutes, which exits us at 2.50 p.m.

So we were making great time this morning.

These are important topics that deserve our conversation.

I'm just giving the Google Maps.

With that, Council Member Rivera, followed by Foster, Saka, and then Kep.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to state here because ALPR was raised that when we passed the ALPR legislation, I did do an amendment because I do believe that we need clearly defined privacy protections when we're using these tools to mitigate any unintended consequences.

So the amendment I put in for that made sure that We had parameters around who had access to the ALPR data, why the data is needed, and tracks who requests access.

And part of that was to make sure there was one person that was in charge of managing for the data, so there was like an easily identifiable person on point that we could hold accountable.

if the information was not properly guarded.

So I say that to say, I don't wanna leave the impression because I know we have some council members here that weren't here at the time we passed the ALPR legislation.

but I want to assure you that at that time, we did do the guardrails and we take privacy seriously.

And as someone who worked in my past, though it was a while ago for the ACLU, I understand the privacy protections and how important that is.

And also, I know that these tools, including the Real-Time Crime Center, are tools we use to be able to investigate crime.

and so the privacy protections are really important as we use these tools that do help us investigate crimes.

You know, I can just point to the Byte of Seattle and we still don't know who actually we have not been able to arrest the person that um, SPD believes actually did the shooting in that case or persons.

We just don't know because we don't, we didn't have sufficient cameras at the Seattle center to be able to say, you know, this is who, who the person is that did that.

So I do think these are important tools in investigating crime writ large.

And I do understand the privacy protections, which is why the council member Kettle's, you know, point we, took safeguards when we passed that legislation.

And for anyone that might be listening, I just want to double down on the we care about privacy writ large.

And so that's why when we authorize approval of these tools, we make sure that those privacy protections are in place.

And if there's more that we can do to put additional parameters in place, I know that Councilmember Kettle, you would partner in that.

and so I thank you for that and I look forward to this year I sit on the Public Safety Committee to continue the conversations around whether or not we need to do even additional privacy protections because I know a lot of this can be I can't say that word, Spanish is my first language, but we make changes as we go along, iterative process.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, I've got Council Member Foster followed by Sokka and then Kettle, I will call you at the end and then I will call Council Member Rink to close us out.

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I had a little laugh with Councilmember Rivera, so I got a little sidetracked in my train of thought.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I just wanted to reiterate something that was already spoken to before and I'm really proud to co-sponsor this.

and the two reasons that I'll just highlight, and again, they've been highlighted, but I think it bears repeating, is that the approach here is intended to ensure that the recommendations from OIG are implemented.

And that's not a comment on a council member or a comment on a committee.

I think it's a comment on a commitment to accountability and to ensuring that we see that accountability in our system.

And I do think that's something that our residents really care about.

The other thing I just want to highlight here is So I think the approach is to say OIG has recommended these, the department has said that they accept that recommendation and we want to ensure that we get implementation.

So I just want to speak to that one more time because I think it bears repeating in terms of the intent behind this approach.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Councilmember Sokka.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to start off by commending the and the sponsor of this, Council Member Rink, for initiating a conversation about this, and very important topic.

It's very clear, just hearing right now, we all have shared goals, the shared goal of seeing accountability and implementation of OIG's report or specific recommendations and findings here.

and for me, I just don't think, based on what I know now, that this is the best approach to do it.

I think there are other ways, better ways, working it up through committee.

Heck, even structuring the proviso to auto lift, if there's a self-certification that those things were done, that's another way of doing it as opposed to coming and requiring full council review and approval.

But question for central staff on this is, just be curious to better understand how would the proviso and delayed lifting of the proviso, especially now it would require past full council like express explicit council action to lift.

How would that affect SPD's timeline, vendor contracts, or technology integration with the real-time crime center?

And are there risks of additional cost escalations or contractual penalties potentially associated with any of that?

Mr. Das?

Thank you, Councilmember Saka.

This particular $400,000 does not cross into any contractual payments or service agreements that the Seattle Police Department has on its real-time crime center or on its CCTV program.

This is capital money.

It would not impact their ability to keep the RTCC going.

not capital in the strictest sense that it's not part of a capital budget, but it is equipment funding.

Council Member Sokka, you still have the floor.

Thank you.

Very helpful.

No further questions.

Thank you.

I'm going to check before I move into closing remarks.

Colleagues, anyone who has not spoken, would you like to speak at this time?

not seeing any additional hands, so we're gonna go, we are now in the closeout, so I'm not gonna take additional comments unless it is, we're gonna go to Council Member Kettle and then Council Member Rink and then I'll take co-sponsors.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, my Vice Chair Saka, Council Member Saka, very good points and yes, we're gonna work these pieces.

I've had this and I think the better way is as I described through committee.

I recognize the point made by Council Member Foster, but at the same time, Again, we're doing this without a doubt.

I'm on top of it.

It's just a question of committee meetings.

As chair and others know, my September meetings were full.

We have one in December, and then we start off in January.

And I'm already setting up my 27 schedule, and this will be on there 110%.

And to Council Member Lynn, who makes a very good point about the executive ignoring the legislative branch, By the way, on this program, there's at least seven bills on top of the base surveillance ordinance that go to this program.

They're all law.

And then we had last year's budget law that talked about, you know, up, you know, with an additional nine FTEs for the real-time crime center, of which the executive did not follow, Councilmember Lin.

And that's the reason why later you'll see in the administrative office section, MO001SA, request the MO provide information on enforcement of city regulations, because by the way, it's not limited to SBD.

This is a bigger problem.

I mean, the mayor forced the removal of the chief of police and totally disregarded the city charter.

So we have a lot of things to work in this area.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Rinkt closes out.

Thank you Chair Strauss and thank you colleagues for your engagement on this topic and I'm glad to hear that there is agreement and desire to get the recommendations from the Office of the Inspector General incorporated and while we may disagree on approach and we're to go here I'm glad at least to hear that part.

I do want to note for the record just because it was raised by the Public Safety Chair that he and I did have conversations over the the past couple weeks about my intent to bring these forward.

We had worked on finalizing language and I understand that we had still been workshopping that and your office hadn't had a chance to see it, but I just want to be very clear on the record.

These should not have come as a surprise because of our previous conversations.

To that end, I want to thank again my co-sponsors on this, Council Members Lynn and Foster.

I hope others will agree that this is a way we could approach this.

I'll also note, since I have the floor right now, that I will be unfortunately having to log off right after this to go watch my friend get married.

And so Councilmember Lynn will be introducing and speaking on the following item on my behalf.

I want to thank you for that.

And colleagues, I ask for your support on this.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

If you would like to co-sponsor SPD 110, please raise your hand at this time.

Oh, I lost it.

I'm not seeing any additional co-sponsors at this time.

I've got up next SPD 111A.

Thank you, Mr.

Chair.

SPD 111A would proviso $100,000 in SPD for a consultant review of sexual assault, domestic violence, and commercial sexual exploitation investigations.

This would not change SPD's total appropriations.

It would redirect $100,000 from existing appropriations to this purpose.

and it's co-sponsored by Councilmember Lin and Councilmember Foster.

Thank you.

Seeing as Councilmember Rink has left for the day, Councilmember Lin, you're recognized.

Thank you, colleagues.

I'm gonna read a statement from Councilmember Rink.

Statement is, colleagues, this budget action imposes a proviso in the Seattle Police Department to hire a consultant who would review their investigative practices for sexual assault, domestic violence, and commercial sexual exploitation cases.

This review would provide information on whether there's a backlog in any of these case types and then recommend best practices for process improvements.

For some context, in 2022, an internal SPD memo reported that understaffing in the department led to the sexual assault unit to stop assigning new cases with adult victims.

The results of the memo led the mayor's office at that time to convene a panel of experts and victim survivors that recommended trauma-informed training, case reviews, and a published dashboard on sexual assault and domestic violence unit investigations.

This review would extend to domestic violence and commercial sexual exploitation cases and would assess current caseloads.

Councilmember Inc. views this as another piece of the Seattle Stands with Survivors Every Step effort.

She thanks me and Councilmember Foster as co-sponsors and asks for your support as she wants to ensure that survivors can seek justice and accountability.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle is chair of the committee overseeing the department.

Anything to add?

Thank you, Chair.

The text is new to me.

This is an area of interest and something that I've been working with Councilmember Rincon is gender-based violence.

I'm not sure if proviso is the correct way, but I do support the overall effort here.

And this is also an issue that highlights what happens when we lose so many sworn officers, when the specialty units have been pulled to basically down to zero and then for patrol and so forth.

And we still can't cover Little Saigon, North Aurora, and all the other places throughout the city that need covering.

And so this is what happens.

These specialty units are important.

and those related to gender-based violence is super important And so, in a sense, I support this overall effort.

My question regarding proviso, maybe Mr. Doss can speak to other options for this.

But overall, yes, I support this review of sexual assault, domestic violence, and commercial sexploitation, which combined make gender-based violence, because it's important to investigate these instances.

And this kind of goes to the work that Council Member Juarez and I have done with the City Attorney's Office, because it's really important.

And again, so I thank Council Member Rink for bringing this forward, again, just with the caveat of how best to do it.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion?

Any discussion?

Further discussion?

Any further discussion?

Any final discussion?

Any final discussion on SPD 111A?

Seeing no further discussion, if you'd like to co-sponsor SPD 111A, please raise your hand at this time.

Seeing no additional co-sponsors, we'll move on to SPD 113A.

SPD 113A would increase SPD by 825,000 in 2027 and 1.1 million in 2028 and seven FTE paralegal senior positions to serve as investigative support for the Criminal Investigation Bureau and would impose a proviso.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Sanka and Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, you're recognized.

Quickly, Chair, to get us back on time, all I'm going to say is that I almost want to say ditto.

This is another example.

This is an important area, Criminal Investigations Bureau.

We're halting ourself, unfunding, if you will, at 50%, and this makes a difference in terms of working through these investigations like we just talked about with the gender-based violence, and I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion?

Any discussion?

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle for putting these and some of the other ads we're going to talk about.

So I'll just say the ones that I've co-sponsored, you know, I agree with the underlying and then of course, concerns about how we're going to pay for this stuff.

But of course, these things are chartered responsibilities in terms of public safety or chartered public safety responsibilities.

So I support all of the underlying pieces and then obviously have concerns about how we're gonna pay for these things in this next biennium.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any additional conversation?

Any additional conversation?

Any final discussion?

Final discussion.

If you'd like to co-sponsor SPD 113A, please raise your hand at this time.

I'm seeing no additional co-sponsors at this time, so we will move on to SPD 114A.

SPD 114A would increase SPD by $383,000 in 2027 and $517,000 in 2028 to fund three civilian positions in the real-time crime center and impose a proviso.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle is the sponsor.

You're recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Just quickly to say that the Real-Time Crime Center is so important.

It helps our officers be better officers and improve public safety.

This is another example of unfunding, and with that, colleagues ask for your support.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion, any final discussion?

If you would like to co-sponsor SPD 114A, please raise your hand at this time.

Seeing no additional co-sponsors, we'll move on to SPD 115A.

SPD-115A would increase SPD by 825,000 general fund in 2027 and 1.1 million general fund in 2028. It would also increase revenue by the same amount in 27 and 28 and increase 9.0 FTE parking enforcement officer positions to return the PEO unit to historic staffing levels and impose a proviso.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

The sponsor, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

This is a budget neutral ad.

We need to hire more PEOs with the work that we have to do, particularly with the chairs now, RV legislation.

So I think these are important ads and it doesn't cost us anything.

So thank you.

Thank you, colleagues.

Council Member Catalyst, Chair of the Committee, anything to add?

Yes, just thanks, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Very important.

And it's also an example, again, where after years and years of departments ask for budget cuts, those areas that they don't see as their high priority are the ones that end up empty.

So when people talk about FTEs being empty for years and years, it's more to do with the budget process than anything else.

And I just want to thank Councilmember Rivera for this proposal.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Final discussion?

If you'd like to co-sponsor SPD-115A, please raise your hand at this time.

I have Council Member Juarez.

Howdy, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Moving on to SPD-116A.

SPD 116A would increase finance general by 1 million general fund in 2027 and 1 million general fund in 2028 and would be accompanied by an equal offset in the same amount of revenue to incentivize SPD to hire its vacant vacant parking enforcement officer positions.

Don't normally do a whole lot of background, but this one doesn't describe itself really well.

The idea here is that $1 million would be placed into Finance General that would be backed by ticket revenue should PEOs be hired and produce such revenue, in which case this could be transferred to SPD to help pay the PEO salaries.

Thank you, Mr. Das, as sponsor of the amendment, I will just ask a quick question here, which is if they are hired and they don't generate that ticket revenue, that's when it becomes, that's when we would have to use general fund.

Is that a generally correct understanding?

Over to you.

If they are hired and they don't create revenue, then yes, their positions would have to be backed by General Fund.

It is currently backed by General Fund in the existing budget for SPD, but SPD has been historically using that to fulfill a civilian salary savings obligation.

Thank you, Mr. Das.

The goal here is to have them make the hires that we have been asking them to make, not just this year because of new legislation, but we have been making these requests for many years and it's unfortunate that these dollars are being used for things that were for other purposes where we would like to have these parking enforcement officers hired, not because we want to have more tickets or have more enforcement on our streets, also because we don't want to overwork our employees who are doing very difficult jobs.

And as I said earlier, that people who get tickets are not usually happy.

And it is like, we are asking these parking enforcement officers to go out and have unhappy engagements with our public just to maintain our curb.

I mean, we see when cars are parked for a long time in places where there's paid parking, and it creates really difficult situations just for everyone to be able to use that street.

Paid parking is often used as a way to make sure that the parking is turning over so that everyone gets a chance to park there, not just a few people.

With that, Council Member Kettle as Chair of the Committee, you are recognized if you have anything to add.

Thank you, and this is a developing theme here in terms of the executive following through, and this is an interesting, clever, good way.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on this topic?

Any final discussion?

If you would like to co-sponsor SPD 116A, please raise your hand at this time.

I see Council Member Juarez, Saka, Rivera.

Council Members Juarez, Sacca, and Rivera.

Thank you.

We're going to move on to SPD 117 .

SPD 117 would proviso $4.1 million general fund in SPD for the Technology Assisted Crime Prevention Program.

The proviso would simply say that $4.1 million is appropriated solely for the use of SPD to execute its Technology Crime Assisted Prevention Program.

and may be spent for no other purpose.

The amount coincides with the amount that XPD expects to spend on this function.

It is co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Councilmember Lin.

Thank you.

Councilmember Saka, you are recognized.

Thank you.

For 17?

We are on-oh, I'm sorry.

Councilmember Kettle, you are recognized.

I was happy to have Councilmember Saka speak to this, but this is important.

In the last number of years, we had provisals related to SBD salaries for good reason, although that's changed dynamic now.

But the 4.1 is a significant amount of money, and again, going back to the theme of the day in terms of the executive follow-through, we wanted to make sure that this money was not than spent somewhere else, because it's important related to the tech program and encompassing the real-time crime center, the CCTV program, and the automatic license plate reader program as well, ALPR.

And colleagues, I ask for your support.

And by the way, I very much thank Council Member Saka and in this case, Council Member Lynn for your support.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Collie.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I just want to clarify one thing.

I mean, earlier we were talking about, you know, recommendations from the OIG, which it's not clear whether there will be any cost implications to any of those in terms of operations.

But part of, just want to say, part of my thinking in terms of making sure that these funding stay with the with this program is to ensure that there is funding to implement any additional recommendations from the OIG to make sure that those privacy protections are in place.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Let the record reflect.

Councilmember Kettle gave a thumbs up.

Any other comments?

Any other discussion?

Any final discussion?

If you would like to co-sponsor SPD 117A, please raise your hand at this time.

I have Councilmember Rivera.

Adding Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you.

Sorry, the rows on my sheet are very tiny in this section.

We've got, up next, SPD 119 S.A.

SPD 119 S.A.

would request that SPD complete a surveillance impact report for the potential of adding CCTV cameras at the Seattle Center.

It's sponsored by Councilmember Saka and co-sponsored by Councilmember Rivera and Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you.

Councilmember Saka, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, Seattle Center is where our city gathers.

Families should be able to attend a major festival without wondering whether basic public safety tools are in place.

This proposal moves us toward major event safety cameras with strong privacy protections and clear public accountability.

at the Bight of Seattle shooting, three people were tragically killed and four injured, including a two-year-old.

SPD later asked, indeed, nay, begged the public for video evidence to help facilitate their investigation.

The police chief told this counsel, that CCTV technology could help deter violence in crowded spaces and help investigate violence once it occurs.

Deterrence and investigation.

By the way, deterrence is a distinct but complementary concept to prevention.

He said deterrence.

This is not a gun violence prevention strategy.

I call these major event safety cameras because the stakes change dramatically when thousands gather.

Major events hosts have urged CCTV technology in high event areas such as this, and polling found broad public support.

The slide directs completion of the required surveillance impact report by March 1st, including privacy, equity, and community impacts.

It positions council to evaluate a 31-camera concept next year.

Privacy and public safety are not mutually exclusive.

This review is how we carefully examine and quickly pursue both.

And finally, I'll note that this lie obviously reflects an important policy decision.

Make no mistake about it.

Policy decision, important one.

I will also note that doing nothing is also a policy choice.

And after what happened at the bite, It's not an acceptable one, from my perspective.

I want to thank my co-sponsors, Public Safety Committee Chair Kettle and Councilmember Rivera for your co-sponsorship, thought partnership in this, and ask for your support.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Sokka.

Councilmember Kettle, anything to add at this time?

First, thank you, Chair.

I just want to thank Councilmember Saka for this proposal.

This is something that, again, 2027 is pretty much booked up.

I talk about major venues, major events.

We have to do a security review, and part of that is CCTV cameras.

And the rationalization between major venues, major events, CCTV cameras is different than the original set that we have, which is based on crime data.

But it's really important because of the size of the events, number of people and so forth, and the visibility is something that we need to address.

So I thank Council Member Saka for bringing this forward and it's definitely going to be folded into the work that we do together over the course of 2027. Thank you, Chair.

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any final discussion?

If you'd like to co-sponsor SPD 119 SA, please raise your hand at this time.

I see Councilmember Juarez.

Adding Councilmember Juarez.

Thank you.

That does conclude our Seattle Police Department section.

Mr. Das, as always, thank you very much.

Colleagues, we are now tracking to complete at 4.30 if we remain on course with our average amount of time.

So we've reduced our time by 20 minutes, but If we keep talking like I'm doing right now, that'll get worse again.

So I'm gonna shut up and turn it over to CARE001.

Mr. Tommaso, good to see you.

Once again, Tommaso Johnson, Council of Central Staff.

CARE1A, this budget action would increase CARE by $2.3 million in general fund in 2027 and the same amount in 2028. for community crisis responder staffing to fund 14 CCR positions.

These positions are currently vacant, and these are the positions that are proposed to be vacancy cuts in the mayor's 2027-2028 budget.

This is sponsored by Chair Strauss, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Lynn and Rank.

Thank you Mr. Johnson as sponsor of the proposal.

I'll speak to it colleagues as I have been going through this budget more and more in depth every day that we have gone simply and in part because I have to find additional revenue for us to use to fund the you know all of the proposals that we're putting forward here.

The more and more cuts that I am finding across this budget to existing programs I am very concerned that the cuts in this budget are going to stop the positive momentum that we have going on in the city.

And in this case, it has been long desired for us to have, and this will be the last time you'll hear me call police alternatives, but coming out of 2020, people asked for police alternatives.

What I call this now is 911 responses.

Do we want appropriate 911 responses or not?

If we are not funding these positions, we are in fact undercutting the momentum that we are building.

That is not something that I'm interested in.

While at this point, I have to go $2.3 million each year is quite a bit of money to locate within this budget.

I can't not have this conversation today.

We can't lose momentum in addressing public safety.

Councilmember Kettle is not on the dais at this moment and so I will open it up for general discussion.

Is there any general discussion on CARE 1A?

Seeing no general discussion.

Do you want Council Member Kettle returning?

Do you want to say anything about CARE 1A or we'll just keep moving?

We're going to keep on moving.

So if you would like to co-sponsor CARE 1A, please raise your hand at this time.

And I've got Council Member Hollingsworth joining.

Adding Council Member Hollingsworth and Council Member Kettle.

Thank you kindly.

We're going to move on to CARE 2SA.

CARE 2SA is a statement of legislative intent that would require request CARE report on implementation updates to the Mayor's Gun Violence Plan.

This report will be due to the Council by March 31st, sponsored by Council President Hollingsworth, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Juarez and Kettle.

Thank you, Council President Hollingsworth.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Chair, and I apologize I'm not in chambers.

I had a family emergency, so I really appreciate the flexibility to Zoom in.

Colleagues, I want to thank Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Kettle for their co-sponsorship.

This slide, what this does is the mayor's office has announced a gun violence prevention plan and this just helps get some more details to that plan.

So my intention with this statement of legislative intent is to extract and make public the details of the plan, but including and not limited to progress and completed components, the planned work for 2027, How gun violence program deliverables and metrics align or differ across city funded programs List of all gun violence prevention intervention investments How the executive attends to evaluate success of the plan How the executive attends to design the plan such as it meets specific needs of the demographics as well Some stats and we know that, and I've talked about this as well, stats disproportionately impacting communities and wanting to make sure that they're within the plan that the mayor has addressed.

that we actually have tangible goals, measurable goals, and also that we can track success and we are not just throwing something out.

Because right now we have to, you know, really have a coordinated approach.

We know that contracts were moved to care.

We understand that there are, we have, you know, things that we're supporting at council that will help with gun violence prevention.

But how does this all play in place?

You know, we can throw as much money as we want at things, but I think having a detailed plan and metrics and know what the measurable goals are is going to be important for us to continue to address gun violence.

There are other cities that have implemented different metrics.

Every city is different.

Seattle, we're going to be very specific and different in ours.

But I think it's important that we have a detailed plan of implementation so the the public can track it and we can know that we're hitting our goals.

Thank you colleagues and I ask you for your support and thank you Councilmember Kettle and Juarez for your support on this.

Thank you Council Member, Council President Hollingsworth, Council Member Kettle, anything to add at this time?

Just that I thank the Council President for her work here and this is about folding in like what we've been doing already, working with the executive, incorporating the work of Council Member Rivera as course.

and I think that we can move forward on this working in partnership with the executive and this is another major area for the 27 work plan.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on this item?

Further discussion on this item?

Final discussion on this item?

If you would like to co-sponsor CARE 2SA, please raise your hand at this time.

We have everyone other than Councilmember Rank, unless she is already a co-sponsor.

No, she is not a co-sponsor, everyone but Councilmember Rank.

Okay.

And all right, moving forward.

And that's not because she doesn't want to, it's just because she's not here.

Moving on to CARE 3A.

CARE 3A would proviso $250,000 general fund in CARE for gun violence technical assistance.

This would be specific to technical assistance from local subject matter experts.

And this proviso is sponsored by Councilmember Lin, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Rink and Foster.

Thank you, Councilmember Lin.

You are recognized.

Thank you, colleagues, and thank you for all the attention that we're all providing on addressing the terrible gun violence in our community.

I think there can be multiple truths.

So as I think about District 2, which I love dearly, and the incredible people of District 2 and the incredible hard work of District 2. I was at a community meeting just earlier this week.

We have monthly meetings with the community.

We have weekly meetings with SPS and CVI and SPD.

and the community is really coming together.

Hearing from Captain Tuttle, who has been working in SPD for decades, she has said that she has never seen the community working as closely together as we have this past year, and unfortunately it started off with a tragedy.

We still have too much gun violence, but shots fired have been significantly reduced in South Precinct, and that's a sign of that hard work.

That being said, we can always use more help, we can always use more expertise, and there's certainly, I think, things that we could be doing better in our CVI work, including some of our contracting practices that have been a little bit difficult to navigate.

The one thing that is clear to me is that we have to work together.

And I know that later on, we're gonna be talking about Council Member Rivera, your proposal for contracting with the National Network for Safe Communities, which I supported the resolution and we'll be supporting your work later.

This budget provides though is really meant to compliment that work.

You know, currently in the mayor's budget, there is $464,000 for 2027 in the gun violence and care, in gun violence prevention, for program audits, evaluation, design, and implementation and technical assistance.

This proviso would ensure that $250,000 for local CVI organizations and implementation to ensure that there's a complementary funding to implement any recommendations of NNSC.

Our local CVI partners are already stretched thin and doing really good work.

and it's gonna be a heavy lift to ask them to show up and to provide feedback and then implement a new focused deterrence model.

And so I just wanna make sure that there are the resources set aside to compliment any recommendations from the NNSE and that's why I brought this forward.

Colleagues, I would encourage your support and thank you to my co-sponsors, Rink and Foster.

Thank you, Council Member Lynn, Council Member Kettle, anything to add?

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to, as a retired Navy guy, I can still use this term even though it's overused right now, but this is an all-hands-on-deck kind of effort that we need related to gun violence, and I thank Councilmember Lin for his work.

along with all our colleagues and it reminds me too that we had a bill this summer related to care and alternative response and the gun violence piece was already in there and we did not touch it because we wanted to set ourselves up for the next step and this is what we're doing and what I love as chair of the committee is that this next step is being informed and supported in so many different ways than it may not have been otherwise.

Now sadly, it's because of tragedy helped push that, but I think the end result, baking in all these different pieces will get us to a better place with better stakeholder buy-in across the board.

So I'm thankful for the work of all my colleagues, but also the community, as kind of noted here, it's really important to bring everyone together and to get that buy-in because at the end of the day, that's what we need moving forward.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, colleagues.

Any other discussion?

Any other discussion?

Final discussion?

I'm gonna call for co-sponsors.

If you would like to co-sponsor CARE 3A, please raise your hand at this time.

Seeing no additional co-sponsors, I'm gonna move on to CARE 4SA.

CARE 4SA is a statement of legislative intent requesting report from CARE on details of the mayor's gun violence plan.

I just would say to differentiate this from the earlier slide that we heard on a similar topic, this is intended to be sort of a year-end implementation update.

It would be due to the Public Safety Committee on December 1st.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Lynn, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Kettle and Rink.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Lin, you're recognized.

Thank you, colleagues.

Yeah, there is certainly some overlap between the earlier SLI asking for a report on the mayor's gun violence plan.

There are certain parts of here that, in particular, We want to make sure that we are standardizing and treating our approach to gun violence with our CVI partners, treating them as professionals, but also coming up with standard language, standing training protocols, and, you know, addressing our contracting process, which again has been difficult at times.

And so we want to make sure that as we come up as we implement this new gun violence plan that we're getting this report on how we are working with our partners and I would encourage your support and thank you to colleagues Kettle and Rink for co-sponsoring.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, anything to add at this time?

Nothing, again, looking forward to working, again, to do so in partnership with the executive and specifically CARE Department.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Further discussion?

Any final discussion?

Any final discussion?

I'm gonna call for co-sponsors on CARE 4SA.

Would you like to, if you'd like to co-sponsor, please raise your hand at this time.

I have Council Member Juarez, Saka Foster.

Council members Suarez, Saka, and Foster.

Thank you.

Moving on to CARE 6A.

CARE 6A, this budget action would increase CARE by $293,000 in 2020 general fund in both 2027 and then $296,000 general fund in 2028 and add 2.0 FTE 911 dispatcher one positions.

for non-emergency call takers and impose a proviso stating that these dollars should be used to prioritize staffing the non-emergency call line.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Saka and Kettle.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Kettle and Saka for co-sponsoring.

And also, writ large, thank you to all the folks that- all my colleagues that co-sponsored all the CBAs that I put in because I know in some cases I've forgotten to thank you, so I want to thank you publicly at large.

This one is my third go around with putting in the last two years.

I believe it was provisos last year.

It was definitely a proviso on some positions to do the make sure we have capacity to answer the 911 non-emergency line.

This is really important.

Folks call the non-emergency line.

and in some cases they're waiting up to 30 minutes to get a response.

Things have gotten better over since with your support.

I've been adding this into the CARES budget.

Like I said, last year was a proviso.

This year I just, and it was for last year that I provisoed this year because I know they've lost some positions with this budget.

rather than do a proviso, I'm asking for an increase of two positions rather than four.

I just want to make sure we have continued to have capacity to answer this non-emergency line.

And just to be really clear how this works is though these are dedicated to the non-emergency line, they're kind of dedicated-ish because if they are needed for the emergency 911 line, they will be used for that purpose.

So they're a little bit like floaters.

but it does do a good job in ensuring that there's some capacity for that non-emergency line.

And I've heard good feedback from constituents when they do call the line that it gets answered.

There are in some cases, some outliers where it has not gotten answered timely, but for the most part, the feedback I've been getting is good to this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle, anything to add?

Just to thank Council Member Rivera for doggedness on this topic, and again, it reinforces a theme that I wasn't expecting at the beginning of today, but in terms of the follow-up and follow-through, thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion?

Any final discussion?

Any final discussion?

If you would like to co-sponsor CARE 6A, please raise your hand at this time.

Council Member Juarez, Hollingsworth, Lynn.

Council Members Juarez, Hollingsworth, Lynn.

Thank you.

We're going to go to CARE 7SA.

CARE 7SA, this is a statement of legislative intent that would request reporting from the CARE Department on various aspects of LEAD and co-LEAD programming.

This would require a report or request, I should say, a report to the Public Safety Committee by April 1st.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, co-sponsored by Councilmember Saka and Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Tommaso.

And I should have thanked you for the last one.

Thanks for your help on these colleagues.

This is just another reporting similar to what I put in on the UCT.

This one is for lead and co-lead.

It's really important.

We, you know, we robustly make investments to both those programs and we want to make sure that we're getting information back on things like operating definition of active participants in programming and analysis of an overlap or duplicative services provided by the Seattle City Attorney's Office Connection Court program.

Sometimes there's that overlap.

How does that work?

A description of communication protocols with SPD if a participant proves to be unreachable.

How does that work?

A description of outreach, engagement and communication protocols with enrolled participants, including how frequently participants are expected to have contact with staff, description of the standard outreach process and scheduling, metrics on annual number of participants who've completed substance use treatment, number of participants with prior records who did not re-offend or have additional police contact for 12 months, in essence other reporting requirements to help us know that, you know, these programs are really helping the folks that we are intending to help that are getting diverted and that they are indeed getting connected to services including treatment because they're not going to be successful if they don't get connected to the treatment.

So it's reporting mechanisms of that kind rather than just a number of people that might be enrolled in the program.

We want to know that these people are doing better because that's the point.

So that's what this reporting is supposed to do.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Kettle, anything to add?

Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

You know, one of the challenges that we see on our streets, you know, it's been seemingly chronic, and in a step-by-step process, first we had PDA, Purpose, Dignity, and Action, that contract's taken from the Human Services Department and brought to care, and we did this purposely because to bring it into the public safety realm, because it is to let everyone live in dignity, but it's also law enforcement assisted diversion.

And so it's important for us to do this, and again, this goes straight to the scene in terms of that interface between traditional public safety and the other areas is working well.

and with that oversight, we will be, and then on top of that, the work that we did this year with the Public Drug Use and Possession Bill, really important to get the data sets that we need.

And so I will work with Councilmember Rivera here.

There's 12 and quarterly, so there's some committee challenges as you've been hearing this afternoon.

Our calendar's gonna be full in 27, but I will work with Councilmember Rivera to effectuate the and the oversight and the work that we need to do to ensure that law enforcement assisted diversion is done well and with the co-lead piece as well that we really, and other community solutions, all these different programs that we're working forward to create better conditions on our street.

And I also want to take the opportunity, because I didn't say so, but in my community, Mr. Johnson here right now, earlier Ms. Gorman was here, but for a different purpose, but with fire, and of course Mr. Doss, I really appreciate the team that central staff has given to us on public safety, and so I just want to take this opportunity as the last of at least the dedicated areas for my committee.

So thank you, Mr. Woodson and Mr. John.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Council Member Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

I have a couple questions for central staff, if that's OK.

Just wondering how this reporting differs from existing reporting we get on the lead, co-lead programs.

Mr. Johnson?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I would say, without going into each one of the 12 enumerated requests in this slide, some aspects of this information have been reported in committee at varying points in time or are contained in some of the information is likely that the contractor reports to the department in the course of contract oversight, but I'm not aware that any of this has been provided in one place at one time, and if some of the information has been provided In the past, it may not be current state up-to-date because there may have been reporting or operational aspects that have changed slightly, specifically with the contract changeover from HST to CARE.

I know that was partially the intent, right, is to sort of firm up some of the reporting.

So I hope that goes some way to answering your question, Councilmember.

Councilmember Lin?

Thank you.

One more question.

In particular, just curious about Section 11, says comparison of lead participants to a statistically matched group of individuals arrested for similar charges.

That sounds important, but I'm just wondering how we would go about that.

Do we have that data?

Would we need to hire somebody to get this data for us?

Any ideas?

Mr. Johnson?

I'm not sure that we have the data.

It's possible that we do.

It's possible.

I could anticipate it potentially requiring some interdepartmental coordination that I expect the mayor's office would provide to the department in terms of response to this slide.

Thank you.

Councilor Merlin, you still have the floor.

Thank you, Chair.

Just overall, certainly support getting, understanding the effectiveness of lead and co-lead.

I think that's critically important.

Just a little bit concerned about the wide scope of the requirements here and how often they have to be compiled and whether the care department or any department is gonna have all of this data and how it's gonna be done.

So just concerned about potentially the cost.

And I know that you've mentioned in general, at some point we need to figure out the cost of all of these.

And since there isn't a dollar figure for some of these, but this one, I'm just concerned about the cost.

Thank you, colleagues.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle, I see you've got a new hand, so I'm gonna call on you and then call on Council Member Rivera to close this out.

Yes, thanks, Chair.

I just wanted to note, I appreciate Councilmember Lin's points, and that kind of goes to coordinating the committee work on the various pieces to ensure that we're set, working with Councilmember Rivera on these pieces.

And I should add, too, that I know we're requesting CARE to report, that's the title, but CARE has always been coming to committee.

I've not had any issues of CARE.

I can get PDA here to speak to this.

in addition to getting SPD, the other elements of our committee to come to committee.

And so I think this is something that, you know, to Council Members Lynn's point, I'll coordinate with Council Member Rivera to ensure that we can make the various pieces fit from, you know, what's being asked, but also scheduling to ensure that we're good.

So I make that commitment as Chair of Public Safety.

So thank you, Council Member Lynn.

And again, thank you, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera, anything to close us out?

Chair, you know, between LEAD and co-lead, the city invests about $20 million or close to, if not exactly that.

Yeah, and Tommaso's nodding.

So to me, this is a large investment, and I don't think this is a lot of information to ask.

And I will say, while I appreciate the PDA, and they certainly have been responsive when I reach out to them, the information we're getting back from them is sparse, to be honest.

And so to me, it is really important for us to get, if we're making this level of investment, I want to know that people are actually getting help, not just on a list that they might or may not check in with every, I don't even know how often they check in with folks, but that people who are on that list are actually connected to the services that they need to be successful because otherwise what are we doing with $20 million?

So to me, I don't think this is too much to ask.

If there's something on this list that they're not able to answer, we can work with them on that.

And I appreciate Councilmember Kettle, you've always been very proactive with the departments to make sure that they get the information that we need by which to make policy decisions.

to meet this is really important information that we need and it is not at all meant to be.

It is meant in the spirit of we need to know how well folks are doing so that we so that we know and have information by which we whether we need to make changes so that folks are actually helped because that's the point of all of this investment.

Thank you chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, if you'd like to co-sponsor CARE 7SA, please raise your hand at this time.

I am seeing Council Member Juarez adding her hand.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Johnson, for walking us through the CARE Department proposals.

Always appreciate your analysis here.

And we have 13 CBAs left, proposals left to do.

If we are using the 6.8 minute average that I was using earlier, that brings us to about 245, 240, I mean 445 or 440. So we are edging a little bit in the wrong direction for our Google Maps, but we've still got some time.

We're joined by Tom Mikesell.

We're going into CBO items and Tom, if you could do CBO 2A and 3SA at the same time, that would be helpful just because they're pretty similar.

Or is it Eden?

Eden, you're taking over?

Tom just joined us at the table.

Eden, take us away, please.

Good afternoon, and this is Council and Chancellor's staff.

CBO 2A is this Council budget action would increase proposed appropriations to the City Budget Office by $150,000 general fund in 2027 to hire an independent consultant to evaluate the feasibility of creating a fire protection district in Seattle.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Strauss and co-sponsored by Councilmembers Hollingsworth and Councilmember Juarez.

and the other council budget action, CBO3SA, is a statement of legislative intent that requests that the executive begin the planning analysis and preliminary work necessary for the city to evaluate the potential implementation of a fire benefit charge.

And this is sponsored by Council Member Strauss and co-sponsored by Council Member Hollingsworth and Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, and I will just say these two items here do two things.

One, we have many different jurisdictions throughout the state that have fire benefit districts.

Some are more complex and some are less complex.

Many of them combine a number of different current agencies.

a number of them form an agency out of nothing.

Our issue here is that we already have one agency, we're not combining, we're not creating a new one, but we would be changing how the operations and funding cycles would work.

I wanna be really clear after the experience this year, I believe that it will take us three to five years to figure all of this work out and that it is important to start now in our original conversations about City staff beginning to develop a fire benefit charge.

The response we received is it would take them two years to complete.

And so that is the importance of starting now.

Colleagues, you may or may not know a fire benefit charge would allow us to charge a different fee for commercial, industrial, vacant or residential.

There are a lot of benefits of having a fire district.

There are some drawbacks.

I think it all just needs to be weighed and that's why hiring or at least paying somebody who has been through this already to give us advice and analysis would be helpful.

I just wanna be clear with folks here that this is not a one year This is not a one-year project, this is a multi-year project, and that's part of the importance of starting now.

Councilmember Kettle, since this essentially falls under your committee jurisdiction, if you've got anything to add, I'll call on you.

Nothing further to add, thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion on this item?

Any final discussion?

I'll just close us out with saying in my time as budget chair and in the city government for the last nine years, what I have seen is that programs and departments that have dedicated funding don't receive cuts because they have dedicated funds.

I think that's just something that I've seen across the board.

And just to have the conversation this year about reduced overtime, not having our fire boat maintained to a level that it is operational.

These are, you know, last year we were talking about how some of our maintenance staff and our automobile workers down at Charles Street Garage weren't being paid enough.

We weren't able to hire them.

They weren't able to maintain our fire engines.

I mean, all of this stuff, it all comes back to, are we supporting our fire department to keep us safe or not?

and that would be a benefit of the fire district just to ensure that they have dedicated funding that can't get cut by an incoming mayor.

With that, colleagues, if you would like to co-sponsor, I'm gonna do the consultant first, CBO 2A.

If you'd like to co-sponsor, please raise your hand at this time.

Seeing no co-sponsor, oh, Council Member Kettle, you wanna jump on?

Yep, adding Council Member Kettle to CBO 2A.

Adding Council Member Kettle.

and then we're gonna go the evaluating pathways to implement the fire benefit charge within the city.

CBO3SA, if you'd like to co-sponsor, raise your hand at this time.

Council Member Kettlesaka-Lynn.

Adding Council Members Kettlesaka-Lynn and I believe also Council Member Rivera.

And Rivera, sorry, I'm just ticking away, trying to get our Google Map time down.

With that, we'll move on to CBO5A.

CBO 5A, this council budget action would increase appropriations in the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, the Department of Neighborhoods, Office of Economic Development, and the Seattle Police Department by a total of $1.2 million in 2027. And it would also restore position authority for a total of 13 FTEs to support the six month continuation of 13 positions that are otherwise subject to layoff due to the city's budget crunch.

Thank you and colleagues as the sponsor of this proposal, I'll speak to it, which is we've had a number of proposals to retain the city staff that the mayor has proposed to lay off.

I will be taking another look even at the positions that were not proposed.

I'll be taking a look at that this coming weekend during the chair's balancing package.

For any position that we are not able to retain here at the city, I am proposing that we keep them on and I might change it to seven months, but six to seven months making sure that we are not laying off our city workers in the holiday season in the darkest part of the year with only three months notice.

I find that to be disrespectful of the service that they have provided, not only to our city family, also the service that they have provided to all residents and people who work, play or learn in the city of Seattle.

And so if I'm not able to save their jobs, I'm at least gonna give them another six to seven months to be able to either find a new job, maybe they become retirement age.

We gotta support our workers.

I mean, for the decision makers that work in City Hall, we make decisions when we collaborate or we are in competition depends on the choices of the individuals, but it's the city workers who are doing the work every day for Seattleites and it's you that we have to serve to the best of our abilities.

Colleagues, any further discussion on this one?

I'm seeing no further discussion.

If you'd like to co-sponsor CBO 5A, please raise your hand at this time.

Seeing no additional co-sponsors, we're gonna move on to CBO 5SA.

Hello, Jennifer LeBrec, central staff, CBO5SA would request a report from CBO regarding how wage equity and inflationary adjustments are applied to city contracts for human services or other similar types of direct services, including for contracts outside of the human services department.

The sponsors are council member Foster, council member Lynn and council member Rink.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster has sponsored the proposal you are recognized.

Thank you so much chair and colleagues I apologize for not being out there if you have a minor health issue so continuing the rest of the day from my office as we just heard Jen say and thank you so much Jen for your work and thank you to my co-sponsors the intent behind the CBO is to get a better understanding of the different kinds of contracts across the city that relate to human services Councilman Berlin put forward a proposal earlier around our wage equity approach and it's my understanding we have a few contracts in different departments that are similar in nature, however they are not within HSD.

And so the intent here is to get an appropriate accounting of those contracts and understand our current approach to wage equity so that we have a more holistic picture and can then have a more holistic response.

So with that, colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on this item?

Any additional conversation?

If you would like to co-sponsor CBO5SA, please raise your hand at this time.

Council President Hollingsworth adding her name.

Adding Council Member Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Well, I guess the 6.8 minutes was not an accurate reflection of how quickly we are moving.

We're moving right on to CBO100SA.

I think there's one in between.

Right, sorry.

Yep, CBO 6SA.

Jennifer Labreck helping me out every day of the week.

This is CBO 6SA.

It would request a plan from CBO on appropriating 50% of annual JumpStart revenue to housing and the Equitable Development Initiative with that goal to be fully achieved by 2035 at the latest.

And it is sponsored by Council Member Foster, Council Member Lynn and Council Member Rink.

Thank you, Council Member Foster's sponsor of the proposal you are recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you, colleagues, for co-sponsoring this legislation.

We're going to talk in a little bit about some of my proposals for fiscal sustainability.

From my perspective, this is related to that as it's intended to help us get a better sort of long-term plan.

So, colleagues, as you all know, we have the Jumpstart legislation, and over the years, The resources from Jumpstart have started to shift.

So in 2022, 2023 and 2024, a total of 50% of Jumpstart revenue went to affordable housing and EDI programs.

Due to a variety of needs, that number has shifted and the current budget proposal has 35% of Jumpstart revenue allocated to those needs.

This slide requests that the executive develop a plan to get back to the initial allocation and consider it and consistently appropriate 50% of annual Jumpstart revenue for production, operations and preservation of affordable housing through the Office of Housing.

and also to the equitable development initiative in OPCD.

The concept put forward here is for the plan to address how in different scenarios, including one where there is new revenue and one where there is not, would impact our approach to reaching this goal.

We request that the plan that is provided in response shows us how we can do this by the year 2035. That is what I'm excited to put forward today with this request and colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Ms. LeBrecq, I was just curious or Mr. Mike Sell can speak to, obviously this council has changed it over the last couple of years.

Can you speak to the changes that this council approved to the payroll expense tax and why those changes were made?

Tom, do you want me to take that, or do you want to take that?

Yeah.

For the record, Tom Mikesell is council central staff.

So since the beginning, the initial jumpstart payroll expense tax was deposited in the general fund, and then there was a council change to create the jumpstart payroll expense tax fund to house those revenues.

From the beginning, there was a spend plan where there were percentages for key priority areas that were established in that jumpstart fund model.

However, given the ongoing pressures from economic pressures, pressures coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was always a need to divert some portion of that fund towards the general fund for backfill, to backfill the general fund expenses.

Most recent change in light of that kind of ongoing pressure to continue to backfill the general fund and never completely fulfill the jumpstart spending categories, there was a change two years ago to kind of re-envision the jumpstart fund policy such that those strict guidelines and percentages were now, they were revised from strict percentages to get funding guidelines in that policy.

And also, the general fund was added as general fund type expenses was added as an eligible use of those revenues.

And so, just to kind of provide an overview, over time, strict percentages were replaced with guidelines and additional flexibility was added to the Jumpstart Fund to the point now where the Jumpstart Fund and the general fund are essentially both general purpose with regards to funding governmental programs.

Chair, can I ask a follow-up?

And so that flexibility, which is really important, plus the reserve, I don't think you spoke to that, I think are reflections of good governance in terms of what we're trying to do with our budget process.

So thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

I'll just opine that Jumpstart is bringing in over twice as much revenue as was originally projected when the bill was passed.

And so if we were going to allocate 50% of it, we would be allocating 100% of what the original projections were.

I'll also say that it was intended to be a bridge during the downstream economic impacts of COVID-19 until we were back as a growing city again.

Those downstream impacts from COVID have lasted much longer than we expected.

Again, our structural budget deficit would be lower if our city had any more construction projects, had any more civic construction projects, if the downtown office space had returned, a number of other factors of economic growth.

If that was growing right now, our downstream or our structural budget deficit would be smaller.

And when Jumpstart was originally passed, these ideals, in my opinion, were really set out to say, once we've gotten past COVID, what should this funding be?

I will state today, I don't believe that we are past the downstream economic impacts of COVID-19 and I was sure surprised to see how the mayor decided to use the jumpstart funds after receiving public comment from her for many years that we should do nothing other than the originally outlined goals to see how it is used today.

in many places it is an accurate use to keep bridging us as we're suffering through these downstream economic impacts.

I'm not taking issue with that.

I just say all of this to give full context as one of the two people who was here.

Council Member Kettle, hold hand.

Council Member Foster, lots of discussion.

You wanna close this out?

Thank you so much, Chair.

Yeah, just a few closing comments.

Thank you for that.

And as you know, I share your interest in ensuring that we are jump-starting housing production here in the city for both the market and affordable housing.

I do just want to clarify, this proposal does not change the SMC in terms of the feedback and the conversation that we just had today.

So this is not that.

This is a request for a plan to give us options for how we can achieve this 50% split.

The other thing I do want to clarify here is, and I appreciate especially my colleagues who have been here for a long time or were here and came back, I do just want to again sort of reiterate that for 2022, 2023, and 2024, we were reaching 50%.

Oftentimes, I think there's sort of a discussion around the 60% or the 62% that was in the original, that some of the advocates will refer back to.

Instead, I've taken an approach here for 50%, which reflects what was sort of a previous achievable goal.

And again, I'll reiterate that the request is to get to 50% over a nine-year period into 2035. So with all of those things, colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, if you'd like to co-sponsor CBO 6SA, please raise your hand at this time.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Adding Council Member Juarez.

Thank you, moving on to CBO, now CBO 100SA.

CBO 100 SA is a request that CBO study and report on approaches to provide business and occupation tax deductions for businesses that hire at-risk youth, persons within or coming out of the carceral system and those in or exiting homelessness, sponsored by Councilmember Lin with co-sponsors Foster and Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lin, you are recognized.

Colleagues, first of all I want to thank co-sponsors Foster and Hollingsworth.

I am really excited about, as I was mentioning earlier, The number one thing I'm hearing from my community, especially as it relates to youth, is the need for jobs.

And as I think about, of course we want jobs across the spectrum, but how do we make sure that those in our community that face additional barriers, that don't have the same social networks and connections, that they also have a fair shot at these jobs.

So this would request the CBO to study and report on approaches to providing a B&O tax deduction for businesses that hire certain targeted demographics.

that could be at-risk youth, youth at risk of gun violence, youth at risk of sexual trafficking for persons exiting the carceral system or those exiting homelessness.

This is partially inspired by programs like the Downtown Seattle Ambassadors or our own Seattle Parks program that hires folks who were previously homeless and what we see out of those programs is those employees are incredibly effective but they just needed some of those initial barriers to be lowered because, again, certain folks in our community face additional barriers to getting full employment.

We also hear from our businesses that taxes are too high and so this could in an ideal scenario really be a partnership with our businesses, be a way to get money, not only money in the pockets of those who need it most, but also make sure they're getting those skills, those connections, the sense of community that comes with employment, and with that again it's just requesting CBO study on how to implement a deduction.

The idea would be perhaps you know you get a deduction of a certain amount of the wages that would be provided.

Obviously we would need to define which categories, how would you to find who would be eligible for this deduction.

And then anticipate there would be sort of a pilot program with a max.

This would have an impact if we did implement this program.

There would clearly be an impact to our revenues, but I think this would be money sort of well spent or well not collected.

Colleagues would encourage your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further conversation?

Council Member Juarez, is that a hand for sponsorship or hand for conversation?

No, that's an old hand.

I apologize.

No problem at all.

Just trying to read the room.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Man, I guess my Google Maps really scared everyone.

We are seeing no further discussion.

I will call for co-sponsors on CBO 100 SA.

I have council member Saka.

Adding council member Saka.

Thank you kindly.

We are now moving into second to last zone.

We have two, the next two items, ledge item one and ledge item two are nearly identical with a small difference.

And so what I'm gonna have Tom Mikesell do is explain them both at once and then I'll call on council member Foster followed by council member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

As you've indicated, these two items are substantively identical.

They each would require the executive, so this is a proposal for budget legislation that would require the executive budget proposals to include balanced six-year financial plans for the general fund and the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

And one instance is sponsored by Councilmember Foster with co-sponsors Lynn and Councilmember Rink.

The other instance is sponsored by Councilmember Kettle with co-sponsors Strauss and Councilmember Rivera.

And Tom, can you just, in a key takeaway style, tell us the difference between these two proposals?

They are substantively identical.

Completely.

There's no difference?

No difference.

In any way?

All right.

Council Member Foster and then Council Member Cattle.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And I have to say, so happy to see so much support across these two proposals for long-term fiscal sustainability.

And Chair, I've talked about this before during this process, and I'll speak about this a little bit more as we go into my second proposal here related to Council Budget Sustainability.

But I really appreciate the role that you play as Budget Chair, holding together a lot of different and I would say incredibly important priorities.

So, colleagues, from my perspective, fiscal sustainability isn't about balancing a budget just for today.

It's about ensuring that we can continue to deliver essential services for Seattle residents in the long term.

The two pieces of budget legislation that I am sponsoring are focused on ensuring that we have that long-term planning for both the executive and for the council.

Speaking to the piece of legislation that's in front of us right now, which is focused on the executive, I want to appreciate my colleagues who were here last year when council established a requirement for the mayor to present balanced future year financial plans for the general fund and jumpstart.

That requirement was a one-time only requirement that applied to the 2027 proposed budget.

So the legislation I'm proposing today makes this a permanent requirement and requires six-year financial planning rather than it coming down just one budget at a time.

It also requires that the mayor to identify the spending categories and amounts associated with projected reductions or increases so that both Council and the public can understand how future balance would be achieved.

Colleagues, I think this is incredibly important, even with so many competing priorities, that we have this long-term fiscal sustainability.

And again, happy to see so much co-sponsorship for these two proposals.

So colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Foster.

I'd like to start off by saying great minds think alike.

Of course, the intent last year was to have it be ongoing as part of the B&O tax, my amendment, and obviously something went sideways.

So to all the points that Councilmember Foster said, well said, looking to take my amendment from last year and put it back in for the long term, for the ongoing.

and then again in parallel with Councilmember Foster here.

So I ask for everyone to support one or both of us.

for all the reasons that she said.

Because it's true.

As much as I respect Director Ali Panucci and also Dwight Dively, I think that the amendment from last year had a positive effect in terms of the budgeteering process of the executive's budget compared to what we've seen in the past.

And I think to Councilmember Foster's point, this will ensure it in terms of moving forward because we could easily backslide.

So thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Thank you.

Colleagues, additional conversation?

Additional discussion?

Further discussion?

Final discussion.

If you, so because these are identical, I'm just gonna, in the chair's package, I am just going to merge them into the same one and take all the sponsors and put them all together.

So if you did not co-sponsor one of these and you want to, now is the time to raise your hand.

Adding council member Saka.

I think Councilmember Saka and Warris.

Great.

Thank you.

Moving on to Ledge Item 3.

Item 3 is Council generated budget legislation that would require final budget parameters that maintain future sustainability in the General Fund and the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax Fund.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

So following the previous discussion, my short and late in the budget process line here is if it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander.

You know, we know that there are difficult budget decisions ahead and our six-year forecast shows real challenges.

This legislation establishes parameters for the council's adopted budget so our decisions do not make the general fund or jumpstart future year outlook less sustainable than the financial plans that we will receive from the mayor's proposed budget.

Functionally, I want to make sure that we are working in tandem and working collaboratively across branches and I think this is a real opportunity for us to put forward to complementary good governance reforms.

I think these two pieces of legislation go hand in hand.

They strengthen transparency, establish consistent expectations, and help prevent future residents and current residents from service disruptions.

So colleagues, I hope that you will join me in supporting this piece of legislation for fiscal responsibility and sustainability as well.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion?

Any discussion?

Mr. Mikesell, something to add?

Yes.

Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I forgot to mention this sponsorship, sponsored by Council Member Foster with co-sponsors Linn and Rink.

Fantastic.

Thank you kindly.

Colleagues, any discussion on this item?

All right.

Well then, if you would like to co-sponsor Ledge Item 3, please raise your hand at this time.

I have Council Member Juarez.

I have Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

We're going to move on to Ledge Item 4.

Item 4 is budget legislation that would create a fund for depositing proceeds relating to the recovery of police salaries paid in error.

and it is sponsored by Councilmember Foster with co-sponsors Councilmember Lin and Councilmember Rink.

And before I turn it over to the sponsor, can you explain a little bit more?

It's my understanding this is around the $13 million over payment.

How does this all work?

We heard from Councilmember Rink earlier, we can't provide other funds.

Just creating a fund doesn't necessarily do anything.

Can you help me understand the broader relationship here?

Absolutely.

So this, on its face, it creates a fund and then it creates a reporting standard by way of the police department would come on a quarterly basis and report to committee named in the ordinance, I believe it's the Housing Committee, because the fund is created to fund multifamily and affordable homeownership purposes.

So once monies are received in the fund, that is the designated use of those funds.

So these quarterly reports would inform how much of the overpayment, which you are correct, is approximately $13.1 million, how much has been recovered either through direct repayment to the city or through some form of payroll deduction in payroll.

And then periodically by October 1st of each year, there would be an assessment of how much has been paid back through those mechanisms, and then budget legislation would be submitted that would transfer those monies from the general fund into this newly created fund.

and that process would continue until which time as the full $13 million has been repaid over time.

Thank you for the additional information.

Council Member Foster, sponsor the amendment proposal.

You are recognized.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And I first want to acknowledge I see this as complementary to the piece of legislation that, or excuse me, the slide that Councilman Morink brought forward earlier in our conversation today.

So as we know, the City inadvertently overpaid 900 SPD officers by just over $13 million earlier this year due to a payroll accounting error.

As we also know in this budget, and you've heard me say as Housing Chair, one of the most substantial ways that this budget is balanced is through a change in accounting and procedures in the Office of Housing with a $65 million sort of forward funding commitment.

So from my perspective as the city moves forward with ensuring that we have this recapture from SPD of this inadvertent overpayment I want to make sure that we are reinvesting those dollars in a place that I think not only do our residents really need it but I think matches with some of the changes and the challenges in this year's budget.

So I do want to be clear that I know the city is still negotiating how and when these funds will be recovered, but I believe that the 1-2 process, if you will, of making sure overpayments are fully recovered and then directing those funds to housing in the coming years is the best way to have both transparency and reinvestment in what I believe to be one of the top priorities of our residents here in the city.

So we get both the transparency of when those dollars are coming back, where they are going, because we will have one fund that recaptures them, and then we have realignment back into our investments in community.

So colleagues, I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further conversation?

Any conversation on this?

Seeing no additional conversation, if you'd like to co-sponsor ledge item four, please raise your hand at this time.

Not seeing any additional co-sponsors, so we're gonna move on to Moe 1SA.

Got Mr. Tommaso Johnson back with us.

Mayor's Office 1SA is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the Mayor's Office provide information on enforcement of city regulations, both what regulations are least enforced and then options for better enforcing those regulations.

And these are non-technical regulations enforced by departments like the Finance and Administrative Services, Seattle Department of Transportation.

Thank you.

Councilmember Kettle, sponsor of the proposal, you are recognized.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Whitson, for that summary.

Colleagues, you know, we've passed—it's funny how this has become a theme, and this is like a little capstone, if you will, to it.

We have passed laws as a city that many of our stakeholders don't want the police to enforce, so we've asked departments like SDCI, SDOT, FAS, Parks to enforce these laws that are on the books.

and they have those people in their departments whose task it is to do this and I know the law, especially the non-technical side kind of going to the point just made it of these laws is not currently being enforced and the status quo is not acceptable in the sense that we need change.

So this slide is a study what's happening with the enforcement of those laws and what the executive's role is in making sure that those charter duties and our laws are carried out.

and companion to this would be to ask the auditor to conduct a separate study of the non-technical enforcement of these laws that exist when those departments and then look to compare with the slide with the city auditor's work.

Colleagues, again, this kind of goes to the reoccurring theme related to passing laws, passing budget provisos or other pieces, CBAs, and having the executive follow up on that because at the end of the day it is law.

I recognize and understand the point about executive prerogative, but one could argue the pendulum has swung too far and I ask for your support.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Colleagues, any discussion?

Any discussion?

Any further discussion?

Any final discussion?

If you would like to co-sponsor Mo 1SA, please raise your hand at this time.

Not seeing any additional co-sponsors at this time so I'm gonna, Council Member Rivera is gonna co-sponsor Mo 1SA.

adding Council Member Rivera.

Council Member Lynn, is that a hand to co-sponsor Mo 1SA and Council President Hollingsworth?

Clearly I'm the one moving too quick, so I'm gonna slow down.

We've got Council Member Rivera, Lynn, and Hollingsworth.

Council Member Rivera, Lynn, and Hollingsworth.

Thank you.

We're gonna go to Mo 2.

Once again, Tommaso Johnson, Council Central Staff.

MO2A would increase the mayor's office by $418,000 general fund in 2027. This is a one-time add.

This would be for technical assistance for gun violence intervention provided by a national technical assistance subject matter expert on this CBA would also impose a proviso for this purpose.

This funding and proviso is intended to implement Council Resolution 32217, passed by the Council last month.

This is sponsored by Councilmember Rivera, co-sponsored by Councilmembers Juarez and Kettle.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

You are recognized.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you to Councilmember Juarez and Councilmember Kettle for their co-sponsorship of this.

Colleagues, As you know, I've been talking about this for a year.

I really appreciated that most of you signed on to the resolution and this is the next steps.

The reason why I'm putting this in the mayor's office is because in those other cities that have implemented the National Network for Safe Communities, strategy, focus to turn strategy that has been done out of those mayoral offices.

And it has come up at this stage today actually about the importance of the mayor's office overseeing certain efforts at the city.

And I believe this is one of them because as I said earlier, that's what where this work has lived and those other cities that have seen success with the focus deterrence strategy when that strategy was implemented with fidelity according to the National Network for Safe Communities focus deterrence model.

So this is the money by which to engage in that contract and have the National Network for Safe Communities to partner with the city to get what I hope to be the same results that they've seen in cities like Baltimore and Philly and Boston and others.

And as you all know, this is very, very, very important to me.

This is something I care deeply about.

I mean, I don't think I need to say any more on this one, but I hope to have your support to go, which really goes along with your support for the resolution.

And in this way, obviously we can't force the mayor to do this work, but we can request of her, we can make the funds available and thereby giving the path to do this.

and it is my hope that she will come along and come aboard and implement this focus deterrence the NNSC model here because I want us to be in a better place and I want us to get the same results that other cities have had.

There's too much gun violence in the city.

I feel like every day I open, I read the news to find out about another shooting or just shots fired in general.

And so that is being, most gun violence is being done by a small number of folks in a city.

And this is a great progressive effort that brings together all the partners including police department to really all be at the table at the same time to get these results.

And I know we want here in Seattle as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle is chair of the committee overseeing this topic.

Do you wanna share anything?

just that I wanna thank Council Member Rivera for her work.

And as she noted, this is something that we've been talking about for over a year.

And for the reasons that I mentioned earlier, I think we've got some good momentum and I look forward to working forward with her plus the mayor on this because it's important moving forward.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez followed by Lynn and Foster.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Again, as we all do, I want to thank Council Member Rivera for bringing this forward and Council Member Kettle being a co-sponsor.

There are some things that Councilman Rivera said we've all heard her say and did not repeat today, but I'm going to, if you don't mind, read some of these facts and dates and efforts into the record because I think it's important.

This amendment would fund, obviously, a two-year contract with the National Network for Safe Communities with a one-time cost of $418,000 to develop and implement, as we've all heard, focused deterrent strategy to reduce gun violence.

this follows an audit which confirmed an increase of gun violence across our city the audit by the city auditor found an increased gun violence across our city let's see in 20 between 20 and 24 shots fires increased shots fired increased by 71 percent Non-fatal shootings increased by 58% and fatal shootings increased by 23%.

That's between 20 and 24. So gun violence has risen significantly in the last decade between 2013 and 2024. And again, there's some more stats.

Shots fired incidents rose by 194%.

Non-fatal injuries are up 150% and fatal shootings have jumped up to 220%.

Currently, the Seattle Police Department tracks and analyzes gun violence patterns to support its investigations and provides reports on those patterns upon request.

However, right now, as of today, the city lacks a mechanism for systemic reporting on gun violence patterns to other city departments, elected officials and community stakeholders.

As you know, what we do when we have shootings is we are in immediate contact with SPD, their PIO, to get us the information about the shooting.

And it's citywide.

I'm not just focusing on District 5. So my belief is that this investment would fill that gap.

Councilor Rivera has done a lot of work over the last year, as you all know, protecting our community and finding ways to reduce gun violence, which we all talk about and we have press conferences about and we do press releases about.

Yada, yada, yada.

So anyway, this stuff that she's done starting on June 8th, of course, she hosted the Gun Violence Symposium led by the NNSC with more than 100 city, county, state, federal and community leaders on July 27th after the Seattle Center shooting called on Mayor Wilson to partner with the NNSC and said that she had planned to seek budget funding.

So we were all put on notice back in July.

Certainly Before that, actually.

Anyway, on August 17, 2026, Council introduced a Council resolution to pursue a two-year partnership with NNSC.

On September 15, this Council approved the resolution, a resolution number 32217 calling for a two-year NNSC partnership at about $418,000.

So now we know that Councilman Rivera has done the work, has worked with this council, has kept us all informed on this topic and found a solution that she believes, that I believe, that has worked in multiple cities.

That the NNC will create opportunities for better problem solving and accountability.

And as we know, gun violence is a citywide problem and a citywide approach to public safety will allow Seattle to use all its available resources to keep residents safe.

Now, I'm not trying to be snarky here, but

we need leadership and if we have leadership in the executive in the mayor's office, if we can do surveys for our commute for transportation and bus lanes and bus routes, if we can do a survey for our next chief of police, then I think we can come together with the mayor's office and the executive and show the city and the residents because they deserve to see a united front between their elected officials and we do not politicize or weaponize this issue of gun violence that is killing our residents, our folks, our relatives, our constituents, whatever you wanna say.

It's just gotten to the point where I feel that it's gotten so polarized and so political that we can't even come together on something that we all agree upon without making somebody a villain and somebody the hero.

I just get tired of the performative stuff.

So if this is what we have on the table, I'm hoping the mayor's office and the executive branch and those folks that are in charge on the executive side, I understand there's a draft of the other study that's out from NYU, that we can work together and actually show this city and the good people that live here that were serious about gun violence and we can start making a commitment and an investment to actually tackle it and do something.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Warris, Council Member Lin followed by Foster and Hollingsworth.

Thank you, colleagues.

I just want to say I will be supporting this, and I just want to talk more about, you know, I mentioned earlier why I was bringing an amendment to the care department, because I think it's important to recognize that hiring a consultant alone is not going to get the work done.

This is going to require us coming together as a community, as you were just talking about, council member, with the mayor's office.

It's also gonna require us working with the community.

And I think we also need to recognize that community has been doing a lot of incredibly meaningful and impactful work.

They've been taking care of our youth for many, many years and doing incredible work.

And we can always do better.

from what other cities are doing, from other national experts.

I also just wanna say that I see this as a down payment.

This is a commitment to our community.

As earlier I was speaking about, jobs.

A central part of this focused deterrence model is that we need to provide youth a positive path forward.

That means jobs, that means mentorship, that means mental health, and much more.

A good public education, sports, teen centers.

This work will not succeed if we are not funding those positive interventions.

And I just wanna make that clear.

And so as we proceed, again, I see this as a critical down payment and a commitment to our community, to our youth, most at risk, that we are gonna get them those jobs, we're gonna get them that mentorship, we're gonna get those positive opportunities to them.

And with that, I'm glad to support.

Thank you.

Thank you Councilmember Foster then followed by Hollingsworth.

Thank you so much Chair and thank you Councilmember Rivera for bringing this forward.

I just had one maybe two I think short questions.

I know this is intended as a two-year contract and I'm just looking at this and it's listed as a all and add in 2027 and I believe that indicates that the contract is meant to be spread over two years but sort of front-loading the cost but central staff if you could just clarify that for me or chair rather if you can have either central staff or the sponsor I would love to understand that.

I see Mr. Tommaso Johnson ready to go.

That is correct.

The $418,000 is the cost associated with two years of a two-year contract, which would be a one-time expense that then should the executive choose to enter into that contract, this would be sufficient for those two years.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster, you still have the floor.

I heard an mm-hmm from Councilmember Rivera.

Yes.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And then the only other question that I had, and Council Member Lynn spoke to this a little bit, is just understanding the coordination between CARE with the gun violence contracts moved over to, or moving over to CARE, excuse me, gun violence reduction contracts moving over to CARE, and then the position sitting in the Mayor's Office.

And so it's my understanding that the intent is for the kind of coordination role to exist in the Mayor's Office.

and from there to then work with the departments?

Or is the intent that it is external and then working with the departments, but the contract sits in the mayor's office?

And so chair, whichever central staff or the sponsor, thank you.

I'm gonna go with Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

The intent is for the mayor's office to hold the contract and also oversee the work because the work is going to the multiple, will be multiple departments involved.

And so the work should really sit in the mayor's office, which as I said earlier is what these other cities have done who have incorporated this NNSC-focused deterrence model.

And I will say it is not a model that is being led by community-based organizations.

It is a model that's being led by mayors working in concert with the prosecuting attorney's office the city attorney's office and many of the other city departments in those cities that we have equivalent departments here in Seattle.

So that's why it's best the work overseen by the executive because it's not just one, you know, there are many pieces of this.

And as I've said earlier, what this looks like is SPD helps identify the folks that are most involved with gun violence.

We work with the CBOs and the community moral voices, the elders and community all coming together at the table with those individuals individually, one at a time, delivering that message that, hey, you are hurting our communities.

We know you're engaged in these all these actions and we have services so that's why the service providers are there and you need to stop and if you don't then there will be a consequence.

So this is why this really involves multiple departments and why it should be the executive coordinating this rather than an external organization or a or one city department.

It really is if this is going to work it really is an executive led effort.

This is a hands-on, all hands on deck with the executive really leading this work.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

Councilmember Foster, you've still got the floor.

Thank you, Chair, that's all.

All right, thank you.

Council President Hollingsworth, over to you.

Thank you, Chair.

I just had a quick comment.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera for her work.

on this.

And I will say that out of all the budget asks that I know that Councilmember Rivera put forward, I know this one is the most meaningful to her as she's been talking about this for a year.

So I'm more than happy to support this and support any type of gun violence prevention plan.

And I just want to double down on what Councilmember Juarez said regarding just not trying to politicize anything, No one needs credit.

We just want to get the work done and move forward so we can make sure that our babies are safe.

And so that's why I will support anything that is gun violence prevention and so we can really start making progress forward in our city.

Because I'll just be quite frank, it's just, it's heartbreaking.

it's sad, it's unfortunate that we are just like even addressing a lot of this stuff and we are in the place that we're in right now with our gun violence plan and that it's taken this long to be able to get something forward and going and really, really have the impact that we want.

And that is no knock on the people that are doing the work every single day on the ground, but it is the city's responsibility, the city's responsibility to make sure that they have a plan so they can implement it.

I do not expect these groups that are out there on the street working every day, they have the passion, they have the energy, they have the street knack, they have the credibility, they have all these things.

I don't expect them to have a plan for everybody.

They know what they're doing and the work that they're doing.

We, the city, have to have a plan for them to help guide them so we have measurable goals.

This has never been a problem with the groups that are on the ground working hard, spinning their wheels constantly, trying to make sure that they're plugging holes and it feels like they have a mop in the middle of an ocean.

You know, we talk to these groups every day.

And so it is the city's responsibility and it's also the county's responsibility.

The county's responsibility.

Most of the murders that are happening in King County are in Kent right now.

And there are people that are coming from Kent that come to Seattle.

And there are issues between the Kentrell District and Seattle.

When we gentrify these neighborhoods in Seattle and we gentrify the neighborhoods in Rainier Beach and Southside, a lot of people move to Kent and Auburn, but there's a lot of activity that comes back and forth.

Just look at the Auburn basketball team.

It used to be a team that was not as diverse as it is now.

You can see the transformation and you can actively see the gentrification that has happened in our county.

and so the city and the county, okay, need to have a plan to be able to address these issues that are going on on our street.

And we cannot rely on the groups that are on the ground every day to have a plan either.

They're doing the work.

We as a city need to have a plan so we can have metrics and goals so we can offer different city departments to be able to support them and not just fund them, be able to account for things, be able to have metrics and be able to figure out where we need to target certain things.

so we can all work in coordination.

That is the city's responsibility.

The city's responsibility.

So I'm happy to support this and I'll continue to support this.

And I just want to thank Councilmember Rivera for bringing it forward.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Just a point of information that's a third time Auburn has come up in these meetings.

Councilmember Saka and then Councilmember Lynn, I see you've got a new hand again.

Councilmember Saka.

Thank you, Chair.

Look, it's Thursday afternoon, late Thursday afternoon, all-day meetings.

I'll just be honest.

I haven't had my typical afternoon dose of caffeine, coffee, soda.

But I would be remiss if I didn't comment briefly on this particular item.

I just want to say Thank you Councilmember Rivera for your leadership throughout the last year now on this very important strategic effort, building the case, assembling appropriate stakeholders, community, getting buy-in, and here we are towards the last step of our process, legislatively, approaching the last step, funding the initiative, and recognizing all the hard work that it took from you and your office over the last year plus.

Just wanna thank you.

Excited to be able to support this and do our part.

On its face, it costs $418,000, but the potential it has to be successful is frankly a game changer.

It could wind up if fully funded and faithfully and fully executed and implemented.

This has the potential to be the singular most impactful budget investment out of all the 170 plus council ads.

So excited to be able to support this and yeah, thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

Just want to double check that there are no additional council members who have not spoken that who want to speak.

And I'll go back to council member Lynn for a second bite at the apple and then I'll turn it back to council member Rivera to close this out.

Council member Lynn.

Thank you, chair.

And I just want to follow up on council member Foster's question about, you know, and I just wanna point out that our code, as Council Member Kettle has pointed out, does anticipate that it is the care department that's supposed to have an initiative to oversee kind of our gun violence prevention interventions and CBI work.

and so the transfer of those contracts from HSD to CARE is consistent with our code.

I personally, it makes sense to me why this contract might be unique to live within the mayor's office but I do just think otherwise it makes sense for these to live within the CARE department consistent with our code and then to have that coordination between the two.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera closes out.

Thank you, Chair.

Well, colleagues, first of all, I just want to say Council Member Horace and Council President, Council Member Kettle and Council Member Saka, thank you for being the wind beneath my wings today.

It is been a long road to get here.

And You know, we all have a job to do and I always say we all, we agree on the goal, on the end game.

We just have a different strategy for how we get there sometimes.

And above all, I am a mom.

I have two daughters that I'm very proud of.

and we talk about lived experience, we need to look at everybody's lived experience, not some people's lived experience.

And I will say that, you know, I'm trying to walk the walk here and not just talk the talk because my kids were involved in a school shooting.

And again, and you've heard me say this many, many times, my kids walked out of there unhurt physically but all the children that were there that day, all the teenagers were impacted to varying degrees mentally.

and so too all the kids at Garfield when Marm Murphy Payne was killed and so too at Rainier Beach High School when they lost their peers.

Gun violence is happening all across our city and not just obviously to our kids but to grownups as well.

and this is the issue that I ran on and something that I've been working on for over a year to bring an actual strategy that was gonna do something, not just keep talking about it.

And to Council President's point, this cannot fall to a few community-based organizations that we fund.

This is a huge effort that the executive of our city needs to be leading.

And Councilmember Lynn, I really appreciate the conversations that we've had about this.

And I will say that this is not an effort that can be led out of the care department.

This is something that the executive has to roll up her sleeves and do something about working with all her city departments that she oversees.

And that is the only way that this effort is going to work.

and to Council President's point, we need a plan and the plan needs to be executed by the executive of the city with our support because the buck stops with the executive and with the council.

So with this last action in terms of identifying the money for this contract, we're doing our legislative piece and then the mayor has to do her executive piece.

If everybody's in charge, nobody's in charge.

and that's why this really has to be led out of the executive's office because it is the executive who's the ultimate head of a city and so that's why I feel really strongly that this needs to be out of the executive office just like it has been in those other cities where this has worked and it also has to be implemented with fidelity.

We cannot pick aspects of this plan, of this strategy, of this NNSC-focused deterrence strategy and expect it to work.

This is not something I just picked up and decided to bring to Council.

I did my Rivera due diligence on this.

I did the research, and I have had many conversations with most of you on this, and I did do the symposium so everyone could come together and work together, because this isn't about me.

This is about all of us working together.

Yes, I identified this strategy as one that I think is very, and research supports and our auditor's office report supports focus deterrence.

And, you know, this NNSC was founded by the creator of the focus deterrence strategy model that has worked in these other cities.

And this has been written about even, like I said, Malcolm Gladwell has in his book and in his podcast talked about this particular focused deterrence model.

That is why after doing the research and working and talking with all the experts, I thought this one was worth bringing to you all.

because it's not about me.

There are nine of us.

We all care about gun violence in our city.

We all want to work together with the mayor to do something.

And that's what I'm trying to do with this effort.

And it's not to take away from all the prevention work that we do at the city.

We spent $51 million at this city doing gun violence prevention work.

And we need to do an effort that's really going to reduce gun violence.

Period.

And this is an effort.

It's not just a contract.

This is a strategy that we will need to implement.

This is a long game.

This isn't just a contract.

That would be belittling this focus deterrence and NSC model.

This is a long-term effort that we need to start engaging in.

And they could start working with us as soon as we sign this contract.

This is not something that's gonna be overnight.

It takes two years to actually start seeing these results, which is why I want to start this, let's get it done, let's try it.

And if it doesn't work, then we have to keep researching and figuring out what is going to work in Seattle.

But it is unacceptable for these shootings to be happening and kids to be dying and adults to be dying in this city.

It is unacceptable that we had a mass shooting at the bite of Seattle.

That is all unacceptable and we need to face the reality.

We are a huge city now with huge city problems and we need to employ big city solutions to these problems.

And that is why I feel so passionately about this.

and this isn't a credit thing.

There is a solution out there that other cities have employed that has had huge success in reducing gun violence.

We in Seattle are worthy of employing this and we can all work together to make this happen here.

Not just the executive and council, but our community-based organizations, our community partners, elders and community that very much care about this issue.

Our police department, our HSD, all our city care, all our city departments working together.

The King County prosecutor very much cares about gun violence in the city.

I've spoken with her.

City Attorney Evans very much cares about gun violence.

I've spoken with her too.

We have federal partners, we have King County partners, we can all work together to make this happen.

So I don't want to belittle this as just a contract.

This is a huge effort and we're going to have to all be, we can pass this money today to get this contract done, but we are going to have to keep working very robustly on this.

So this is not an overnight, something that's gonna take place overnight and we're gonna get overnight results, but we need to be committed to this because we, to Council Member Juarez's point, need to commit to something and this is on the table.

And to me, that it worked in other cities who've been dealing with gun violence for many more years than we have is really compelling.

If that doesn't compel people, I don't know what will, but I am done with the talk.

I want to do something.

To me, it's already taken too long, and so I hope that I have everybody's support in this because I will tell you something else.

If people do not get on board, this will not work, and we will continue to be where we are today.

and I'm tired of the hopes and prayers and I'm tired of facing our kids and they want solutions, they wanna be protected and we need to do something about this.

So thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

If you would like to co-sponsor Mo2A, please raise your hand at this time.

Looks like we've got a bingo.

Council Member Rink's not here, but other than that, everyone has signed on.

All council members in attendance.

Thank you.

Last item of the day, I joked with, that was a good conversation.

That was an important conversation.

Thank you.

Yeah, I was about to make a bit of a joke about time, but I wanna just be so secure, and I didn't talk in it, and I guess I'm talking now, but when I was growing up here in the 90s, we had a similar level of gun violence going on with the youth.

It was really scary.

There were drive-by shootings right near my house, and we are nearly back there today, if not back there, and We really have to get ourselves out of this because I've seen us go through this before.

We can't let it continue.

But if the leader does not lead, we won't be led out.

With that, we're gonna move on to the next item here.

Moe 3SA.

Hello, I'm Erica McConaughey and Council Central staff.

This statement of legislative intent would request that the Mayor's Office, in coordination with the Seattle Center, the City Budget Office, Office of City Finance, and other relevant departments report to Council in two parts.

One, the executive schedule for transmitting the Seattle Center campus revitalization bond measure proposal per Resolution 32205, and two, the transmittal of a complete bond measure proposal.

The sponsor of this statement of legislative intent is Councilmember Saka with co-sponsors Council President Hollingsworth and Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you.

Councilmember Saka, you are recognized.

Thank you, Chair.

After three marathon days at the end of the third full day, recognizing that this is the last thing that potentially prevents us from getting out of here, I will try to be brief.

Earlier this year, colleagues, the Mayor and the Council jointly committed through Resolution 32205 to advance Seattle Center revitalization and anticipate a bond measure decision in 2027. This slide is a good routine, good governance step supporting that shared goal.

Appreciate the Mayor for putting some dollars and investment behind that non-binding statement at the time, the resolution to help facilitate planning.

And this slide again is the next step in terms of driving our shared goals.

If the executive targets the August primary, The proposal should reach Council by February.

If it targets the November general election, it should reach us by May, early May.

An earlier notice identifies the intended election and work plan.

Those dates allow serious review and deliberations before King County's ballot deadlines.

This is about improving clarity and certainty, and it's also about preventing a last minute scramble.

A shared destination needs a shared calendar.

Whatever form the eventual proposal takes, executive transmitted proposal or otherwise, council must have the information and time to preserve a credible 2027 path and act responsibly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sokka.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion?

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, colleagues.

I hate to ask a question on the last slide in front of us at the end of three days, and yet here I am.

I just wanted to ask about how some of the timelines converge as it relates to some investments that are being made and the ability for Seattle Center to do the design work that we've talked about here previously in committee.

I know we're asking for a report by January 15th.

I'm just wondering, and Chair, I'll let you direct this appropriately.

I wonder if I can learn more about the timelines and how they line up.

I will defer to Eric McConaughey, but you may be asking questions that what Councilmember Saka is asking for would bring to the forefront unless you already know the answers.

And I say that if you don't already know the answers, then that is where, I mean, like right now we just passed the work within debt management policy advisory council that will only be passed with this budget that starts the work to ground truth.

And so I think to, sorry for taking the microphone, but I think a little bit to council member Saka's point of if you, don't get going in earnest on that work now, then a February deadline for a August vote isn't gonna work.

And if that's the case, let's know that now.

But there is some really important work that does need to, sorry, I've been working this also just because I have to watch it from budget standpoint.

There's a lot of work that needs to be done to ground truth some assumptions so that we are making sure that we're not asking for more money than we need, but that we are asking for the right amount of money to make the capital improvements.

Any colleagues here, please go visit the armory.

The Seattle Center calls it the pool that was never finished.

It was a powder room.

It's where they kept the gunpowder.

it's a wild building, you will be scared, you will be shocked, you will be confused as to why our city has let it get this bad.

That wasn't your question, Council Member Foster, so I'm gonna ask Eric one last, if you wanna shed some more intelligence on this.

I don't have a lot to add other than what you had, Chair.

The first date, just to sort of point out what's in the slide itself, the first date, sort of, on the 15th of January, asks for when these things will happen rather than saying the work itself.

So it calls for which election the executive is aiming for, whether the August or November, and when, based on that decision, when that legislation will be sent over to the council.

And so, the work itself, maybe to scale it, to understand it, the mayor put $3.1 million in the budget in positions to do the work.

It's a significant body of work, but January 15th, There's no way that under that kind of crunch that they would actually achieve the body of work that they have set up to do as proposed in the budget.

That is different than making a response to the Council on the sly about what election it would be sent to for the voters.

I will observe, just as part of our work as the Council of Central staff, that the Statement of Legislative Intents are typically adopted and sort of activated around February of each year.

So this January 15 date is before that date.

You all know that, but that's just to sort of get a sense of scale and maybe I should defer then to the sponsor of this slide about maybe the sense of sort of urgency and keenness that this is being requested in advance of what is the typical time that slides kick off.

Okay, gotcha.

And then I see Deputy Director Chow and then Council Member Foster.

I'm gonna give you your birthday present of the last word on the last item of three long days.

Deputy Director.

Thank you.

Council Members, my read of this, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but fundamentally this is asking one simple question, which is which election is the executive planning to go for?

and the question about how prepared that is or how defined that is, that's a separate issue that is built into the work that's already underway and will inform that question.

Fantastic.

Councilmember Foster, happy birthday.

Floor is yours.

Last word for the week.

Oh, gee, thank you so much, Chair.