Select Budget Committee 10/20/23

We're recording.

All right, great.

Well, good morning, everyone.

Thank you so much for joining the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is Friday, October 20th, 2023, and I am Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Budget Committee.

The committee will come to order, and Madam Clerk, could you please call the roll?

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Juarez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Here.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Okay wonderful.

Just for the viewing audience I want to make sure that the Zoom presentation is appearing correctly on the screen for members of the viewing public in on Seattle Channel.

Just pause real quick to make sure that the screen is not elongated like it is on my computer.

Does everything look okay to you Seattle Channel.

Yes it is.

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OK, excellent.

Well, thank you very much again for dialing in today.

Colleagues appreciate the full presentation that we have in front of us today.

I want to do an announcement for members of the public.

My apologies.

I did note at the very tail end of our three hour and 15 minute public hearing on Wednesday that I thought there would be a chance for public comment today.

My apologies.

That was an oversight on my part.

The next opportunity to provide public comment is actually next Friday.

That gives everyone a full week to be able to provide comments and dive in deep to the proposed balancing package that we have in front of us.

The chair's mid-biennial balancing package has been released this morning as of 8 a.m.

We will have public comment on October 27th with the opportunity to hear directly from members of the community.

starting at 10 a.m.

We also will have an opportunity for a evening public comment session, November 13th, starting at 5 p.m.

Please, clerks, let me know if any of those dates are stated incorrectly as well.

We have over a month to complete the final budget process here.

The final vote on the 2024 calendar year budget, our second part of our biennial process, will be wrapped up by November 25th.

First, for a full view of the calendar, you can go to our Seattle Council budget calendar website, which provides all of the detailed information.

And that is thanks to our communications team who've been able to, in real time, update those budget graphics and make sure that you, members of the public, have the entire calendar in front of you.

So please do go to seattle.gov backslash council backslash issues backslash demystifying the budget process.

Thanks again to the communications team for continuing to make sure this information gets out to members of the public in a timely way.

Colleagues, on today's budget committee agenda, we have council central staff who will provide an overview of the council's budget actions and statements of legislative intent that comprise the chair's initial balancing package for 2024. We are listed on the calendar, sorry, excuse me, we are listed on the introduction agenda for today to have an overview from Director Handy and Deputy Director Panucci from central staff.

That's listed as agenda item number one.

What I'd like to do instead, colleagues, is go first with the economic and revenue forecast update from Director Ben Noble, Jan Drouse, Sean Thompson, And from Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasts, Dave Hennis from the city's budget office.

Moving that to agenda item number one will allow for us to have the context of the new revenue forecast that was just released on Tuesday this week.

And then we'll continue with the introduction and overview from central staff on the chair's proposed package, which would include the overview from central staff listed as agenda item number one, and the presentation of the chair's budget package listed as agenda item number three.

If there is no objection, we will go in the following order, agenda number two, agenda item number one, and then agenda item number three.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

Colleagues, as I mentioned, there is not public comment this morning, but I would like to offer some opening comments as we begin to deliberate our budget in front of us.

I want to thank you.

And before we turn it over to the city budget's office, just give some framing for today's conversation.

I really appreciate the updated information that we've received from the Revenue Forecast Council on Tuesday.

You will hear from the Revenue Forecast Council and you will hear from the city's budget office directors and team about the impact of the revenue forecast just released on Tuesday.

I want to thank you, colleagues, for putting that revenue forecast in context, but not just for the 2024 calendar year, but also for the out years.

I want to thank you for the engagement that you provided to our office and working in deep collaboration with central staff as we've considered various amendments to the 2024 proposed budget.

Thanks to the mayor's office for sending down the mid-biennium budget and for the work that you have done, colleagues, on council to identify amendments to enhance and deepen investments in community infrastructure and support.

Today we have a balancing package for the 2024 mid-biennium process that I believe prioritizes accountability, sustainability, and equity.

This package maintains the city's focus on investing in our most vulnerable, rejecting austerity, and ensuring vital jumpstart revenue is targeted, targeted at the original intent to grow our health of our economy and to grow the health of the community through housing, economic resilience, Green New Deal, and equitable development initiatives.

With many of your amendments, colleagues, this package now maintains and builds upon the 2023 and 2024 biennial budget that prioritizes keeping our community cared for, housed, connected, and resilient, and healthy, and safe.

We did a significant amount of work thanks to central staff working in collaboration with the city budget's office to understand the ways in which jumpstart progressive payroll tax was programmed in the proposed 2024 budget.

Thank you for that.

And we realigned funding streams to protect the targeted jumpstart investments as codified in statute by restoring and moving around nearly $20 million.

This includes restoring $5 million back to housing, yielding a historic investment over the biennium of nearly $600 million invested into affordable housing over these two years.

This is made possible in large part due to the Jumpstart Progressive Payroll Tax.

We restored $2 million of Jumpstart back to the economic resilience category, building up the investment in workforce training, small business supports, arts and culture, and street activation for greater community cohesion.

The adherence to the spend plan means the budget allocations for 2024 now align with the codified four categories in Jumpstart, affordable housing, Green New Deal investments, economic resilience, and equitable development initiative.

As we will hear from community partners continuing into the upcoming week, we are beginning to see, excuse me, as we heard from community partners at the beginning of this week, we are beginning to see the tangible results of our prior jumpstart investments into affordable housing and in workforce stabilization for frontline workers serving our most vulnerable communities.

We're seeing the tangible results in equitable development and Green New Deal investments.

It's time to make good on our commitments by building on these successes.

That presentation from our community partners on Jump Start shows the power of the progressive revenue to deliver on real results for the people in this city.

In this upcoming budget discussion, we will talk about how we reprogrammed funding for human service contract wage increases, childcare appreciation allotments, social housing initiative startup costs, along with tiny house village relocation and code compliance staffing.

All of the things that we also support that the mayor included in his budget, we've included the full funding for those.

We've now just realigned the funding source to make it come from the more appropriate general fund revenue stream.

The balancing package invests millions more into public safety and community health through early intervention and upstream solutions that create greater self-determination and economic stability, which also help address rising trauma and stress.

This is accomplished through new investments in culturally competent counseling services, after-school programming, community safety coordinators, support for youth violence prevention workers, pre-violence diversion programming, the Harborview Bedside Gun Violence Interruption Services, community cleaning directives specifically for the Chinatown International District, and much more.

Council members, you probably recognize your amendments in this and other lists that I've mentioned already today.

And we will have the chance this morning to hear directly from you as the sponsors of these ideas about why you wanted those included.

I thought it was important to lift up some of these investments to show the broad support across this council for early intervention and upstream investments, which we have accommodated for in the chair's balancing package.

We learned from the revenue forecast this week that unfortunately, while general fund and jumpstart were up slightly, there was nearly a $10 million combined downturn in revenue to support specific investments in transportation and infrastructure.

And accordingly, the chair's balancing package in front of us today realigns funding streams to fully close that gap.

There is no longer a gap of millions of dollars in services directly for Vision Zero, bridges, sidewalks, or safe school investments.

We accomplished this by appropriating $3 million from general fund and redirecting the contributions of the emergency fund in 2024 to the tune of about three quarters of a million dollars.

Not something I take lightly, but we did this with the goal to continue to find cost saving opportunities in partnership with the mayor's office and the Seattle Department of Transportation so we could close any funding gap.

Ultimately, my hope is that we restore any funding to the emergency reserve, but we wanted to make sure to fully preserve the investments in transportation in 2024 to avoid broad cuts to safe streets, infrastructure projects, and prevent pitting communities against each other when Vision Zero, bridges, sidewalks, safe school investments all complement each other and all are necessary to improve the infrastructure and the safety of our city.

This was the only change to the contributions made to the emergency fund.

So we've almost fully maintained the investments in rainy day and emergency funds with the goal of hoping to still do that throughout this process.

And through your amendments and conversations, we have had over the last few months, colleagues, we have identified urgent needs that you've asked for prioritizing.

That means investments in food security, additional support for those who provide care in shelters and in emergency housing, additional investments in health services, and broadening out the types of health services offered to our community.

We've helped to put funding forward for emerging needs, such as the migrant and asylee humanitarian crisis unfolding in our area.

There's many more investments that I look forward to you, council members, highlighting when we get to your items in the central staff summary, because we will go through each of those components.

And I think it's really important that the community gets a chance to hear from you why and who you are helping to invest in with the amendments that you've put forward.

I want to underscore that this iteration of the budget continues the proposed surveillance pilot for the closed captioning television and acoustic gunshot locator technology that the mayor proposed.

While I remain opposed to the costly acoustic technology, concerned about the data that shows that in the past, in other cities where ShotSpotter has been deployed as a solo strategy, it is ineffective.

Data shows it can negatively affect police response times, and it can lead to disproportionate impacts for communities of color.

It has been raised by the ACLU and other organizations who have many civil liberty concerns.

The council will have the chance to have more discussions about whether or not this technology should be maintained as a pilot in the budget prior to its passage.

This balancing package does also now include a proviso, holding the funding until a racial equity toolkit can be completed and a surveillance ordinance policy completed by geographic location prior to any implementation or purchase of a technology.

Finally, and this is where we get to revenue, friends, from city budget office and economic and revenue forecast, finally, this balancing package is only one component of the budget process.

The mayor's proposed budget did not include a proposal for new revenue.

It did expand the gap between revenue and expenses to a total of $247 million each year on average starting in 2025. And the proposed deficit in the chair's proposed balancing package in front of us has reduced that, but it's still a significant amount, $221 million on average beginning in 2025. We were able to close this primarily due to the forecast update and an error in the transmitted financial plan, but the gap is still significant and must be closed by 2025 when the temporary use of JumpStart progressive payroll tax can no longer and should no longer be used to supplant the general fund.

As we continue the 2024 budget discussions today and over the next month, the looming revenue challenges that are on the horizon in 2025 and beyond must be front of mind.

Our city's values do not align with a budget that assumes this level, over $200 million in potential austerity and cuts coming without additional revenue.

The future of our city and the sustainability of our community is far too important to gamble on.

The budget committee will address any additional revenue and fee related policies from council members in the November meetings prior to the completion of the 2024 budget process.

And with that, I look forward to our discussions today.

Madam Clerk, could you please read agenda item number one?

Excuse me, agenda item number two into the record.

Thank you.

Agenda item two, economic and revenue forecast update for a briefing and discussion.

Wonderful.

I want to welcome to the dais here we have Dave Henness from the city budgets office and we have director Ben Noble from the office of economic and revenue forecast.

Thanks to your teams for all of the work that you've done over the last.

Two years as we have the chance to have this new partnership with an independent office of economic and revenue forecast And the corresponding additional revenue that doesn't get included in the revenue forecast office considerations The fuller picture provided by the city budgets office We've had the chance to meet quarterly since the inception of the revenue forecast council last january I want to thank council president Juarez for serving on that body along with me and we have two members of the The executive branch that are also members of the revenue forecast.

The mayor's representative is often the deputy mayor.

I want to thank senior deputy mayor Monisha Harreld and now deputy mayor Washington for participating in those meetings along with the finance and administrative services director, Director Harnell.

Thank you so much for all of the work that goes into those quarterly revenue forecast meetings, and the independent office for creating the website that provides all of the information in real time to the executive branch, the legislative branch, and members of the public.

What we have done over the last two years is ensure that the Revenue Forecast Office has a chance to present to the Finance Committee slash Budget Committee immediately after the presentation at the Forecast Council.

For those who hadn't tuned in, we want to elevate and daylight all of the revenue information as quickly as possible and bring in our City Budget Office team as well who provides updates on revenue streams that are outside of the Revenue Forecast Purview.

revenue forecast council's purview.

So today I want to thank you again Director Ben Noble and David Hennis for being here with us and I will turn it over to you to walk us through an overview of what we learned on Tuesday and to fill in additional information on additional revenue streams from the city budget's office.

Good morning Director Noble.

Good morning.

Thank you for that introduction.

As you described, the presentation I have for you today is a somewhat compact version of the discussion that we led this past Tuesday for the Revenue Forecast Council.

So I'm going to dig in by first – actually, next slide.

I have a little bit of an outline.

So I'm going to start by giving you just kind of a summary of the economic developments both nationally and regionally Since August, when we provided the August forecast that underlies the mayor's proposed budget, give you some context for for the revisions in the forecast.

And then jump to actually the revenue forecast itself.

So we'll put up some rather complicated tables, walk you through kind of what's in each of them.

But those will highlight the changes in the revenue forecast for the general fund.

And then separately for the two sets of non-general fund revenues, one is kind of general government revenues, in particular, the jumpstart payroll tax and real estate excise tax, a couple others as well, the admissions tax, for example.

And then also a set of transportation revenues that are, that are outside the general fund.

But again, our key revenue streams, I know are of interest to the council, have been dedicated to specific purposes.

And as you'll see, there are a number of notable changes there.

So, with that, I'm going to dive in.

Next slide.

One more.

So what's been happening in the economy since August?

If you've been reading the news, the headline here won't surprise you, which is that generally the economy has remained quite strong over August, September, and this first part of October.

And frankly, stronger than had been projected at a national level and that we had expected regionally.

So gross domestic product growth for the second quarter was reported back in August at 2%.

The forecast now, actually, when I wrote this forecast was from our national forecast, S&P was for a 4 percent growth in the third quarter.

They've now actually, in the past week, updated that forecast to better than 5 percent.

So, again, very strong performance in the third quarter, stronger than had been projected.

But it's really important, and we spent a little less time in this presentation than we do with the forecast council, but important to recognize that although there's We've seen greater than the projected growth near-term, and that's actually expected on a momentum basis to continue into the fourth quarter, into the first part of 2024. After that, there is still an expectation that we'll be entering a period of long-term, relatively slow growth.

We're seeing long-term interest rates creep up.

I'll get back to that.

We know that the Fed is committed to reducing inflation.

their expectation is that inflation can't come down until the employment market cools considerably.

And the way that will happen, they no longer project it'll take a recession to cool the labor markets, but they are anticipating that a period of long, slow-term growth is what will be needed.

And that is – and their goal is to bring inflation down.

And if cooling the labor market is what it takes, they're prepared to hold interest rates at a higher level to make that the case.

So again, good performance near term, that's going to be reflected in the forecast.

But the expectation for the long run really hasn't changed.

And it's an expectation of slow growth, which for us will be again, relative to the pre-pandemic period, a real change.

In terms of employment, Again, more strength.

So the economy continued to add jobs.

If you look at the chart above there, if you read the orange lines, although that moves about month to month, there had been a slowing of the rate at which new jobs were being added to the economy.

But then September came in as a real surprise with better than expected performance and slight upward revisions actually for the July and August figures.

So job growth is quite strong still.

Unemployment has remained at, you know, plus or minus 3, 3.5, 3.6% for an extended period of time.

On the inflation front, and again, high inflation has been something the Fed has been actively fighting.

Inflation has been coming down, and you can see that CPIU, so Consumer Price Index for urban workers is the general number you hear quoted for inflation.

But on a steady downward trend, it did then tick up in August, and the most recent figures for September are the same at 3.7%.

increased relative to September a year ago.

The most recent spike driven significantly by fuel prices, but not only that.

And then I put another measure of inflation up here as another data point, and one that is actually worth knowing about and worth tracking.

The Federal Reserve is less focused on the CPI measure inflation.

They focus instead on something called the Personal Consumption Expenditure Index or the PCE index.

It's generally seen as a, it's less volatile than inflation.

And they actually look at the core CPE, which takes out food and energy.

They don't take those out because they want to ignore them or don't recognize that they represent real pressures on consumers.

But rather, if you look at the long-term, the core is a very good predictor of long-term interest rates.

And their goal is to bring down long-term interest rates.

What you see there when you look at that core index, it is also been coming down more slowly than headlines CPI.

But again, good news there largely.

So on the inflation front, still too high, if you will, but continuing to come down.

Next slide.

I think we're maybe back up one.

Maybe I have the order wrong.

No, next slide is fine.

Thank you.

Sorry.

I had the order wrong.

So that said, although we've had the strong growth nationally since August, there are a number of new risks that have emerged to the economy.

And none of these are a surprise, but I think they are worth highlighting.

So the UAW strikes, the autoworker strike, whether it has a long-term impact on the overall national economy will depend on how long the strike lasts and how broad it gets.

It is certainly a minor drag on the economy.

And in certain states, you know, think of Michigan and Ohio, it's a more significant risk.

Obviously, the war in Ukraine has been an ongoing risk and has put pressure on commodities prices.

It's one of the real, one of the obvious reasons we had an inflation, spike in inflation.

Conflict in Israel and Gaza and Palestine has only added to those risks.

So something to be aware of.

The most immediate pressure is likely again to be on energy prices.

Gas, spending more on gas immediately means that consumers have less money to spend on other things.

But then also, higher fuel prices do percolate to the whole economy.

Transportation costs go up.

That raises the cost of all goods.

So that could be, again, we could see renewed inflation pressure there.

Government shutdown, congressional chaos, that is literally ongoing as we speak.

There's been a vote this morning in the House.

No signs of that resolving.

raising new risks about a government shutdown.

And again, the magnitude of that will depend in terms of risk to the economy will depend on how long it takes to resolve those issues.

But certainly a note of concern.

And then the last one is actually one that's probably a longer term issue for concern and one we all continue to monitor.

And you actually can see this, the chart on the right there of 30 year mortgage, that's the actual data for 30 year mortgage rates And what you see there is that although inflation has been coming down in the past few months, mortgage rates, which is really long-term interest rates, have been going up.

And that kind of, those increased interest rates will put long-term pressure on growth.

Again, it's consistent with this projection that we have that long-term, beyond the next couple of years, we expect to see growth, but at modest rates.

Next slide.

Regionally, Again, overall, the economy has performed well.

I think there are some things that we are now seeing in the data that I want to highlight.

These are not things that are going to bring down our forecast, per se, because we had been expecting them, but it's rather that they are playing out the way that we thought, and they are things that are going to slow growth.

So one is we received revised employment data from the state.

Looking at the upper chart, the green dotted line is where we thought excuse me, employment levels had been, so at about 1.78 million and then growing towards 1.8 million.

This is a regional measure of employment.

But with the revised data, what we see is that we actually, through much of this early part of this year, have had lower levels of employment in the region than we thought, about 20,000 jobs less.

And if you look at the lower chart, we had presented a version of this in August, where we saw some job loss in both information and professional business services which are really where the tech jobs are focused, and also in construction.

But they were more modest reductions.

What we see now with the revised data is really significant job loss in those areas.

So adding them up on almost 18,000 jobs in tech and an additional 1,000 jobs in construction.

And again, we've seen this, right?

We've seen the tech companies announce that they're not hiring, that they're, in fact, they're engaged in layoffs.

And we had incorporated much of that into our forecast.

the data hadn't actually shown it yet.

So, we are now seeing it.

And I wanted to emphasize again that this is not creating, per se, new risk to the forecast, but they are highlighting that what we thought was happening does really seem to be happening.

And I see there's a question, and I'm happy to take them as we go, but I'll leave that to the Chair.

Let's do that.

Thank you.

I just want to understand the – what's driving maybe not striving – whether or not the revised data from ESD is just a sort of a natural occurrence associated with projections and then real numbers, or if there's something else going on here?

No, it's a good question.

It is – it's a natural thing.

They revise their data on a regular basis.

What the Data for Employment There are two sources.

One is a survey they do of employers where they get partial information.

They essentially take a sample, if you will.

That's how they provide their most current data.

They then are also collecting actual payroll data.

They are ESD.

And so on a quarterly basis, they correct and rebase based on their actuals.

So this is a normal process.

This is an unusually large correction.

But it's not, it's a natural part of the process.

And again, reaffirms what we had been, if you will, what we had been worried about.

Thank you.

Next slide.

And this theme will reappear in the next slide.

So, construction, again, is an area where we've been concerned and expecting there to be less activity.

We know there's less demand for office space now on the commercial side.

And we know there's been a lot of residential production, multifamily residential production in the last few years.

Think about condos going up downtown.

And also in the neighborhoods, townhomes and smaller apartment buildings and the like.

And again, seeing it play out in the data.

So the chart on the right, the bar chart, just to give you a baseline that we put the 2019 pre-pandemics.

These are value of permits that are issued.

So these are projects that are really likely to come to fruition.

So people are, it's not, people submit their permits.

There's a natural process where they're being reviewed at STCI.

And then companies decide, developers decide when to pull the permit, when to make it an issued permit and go into construction.

So 2019, very high levels of construction.

2022 is in the orange.

You can see there was significant reduction relative to 2019. What we're seeing for 2023 is a further step back.

So, as indicated in the title of the chart there.

2023 compared to 2022 to date is running about 16% below.

And and 44% below 2019. so again, notably lower levels of construction activity.

There was a big spike in September, actually, for 2023, as you can see in the text.

Major project from Swedish Hospital came through.

If you take that one out, we're actually even down, we're down further.

Again, not per se a surprise, but affirmation of slowing in that sector.

I would note that we're still seeing that folks are still working on projects.

So the value of permit intake is down less about 6% compared to the 16% per issued.

Again, there's a natural process of between several many months, actually, between submittal and issuance, just as part of the natural process of working through those.

But at the same time, during slowdowns, it's typical for us to see that the ratio between permits submitted and issued changes.

That is to say, people choose not to pull their permits because it's no longer – they either can't find financing or they're deciding for economic reasons it doesn't make sense to move forward with the project.

So again, we're seeing the pattern that we had expected to see.

On the inflation side locally, generally good news.

We have been running at a higher inflation rate than the nation and still are.

So we're about five and a half percent, a little bit less.

But a key for us in bringing that down is the stabilization of apartment rental rates.

If you think about in the consumer price index, in that calculation, what they're doing is there's a basket of goods and they go out and survey what those goods cost.

One of those things that consumers are buying is housing.

And so almost 30% of budgets on average are spent on housing.

So bringing those costs in line are helping bring down local inflation.

And the chart there is just a very, it's a high level summary, an average of apartment prices.

And you can see there's still a slight upward trend, but much more stable than they have been in recent years.

So good news locally on that front as well.

Next slide.

So before I move on to actually putting up the revenue numbers and highlighting the dollar amounts, I do want to highlight one other aspect of the forecast that we present and the work that the forecast council does.

We, I haven't gone into detail here again, really, for the sake of time, but we look at a baseline forecast from our national forecasters.

We also look at a pessimistic forecast and an optimistic forecast to get a sense of the range of possibilities.

And then, ultimately, we make a recommendation as the forecast office which of those to use as the basis for the forecast.

And as highlighted here at the bottom of this page, we ultimately recommend the baseline scenario.

I wanted to give you some feel for why we've done that.

The chart that appears on this page is part of the reason why.

So one of the things we do is try to benchmark our own forecaster.

So S&P Global is the forecast firm that we generally use as an input to our regional forecast.

And what this chart does is just compare their forecast for four key measures of the economy, inflation, the federal funds interest rate, the unemployment rate, and then GDP growth, compare them to another national firm that we have a subscription to, Moody's, that's the yellow dot, and then to a quarterly survey from the Wall Street Journal.

They survey both academic and private sector economists and get their answers to a series of questions, their forecast.

And bottom line, what we can see is that our national forecasts are in line with others.

So we're not looking at an outlier here.

Other thing I note in the text here is that the baseline forecast is itself a relatively modest growth.

And although we've identified some risks that exist at the national economy, at the national level, we don't think that they're really specific to Seattle.

So, you know, auto workers strike will have an impact nationally and a modest impact nationally.

Depending what region you're in, that would be a big impact.

So, you know, depending where you are, you might adjust towards a pessimistic forecast if you were in an area that was dominated by auto production.

Ours is not.

So, ultimately, we have recommended the baseline, and that is the forecast that was endorsed by the forecast council.

So as we move forward now to give you the actual dollar amounts, know that it was based on that baseline.

So one more slide, and we'll dive into the numbers themselves.

So as promised, detailed slide, lots of data here.

Let me just walk you through the structure of the slide, and then I'll move on to talk about the specific results.

So, revenue categories down the left column there, and I'll talk about those.

The highlighting here, those that are highlighted in blue are the ones where the forecast office has the lead in terms of developing revenue estimates.

These tend to be the ones that are most economically dependent, so it really makes sense we're doing this economic forecast as a significant influence on forecasts for these revenues.

In dollar terms, they're a very significant share of the overall total.

We've given you 22 actuals for each of these categories and a total just really as a point of comparison.

Then 2023 revised, those are the figures that were used as part of the proposed budget.

The next column, October forecast, those are the current numbers as updated this week.

And then that next column, the difference is really the change in revenues and potentially where you want to focus.

For 2024, same structure.

We have the proposed.

That, again, underlies the mayor's proposed budget.

Our new figures, the October forecast, and then the difference between those.

And then the final column is the cumulative difference across the two years.

So I'm going to work down now the column first starting in 2023, the column that's highlighting the differences and explain what has changed.

So property tax, $20,000.

A minor technical correction there.

For retail sales in B&O, you see a significant uptick across the two of them, about $5 million, largely reflecting stronger than expected performance year to date and an expectation that we'll have good performance in the third and fourth quarters, again, consistent with the forecast that presented and discussed already today.

Note on the public utility side, so these are taxes on SPU and City Light, a significant reduction there.

That's actually a component, there are two offsetting things going on there.

There was a one-time increase in solid waste revenues having to do with some accounting issues from last year of a couple million dollars.

But then a refund to City Light of almost five million dollars.

So City Light in past years had overpaid its utility taxes, has been working through that issue with FAS.

And we're expecting a payment from the general fund back to City Light for overpayment of about $5 million by year-end.

So the net of those things is an almost $2 million reduction.

Largely a one-time effect, so you don't see that repeated in the 2024 forecast, because again, these are with a one-time increase and then a one-time decrease with that refund.

Court fines up a little bit.

Red light camera activity higher than originally expected, so good news on that front.

Service charges and reimbursements, just some, again, you can see it doesn't continue for 24, so some realized revenue reimbursements to various departments.

Licenses, permits, interest is kind of another category.

A couple million dollar reduction there.

Almost half that reduction in interest earnings from the somewhat lower balances than had been expected.

Interest earnings move up and down.

Their total earnings, I think, is a neighborhood of $20 or $30 million.

So small change in terms of the relative value there.

And then another big change and reduction in payroll tax.

And if you step back for a moment, that might seem a bit curious because the payroll tax in general does not go to the general fund.

So why is there payroll tax in the general fund and why is it negative?

So for the ordinances that direct the payroll tax into its own fund, 2021 revenues are deposited into the general fund, were deposited into the general fund.

And any activities related to 2021 still flow through the general fund.

So if you look at the revised column, we had been expecting, and actually we had received over $2 million in late payments for 2021 in 2023. So we were still getting money from 2021, and that was being deposited into the general fund.

What's happened now is that someone had applied for a refund.

They had overpaid their 2021 payroll, the jumpstart payroll expense tax.

And that refund in the tune of about $3.5 million is going to be paid by year end and paid from the general fund because it's a 2020, excuse me, a 2021 refund.

So bottom line, you get a one-time effect there and a negative value.

Total across 2023 is actually still positive, about $800,000 of net new revenue for 2023. And if you think about this in terms of sustainability, but for the one-time effects, that would be closer to 6 or 7 million.

But we do have these refunds, and that's not an unusual thing.

They come and go, if you will.

For 2024, looking down the difference column, kind of what's changed.

Again, property tax, really minor corrections there.

Retail sales, we're expecting the strong growth in 2023 to lead to a new base, a higher base for 2024, and then somewhat higher growth in 2024, again, particularly in the first half of the year.

So, significant increment there.

smaller increment for B&O taxes and really only modest changes beyond that for any of the categories court finds up again related to red light camera activity and expectations about that.

So the net increment for 2024 is about almost exactly nine million dollars in general fund and then across the two years 2023 and 2024 almost 10 million so 9.8.

So that's For 23 and 24, a summary of the general fund revenue changes.

We'd be happy to answer questions.

The next slide is going to give you some information about the long-term trends and then move on to the non-general fund.

But if there are any questions here, happy to take them.

Council members, any questions so far?

Okay, and again, I appreciate that Director Noble is doing a truncated version of the presentation.

If you'd like to see the full two and a half hour presentation that we did on Tuesday, it is linked on the Seattle channel.

Please go ahead, Director Noble.

Okay, so next slide.

want to shift and talk a little bit about the long-term growth in the general fund.

We focus a lot on 23 and 24 for obvious reasons, given the deliberations you're now engaged in.

I think it is important in terms of sustainability and our overall work.

We want to give you a sense of the long-term as well.

So what I put on this graph here and try to make this simple, two bars, one is the pure general fund, that's the blue line, blue bars, excuse me.

And then orange, because for 23 and 24, The general fund depends on significant transfers from the jumpstart payroll expense tax and from some residual stimulus dollars.

But it was interesting to take a look at it without the grants and the transfers because the orange then it really is a measure of your kind of core general fund revenues.

And the percentages that are sitting above those orange bars are the growth from the previous year.

So what this tells you is that in 2023 core revenues actually declined somewhat relative to 2022. Um, And then beyond that, what you see are just very low growth rates.

So 2024, it'll be less than 2% bigger than 2023, again, setting aside the transfers.

And then you can see going forward, 2%, not quite two and a half, three.

So very slow growth rates.

These growth rates are in the near term actually below inflation.

So we'll continue to fall behind in terms of the city's buying power, if you will.

And compared to the pre-pandemic levels, we're still below inflation.

And we're not, bottom line here, we're not going to catch up from the natural growth of the general fund.

And just important that you have that context as you consider near-term actions and their potential long-term implications.

And this hasn't changed from the August forecast.

The levels of the general fund have changed, and there'll be more of this discussion, I think, today.

You know, the $10 million increment that we were showing for the two years grows quickly to about a $20 million increment.

So the general fund is actually, per year, about $20 million better off on a projected basis than we thought in August.

But really, in terms of the bigger, that's out of 1.7 billion.

So that's a small increment.

And these slow growth rates are still the case.

So that doesn't change that fact.

So next slide.

I was going to move on to talk about the non-general fund.

Before we go to the next slide, I think it would be really fascinating to see this long-term growth, or I should say stagnation, of the general fund compared to the population growth that might be projected.

We know that.

And I apologize that I didn't ask for that last time we met, but this is more in line with how we prepare as a city for the future.

We know that over the last decade, there's been a 21% increase in the population in Seattle.

And just last year, the national data showed that Seattle was the largest large city who had the highest growth in population throughout 2022. So when the question comes up on whether or not we have a spending problem or a revenue problem, and we see the stagnation in the general fund forecasted over the next five years, I would very much love for the community and our colleagues to put into context the growth in population and thus the growth in needs.

Never mind, compounding that we have a global pandemic that has exacerbated those needs, both in terms of economic instability and healthcare needs.

So, thank you for pausing on the slide.

And for future reference, it would be great to have that combination of the four.

the population forecast if that is available.

I think that some unknown factors can remain.

Growth in immigration and migration across the country.

We have seen a number of people move to this region because we know that this has a more relatively stable climate compared to other regions of our nation and globe.

And it's probably hard to forecast for that.

But it is important for us to try to do as much as we can to project growth in population and corresponding need with the existing general fund revenue streams.

Thank you so much, Director Newell.

I do see a hand, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I agree it's really important to show the growth in these funding sources along with other factors such as population growth, and it would help to see that historically too, and maybe that's what you're referring to.

over the last few years or whatever is helpful.

In addition, it's helpful to see the increase in the consumer price index.

I think if we did the population by itself, it would actually be growing not as quickly as the general fund, but if you layer in the consumer price index as well, then it's my understanding you would then really see the double impact of things.

So that would be helpful to see that.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

I think another measure that might be interesting to track as well, would be the growth in income over the same period.

Not that the city has a direct way to tax income, but rather as a measure of kind of the community wealth, to give a sense of ability to pay, if you will, as well.

So, and those are things that we're well aware of, and going forward, we'd be happy to present some more context about growth overall over the long run.

In any case, before we move on, just to emphasize again that it is going to be a challenge for the city near term.

We've been used to, again, as the economy in some ways boomed in the pre-pandemic period between, we were led by tech, but leading, but also through construction and the like, we kind of, my language, we got used to significant year-to-year growth and expectation going forward is for significantly less.

So next slide, we'll move on to talk about non-general fund revenue streams.

Again, the shading is, as before, the blue ones are ones from the forecast office, those not shaded from the budget office.

So the 1st line here is the payroll tax.

I'm going to walk through these numbers, but we actually have 2 more slides to follow the last 2 slides of the presentation to talk more about the payroll tax forecast and to put it into some context.

So, what you see is a downward revision of almost $6 million in the payroll forecast for 2023, and then a revision upwards of almost $20 million for 2024. As my colleague, Jan Verhuis, will explain shortly, that's largely driven by expectations around stock values.

What we've discovered is that for a significant share of the largest payers of the PET, stock compensation is a driver and then influences our net revenues.

This makes it very hard for us to forecast what's going to happen, so part of the discussion over the next two slides is the high degree of uncertainty we have in this forecast.

But again, highlighting reduction this year of almost $6 million, increase of almost $20 for 2024, and you can see the net over the two years.

Admissions tax up slightly in 2023 and 2024, reflecting year-to-date performance and expectation that that will continue.

Other notable change here is in real estate excise tax REIT.

So again, this is a tax on real estate transactions.

We had recently again, as August had a forecast for 50 and a half million, bringing that down to just below 49 million.

And that again, based on actual performance over the past couple months, we thought we'd lowered this enough, but we continue to see sluggishness.

And again, consider the volatility here.

This was a $90 million, $91 million source of revenue in 2022, now expected to be less than $50 million for 2023. Two huge factors here, interest rates, which are making, certainly on the residential side, housing affordability a real challenge.

On the commercial side, interest rates are also binding, but also, again, lack of demand for new office and the volume of new residential multifamily coming online, meaning there's less activity there as well.

So reductions of almost 1.9 in 2023 and 1.6 plus in 2024. Moving down, one time loss of revenues for the vehicle license fee due to delay in the implementation of the new fee rates, but that does not continue to 2024. Commercial parking tax lowered, just again reflecting a little bit less activity than had been anticipated year to date.

And then the school zone speed enforcement, small reduction in 23, more significant reduction in 2024 related to school closures.

So not school construction, actually better spoken.

So a couple of locations where we have cameras in place, the school district is engaged in major rehabilitation of existing facilities.

So they're going to close them as schools for a couple of years while the construction activity is underway.

We then don't, it's not no longer a school zone.

So we lose revenues related to those cameras.

So that's the nature of the change there that dissipates over time as those schools come back online.

Before we dig in, and I turn this over to Jan to talk more about the Jumpstart payroll tax forecast, are there questions about other revenues on this page?

No, I don't have any questions.

I just also want to echo the points that you made are concretized and spelled out as well in the central staff memo that Tom Meitzel put together earlier this year and has been for foreshadowing this conversation over the last two or three years.

So if you want additional references to what Director Noble has been talking about, please do take a look back at those central staff memos as well.

that really talked about these out years and the projected problems that we see compounding for our city's potential economic stability.

Thanks again, Tom Mikesell, for daylighting those in previous central staff memos as well.

Thank you.

And with that, I'm going to turn this over to Jan to give you some more insights, and we can move on to the next slide, some more insights about the payroll expense tax forecast.

All right.

Thanks.

Good morning.

So first, a little bit about the forecast update, and then we'll have one more slide with a discussion of general uncertainty related to the jumpstart payroll expense tax forecast.

The 2023 revenue forecast is slightly lower than in August.

That reflects one of the two main inputs that we use to develop the forecast.

We use data on return to the office as one important factor and then stock price expectations, the expected price of stock for the companies that are major taxpayers turns out to be an important factor that affects the revenue.

In terms of the return to the office, the trends, the data that we are seeing is very close to what we are expecting in August.

The main reason for the change is the different expectation regarding stock prices.

And in particular, in the chart on the right, the light blue and the darker blue dots compare the expected year-over-year growth in August.

That's the light blue points.

and the current year over year expected growth in dark blue points.

So as you can see, there have been slightly downwards revision in, in the stock price expectation.

The stock prices have retreated slightly since summer.

Those lines around the dots, they show how much uncertainty there is relative to that average point.

These are not our forecast.

We rely on the data from Wall Street Journal analysts, and the points are the average expectations of this group of the analysts.

And then the line goes from the low to the high estimates in that group of people who are providing their forecast.

And as we are getting closer to the year-end for 2023, the amount of uncertainty there is small.

So, and the main change that explains the downloaders is just slightly lower expectations or on average for 23. Now, looking at the forecast for 2024, that is. the change that large upwards revision is again primarily because of a better expectation for stock prices in the next year on average 2024 the analysts believe 2024 will be a good year for The stock market are those couple of companies that are included in this chart are here for the illustrative purposes.

They are companies that are known to have a significant footprint here in Seattle city, or the.

broad region, Microsoft for example here that has its headquarters outside of city of Seattle and we included them in this chart to provide again some sense of how much uncertainty there is and where the whole tech sector might be heading in the next year.

So the points, those purple points are again the average expectations by the Wall Street Journal analysts And the line goes from the low to the high estimate for the year over year change.

In some cases, the low point is actually actually implies a decline year over year decline in stock price of that particular company.

But on average.

The analysts are quite optimistic and that's the reason why the.

Forecast for 24 has been revised up significantly in terms of the return to the office.

It seemed to be plateauing, so there hasn't been major change in our expectations and the last factor that resulted in an increase of roughly 4.5M in the forecast for next year.

Is the sunsetting of the nonprofit health care entities deductions that has roughly 4.5M to the forecast.

Now, if we can go to the next slide.

We have a little bit of additional detail on the amount of uncertainty regarding our forecast.

Um, jumpstart payroll expense tax is, uh, quite significant revenue stream, almost as large as retail sales tax or business and occupation tax, but it's quite different from those 2. We have only 2 full years of tax collection so far.

In general, our understanding of a tax base is limited and we are learning more as we go and trying to incorporate our improved understanding into our forecast.

We have been working on improving our models.

One of the factors that we have found out to be significant or that explains both the overperformance and The payroll expense tax collecting more than significantly more than expected in the 1st year, but then dropping about 50M between 21 and 22. that stock price development has proved to be quite a significant factor and the chart there at the bottom right shows again how much the stock price expectation matter for our forecast for the next year.

In line with that previous slide, which showed quite large range for those companies that were included as an illustrative example, the range from the pessimistic scenario to the optimistic scenario for next year is about 100 million.

So about 50 million down from a baseline to the pessimistic and roughly 50 million up between baseline and the optimistic scenario.

And that is really just the result of that large uncertainty regarding the stock price changes.

Beyond that, there is a general, there are additional factors that increase the uncertainty that we were not able to factor in to our forecast.

The data that we have to develop the forecast is still rather limited.

work this year in cooperation with the IT department to obtain access to the payroll data from ESD that will improve our ability to forecast jumpstart payroll expense tax revenue.

And as we collect more data, we'll be able to improve our forecast and the amount of uncertainty should be should be smaller, but there are some Factors in the long run, especially that also potentially a significant trace and potentially significant or a downward trace.

The chart on on the top here shows the expectations regarding the office vacancy rate.

As the.

Return to the office seem to be plateauing and seem to be stabilizing somewhere around 3 days in the office rather than 4 or 5. There are expectations that the office vacancy rates will continue to climb.

So, as the leases expire, and companies need to reevaluate.

Whether to extend those leases, or whether to let them expire, potentially relocating outside.

Of the city, there is. a possibility that some of the tax base is at risk and the companies might, if they decide to relocate outside of a city, they'll no longer be the part of their employment that will move out, will not be subject to a payroll expense tax.

That significant increase in the office vacancy rate together with Overall decline in France and the significant amount of office space construction that's currently.

Um, that's currently in place on the East side.

Again, poses potentially a significant risk, but it's hard to quantify how much of a tax base is at risk and.

That part of uncertainty is not directly incorporated in the forecast for 24 or beyond.

So the uncertainty that was included in the forecast is just the stock price uncertainty of those additional factors that could potentially matter and could potentially matter quite significantly.

With that, I think we are at the end of, at least at the end of the discussion for Jumpstart at payroll's expense.

I think we are happy to take any questions.

And questions overall as well.

Great.

Well, I don't see any questions.

Let's roll into David Haines' presentation from CBO, and then we can take Hennessy's presentation, excuse me, from CBO, and then we can take questions on the overall revenue picture.

I think maybe there's some mistake.

I don't have a separate presentation.

Ours is incorporated in with Dr. Nobles.

Oh, great.

Okay.

Apologies for that.

We'll give you some time right there.

Do you have anything else you'd like to add?

Yeah, he was there all the questions that we otherwise couldn't have answered, but yeah.

I'm not seeing any hands.

I want to thank you for walking us through the information.

It was a mix of good news, bad news for the near term, right?

Slightly up revenue for jumpstart and general fund, slightly down.

for transportation and infrastructure-specific revenue streams.

So I appreciate the real-time information that helps inform the budget deliberations in front of us.

Again, I'm happy that we were able to use some of the general fund increases to put some additional funding into planning reserves and some smaller investments in the overall balancing package.

jumpstart revenues allowed for us to help build back some of the reductions that had been proposed across categories and also ensure that there was additional funding to really stabilize and administer the programs.

And then to accommodate for the transportation infrastructure reductions, we were able to close the remaining gap.

There was about a $10 million combined reduction across those revenue streams.

And thanks to some really creative work and good thinking from central staff and our executive partners, we were able to close part of that gap.

And then the central staff, along with my office, worked to close the remaining about $10 million, excuse me, $5 million hole that still needed to be closed up with the use of general fund, because we want to continue to invest in those programs and our infrastructure.

I appreciate you being here.

Director Noble, did you have anything else you'd like to add?

Not only to say thank you for the opportunity and council members or their staff, if any follow up questions were available offline or online, if you will, in whatever form.

So thank you again and look forward to doing this again in the future.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you so much.

All right, Madam Clerk, could you please read item one and three into the record together?

agenda item one, introduction and overview for briefing and discussion, and agenda item three, chair's balancing package for briefing and discussion.

Okay, well thank you so much.

As we hand this over to our central staff team, I want to just take another minute to thank the incredible colleagues from central staff who've been here with us throughout the presentation, but who've been working literally around the clock on creating the proposed balancing package in front of us.

who helped to identify the changes in existing revenue streams and the new information that we received at the beginning of this process allowed for us to create a streamlined process that allowed for a chair's balancing package to incorporate as many council member amendments as possible to really ensure that this was a collective product from all of us.

And then this gives us the platform to identify additional amendments that might be necessary or desired from council members.

I want to thank central staff for your incredible work and the analysis that's gone in to ensuring that we have a balanced 2024 calendar year budget in front of us, but really thank you for hearing all of the council members and the issues that they are trying to raise and identify ways to possibly fund those, but also to flesh out some of the policy concepts.

Your expertise and your diligence to serving all of us is greatly appreciated.

So by name, I wanted to thank Director Esther Handy, Deputy Director Ali Panucci, Executive Assistant Patty Worgen, Seattle Council Counsel Lauren Henry.

Our budget gurus, Tom Mikesell and Eden Siskic, along with all of the central staff analysts.

Greg Doss, Ann Gorman, Asha Venkatraman, Jennifer Lebrek, Brian Goodnight, Calvin Chow, Eric McConaughey, Lisa Kay.

Lisa?

I don't know if the Lisa's still here.

Tracy Radscliffe, Yolanda Ho, Jasmine Marwaha, Karina Bull, Ketel Freeman, Lish Whitson, and am I missing anybody, Central Staff?

You're missing the Rainbow Budget Pony, but I'll let that go.

The Rainbow Budget Pony, our little statues here in front, and all of the folks who've gone into thinking through the incredible amendments that you will see in front of us today.

So really, thank you to everybody who's provided feedback on policy ideas, funding strategies, and really fleshed out some initial policy ideas with the expertise of central staff, our nonpartisan central staff who serve every council member.

You will see all council members' fingerprints in this proposed budget in front of us for 2024. So thank you.

And with that, I hand it over to Esther Handy, our Director of Central Staff, to walk us through the overview of the 2024 Mid-Biennium Balancing Package.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and thanks for the generous lift up of this team.

It's been a pleasure working with you and all of the council members over the past couple of weeks to understand this budget and get to this balancing package.

I am going to begin with a set of slides that provide an overview of some of the big picture balancing.

This will include how the jumpstart funds are used in the package, how it responds to the October revenue forecast, and what it means for the general fund deficit.

We'll take questions on that, and then we will turn to the individual transactions in the package, and we will walk through them one by one, categorized by department.

Deputy Director Ali Panucci and I are going to do most of the presenting today just for efficiency sake.

But we have much of our central staff team on the line to answer subject matter questions.

And I just want to note that what I present is our team's collective work and appreciate the depth and breadth of this team.

So, Patty, let's jump into the first slide so I can describe how the chair's package realigns JumpStart funding.

The chair covered some of this in her opening remarks, and I'll just put a finer point on it.

So the package remains the, retains, excuse me, the $84 million transfer to the general fund that had been proposed in the endorsed budget to support proposed general fund programs.

It does so by transferring back 9.3M dollars of general fund dollars.

I'm sorry, excuse me, transfers back 9.3M dollars of jumpstart dollars that.

To the general fund.

Thanks for giving me a minute as I find my rhythm here this morning.

And with it, it moves the programs that are listed on the slide.

So the increase for wage equity for human service providers, startup costs for the social housing PDA, relocation of Rosie's Village and code compliance staff for the economic displacement relocation assistance programs.

All of those are at the same funding levels as proposed in the mayor's budget, but they are now supported by general fund instead of jumpstart resources.

Second, the chair's package restores affordable housing and economic resilience categories to levels in the 2024 endorsed budget.

It reduces about a million dollars of proposed new spending in the administrative category that was focused on evaluation of the tax and its programs.

When we get into specific CDAs, we'll describe that in a little bit more detail.

With that reduction, there is a swap of moving some administrative expenses out of the economic resilience category into admin.

So we'll walk you through those in the next section.

And the final piece is it adds $2 million to the Jumpstart planning reserve to support the growth in labor costs for positions supported by Jumpstart resources and to protect against volatility in this fund.

The proposed budget projected $1.8 million in this reserve at the end of 2024, and the balancing package brings that up to $3.8 million.

Jumpstart Fund had a larger reserve going into the biennium on the scale of $15 to $20 million that has been used to address Revenues that were lower than expected in 2023 and 2022. And you just heard from the forecast office about sort of the range of uncertainty in the forecast for this tax.

So building reserves helps protect against that volatility.

The next slide shows a table of the totals.

Maybe I'll walk through that and then take questions.

That'd be fine, Director Handy.

Thank you.

And I see Council Member Herbold had a first question up.

I would also just note for our Council colleagues, I apologize.

I did not include on our agenda today the summary document that we created that provides a short four and a half page summary of all of the investments and some of the major changes that Executive that director handy is walking through right now.

So i've just emailed that to the floor And you would have received it in the press release this morning, but I apologize I should have asked for that to be included as part of the agenda as well So, please take a look for that and we will go back to director handy to walk us through the overview of these major Fund shifts and I will take folks in the queue council member herbal this first up in the queue

So this table, the first couple columns show the 2020 endorsed budget, 2024 endorsed budget by category.

The middle columns are the proposed budget from the mayor, and the last two columns are the chair's balancing package.

So you'll see under general fund balancing, 84 million proposed, 83.5 million in the balancing package.

Administration and evaluation stays under that up to 5%.

It is 4% of total Jump Start spending in the Chair's balancing package.

The economic revitalization category is restored from 31 million in the 2024 proposed to 34 million in the balancing package, which is the 15% allocation of Jump Start funds defined by the fund policies.

No change in equitable development, very minor change in Green New Deal, and you'll see housing there up to the $141 million level in the balancing package.

That's 63% of total resources exceeding the required 62%.

Happy to take questions on those jumpstart moves and totals.

Okay, great.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I was just reflecting the statement that you made, Director Handy, that the fund swap for the items funded does not change the number of dollars allocated.

And I just wanted to flag, I think there is one exception to that, the human services service provider wages.

There is, I think, an accepted budget request in the chair's package that increases the it doesn't increase the 2%, it increases how to get to 2%, so it increases the number of dollars.

So I just wanted to flag the dollar amount has changed, the percentage is the same.

Thank you.

Yes, the chair's...

balancing package retains a 2% wage equity increase for human service contract providers.

We, there is a, on the order of $300,000 increase in the chair's package such that the contracts receive their inflationary increase.

and then the 2 percent wage equity is applied on top of those inflated contract amounts, rather than having the wage equity amount and inflationary amount applied both to the base and then added together.

So, thank you for reflecting that.

Sorry to jump ahead.

I was just thinking that perhaps some folks listening might miss that there will As you accurately said, the percentages were the same, but the dollar amounts, we'll learn more about later.

Great.

Ali, was there anything you wanted to add there?

Yeah, I think I'll just.

maybe clarify, hopefully not add to any confusion.

The dollars in the, in the chair's balancing package to add to that bucket are not backed by the jumpstart transfer.

So they're kind of unrelated to the, um, this breakdown of the percentages, but they are funded by, by some of the general fund that is freed up through certain pieces in the package, as well as the government forecast.

Great.

There aren't further questions about JumpStart.

I will move to how this responds to the forecast.

Great, next slide, Patty.

So the Economic and Revenue Forecast Office just walked you through the forecast.

Two big revenue sources are up, as they described.

The chair was responding to a $9.8 million increase in general fund revenues.

is deployed in two primary ways in the package.

The first is that $5 million is used to avoid reduction in transportation investments and to increase contributions to planning reserves for needed costs in future years.

And $4.5 million of that is used to expand services, particularly in human services and community safety.

Again, we'll walk through those sort of line by line.

The $9.5 million increase in the jumpstart revenue is used primarily to restore the housing and economic resilience categories as just described to the 2024 endorsed budget levels.

And then $2 million of that is used to add to planning reserves.

So those are the two big buckets of new resources plugged in those ways.

I'm happy to take questions, and then I'll talk about the transportation revenues.

Sounds good.

Councilmember Peterson, I know you're eager to get to transportation, but let's take a question on the slide.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and sorry if you alluded to this already, Director Hannity, but the $9.5 million increase in jumpstart revenue, I thought that the Office of Economic and Revenue Forecasting was referring to a $19 million or $14 million increase in Jumpstart?

Yeah, thank you for the question.

Happy to clarify there.

The forecast showed a approximately $19 million increase in 2024, and it's a $14.5 million increase across the biennium.

This balancing package assumes an extension of the payroll tax exemption for non-profit healthcare and life science facilities that has been in place since the adoption of the tax and expires at the end of this year.

So if you assume that in place, the sort of net total add is $9.5 million in increased amounts.

Thank you for the question.

Thanks for the clarification.

All right, let's go to transportation.

Unless you had a follow-up, Council Member Peterson?

No.

Okay.

Transportation.

All right, so here's the tougher part of the chair's work over the last week.

The balancing package responds to a $3.5 million decrease in real estate excise tax by spending out of a portion of the $5 million reserve for REIT, and that allows us to sustain capital programs that are backed by REIT.

A $1.3 million decrease in the vehicle license fee revenue and a $2.4 million decrease in school speed zone enforcement revenues are addressed together with a transfer of $3 million general fund.

Excuse me.

And a reduction of.

Excuse me, I just want to pause.

I just realized I don't, I'm not sure that Seattle Channel is broadcasting the speaker or the slide.

Can we double check on that?

We should have the shared screen and Director Esther Handy.

Thank you so much.

And we can change that to Director Esther Handy.

Okay, you are now showing and for anybody who missed the previous presentation slides, those are linked on today's agenda.

And we will get the summary document that I mentioned earlier included in the meeting minutes.

Okay, I'm going to turn it back to Director Handy and keep my eye on the screen there so we can have the PowerPoint showing and Director Handy.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I was just addressing the decrease in vehicle license fee and school speed zone enforcement revenue, noting that they are addressed in the balancing package by applying $3 million of general fund increase from the revenue forecast and a reduction of $775,000 from the contributions to the emergency fund.

I'll note that that transaction moves the payment to the emergency fund from 24 to 2025. So the city continues to expect to fully replenish the emergency fund by 2026 as planned.

So it's sort of a shift in that fund in order to sustain those transportation investments.

And finally, it addresses a $2.4 million decrease in the commercial parking tax by using a revenue stabilization reserve for that fund.

The net of those actions is to preserve all capital and transportation projects supported by these funds.

I'll note that as we head into the coming weeks, the chair, central staff, and the city budget office will dive a little bit further into the technical details of these funds to more thoroughly determine if there are other ways to balance that rely less on reserves, but still avoid cuts to current project.

And we'll be bringing those forward in the next round, if any, emerge from our deeper technical review.

Any questions on the transportation funds?

I'm not seeing anything.

Yep.

Seeing none, I will return, I will turn to what this means for the projected general fund deficit and appreciation to fiscal analyst Tom Mikesell for helping us put this together in short order.

As a reminder, on these charts, the blue line is revenue, red line is projected expenditures.

This first chart shows the mayor's proposed budget with an average deficit of $247 million for 2025 and beyond.

If we go to the next slide, we see that average deficit reduced to 221Million.

This is primarily due to the forecast, which is showing an ongoing increase in revenue as well as to a correction of an error in the financial plan.

But I will add that the balancing package adds only a very small amount of ongoing new spending to the general fund, which helps with this improved look at out-year sustainability.

Additions are primarily one-time expenditures to the general fund, and where you see ongoing programs, they are largely supported by jumpstart funds.

Questions about the deficit?

I will turn to budget legislation.

Let's keep going.

This package, in addition to all of the transactions we will describe shortly by department.

The package assumes inclusion of a significant amount of budget legislation.

So on October 11th, central staff presented a list of proposed budget legislation.

This includes all the pieces that were transmitted with the budget and a few proposed by council members.

That list is linked to these slides and we can pull it up if needed.

The package assumes the adoption of that legislation except for The Jump Start Fund flexibility ordinance transmitted with the budget is being replaced by one that amends the Jump Start Fund policies only to extend the deduction or exemption, excuse me, to nonprofit healthcare providers.

With the realignment that has been done in this package, additional flexibility is not needed that was included in the executive's version of that ordinance.

And then Council Member Peterson's capital gains tax and water tax repeal bills are not included in the package, but they've been introduced to the council and Council Member Peterson may bring them forward in the next round of amendments.

Council members have access to all of the transmitted legislation.

I'll just make a note, legislative assistance, if you're not sure where to find those, please be in touch with Patty Wigrin and they can help point you to them.

A few bills are still being drafted, including regarding fiscal transparency, wage equity, and I believe the network company fee ordinance.

Most bills will be on the introduction and referral council calendar on Tuesday, October 24th.

And all bills to be considered alongside the budget need to be introduced by November 7th.

If additional legislation is proposed through council member amendments next week, we will preview them in committee on Friday, October 27. And we'll be in touch with council members about sort of the logistics of moving that legislation through the budget process.

And finally, I'll note that there are inevitably a set of technical corrections that must be made at the end of this process.

Those are typically included in a chair's package when the chair's package is released at the end of the process.

Because this package is being released earlier in the process, I'm just noting that we will bring them forward in the November 13 to 15 deliberations.

Next, I'll move to just process.

Remind us where we are at.

Today kicks off the council's budget deliberations.

Council members self-balanced amendments are due to central staff by noon on Tuesday.

And next Friday, we will be back here in committee previewing all of the submitted amendments.

Your central staff team will take the next two weeks to write those up, and they will be up for discussion and vote on November 13 and 15, 13 through 15. Your next public hearing is Monday night, November 13, after you and the public have received a full briefing on the proposed amendments.

That is the end of my presentation.

I'm happy to take questions, and then we will turn it over And Deputy Director Panucci and I will walk through the changes by department.

So just occurred to me to flag for the members of the viewing public that you will have a chance to weigh in on possible amendments that you'd like to see, including on Friday next week.

Amendments are due on Tuesday.

So it will be all of the amendments that we know by Friday's committee meeting will be published on the agenda.

And that's a good opportunity to call and give the legislative body here, the council members, a chance to hear from members of the public about which amendments you'd like to see.

So again, that's next Friday.

That would be a good opportunity to weigh in on the amendments that you see.

And then we'll have another chance for a full public hearing and obviously more public comment to come.

But that's a good first opportunity to weigh in next week at 10 a.m.

Anything else on that, central staff?

Okay.

And colleagues, as a reminder, next Tuesday is that deadline for amendments that you'd like to see to this proposed package that we are about to walk through.

And for central staff, is that deadline at noon on Tuesday?

That is a noon deadline, and that is maybe Central Staff's most serious deadline of the year.

So our team is really fully available to you on Monday and Tuesday morning to help you get your amendment submittals in.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And even if it's not fully fleshed out idea, I'm sure Central Staff would like to hear about it before that deadline so that they can work with you.

Okay with that we've already read agenda item number three into the record.

So i'm going to ask um That each council member if you'd like to speak to the amendments that you see in the balancing package where you are the prime sponsor Please be prepared to share some short comments I will turn it to you after this after the central staff team does their presentation of the topic And the dollar amount and again if you'd like to add additional context to why you brought it forward and the impact you think that this will make That is very helpful for the viewing public Again, please do try to keep your comments relatively short.

We are going to plow through lunch.

I want to remind folks, we start at 11 o'clock.

So if you need to eat while you're on your Zoom, appreciate it.

No problem here.

But do keep close to your computer so you can chime in when it comes to your amendment.

for your amendment idea, and we are going to go all the way through this presentation.

This, again, is a really important opportunity for you to show community members that you've been listening to where their ideas ended up in the proposed balancing package, and, of course, to flesh out any additional questions that you have.

I will flag for council members, this is a good time to ask questions.

It's not a great time to debate.

We will have plenty of opportunity for debate and discussion and a back and forth, especially starting next Friday and then continuing into the subsequent weeks.

But if you have questions that you would like to get to the bottom of, I encourage you to ask questions.

That's no problem.

But please refrain from debate at this juncture because this is really a briefing and an overview of the proposed package.

If questions and discussion help inform whether or not you'd like to bring forward an amendment, that is absolutely encouraged and welcomed.

Okay.

With that, I'm going to turn it to central staff.

Thank you again.

It's yet another year where I've seen the incredible ability for central staff to allow for multiple important ideas to be able to be accommodated for in a chair's balancing package.

So thanks to you, central staff, and thanks to you, colleagues, for flagging your ideas early.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Director Handy and I will walk through the items in the package.

I will just preface this with we have been working with you in earnest since the forecast came out and to get this package together and with all of you over the last two weeks.

We have developed descriptions of these items, in some cases not as fully described as we would normally do when the balancing package is released later in the process.

So I will just note that some of these descriptions will be enhanced and refined as we move towards discussions on November 13th through 15th.

So just flagging that for awareness.

And Patty, if you could zoom in on this table so we can really see the title, the description, and the sponsor.

So maybe on the sort of the leftmost columns of the table, that might help.

for legibility for the people viewing at home.

Does that work for you, Chair Mosqueda?

Yep, that sounds great.

Thank you very much, Patty.

Thank you, Patty.

Okay, so I'm going to describe the first 2 items together because they are related to each other.

The 1st item arts 801 a sponsored by chairman skater.

And item 2 arts 801 s a, also proposed by council member.

And this would be a good time to just note that this year in our numbering protocol for amendments, if you see an S.

After that first three-digit number, it indicates that it is a statement of legislative intent or SLI, as you will hear us say throughout the presentation.

So, the 1st item would add a 100,000 dollars to the office to the arts and culture from the arts and culture fund to the office of arts and culture for organizational development and strategic planning support.

Thus, the associated statement of legislative intent asked the office of arts and culture to develop a strategic strategic planning framework and lays out 2 stages for development of that proposal.

Thank you so much.

Are you done with the summary of those two items?

Okay, great.

I'll just jump in.

Folks, I appreciate that we've been able to work together to make so many investments over the last few years, especially with the ongoing pandemic and the way that our community has been impacted, both small businesses, arts and culture, and workers.

As a city, we need to continue developing a strategic framework to better allocate and prioritize funding and resources for arts and culture.

This funding will be used for community stipends and consultation to better support a robust community-driven planning process, a scope of work that includes a survey of best practices in other jurisdictions, a racial equity analysis, among other considerations.

This would help provide clarity and transparency for both the executive and the council on community-informed priorities.

I'd also just note on that second piece, it's a great way to emphasize also greater investments and strategic priorities for future alignment with neighborhoods, especially neighborhoods at highest risk of displacement.

So thanks so much.

Thank you.

And I'll just as we get into the flow here, we are going to provide a very high level description of the amendment.

We're happy to say more.

And I should have noted at the beginning.

We do have our, the rest of our team, or the most of our team on the line.

If there are more detailed questions about the proposals, they are our subject matter experts who can weigh in.

as needed.

So this third item, Arts 802A, sponsored by Councilmember Strauss, would add $20,000 one time to the Office of Arts and Culture to support projects featuring African American artists and their experiences in Nordic countries, such as the National Nordic Museum's Nordic Utopia African Americans in the 20th Century exhibit.

Excellent.

Councilmember Strauss.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Ali, for this brief discussion.

Yes, the National Nordic Museum has this exhibit, African Americans in the 20th Century in Scandinavian Countries.

This is traveling the country, and this is an opportunity for us to not only support a local cultural institution.

It also is an opportunity for us to get our city's name out and across the country.

I think I've said this a number of times, the National Nordic Museum operates more like an embassy to Nordic countries in the city of Seattle than it does a museum.

We have dignitaries coming from all over the world.

Eric Nelson, the CEO, has been knighted by almost every single Nordic country.

And so this is a really, this is a prominent place to have our city seal for while also supporting our arts and cultural institutions.

I will note that the full cost of this item is $50,000 and I appreciate the $20,000 in place, but I'm not sure that that will actually, I'm not sure that that actually accomplishes the goal here.

So appreciate everyone's assistance on this.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

We will follow up with you on that one.

Let's go to number four.

Arts 803A1, sponsored by Council President Morales, would add $675,000 one time from the Jump Start Fund to the Office of Arts and Culture to support arts, neighborhood identity, and public space activation improvements in Interbay and integrate with the Seattle Storm Training Facility.

The intent is for this funding to be used for artists and or arts organizations to provide improvements such as murals, enhanced crosswalks, and wayfinding, as well as to support the work of local black, indigenous, and people of color artists.

All right.

Council President, we are talking about the STORM training facility and all the activation and arts that they've been talking to community members about.

Would you like to speak about item number four on this list?

I'm actually preparing for you, Madam Chair, and for the public that, and I will have more to say, and I apologize for not having particular comments teed up.

It isn't so much about the Seattle storm as it is about that this process started three years ago when we rezoned the area for a training center and moved over light rail, one block sound transit to accommodate to activate this inter-bay neighborhood and brand it with all the type of discussions we talked about with transit-oriented development, transit-oriented, obviously, childcare, entertainment, you name it, and the urban and the density there and making it walkable.

And we put together a timeline for you, which I will be sharing.

I've already shared, I think, with your office, but we have another timeline coming up.

in conjunction with the actual training center.

So with that, um, I have more to share with my colleagues, but that's where we stand right now.

And I want to thank you and your staff and of course our staff and working with the mayor's office and making sure that, um, we make, we, have um you know i hate using these kind of words that we center and uplift um something as a training center for a team that's won four national championships and has spent the last five years playing everywhere and practicing everywhere except for the city of seattle so that's where we're at right now and i'll have more to add more to come later so thank you excellent thank you very much uh council member lewis

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and very much appreciate the Council President's amendment.

I have been talking to the Storm about this neighborhood since the Council took our land use actions a couple of years ago, and I'm very supportive of the projects and ambitions that the Storm has in this particular section of Interbay.

I really appreciate this creative and very responsive proposal to get these needed investments into the neighborhood to I want to highlight my full support for this item.

public asset that is being created in Interbay.

I thank the Council President for bringing forward this amendment.

I think it's really exciting that Seattle is leading the way to create this practice facility that's not just for the storm, as our Council President noted, but really about how we encourage and invite members of the community and public, especially communities of color, to be part of this practice facility.

There's going to be programming and opportunities for community engagement, and we really want to light up the path to more opportunities to have the community engage with this new facility.

With the expansion of light rail and interbay, as the council president noted, and the creation of the storm facilities along with, and Council Member Strauss, I'm going to give you a shout out, Ballard FC, bringing the soccer players and soccer fans to the neighborhood We know there's a huge opportunity for activation and placemaking.

It's also about public safety and really celebrating our community assets.

So thank you so much to all that have been involved in this.

And Council President, thanks for lifting this up about how it's about investing in local BIPOC future athletes, but also this specific line item is supporting BIPOC artists.

Thank you so much.

Let's keep going.

Thank you.

Great.

The next item on 801A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, would add $40,000 general fund to the office of city auditor for staffing costs.

These funds will be used for staff recruitment and retention, enabling a competitive salary for a vacant auditor position and salary adjustments to advance pay equity.

Thank you so much.

I know that many council members probably received the request from Auditor Jones about the ongoing asks that the auditor's office receives from the legislative branch and the need to respond to those for the city families.

So I am happy to put forward this request.

I know that there's a number of council members who wanted it.

We just put my name on it since it's part of a larger request from a number of council members, but I will note the council's interest in continuing to support staffing for the Office of the City Auditor.

And with a large number of staff retiring, this funding is really important for helping to attract and recruit experienced candidates to join this important team.

Thanks to my colleagues who've continued to identify ways to engage with the auditor to daylight issues that then can turn into policy proposals.

Change the laws in the city appreciate that especially want to thank the auditor for their early work that they did with my office in 2018 and 2019 on City light rate changes and the good work that went into that Councilmember Peterson

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

the city auditors bandwidth even more.

We just had an excellent report in the land use committee this morning looking at one of the departments.

We also have the bridge audit that won a national award.

We know that their audits have saved the city millions of dollars and so I'll be, and the federal government obviously has substantial resources on the legislative branch side to look at things deeper into the executive branch, such as the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accounting Office or Government Accountability Office, Congressional Research Service.

So I'll be looking to see if we can add more FTEs to the City Auditor's Office to expand their and with which will enable the legislative branch to do an even more robust job.

There's your budget bingo.

More robust job for our oversight.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Councilmember Mosqueda, and I'm very glad to see this ad reflected, given the strong support from Council colleagues for keeping this in the budget.

Similar to Councilmember Peterson's remarks, there is a An office expansion plan that has been proffered for the last couple of budget cycles by the office of the auditor that that I would be interested in looking at again in promoting that adds a couple of additional and some capacity for paid internships.

So just want to flag my interest as we continue to go through our budget process in realizing that capacity increase because for the reasons that have been mentioned, this office does really excellent work and they are part of the solution for our ongoing budget challenges.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

It's the plug for the need for additional capacity in some form, because many times I have thought about a big policy issue and thought, we should study this, or are we spending our resources wisely and are we getting the results we want, et cetera.

So I do support increasing capacity for that body of work, which is important work to do, and also then You know, we always get those reports that say and these are recommendations and also it will help us better.

I think with more capacity, we can ask follow up questions about the mechanics of how we will implement the recommendations that are offered.

Thank you very much for putting this forward.

Thank you very much.

Okay.

I think we're ready to move on to the next item.

Great.

The next item, CEN801A, would add 150, oh, excuse me, sponsored by Councilmember Lewis, would add $150,000 jumpstart fund to the Seattle Center for Bumbershoot Workforce Development Program.

Thank you.

Just before I turn to Councilmember Lewis, I'm sorry to ask this, Patty, do you mind just shifting the slide just slightly so that members of the public can see the dollar amounts as we walk through those as well?

Okay, great.

Thank you.

I'm sorry to ask for the changes like this.

Midway, appreciate it.

Council Member Lewis, let's turn it to you to walk us through Bumper Works.

Thank you so much, Councilmember Mosqueda.

And as council colleagues know, this year saw the long anticipated return under a new operator of the Bumper Chute Music Festival.

Really exciting component of the return of Bumper Chute has been this Bumper Works Workforce Development Program that helps mentor and give resources and training to young people to be the next generation of music promoters, of event planners, and be involved in the music industry.

The only thing I have to add to this is actually the first Bumber Works cohort this year had 16 people in the cohort.

So above and beyond what is mentioned in the language of the amendment here, which is really great.

and that was with a smaller amount of support in last year's budget, about $100,000.

So very much appreciate the chair's leadership in bumping this workforce development number up in parity with some of our other workforce development initiatives.

Really appreciate this expanded impact of Bumpershoot.

from something that has been a music festival and Labor Day weekend to something that has year-round activations and economic and workforce development implications.

Really appreciate the inclusion of this amendment and hope to support it through to being a successful part of our final budget.

Thank you so much Councilmember Peterson and I an earlier spreadsheet we had it was There was a column that showed whether or not something was jumpstart supported or whether it was general fund supported if there was a different Revenue stream we noted that too.

I would just note on this one This is a great tangible example of jumpstart dollars going directly into workforce development.

So we were able to enhance our the workforce development categories across the city, using some of that economic resilience funding.

That was additional funding that we built back into the budget, as noted from Director Esther Handy at the beginning of the presentation.

And as Council Member Lewis just noted, this is one of a handful of workforce development opportunities that you'll see teed up here in a second, where we've created harmony and parity in terms of the funding amounts for bumper works, Filipino community center workforce training and the MLK labor hiring hall, all to support the creation of a more equitable economy as we seek to recover from the ongoing pandemic.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis, for continuing to bring this forward and to the folks at Bumper Works for the success that they've had in the last few years.

I'm excited to continue that investment.

Let's continue.

Thank you, Chairman Skater.

And I will just note, we did take out the column with the fund name, just frankly, to try to get it in a reasonable size on the screen.

But the fund, and whether it's one-time or ongoing, or if it's, sorry, if it is one-time, is noted in the description.

So, the information is available for those of you who are following along at home within the description.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And appreciate it.

Yes.

And do appreciate the slides here.

And also for the viewing public, you can always click on the link in the agenda and zoom in on these documents.

But we do appreciate that this material is provided on the screen in the largest format possible.

And thank you again to Patty for helping to manage to get all that information up there so people can see where we're at.

But do click on the agenda items.

The presentation has all of these details and you can zoom in.

for the viewing public.

The next item, CSCC 800A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold, would amend and pass as amended legislation transmitted with the budget to rename the Community Safety and Communication Center to the Community Assisted Response and Engagement Department and to expand the department's mission and purview.

This budget action would amend the legislation in the following ways.

It changes reference references from public health to health, incorporates a reference to the interlocal agreement between the city and public health Seattle and King County, noting that it sets forth roles and responsibilities around the development and implementation of public health policies, and retains the director title for the department head.

Excellent.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to this item?

Sure, thank you.

The issues around lack of clarity in the originally proposed legislation, specifically as it related to intent on incorporating health as a service, as a policy area, there was, again, confusion about whether or not the proposal was sort of a foot in the door to taking on some of the responsibilities that we contract with King County Public Health on.

Since they are, King County Public Health is the organization by state law that is responsible for public health services, although the City of Seattle does buy enhanced services and that is coordinated through our interlocal agreement.

So this is intended to make that more clear that we're not talking about public health as it relates to those services that the City contracts with the Public Health Department, but more broadly the idea of violence prevention and violence prevention efforts as part of what makes a healthy community, so making those changes.

And then, in addition, the change to the department head to reflect the intent that this is a community safety department, the description of the mission of the department, refers to community multiple times.

Also in the department name.

And I think it's really important that if we are looking for clear community support for this direction of a third public safety department.

If we were in the future going to change the title to director, that that might be something that would be considered in collaboration with community.

Also the fact that what is envisioned is that many of the funding program, the programs funded currently under the Human Services Department through the Safe and Thriving Communities Department is going to be moving under the new Care Department.

I think it's really important for us to be more deliberative and have a lot of conversation with our community providers currently in the Safe and Thriving um uh division of the human services department what it would mean for them as our community um uh safety response providers what would be for them to be contracted um by an agency that is led by somebody with the chief title.

I just think that there's a – if we weren't, I totally recognize what we heard in the presentation.

that the objective of using the word chief instead of director would be to, you know, make this position normally more on par with the chief of police and the fire chief.

But I think we really need to balance what our objective is for this department to be a a community safety department that does not look like a law enforcement department, does not do law enforcement.

So I think that's the thinking behind my and Madam Chair's thinking on these changes to the ordinance.

Thank you very much, Vice Chair.

And thanks for your work on this.

I also appreciate the mayor's office for helping to weigh in with some of the language that helps to refocus the concept on community health and referencing the interlocal agreement with King County Public Health was a great idea.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold, happy to support you on that.

And I'll just add to this, I think it's important to note that after hearing from Ms. Smith and committee and then hearing subsequently The consensus among the dispatchers guild that they were in favor of retaining the director title support from members of the firefighter community That underscored the importance of maintaining a director title I think it's it's good that we're making this change in the proposal here And I think that it's um, you know a work in progress as we noted, but we also want to start off on the right foot and ensure community has a clear understanding of the proposal as it's being stood up so that folks know how accessible it will be and the unique structure that we're creating here.

So thank you so much.

Seeing no questions, let's go ahead and move on.

And I might ask Council Member Morales, I'm going to just step out real quick.

Please go ahead and jump in after the Council Central Staff summary of the next two items.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And I'll just note on that last item, there is a error in the first sentence.

It notes that it amends the city charter.

It amends the Seattle Municipal Code, but not the city charter, which would require some addition.

This next item, Deal 802A, sponsored by Council Member Morales and Chair Mosqueda, would add $143,000 general fund one time to the Department of Education and Early Learning, and imposes a proviso on that funding to contract with an organization that provides after-school and summer learning programs grounded in ethnic studies for middle school students, such as El Centro de la Raza, MESTA's after-school program.

Thank you, Ali.

Yes, so this is a program that we are hoping to support.

It's really geared toward helping students in grades six through eight, and the program dedicates itself to guiding.

young people during their formative years.

So it really helps establish healthy habits around after school studying and also really provides a kind of wraparound services to the extent that it provides support to families.

These are often very low income.

students.

It is bilingual programming and provides that ability for the young people to really impact in a comprehensive way the students learning and the families offering the family support.

So this is something that we are hoping to have your support for.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales, and I'll also just note my appreciation for this item.

Really excited to see the ways in which our community organizations and community partners like El Centro de la Raza bring together communities to provide direct support for youth, especially in the wake of the pandemic and the online teaching for over a year, we know that many students have ongoing needs that are beyond academic as well.

And it's very exciting to hear more about programs like this that help not only provide academic training, especially for our BIPOC youth and in language and in culturally competent ways, but also then identify ways to get families into services that they might need as well.

So it's really about supporting resilience and stability for families so that kiddos can have a good opportunity to learn while in school.

And at this delicate or this important age for youth, It is critical that we're investing in the health and well-being as well as their academic studies.

So thank you, Council Member Morales, for bringing this forward, and it's my honor to support this amendment as well, a big priority in our budget here.

All right, next one.

Thank you.

I will describe the next two together as they are associated with each other.

D.

O. N.

801 and D.

O. N.

801 s sponsored by council member Morales.

The 1st action would add 2.5 to the Department of neighborhoods to restore staffing for the community.

Well, building.

work that has been going on in the Department of Neighborhoods.

The 24 proposed budget adjustments would abrogate these positions with the intent that the new positions would be created in the Office of Economic Development to continue this work.

This action would maintain those positions in the Department of Neighborhoods and allows for a gradual transition to the Office of Economic Development.

and this is based on a plan requested in the Statement of Legislative Intent, which is the next item, which would ask the Department of Neighborhoods and the Office of Economic Development to provide an implementation plan for the equitable economy and community wealth building slide final report.

Excellent.

Council Member Morales.

Yes, thank you.

So folks, we've been talking about community wealth building for four years now.

It is very exciting that the city is really starting to lead on this work.

The Department of Neighborhoods is doing work, OED is doing work, and they've been working together on this.

So there is an interest in, the executive has expressed an interest in transitioning the work.

I have met in the last couple weeks have been meeting with both departments as well as with the community wealth building roundtable.

We have six pilot programs that have been going on for the last couple of years and these community organizations are really excited about, A, about the city leading on this work, but B, about the fact that they were brought together to collaborate in the creation of how to implement this work.

And so there is an interest in .

I would like to make a comment on the transition process.

I think it is important to note that we are just slowing down the transition process because there isn't a strong implementation plan yet for how the transition would take place.

Or for how this community roundtable would be able to in being able to stay engaged in this process.

So this would just request that the position stay at D.O.N. for now while this implementation plan is being developed in collaboration with the community roundtable, and then we would revisit this after that plan is put together.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

I'm not seeing any hands on this.

Oh, I see Councilmember Nelson.

Please go ahead.

Please refresh my memory.

Did the report detail the plan that's to be implemented or what the specific strategies are?

Which report are you referring to, Council Member?

You're talking about the Community Wealth Building final report, I think, that's referenced here.

So that report is what we reviewed in my committee a couple of weeks ago.

What I'm referring to as wanting to slow down a little bit is the transition that was proposed in the mayor's budget package to move the work from D.O.N. to O.E.D. and that plan is not yet approved.

fleshed out.

And so the concern is the risk losing sort of the institutional memory of the staff who were there and the community roundtable not being able to continue and bringing their relationships and institutional memory into the work at OED.

And so that is the intent here.

Do you see a diversion or a real, like a difference in philosophy or work plan items that, between OED and DON, that slowing down the transition seeks to mediate?

A little bit, and I'm happy to talk with you offline about this more, but the sort of crux of the issue or the difference of perspective maybe is that OED is typically geared more towards sort of building individual business, building individual household wealth.

And the approach that the community wealth building folks from the DON roundtable have been taking is much more about community ownership of assets and community ownership of worker-owned co-ops, for example.

And so it's just trying to make sure that those principles and that approach can also be part of the work at OED.

And council members, um, i'll just note here, um in my conversations about this item, I think uh, regardless of the long-term vision There are some immediate labor concerns that need to be taken into account.

And so We want to make sure that there's a sufficient and stable ongoing funding anytime There's a new fte moved or added.

I would like to see that ongoing so part of our interest here is ensuring the stability of both the workforce to carry out this work over the years and and ensuring that that stability and ongoing funding aligns in future departments.

We have, I think, a commitment to do that across departments, and this is one of those.

So I look forward to chatting with folks more about that, but just wanted to underscore my interest and in continuing to make the transition thoughtful and more planned.

Retaining folks at DON while people plan for a longer term transition to OED is still in the works, but sustainability, ongoing permanent positions I think are critical as we look to stand up programs.

Okay, excellent.

Let's keep going.

Thank you.

I will just know on this 1, 2, that if this amendment as proposed didn't move forward, the city budget office has requested a technical change to how this.

Position transition was proposed in the budget and.

would have been seeking a technical amendment to move the two positions from D.U.N. to O.E.D. rather than the plan as described in the proposed budget.

So I'm happy to talk more offline with council members if there's questions about that.

And when you say proposed budget, you mean the original proposed budget from the mayor's office transmitted in September?

Right.

Yes.

They were seeking a correction to what they transmitted in terms of how these positions were Or a handle, which I think speaks to the point council member Morales was making was to slow this down to think that through a little bit more while this work continues.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I just want to make the distinction since we have multiple proposed budgets out there.

And the one in front of us again to orient us is the balancing package for the council's consideration over the next four weeks.

This is the chair's mid-biennial budget adjustments in our proposed balancing package.

All right, let's keep going.

Agenda item, excuse me, I keep saying agenda item.

Amendment number 11, is that, no, 11, is that where we're at?

Okay 11 years where we're at.

Let's keep going.

PON 802A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $100,000 general fund to the Department of Neighborhoods for Payroll Tax Oversight Committee evaluation work and annual reporting.

This funding while coming while paid for out of the general fund is made possible by the administrative or funds from the administration category that are first deposited into the general fund and then spent out of the general fund for those purposes.

The proposed budget adjustments transmitted by the executive adds $50,000 for non-labor costs associated with the Oversight Committee's work.

This would bring the total resources available to $150,000 to support their work in 2024. And I'll note that this signals an intent that how that evaluation work happens and is shaped should be informed and directed by the oversight committee.

I will stop there.

Okay, excellent.

I want to thank the members of the executive team for the work that we are jointly doing to stand up the Jump Start Oversight Board.

This is a requirement that we codified in 2020 when we passed the original ordinance and I want to thank Mayor Harreld for their work to advance the concept of standing up this oversight board.

Oversight and accountability baked in to jumpstart from the inception of the revenue proposal.

The council has five appointments that we will consider soon.

The mayor has five appointments that they are working on.

And I appreciate that this body will be the body of the future to provide additional oversight as we look at future investments, but really to keep an eye on revenue that comes in as well as alignment with the spend plan.

I want to say that the charge of the board is to evaluate the impact of the revenue stream and to ensure that the community and local economy is receiving those direct funds, to ensure that we have continuity, trust, and we keep that social contract with members of the public.

I think it's a really important asset to transparency and accountability.

So this is what the funding is intended for, to support the annual evaluation and annual reporting that the board and our city family will be doing.

Let's continue.

Next item, UN803A, sponsored by Councilmember Strauss, would add $175,000 general fund to the Department of Neighborhoods to increase funding for community safety coordinators in Ballard, the Chinatown International District, and South Park.

These positions have been supported in each of these neighborhoods for a number of years, starting in 2017 in the CID and Ballard being The last one in the mix in 2023, each community would receive $100,000 in the 2024 proposed budget adjustments.

This adds an additional funding for each of those neighborhoods as well as some support for the Department of Neighborhoods to do their contracting work with the community-based organizations.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair.

I have a fair number of questions about this because I think that my original budget request had been about the ambassador's program, which is separate from the community safety coordinators.

Are we talking about the community safety coordinator position or the ambassador program?

Thank you for the flag on that.

And I'll flush out where I think some of the evolution on this concept happened, but I'll let central staff answer that first part of your question.

Thank you.

I'm looking for my colleague, Lish Witson, who I'm hoping can help.

As Lish is coming in.

Okay, wonderful.

I'll hold my comments.

Hello, Lish.

Did you happen to hear the question from Council Member Strauss?

Yeah, as drafted, this would add funding to the three neighborhoods to support the existing community safety coordinator positions.

There's been a lot of turnover with the within the community-based organizations in terms of staffing, and they haven't had an increase in funding.

So this is to make sure that there's stability in that role.

And I'll just add to that, and Council Member Strauss, I'll turn it back to you for questions.

Thank you for flagging concerns as well, too, in case we didn't capture the intent of the original amendment or as you think about changes in the upcoming week.

We did receive their request for an ambassador, recognizing that an ambassador uses additional funding from the BIAs locally and that there was a partial request in.

Part of the conversation that we've had over the last few weeks was the additional request from other neighborhoods who had also a need and desire to see increased presence and recognizing that There's been a number of years since these DON, Department of Neighborhood, funded contracts that support neighborhoods like Ballard, South Park, and the Central District, is that the other neighborhood there, have not seen an increase in their funds for a while.

We wanted to create parity across those investments and really ensure that similar investments were being included for those other neighborhoods.

Leisha, I'll just pause there real quick to see if you had anything to add to that.

discussion that took place.

Sorry, my camera doesn't.

No, thank you.

Excellent.

Council Member Strauss, turning it back to you.

Thank you, Chair.

I absolutely support parity across these public safety coordinator positions.

Unfortunately, this was not the amendment that I requested.

And specifically, I had requested an ambassador program similar to what is in the University District, which supports our outreach workers, whether it's Evergreen Treatment Services reach workers, DESC host workers, or a multitude of other programs and folks that are supported by the ambassador program.

The original amendment was for $175,000.

which is cost sharing with the Ballard BIA for the Ballard BIA through their most recent rate changes that came before Council embedded their share for this program within their new rate structure.

But the request that I had made, and my apologies if I was at all not clear, is not about the public safety coordinator position.

I absolutely support parity across these public safety coordinator positions.

And I think that every neighborhood should have one.

The scaling up of this work to that would be $175,000 for just Ballard.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm more.

Yeah, I mean, I'm more than happy to support all these other neighborhoods.

It's just I think that, you know, I think it's important for us to be able to support all of these other neighborhoods.

And I think it's important for us to be able to support all of these other neighborhoods.

And I think it's important for us to be able to support all of these other neighborhoods.

we might not have connected correctly about what my request was.

Okay, thank you.

Colleagues, we are happy to hear you tee up possible amendments to come forward.

So it sounds like Councilmember Strauss you're teeing up a possible amendment to this revenue source here.

And look forward to having more discussion about various amendments.

You will see, colleagues, that there's some council members who put forward amendment ideas that were maybe similar in nature to another council member or had a nexus to an investment that could be made across the city.

And where possible, we really tried to ensure that there was investments in multiple neighborhoods.

But appreciate you flagging that you may bring an amendment forward on this to correct that.

And looking forward to hearing more from other colleagues on this piece if that amendment comes forward.

All right, let's go to the next item.

Okay, the next item FAS 801 S A is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

This is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the executive in collaboration with the City Council and key stakeholders convene a work group to determine how to modify the City's policies for the disposition or reuse of surplus city-owned properties.

This should address specific interests of federally recognized tribes, organizations serving Native Americans, Black, Indigenous, and people of color, and representatives of non-profit housing providers.

Council President, I see you coming in.

I want to thank you all.

We have been having conversations with folks in the Housing Committee about ways that we could enhance our land disposition policies.

This is really about bringing together a work group.

This is to convene a stakeholder work group to determine if and how the city modifies its land disposition policies.

As we began our review of the land of disposition policy in our land in our housing committee earlier this year there was a conversation that was initiated and thanks in large part to Mr. Ranin from the mayor's office who is our legislative, excuse me, who was our tribal liaison and tribal director in the mayor's office who flagged that in Pierce County, the land disposition policies that that jurisdiction had just updated did include a conversation about tribal governments and native community organizations and how those organizations and tribes through a government-to-government relations policy were incorporated in land disposition policies.

So we're really proud of the work that we've been able to accomplish since the passage of the surplus land disposition policies that I sponsored in 2019. Very excited that we have prioritized among the available surplus land, which is not a lot, but when there is surplus land, We have retained it in public hands and or partnered with community organizations that are dedicated to investing in building affordable housing and other public assets.

We have further prioritized amongst the process ensuring that housing is being built on those properties and doing so in a vein of what communities who are at highest risk of displacement would like to see by ensuring that there's additional consideration of those communities at highest risk of displacement.

So as part of our process in 2019, we set up that within a four-year period.

We would come back and take a look at the policy to see how it's working, given our neighbors in Pierce County are also now on the cutting edge of including the tribal governments and Native organizations in their land disposition policy, it seemed like a great opportunity to partner with the Indigenous Advisory Council, who we've met with twice, to talk about ways to include additional language in the land disposition policy, and ongoing conversations through our community conversations with the housing roundtable that we convene quarterly.

Universally, people are interested in continuing the conversation and really needed more time than we had scheduled for just this year in the housing committee.

So I think that it's much more diligent and deliberative to have this be run throughout next year so that we can have robust stakeholder engagement with key community partners and government relations with our tribal partners.

government partners in the region as well.

Looking forward to that conversation evolving and no predetermined outcome here, but really wanted to set aside an opportunity for that conversation to continue in earnest.

Any additional comments?

Yes, comes president.

Yeah, thank you.

Thank you.

Madam chair for doing this.

And I know this has been an ongoing conversation.

I'll be quick.

I'll have more to add later.

As, you know, we got your budget at 8 o'clock this morning.

So, I'm a little caught a little flat footed on some of these issues, but just quickly the land disposition policy is basically the city of Seattle's version.

of land back, and that is a national trend that we've been seeing at least the last five years in government.

So thank you for the City of Seattle being one of the first cities to recognize that starting with Sam Asafa four years ago.

And as you know, land back, land disposition, goes into the category that we've been working on with the Indigenous Advisory Council and my colleagues, that this is more than a land acknowledgement, which I refer to as land acknowledgements as verbal dream catchers.

So, anywho, moving on, on the land back piece, going back to tribal consultation, government to government relations, having Tim Raynon in the mayor's office as a tribal liaison is amazing.

Working not only with tribes on surplus property, but also market rate property, as we saw Michael shoot in district 4, but a building to put in housing, low income and affordable.

So we're not just talking surplus, but we're also talking market rate and property that's for sale, not only in downtown Seattle, but citywide.

And as you stated, Madam Chair, for housing.

So that is very exciting.

I would dare say with the Indigenous Advisory Council, this council, that we are being very progressive.

And I know you like to hear that, Madam Chair.

And moving forward and making these things, these policies become realities.

Right on the ground at the city level and as, you know, government to government consultation with tribes doesn't begin and end within the city limits.

So, with that, thank you.

And I hope to.

hope to sponsor this with you.

So, thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council President.

We will add your name as a co-sponsor here and thank you for your initial request as we were considering this policy mid-year this year to really enhance how the language is described in our city code and consider as at your request and in consultation with the Indigenous Advisory Council and Mr. Rannan what our partners in Pierce County had done.

So, looking forward to continuing this conversation and we know it will continue into next year.

and we'll add the Council President as a co-sponsor on this item.

Let's continue.

The next item, FAS 802S-A would, sponsored by Chairman Skada, request that FAS report on an implementation plan for adopting responsible contractor policy for city contractors.

This should include working with stakeholders in other jurisdictions to develop contracting requirements that expand upon existing obligations in city contracting laws and demonstrates the commitment to fair and responsible business practices, a plan for adopting a responsible contractor policy and provide accompanying legislation as appropriate.

Thank you so much.

I'm really excited about this.

This just sets up a process for us to ask Finance and Administrative Services to develop a plan for a comprehensive, responsible contractor policy for city contracts.

It draws from and builds upon good policy examples in our region, such as Sound Transit.

Thank you again to Council President for sitting there and representing us at Sound Transit.

There's other great examples in the region of responsible contractor legislation, including at King County.

So this is an opportunity for the city of Seattle to build upon those existing city contract laws that we currently have, thanks to our past leaders for that work, and to expand upon that effort and show leadership for fair and responsible business practices.

Again, pulls together a request for future work that the council would consider upon receiving FAS's report.

Thank you so much.

Let's keep going.

The next item, FAS 803A, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, would add $900,000 of JumpStart funds and one FTE to FAS to administer a proposed network company fee, and $500,000 from the JumpStart fund and seven FTE to the Office of Labor Standards to implement the app-based worker deactivation rights ordinance.

This amendment assumes passage of legislation that is under development to establish license and fee requirements network companies operating in Seattle.

And the funding for ongoing, for this ongoing work or for some of all of these proposed expenses will be considered during 2025 budget deliberations based on assumed fee revenues.

So the intent here is that this funding will allow for the startup of that new fee and ongoing costs would be covered by that fee.

Thank you so much.

I'm going to turn it over to Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you so much, and thank you, Madam Chair, for the inclusion of the funding for the enforcement mechanism to be developed by FAS and the Office of Labor Standards, and the enforcement mechanism is itself reliant on a funding mechanism.

So just referring to a recent memo that we received from the Office of Labor Standards, they identify that new gig worker ordinances quote, raise the need for a scalable and stable source of revenue for this office's ever-increasing responsibilities.

Discussions regarding funding for app-based worker ordinance implementation have focused on identifying revenue sources outside of the general fund.

This is necessary and helpful in the context of funding OLS.

It also begs the question how to provide a reliable funding stream for the entire department regarding all of the ordinances it enforces, including the ones focused on the traditional employee sector and the independent contractor.

So, again, this is providing infrastructure and funding to support future ongoing revenue, but it also funds necessary policies and rulemaking for the implementation of the ordinances passed by the council.

Excellent.

Thank you.

The, what is the letter called that we received from office of labor standards?

The certification memo.

Thank you.

I appreciate you referencing the certification memo.

This is something that we receive every year prior to the budget process.

And it really identifies ongoing needs within the office of labor standards.

This was a critical component of the establishment of the office of labor standards.

And I thank you for the creation of that council members prior to that.

And so, um, my arriving at council.

It was an opportunity for me to advocate for that, and it's really, um.

Among very few local jurisdictions.

We were one of the first to have an office of labor standards, so it's a great way for us to lift up the ongoing needs for labor standards, both education and enforcement revenue needs for the department to be sustainable.

So building on what council member to be purchased to implement fully the new ordinances passed by the council this year at Finance and Administrative Services.

We have fully funded, I believe, fully funded both of those requests to ensure the stand-up of enforcement and education.

through Finance and Administrative Services and our Office of Labor Standards across that $1.4 million.

This is going to yield additional returns both for workers to be able to ensure that their rights are protected, but also to ensure that employers have adequate access and time to adapt to the technology that's being requested and ongoing work that the departments will be doing to ensure everybody knows the new standards and can easily comply.

Okay.

Let's continue.

Next item, FG801A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold, was described in Director Handy's introductory slides.

This is the budget action that would transfer $9.3 million of Jump Start Fund to finance general and then swap the fund source for those expenditures described previously with general fund instead of Jump Start Fund.

Council Member Humboldt, would you like to speak to this first?

I think I would defer to you, Madam Chair.

The broader policy shift is, well, as far as what the funding, the revenue source is, is I think a policy that you have championed and can speak best to.

I asked to be a co-sponsor, and you graciously included me, because of the specific element related to the Human Services Department and the contractor wages.

And I really, really appreciate your switching out the revenue source to fund the equity the equity raises in order to make sure that those increases are not funded by one-time funding that may not be reliable throughout swings and downturns in the economy.

So just that was the piece of this larger piece that I was really passionate about, and I think you're the best person to talk about the broader the broader piece.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Well, happy to.

And again, I want to thank the mayor's office and the mayor for including the concept of increasing the human service provider wages in the proposed budget.

What this alignment does is ensure that among the items that were teed up to be integrated into the jumpstart spend plan in a quote, flexible funding category.

We've actually just maintained those commitments and funded them through the more appropriate use of general fund.

And as the council budget vice chair noted at the beginning of this meeting, not only maintain them, but specific to the human service department Department of Education and Early Learning, Department of Neighborhood, Human Service Provider Pay.

We maintain those and we increased it in the proposed package in front of you.

So, child care workers, human service providers, the code compliance enforcement, and the funding necessary to stand up the social housing Uh public development authority pass via initiative along with the relocation costs for rosie's village All of those as proposed in the mayor's proposed budget are included in this package Just swapping the fund source from jumpstart to general fund and especially as the council president noted our excuse me the council budget vice chair noted the intent is to make sure that things like the um provider pay changes remain ongoing in the um In the out years through through general fund so appreciate the the shared interest in these categories Just a realignment of the fund source there Okay, councilmember her and Nelson question from you Oh Councilmember Nelson, did you have a question councilmember Nelson?

Thanks.

So are you are you thinking about using the additional revenue that was that that came apparently available in the in the forecast for this money if you're using general fund instead of jumpstart?

Central staff, do you want to describe again how you use the additional revenue from the forecast?

So the, so on this action in particular, what is happening is there is more jumpstart money being transferred to the general fund and then being spent on these purposes.

So, it's not using, it's still using jump.

It's backed by a jumps a jumpstart transfer 1 time, but.

The way the proposed budget came in, these expenditures were funded directly out of the jumpstart fund.

Instead, these expenditures are going to be funded directly out of general fund made possible by increasing the transfer to.

from the jumpstart fund to the general fund.

And so what does that mean?

This is saying consistent with what the council adopted last year up to 84 million dollars can be transferred to the jumpstart to the general fund from the jumpstart fund for general expenditures.

And so these funds are used for that purpose in this budget and it's indicating council's intent that in an ongoing way these expenditures should be supported by general fund revenues because they're inconsistent with the policy.

So that's That's what's happening in this one.

It is just swapping which fund they are being paid out of this year, but it is ultimately still Jump Start funding that is backing them.

The new general fund revenues are used in a variety of ways.

That includes $5 million to help address the decline in transportation revenues, as well as increased contribution to the planning reserves.

And then the remaining funds are supporting many of the proposals that we are walking through today that are funded by the general fund.

Thank you, Councilmember.

Okay, for the short term, I don't really, oh, can I respond?

Sorry.

Sure, and I would just also underscore one point that Deputy Director Panucci made as well.

It is not increasing the transfer to the general fund higher than the amount already authorized.

in last year's endorsed 2024 budget.

So I think that's an important caveat.

We already authorized 84 million to be used to support general fund investments in last year's deliberations.

So we're basically truing up the amount that is being retained in general fund from JumpStart as endorsed in our 2024 process.

So many of the investments that we're talking about supporting here are coming from the general fund category, but we have retained the support from JumpStart to supplant general fund investments for 2024. And part of those investments help ensure funding for these five categories that are delineated in this item.

Council Member Nelson, additional questions?

Thank you for that clarification.

I appreciate it.

Like, I was about to say that for me, for the short term, it doesn't.

I don't have a lot invested in which fund this comes out of, but I do just to restate the perennial conversation for the record.

It is going it is important to.

A difference of interpretation over what is an appropriate use of jumpstart funding seems to keep coming up and up and so just really.

Uh, I don't know what, how that impacts other changes to the mayor's proposed budget, but I feel like it's, um, it's a.

It's a matter of interpretation, and I hope that we can move beyond that's this sort of back and forth going forward with the panel that will be in panel.

So the oversight board.

So, thank you.

Great.

Thank you.

I'm not really sure if I agree that this is an inappropriate use, but, um, for the short term.

No problem.

Okay, thank you so much.

And I think that there's not a lot of disagreement about what the current statute says.

In fact, if we were to include these five items here, we would have had to statutorily amend Jumpstart, which the executive also understood and realized in the transmission of their budget proposals.

So, it's clear that these are not authorized expenses, but what was being proposed is to change that authorization to include a broader definition of flexible funds.

So, I think there's clear delineation in the statute of what is authorized expenses, and I agree, Councilmember, and I mentioned this in our committee meeting last week.

I do hope that this helps us move away from having the back and forth on what is included.

We are in this proposed budget sticking with the existing statutory definitions and thus able to just move forward on how we want to adjust for any new revenue that's coming in to the existing defined use of various revenue streams.

From now on, we are sticking with the definition in the statute as currently in code and agree with the importance of having that oversight board really help us not have to go into these conversations year over year.

Point well taken.

All right.

Let's continue.

All right.

I'm going to pick up here as we begin with the Human Service Department changes.

Item 17, which is HSD 801A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, would add $100,000 general fund to HSD to convene survivors of police violence and family members of individuals killed by the Seattle Police Department to create recommendations for support services.

You'll see in other sections of the budget a reduction of $50,000 in 2023 and $50,000 in 2024 allocated for an affected persons program.

That work has been reorganized in the city and those funds support this ad.

Okay, thank you so much.

I want to thank the executive's office who's been working on this for the last part of this year and the office of police accountability who was working on this concept for the beginning part of this year.

Council members, as you'll remember, we were interested in looking at other jurisdictions that had an affected people's program to see how the city of Seattle may create a similar program.

within our own jurisdiction.

The funding has not been fully spent, so we are transferring the unspent funds from this year to next year.

And in partnership with a community organization, we will be evaluating how the city of Seattle should engage with setting up the state's effort that they are creating to have a body that looks at affected people program as well.

We understand something passed earlier this year and analyze the question of how the city can tap into that state process that's being directed or supplement and enhance the ways in which we support affected people.

Again, this was discussed in detail last year and in this specific budget item.

We are just transferring the unspent funds to this ongoing investment in 2024 and working in partnership with the community organizations to ensure that there's a trusted partner to have the discussion.

Thanks to Deputy Mayor Burgess and their team for having the latter part of this conversation, especially with the I can't remember the name of the accountability judges that are looking at various implementation.

Council Member Herbold.

Okay.

Well, I'll come back to that.

And Director Handy, if it's off the top of your mind, too, the entity that provides oversight has also been working with the executive's office to look at various models across the nation, across the globe, frankly.

And so this will give us a chance to build on the feedback that they have and also underscores the importance of having a community organization really be a trusted partner as we think about the city's responsibility and the city's role in standing up an effective people's program that could complement conversations happening at the state level as well.

Yeah, I think you're thinking of the federal monitor team who are engaged in this process.

Great.

Next, we have HSD 802A, sponsored by Council President Juarez.

This would add $200,000 general fund to HSD to empower Native youth to live healthy lives by providing awareness, prevention, and character enrichment activities through the Rise Above program.

Council President Juarez.

Thank you.

First of all, Madam Chair, I'm going to read what we have written before, and then I want to just add a quick note.

The goal of Rise Above is to keep at-risk Indigenous adolescents and other children out of the juvenile justice system by exposing them to social, multigenerational, and culturally relevant prevention programs through our community-based collaborations and initiatives targeted use between the ages of 5 to 18, not just limited to the greater Seattle area.

And what I want to add here is, without what I know this program to be, and there's more to come, this is just, this is beyond basketball clinics.

This is a truly effective, is what we would call, upstream diversion program through sports mentorship counseling, back-to-school prep, not only working with the Seattle Indian Health Board in Seattle U and the tribes, but the University of Idaho, the Lenny Wilkins Foundation.

And I also want to add that we have had such tremendous success.

This council, thank you so much for funding it in prior budgets.

through Coach Wilkins, former Seattle Sonic players, Seattle Storm players, current and former Seahawks, tribal leaders, Native American athletes, all of these folks participate, volunteer, and support this amazing program.

And it is, again, isn't just limited to the city limits of Seattle.

It is a, what we would call an organic, indigenous-based, indigenous creation about how we model our youth to protect them and keep them safe with sports being a modality to keep our children engaged in community.

And we also work closely with the Tulalip tribe, Boys and Girls Club, And for the money that we have been putting into this program, the returns have been phenomenal.

And I will say this from a personal perspective.

I want to thank this council in the last couple sessions for funding and also the mayor for supporting this organization, because I think this is a great model of sustainability of a real upstream program that diverts and works.

And we have deliverables.

We have accountability, we have transparency, and we have success.

And it only continues to grow each time we add more people to the Rise Above family beyond the Lenny Wilkins Foundation, Seattle U, and all the other universities I listed, but also for the first time outside, not just within King County tribes that are actively engaged, but tribes east of the mountain, including the Kalispell tribe.

And we will continue with that.

And also Senator Murray's office has been great.

I just think it's a great investment and I hope that I have some of my colleagues join me in co-sponsoring this organization that I hope lives even after I'm gone.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I don't see any hands.

Let's continue.

HSD 803A is sponsored by Councilmember Morales, and it adds $100,000 in jumpstart funds to the Human Services Department for tax preparation assistance for individuals and families through the United Way of King County.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

There's not much more to say than that.

Uh, this is a free tax preparation for low income families.

Uh, it also connects folks to, uh, uh, public benefits.

So folks who are maybe entitled to public benefits, but haven't signed up for them.

Um, this has historically been a part of HSDs based budget.

Uh, and so this would continue to offer this really important service for folks, uh, who may be eligible for a tax refund, uh, or, um, may not be aware that they have entitlement or public benefits that they're eligible for.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I would just note our support for this as well in this year's budget and last year's budget, including the free tax prep that United Way offers.

We had the chance to go visit that at the White Center Library.

United Way works around the region.

And they were serving residents of Seattle to ensure that they got access to not only tax preparation, but especially important, the child care tax credit that was available for the first time this year, but not widely advertised, especially with many of the national platforms.

So the hands-on work that the Free Tax Prep team does helps to ensure that community and economic Let me see, ensure the resilience of our community and ensure economic stability for especially our most low income residents around Seattle.

I look forward to hopefully this being an effort that we can see built into our city's efforts year over year in the future.

Let's continue.

HSD 804 S.A., sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, is a statement of legislative intent that requests that the City Budget Office and Department of Finance and Administrative Services provide recommendations for tracking and reporting on non-utility grant expenditures made from the general fund.

Many of our grant funds get transferred into the general fund after acceptance, and it can be challenging to track these resources across the budget.

So this slide asks for a review of current practices and consideration of a draft bill that the council could consider to enable better tracking and reporting.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Not a lot to add here.

This is an issue that was flagged by Council Central staff during deliberations on a piece of legislation that recently went through my committee and full Council voted on, and that was the reallocation of about $7 million in CDBG money, some of which would likely expire if not used within the time period.

We want to make sure that it's not only the executive departments that know about the existence of those funds in their budgets because some of these fund sources go to numerous departments, but we want to be able to have the transparency so that the legislative department and the public also knows how much funds are available and when they are likely to expire if not used.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Let's go on to item number 16. Oops, excuse me. 16?

I think I'm at 21. Oh, my side column is different than the actual numbers here.

Okay, we got 21. No problem.

So, HSD 805A is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold.

It adds $1.9 million general fund to HSD for inflationary adjustments to continuum of care contracts administered by the King County Regional Homelessness Authority.

I'll remind the council that these are contracts funded by the federal HUD that were administered by the city until 2021 and now are administered by the Regional Homelessness Authority.

This action would provide a full inflationary adjustment for 2024, That adjustment would be sustained in an ongoing way, but express the council's intent that an additional inflationary adjustment would not be provided in 2025 and beyond.

Council Member Herbold?

Anything you'd like to add on this?

Sorry, I'll be a minute to unmute.

Yes, I just want to, again, thank the chair for her leadership in this area broadly and specifically to this particular budget item.

We know that there is a concern with the fact that HUD does not currently provide annual inflation increases for wages in continuum of care grant funding.

And this is a high, these services are a high priority for council to ensure that there are services that are being delivered, ensure that there are not staff turnover and vacancies that impede their ability to be delivered.

This is a national issue with implications beyond the city of Seattle.

It is also one of the National Alliance to End Homelessness' policy priorities to increase the continuum of care contracts to address both the growing need and also to allow for modest cost of living increases.

There is a, um, an appropriations bill, um, that would provide $25 million for cost of living increases for workers in homelessness services.

Um, that bill is, uh, has not passed.

Its fate is uncertain and, um, trust that we have, um, our, uh, lobbying staff, um, at, at OIR and contracted with OIR working on this issue.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Council, uh, Council Member Nelson, question.

So that was, that money was identified, or it was paid for by, it was paid to the Regional Homelessness Authority while there was a transition from those contracts going from the city to KCRHA, as I understand it.

And I appreciate that the 7.5, is not ongoing.

It's one time, but that does increase the base.

And then the 4% is ongoing.

So, do we know that we don't know?

So, who would be responsible for the continuation of that increased base?

And potentially, there will probably be a push to make an additional additional inflationary adjustments going forward.

So if that bill that was just referenced does not pass, are we putting a funding responsibility on RHA that they might not be able to support going forward?

Or are we kind of just taking that on going forward ourselves because we're the major funding authority, I mean, one of the major funders of KCRHA?

What do you see going down in the future if, you know, given the uncertainty of that act, I suppose?

I understand your question.

Thank you.

Director Handy.

Yeah, I just want to clarify that this, because there were a variety of transactions of what was one time and ongoing in the proposed budget, at the end of the day after this $1.9 million, it makes all of the 7.5% increase ongoing.

So it sustains the inflationary adjustment that is provided through this action.

will be sustained but states the city's intent to not provide an additional inflationary increase in future years.

And I might turn it back to councilmembers to answer the question of what do you think happens if HUD doesn't step in or sort of what's the crystal ball about the future here?

Councilmember Herbold, anything you'd like to add?

Yeah, I mean, I think the question of what our intent is, is a good one.

It is one that came up within the context of developing this particular budget action.

Looking back at what our intent was last year, I think The clarification that Director Handy made about what are ongoing funds and what are not ongoing funds, I think, expresses our our policy intent at this time, but you know, recognizing, as was said, that we don't have any guarantees on what happens in Congress.

This may – just, you know, being transparent, this may be something that has to be revisited, whether or not ongoing increases of inflation above what we are creating as the base is something that we have to consider.

Thanks.

Let's keep going.

Item number 22.

HSD 806A, sponsored by Councilmember Morales, would add $500,000 general fund to HSD for culturally competent behavioral health services to the Latino community, and with an expectation those services be provided by Consejo Counseling and Referral Services.

Thank you so much.

Please go ahead, Councilmember.

Thank you, Chair.

So Consejo offers domestic violence services specifically designed for the Latino community, for survivors, and brings a cross-disciplinary behavioral health therapeutic lens to their services.

They are advocacy-based counseling.

They also offer empowerment and wellness programs.

And all of their services are provided in Spanish and delivered within that cultural framework.

So this funding keeps the doors open and allows this vital program to continue with their after hours crisis line as well.

Thank you so much.

I don't see any additional questions.

I'll go on to the next one, number 23, and I'll note this is probably mistitled with Councilmember Strauss at the top, given the miscommunication that we had.

So I'll invite him to say anything he'd like to, but we'll also note this is a priority that was lifted up by Councilmember Morales and myself.

Please go ahead, Central Staff.

Yeah, this is HSD 807A.

And it would add $650,000 general fund to the Human Services Department for an emergency food fund.

This in part mirrors a one-time investment of this size around emergency food services that existed in 2023. This is a one-time add again for an emergency food fund as well as meal provision.

Great, thanks.

And we have two council members who had brought forward various amendments related to food security items.

So broadly, food security items were both identified for the Ballard neighborhood and the Rainier Beach neighborhood.

So I took some liberties here to identify a category that allowed for food security to be addressed at the full amount that the Food Security Coalition, I will get their official name in a moment, And then applied both of these council members names to it So if we have mislabeled you as a sponsor on this and you would like to remove your name, you're more than welcome to But I wanted to give some context to why council members see their name here if that wasn't already clear from our conversations yesterday Councilmember Strauss, would you like to say anything about this item?

Thank you chair.

It's always a huge priority of me to fund food security items whether it's been fresh bucks or our food banks.

I know that in speaking with some of the advocates today, that there is a little bit of concern about it was at the meal program or emergency food funds.

I just want to signal to everyone, I'll continue working on this to make sure we have both programs appropriately funded, because if you don't have food, you can't really do much else with your day.

So thank you, Chair.

Excellent.

Councilman Morales, anything you'd like to add?

Thank you.

I'll just say, you know, we are recovering from the pandemic, but there's still tremendous need.

And particularly down in the South end, we continue to see growing lines and increasingly families and kids, you know, taking advantage of food backpack program, for example.

So we know that there continues to be a high need for folks to get their food needs met, particularly as our city becomes ever more unaffordable.

So this is one way for us to support and address those emergency food needs.

So thank you.

Absolutely.

Thank you both.

And thanks to the Seattle Human Services Coalition and the Seattle Food Committee for your advocacy on this area and flagging the need for $650,000 to support the emergency food fund and to respond to the continued need that we're seeing in our community.

especially given the high inflation and cost increases and expiring COVID relief.

We know that food security and food programming is a critical investment in this year's budget again.

And I know that there's additional food security requests that are not included, as I understand from yesterday, a conversation I had with some stakeholders yesterday.

So, of course, look forward to hearing more about those specifics and seeing what else we might be able to do in the food security arena with our colleagues here.

Okay, I don't see a hand.

Great.

I'm going to continue our conversation here.

We're on item number 24.

This is sponsored by Terra Mesquita, an additional food-related ad.

Adds 42,000 general fund to HSD for senior meal programs.

This is a one-time ad in addition to $100,000 that is ongoing in the base budget for this program.

Thank you so much.

Again, this comes to us from the King County Senior Services Coalition.

And I appreciate that the mayor's proposed budget included $100,000 in the budget.

This would be a continuation of their funding.

They did ask for an additional $42,000 to help them formalize and finalize their hybrid program, providing both in-person dining and deliveries and to-go meals to best meet the needs of seniors across the city.

And again, we know among the vulnerable communities hit hardest by the pandemic and economic and housing instability, seniors are among that population.

And senior serving programs that used to be only in person, many of them have had to adapt to providing delivery and to go meals.

So this hybrid approach allows for them to continue to expand crucial nutrition services to seniors who face barriers to accessing food at our senior centers and appreciate that this is a joint interest and shared price.

priority from the executive and the legislative branch.

We're just bringing that dollar up, dollar amount up by $42,000 to meet their express need, needed amount.

Let's continue.

HSD 809A is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold.

And I spoke about this in my overview presentation, so I'll be brief.

It adds $324,000 general fund to HSD and the Department of Neighborhoods for additional costs related to the 2% wage equity increase for provider contracts.

Again, this is about ensuring that we take the contract base, we apply the inflationary adjustment, and then the 2% wage equity is applied on top of the inflated contract base.

Council Member Herbold, I think we've both spoken to this concept.

Is there anything else you'd like to add?

Seeing nothing more to add.

And we'll just take this moment to pause and say thank you to Jennifer Labreck, who's been really digging into the details of this item, plus the other council budget amendments that you saw outlining the multi-tiered way in which we are trying to invest in human service providers.

So thank you for her deep dive into this issue.

And I see Councilmember Lewis' hands up, who is also a co-sponsor of the base wage adjustment report and ongoing work needed to invest in human service providers.

Councilmember Lewis.

Thank you.

Now that I think we're at the conclusion of the food-based items, I did want to recognize and join my colleagues in recognizing the ongoing ask for a one-time investment of $300,000 for food and operational costs for meal providers that the meals partnership coalition has requested.

I know that's not something in this initial package, something I still want to look To see if can be accommodated as a 1 time ask do appreciate the work of the chair in putting forward the package in as presented here.

But that is 1 item.

I would like to continue to work on and I want to publicly flag my interest in that.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Lewis, and I will also express interest in that.

Thank you for taking the lead on bringing that up today, and that is one of the $300,000 asks that we heard about yesterday that unfortunately is not in this proposed package, but appreciate your interest in bringing that forward next week.

Let's continue.

HSD 810A is sponsored by Councilmember Lewis, and it adds $200,000 general fund to HSD for pre-filing diversion programs.

This is an approximate 20% increase in the $960,000 of pre-filing diversion resources in the proposed budget and could serve up to an additional 200 or so clients.

Excellent.

And Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

councilmember peralez?

community and provider organizations to divert people to programs offered by those providers as an alternative to a traditional charge and adjudication in the criminal legal system.

We heard a presentation earlier this year, I believe in the spring from the city attorney's office about the expanded pool of partners that they are using for pre-filed diversion and the additional capacity that that unlocks.

to be able to take full advantage of that service.

This increase helps us take full advantage of those partnerships and continue that work to have a more just and equitable system of justice in the Seattle Municipal Court.

Thank you so much, Council Member.

I appreciate you bringing this forward and your interest in expanding the pre-file diversion programming.

I think I'm especially interested in this and in supporting the request of the $200,000 because of the new drug legislation that just passed.

We know that the pre-filing diversion programs and the investments that we're making there are even more crucial now as the focus is expanding and we need to ensure that we mitigate the harmful impacts of criminalization of a public health crisis.

Again, what's not in question is whether or not there's a gross misdemeanor requirement.

The state legislature already decided that.

The question that I think the city has an opportunity to invest in is whether or not we're investing in additional pre-filing diversion programs.

In the proposed budget, as we received in late September, there was no enhanced funding for pre-filing diversion.

There was a continuation of LEED funding plus inflation, but with the inclusion of this, there's at least some small down payment in pre-filing diversion expansion.

Again, $200,000 is something I'm happy to support here.

I think we all recognize this is not sufficient to expand to the larger population and increased need that we will see across our community.

So hopefully we will continue to be able to increase this investment year over year.

Okay, let's move on to number 27.

HSD 813A is sponsored by Councilmember Nelson.

This would add $300,000 general fund to HSD for flexible funding for substance use disorder and treatment.

This funding would be directed to the King County Department of Community and Human Services Behavioral Health and Recovery Division to grow a pool of funding that could be used flexibly flexibly to support care, for example, to supplement Medicaid reimbursement for treatment services.

Excellent.

Council Member Nelson, I know that this is a little bit of a adaptation of the concept that you have been spearheading.

I'm happy to turn it to you and then help fill in any additional information on how we got here, but appreciate your interest in continuing to broaden the type of treatment options, and I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you very, very much.

Madam chair, this package came together really quickly.

So I appreciate you, including placeholder funding for for my concept and inviting revisions once and and government of central staff continues to gather information from and the county.

For now, what people really need to understand is that the treatment we fund, the City of Seattle, is medication for opioid use disorder, which is methadone and buprenorphine, and that's it.

It's absolutely necessary.

It helps stabilize people.

It can reduce overdoses, et cetera, but that is the only treatment that we fund.

So, and also HSD, I mean, DESC did mention that they do some counseling services, but in our contracts, we fund medication for opioid use disorder.

Now, when people think of rehab or what used to be called drug and alcohol abuse treatment, what that refers to is inpatient or intensive outpatient treatment with the, adjacent services that are described in the CBA.

So an evaluation by a doctor, physical and psychological, and then detox from whatever substance, alcohol, opioids, etc.

And then intensive behavioral therapies either at a residential facility or on an intensive outpatient basis, and that can sometimes go Longer, the typical inpatient is 21, I mean, 28 days or so about 4 weeks and then intensive outpatient can go longer than that.

But the point is that the individual can choose what modality they would like.

There is not funding for this, and that is noted in the response to question 117 in HSD's Q&A tracker.

And so just imagine the person, a lead client, for example, or a resident at a permanent supportive housing facility, who has just.

come out of his or her third overdose.

And that person decides that they need to make a change before they die, frankly.

Now, even if they have Medicaid, they're out of luck, assuming that they don't have health insurance or out of pocket, because Medicaid spots in regional facilities are exceedingly limited in number.

And so the concept that I brought forward last year and that I'm trying to bring forward again this year is that HSD, or that in my original conception, or DCHS in the CBA before us, they would simply Pay the invoice of a facility once that treatment is completed and or a segment of that treatment, because I do recognize that people don't complete the whole course of treatment now.

And so how would people get into those facilities?

The caseworker, the lead caseworker, or the permanent supporting caseworker, or perhaps even an officer who is responding to someone on the street using drugs and chooses to, well, calls our diversion partners, they arrive, that person can facilitate entry into one of these facilities.

That is the general concept.

This provides immediate access because we want to, We want to get people in the moment that they want to change their lives basically.

And so providing a providing money after the fact paying directly the facility is a way to take advantage for those out of pocket spots in regional facilities, which there is capacity.

it's not too difficult to get someone into a treatment facility.

The problem is if they are going to be paying by Medicaid, that's going to be a really long wait list.

And so I really appreciate that we're moving forward on recognizing that we need a broader range of treatment services for people who are addicted to things besides opioids.

Methamphetamine and fentanyl are the leading cause of death in fatal overdoses.

And so we have to be able to to provide services for people to get over multiple substance use disorders.

And that's what I'm trying to do with this proposal.

And we'll see how it might transform going forward in the weeks ahead.

But again, thank you very much for including this.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you so much.

I just want to, hearing Council Member Nelson talk about her proposal, I think I understand her to say that the city is not providing funding for the operations of treatment.

We have, as we've talked about already, recently provided $5 billion for a we're going to be able to provide a lot of support for the low barrier outpatient treatment facility.

Those are capital costs.

So the need for operational costs is an issue that council central staff flagged, and I Neither one of the two facilities, again, one being a low-barrier treatment facility, the other being the post-overdose recovery center, they're not expected to come online in the beginning of the year, so there will be some time for HSD and King County, both partners in both programs, to talk about addressing the operational needs.

But just want to just be clear that we have provided funding, capital costs, for a low barrier outpatient treatment facility.

And then, Madam Chair, I just wanted to say I had opportunity to speak with Director Floor over at BeHerd today.

The purpose of our conversation was more about implementation of crisis care levy objectives, but I did discuss with Director Floor this idea of having city dollars complement their flexible fund for costs that aren't covered by Medicaid, but for Medicaid-eligible people receiving treatment, and that there's great need to enhance that fund.

And just really want to thank you for thinking creatively about how to both address the identified needs of clients already being served as well as working to address the priorities of Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Please go ahead Councilmember Nelson.

I appreciate your conversations with Mr. Floor.

And if some of that informed this CBA, that's good for me to know.

Just to note, yes, we are not standing up a new program.

We're basically paying a facility that offers a treatment.

So it's kind of more like we're paying a bill to a vendor.

This does not go to capital programs and this is one time funding and the it's, you know, it's designed to last as long as it lasts on a case by case basis until depletion.

And then we'll see if it was a good idea.

I do want to note that we don't know what kind of treatment is going to be offered in the, in the, the crisis care centers that are built by from the levy and it's.

It's, I do not believe that the organizations that will be setting up that facility for which we're providing capital costs, those operational costs, I do not believe that they will be offering anything but medication for opioid use disorder either.

So I'm just highlighting the need for a wider range of services.

And then finally, I'll say that again, we have to be, if, If people are on Medicaid, that's great.

Supplemental funding for people on Medicaid for whatever their services, that is helpful, definitely.

But again, if they're on Medicaid, they're going to be on a really long wait list.

And we want to help people that are deciding to make a change in their lives right now.

They are tired of overdosing or they just realize that they can't go on the path, they can't continue on the path that they're on.

And so for the people that are not on Medicaid or who have Medicaid, We have to be able to provide some way to accommodate their entry into into a facility where they are taken out of their daily lives and detoxed and given some counseling and behavioral therapy, nutrition, et cetera.

Those are the components that are.

associated with traditional drug rehab.

So I'm just clarifying that that's the reason why I made my comments about Medicaid.

Okay.

Let's continue to move on.

I want to thank you both for those comments here today.

As Councilmember Nelson noted, this is a concept that is still in development.

I want to thank and Gorman from central staff who has had some initial conversations with King County as we will continue to do.

And I want to thank members of the community that we reached out to to provide additional feedback on how to bring together the concepts and create a shared vision.

for reducing barriers.

And if I could just summarize it as easy as that, we want to reduce any barriers that exist, whether it's a cost barrier or flexible funding needed to get somewhere.

When someone is ready for treatment along the treatment spectrum, we want to ensure that we're reducing barriers.

So I'm glad that there's a shared interest amongst council members here.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson, for bringing an initial concept forward.

And we will continue to develop this with King County and I wanna thank members of the community who provided some initial feedback as well.

King County Coalition on Homelessness, REACH and LEAD and DESC appreciate their best practice implementation of an array of treatment options.

And also would note that this builds on the 2022 statement of legislative intent that did note that there was a small pool of people impacted by barriers to access to treatment due to cost.

and anything that we can do, again, to ensure that someone is able to get access to treatment is always a value add.

Okay, let's move on to agenda, excuse me, amendment item 28.

HSD 814A is sponsored by Councilmember Lewis.

It adds $500,000 general fund ongoing to the Human Services Department for behavioral health services, case management, and operational costs at non-congregate shelters.

This funding would be directed to the Low Income Housing Institute for their support at many tiny home villages around the city.

Last year, they were provided $2.5 million in one-time funds for this purpose.

Thank you so much, and I will turn it over to Councilmember Lewis, recognizing this is not the full amount that was requested for this item, and it is a down payment.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, for being the sponsor.

Thank you for highlighting at the front the thing that is the bad news, which is that it is not the full amount that was requested by Lehigh.

I would indicate that as a base to build from, one of the good things that we have done with this amendment is identify what we think could be an ongoing source of support to provide more consistency and reliability instead of patching the service together with one-time money every single budget, which has been what we have had to do.

I am still committed to working to figure out how we can enhance the service.

I'm going to be completely honest, it really does need to be higher.

than the half a million dollars and I don't think anyone would deny that.

This is a really critical component of why our tiny house villages have been so successful is the ability to provide this additional support for behavioral mental health.

Making sure that we are working to keep that service as intact as possible and sustainable is really important to me.

Really thrilled to see this initial figure and the fact that it's ongoing included in this budget today and looking forward to continuing to work with our partners at Lehigh on how to enhance and expand the services of tiny house villages.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis, and yeah, I appreciate that you lifted up part of the trade-off here that we were trying to offer is ongoing half a million dollars additive to, I believe, the over 10 million going into this category.

But recognize that unless there's additional funding, the organization has flagged that last year's one-time investment could yield a cliff this year.

So both trying to ebb that cliff, build up the ground, if you will, if we can, in additional amendments coming forward, but definitely want to add to the long-term sustainability by making this an ongoing add to the base budget.

Councilmember Lewis, thanks for flagging the interest in a potential amendment there.

Go ahead, Deputy Director, excuse me, go ahead, Director Esther Handy.

No problem.

HSD 815A is sponsored by Council Member Herbold.

This adds $200,000 general fund to HSD for mental health resources for frontline community-based crisis responders.

These are the community-based organizations that participate in the Seattle Community Safety Initiative.

They help respond to and de-escalate shooting incidents and provide support for individuals and families.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Thank you for your inclusion in the balancing package, and thank you, Director Handy, for your explanation.

The only thing I would add is that this is recognized by the Human Services Department as the most critical, unfunded programmatic need for the department right now.

And we know that the folks who are on the front lines delivering violence interruption services in response to gun violence when it happens, as well as engaging in activities intended to prevent gun violence are putting themselves in harm's way.

They are seeing the outcomes of violence directed at people that they work with, people that are clients and people that in what is a relatively small community in Seattle, people who cross relationships, both as whether or not it's as a client, as a family member, the work that these folks are doing, they're not just doing this work for the community, they're doing this work for people that in many cases are known to them and known to their families.

And so this is just so incredibly important, and I'm just very, very, very happy that we could include funding to assist the agencies in supporting their staff.

Excellent.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales.

thank you.

I want to thank Councilmember Herbold for bringing this and acknowledge, as I'm sure we all do, that this isn't nearly enough for this really important work.

We know that when gun violence is erupting around our community, there have to be people to respond, to support the victims, to support the perpetrators even, and all of their families.

And so this interruption work is really important.

This victim support service that is offered is really important.

And I think something that we are starting to also hear in my district is that.

As important as this work is, it is very relational.

And so as Council Member Herbold said, very often the folks who are responding know the people engaged.

And those are sometimes limited networks.

and so what we are hearing more and more is a request for similar kinds of responses that are more culturally appropriate or that are rooted in other communities.

And so I'm just flagging this to say that if we really want to start addressing some of the community safety issues that we keep hearing about, Then we also need to start thinking about how to modify this model so that it is culturally appropriate to different segments of our community who are also engaged in some of this behavior.

And really helping to scale up this really important evidence-based work and response to safety.

So this is work that my office is starting to do in my district in partnership with King County Council Member Zahalai.

And for those of you who are also on the Board of Health, we've started having these conversations at that level as well.

So more to come, but just want to flag for folks that this is really critical and we need much more of it.

Council Member Herbold, before I go to Council Member Nelson, did you have a response that you'd like to provide?

You're on mute, just real quick.

Real quick, Senator Morales, I'd love to share with you a little bit more information about the proposal.

We are working to identify specific providers whose expertise is really in delivering culturally appropriate services that are tailored to the needs of the community.

They have a complement of services that are contracted mental health services that can be tailored to different organizations according to the need.

I would love the

this program lives at public health and then we also have the community safety initiative which funds much of the same work I think to HSD and so that is what I wanted to ask is how is this program distinct from the work that is performed by I believe it is community passageways and they subcontract with the boys and girls club I think no this is etc I'm going this is called organizations in this one

This is for the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, which is the program that is administered and funded by the Human Services Department.

Okay, but it's housed in public health.

No, it is not.

I'm happy to clarify.

That's the next one, I think.

The next one.

The Harborview program is housed in public health.

All right.

Colleagues, thank you so much for the discussion on this.

This is absolutely one of the biggest public health crises that we're facing.

Obviously, gun violence and youth violence reduction, interpersonal violence reduction strategies, anything that we can do in the city of Seattle to reduce violence is a primary goal and priority category in this budget.

Thank you for bringing this forward Council Member Herbold.

This and the next item we'll talk about in a second.

So I appreciate the interest in this and I would also encourage folks to try to keep your comments relatively short and we're going to get through the next 30 items here together and I won't have a lot of comments on the last few items but if we can spend at least the next hour and a half getting through the next 30 items I think we can try and get folks out of here by about 4.30, 5 o'clock at the latest.

Okay, let's go to the next item please.

HSD 816A is missing a sponsor but should be Council Member Herbold.

This is a second CBA related to gun violence, it adds $500,000 general fund to HSD to increase the reach of a gun violence reduction program.

This is for the regional Peacekeepers Collective that works with black and African American men and boys and is to continue to expand this program.

If you have nothing to add, this is a pilot that we started last year with the expectation that there would be a recommendation from the Human Services Department for continuation this year based on more knowledge on the cost to run the program and appreciate the chair's addition.

Excellent.

Thank you.

I would just note on this item and the previous item, we are significantly scaling up investments, as Councilmember Herbold just noted, for harborside gun violence interruption strategies, working in partnership to try to ensure that we interrupt violence at the point where somebody has been hurt so that more people don't fall into the cycle of using guns for retaliation, and it's proven effectiveness.

So, Council Member Herbold, I know you've lifted up those statistics in the past, and maybe we can all have those at our fingertips as we think about explaining to folks what the example investments have already yielded.

On the previous investment for the $200,000, I would also note, and I believe this is true, central staff can always correct me, that the previous investment in this category for supporting the workers, the frontline providers who are the members that make up the Safety initiative workers on the frontline previously this category had around $5,000 in it So we're making a significant improvement and investment in those frontline providers.

So thank you for both of these items I see them in tandem helping to really reduce gun violence and provide upstream solutions Councilmember Nelson

So the crux of my question is basically, this is, I understand that we did get a presentation on this a long time ago in your committee.

So this is basically focused on people that are leaving the hospital.

I understand the reasons for that.

And is there coordination with community passageways?

Is it community passageways that is doing this work?

I just wanna make sure that everybody involved in this collective are working together and with the other program that we've got in the community safety program.

Council Member Herbold.

So this is housed in public health.

We have a body of work in HSD.

Community Passageways is a member of the collaborative, the collective.

Thank you for that clarity.

Are there other members?

There are other organizations that are members, but Community Passageways is the member of the collective that is focused on this particular work.

Okay, thanks.

Thank you both.

Okay, let's move on.

With our next item, we will move out of the Human Services Department and over to the Legislative Department.

Ledge 800A1 sponsored by council member Morales adds $200,000 general fund to the legislative department for council transitions.

This is to support the transition of new council members elected and appointed in 2023 and 2024 and their staff with things like temporary support in HR operations, IT, and communications, as well as for the training and onboarding of new elected officials and their staff.

There's often funding for a mayoral transition, and the council is preparing for a significant transition in January.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales.

Not a lot to add.

We anticipate four new council members next year, and so this would provide a temporary staff to help with all of that training and onboarding.

Thank you for your leadership on this and bringing this forward.

And it seems to me this is very tied into the conversation we had in my committee earlier this fall about significant transitions and a way to help mitigate for them.

Another time.

All right.

Moving on to agenda item number 32.

Great.

This begins conversation about the Office of Economic Development.

OED 801A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Morales.

adds $150,000 jumpstart funds to OED to support a workforce training program focused on technology skills.

This is likely to go through a program such as the Filipino Community of Seattle's Innovation Learning Center.

And Chair Muscat, I think you may have spoken to this earlier as we were talking about the Bumper Shoe Program as this is one of those workforce training programs.

Wonderful.

Funded in this budget.

Council Member Morales, would you like to speak first or would you like me to?

Oh, you can go ahead, Chip.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks for the partnership on this and the joint co-sponsorship, Council Member Morales.

This workforce training program is a really exciting opportunity for us to put funding directly into rehabilitative workforce training programs, the one that's offered at the Filipino Community Village, for example.

is a workforce training program on the first floor below affordable housing that has seniors included, that's next to community space, that's next to a childcare facility.

This workforce training program provides education, career counseling, job placement services, and much, much more with a focus on STEM fields.

So I'm looking forward to helping to make sure that we're investing in workforce training, but specifically investments in rehabilitative workforce training for those who are reentering community after incarceration.

We want to also shout out the workers in this program who went to Hawaii in the aftermath of the Great Fire on Maui and helped to connect their infrastructure grid immediately in the wake of the horrific fires.

And I had the chance to talk to some of the workers as they returned from that trip.

Very harrowing experience and really excited, though, that we are going to be able to invest in that type of work that's not only having impacts here, but apparently across our nation.

Okay, and 150 again, we're creating parity with the other workforce training investment opportunities, again, funded through Jump Start.

All right, let's keep going.

OED 802A, sponsored by Termis Data, adds $30,000 Jump Start to OED and changes funds from, excuse me.

Your Jump Start in my heart with the Jump Heart, Jump Heart.

All right, this is for the virtual hiring hall supported by the MLK Labor Council.

We heart workers, and we love using Jumpstart Economic Resilience Fund to invest in workforce development.

This is an investment that's already been made in the last two budgets.

I want to thank the Office of Economic Development.

Director Mark McIntyre has been in close conversation with members of the labor community who have stood up a virtual hiring hall.

This was something that the labor community identified in the beginning of the pandemic, and we work to incorporate this as a funding source when we conceived of Jumpstart, and we're working on the economic resilience categories.

In the last budget for 2023, The hiring hall received funding, and we are very pleased that the mayor's office continued this funding into 2024 to create parity with the other workforce training areas, as we heard about with Bumper Works and Filipino Hiring Hall, for example.

We are increasing this amount to make sure that there's parity across these workforce training programs.

All right, number 34.

OED 803A sponsored by Councilmember Morales adds $50,000 in jumpstart funds to OED to support community events in the Chinatown International District, specifically their night market, which has recently been canceled due to lack of sponsors and rising costs.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

Thank you, Chair.

We have spoken with the CIDBIA executive director, who expressed in September that the organization needed at least $50,000 in sponsorships to run the CID night market this year.

Unfortunately, those sponsorships declined across all its events.

since the pandemic began in 2020. So the market and other BIA events like Dragon Fest and the Lunar New Year celebration are designed to be fundraisers for the nonprofit.

This pays for various programs including neighborhood trash pickup, graffiti removal, public safety outreach, education and marketing for small businesses in the area.

And so this funding would help ensure that the night market could continue for this year.

Thank you so much.

Any additional comments?

All right, let's move on.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

OED 804A is sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, and it is paired with OED 903A.

804 adds $455,000 to OED for administrative costs associated with economic resilience programs.

OED 903 is a reduction to move some of these items out of the Jumpstart Economic Resilience category, and the CBA adds them back in in the Administrative category.

These three items include $80,000 for professional development of OED staff.

That's scaled down from $120,000 in the proposed budget.

The second item is $225,000 for two grants and contracts specialists.

Again, proposed in the budget retained here, but moved from the subject category to administrative category and finally, 150,000 dollars to implement economic development, analytic software that's scaled down from 200,000 dollars in the proposed budget.

Excellent thank you and I'll speak to both of the items that you just read in.

I want to underscore the importance of ensuring that there is staff to carry out the good work that's been requested of them and this continues the investments in staff just realign sort of where those positions are categorized and also, I think, underscores our support for the department in the long term.

I don't think that this is a major departure from what was already intended in terms of the vision.

It just basically ensures that the funding is being, in my opinion, more appropriately categorized for where there's administrative costs and ongoing positions versus other investments.

Central staff, would you have anything else to add to that?

Nothing more to add?

Okay, thanks.

Let's go on.

OED 805A is sponsored by Council Member Nelson, and it adds $20,000 in Jump Start Fund to OED to support the Seattle Film Commission and the Seattle Music Commission, $10,000 each.

Great.

Council Member Nelson.

I'm happy to wait for a moment.

That's okay.

I'm happy to speak to this.

It's self explanatory.

I appreciate that we have jumpstart progressive payroll tax to support both of these categories.

Part of the vision of jumpstart was to ensure activation and include more arts and culture and small businesses and really try to ensure greater community cohesion.

That's also good for the health of our small businesses and as we invest more in arts and culture.

So I filibustered long enough to let Council Member Nelson catch her breath and would love for you to speak to your amendment item number 36.

Thank you very much for your patience.

No problem.

So of course, film and music are critical to the success of the creative economy.

And we know that the Boys in the Boat movie will be opening on Christmas Day.

And you know what I've heard about that before, which is that we need to ensure that our lovely city is not just a, you know, a panorama at the beginning of the movie, but that these films are actually made right here and that we support our existing you know, very, very diverse in terms of jobs and also backgrounds of people that work in the film industry here.

And also our music industry.

The pandemic decimated the revenue streams of our nightlife and our music venues.

And so what I'm trying to do here is to support the work that the Film Commission and the Music Commission are doing all the time and have been the Music Commission since its inception to form a bridge between the city and these creative economy sectors.

And so this is funding that is identified to help those commissions fulfill the work that the people who are working in the industry say is most important for their viability so that we don't lose these artists to other cities as so often has been happening as our city becomes more expensive.

Thank you, Council Member Nelson.

And we have just a reminder for folks that haven't been tracking.

We do have all 11 commissioners seated on the film commission that was established last year, and they are bringing forward items that will help them do their work that we have bestowed upon them to strengthen the film industry in Seattle.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

Let's move on to item number 37.

OED 806-S is a slice sponsored by Councilmember Strauss that requests the Office of Economic Development develop a landscape analysis of child care in Seattle and a coordinated city approach towards increasing child care supply.

Great.

Councilmember Strauss.

Anything that you'd like to add?

Thank you, Chair.

No, just that child care is incredibly important and we need to be doing as much as we can to support more child care in our city for every working family.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

I don't see another hand.

Let's go on to item 38.

Thank you to the child care providers who are watching my kids right now as I transition to the next item.

OED 807A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, would add $600,000 jumpstart fund to OED for public space activation outside of downtown.

This expands the investments in the mayor's proposed budget and the future of Seattle strategy for activation specifically in Capitol Hill, Rainier Beach, and the North Rainier, Mt. Baker area.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I don't know if people are playing bingo at home, but I'm going to say community social cohesion again.

Excited that we have this amendment to further public space activation.

This is using funding that is coming from Jumpstart.

Excuse me.

Let me double check that fund source.

This is Jumpstart Economic Resilience funding supporting this program.

All right, just wanted to double check here.

This is exciting to be able to use Jumpstart Economic Resilience dollars to ensure greater public space activation for neighborhoods outside of downtown.

It also complements the mayor's vision of trying to activate more spaces in our downtown core.

This is exactly the type of activity we envisioned when JumpStart was created so that we could support economic recovery and to create healthy, safe, vibrant spaces for small businesses and artists in our local community.

It also helps get people out of their cars when we invest in activation of public spaces.

I'm excited that there's been a long-standing, long-time advocacy for greater street activation and promoting the safe paths for pedestrians in areas such as Capitol Hill, where there has been ongoing support from community, from residents and small businesses for allowing delivery and residential pass-throughs, but also promoting the opportunity for greater pedestrianization of spaces.

And that's really been ongoing for at least the last five years.

I'm excited as well that this amendment includes the concept of expanding out pedestrianization to a neighborhood around Seattle where there has been much need for investments in safe streets and pedestrianization to reduce the incidence of people being hit by cars.

And this is a public health benefit when we invest in activation throughout our city, especially where There is a need for greater investments in the health and community cohesion of our neighborhoods.

All right.

Moving on to item number 39.

Item number 39 we discussed above.

This is OED 903. That is the reduction paired with the add to the move for administrative funds.

So that ends the Office of Economic Development and I can go pass it back to Deputy Director Ali Panucci.

to start us on the conversation about housing.

Thanks so much, and I don't think I need to weigh in on that one.

Thanks for talking about how that has already been addressed.

OH, Office of Housing, number 40.

Thank you.

OH801A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, would add $50,000 of general fund to the Office of Housing to fund a workgroup to study the operational sustainability needs of non-permanent supportive housing providers.

Excellent, thank you so much.

Colleagues, I think specifically we are looking for ways throughout the budget to address the impacts that the pandemic has had on exacerbating long-standing inequities throughout our community and the long-standing operational instabilities within our affordable housing system is one of those.

Costs of providing services and housing have increased, needs among residents inside those buildings have increased, And as we've said before, directly from the mouth of the housing providers, the buildings may look the same on the outside, but the needs of the residents on the inside have grown dramatically.

Rent recovery has been much more challenging as residents of affordable housing continue to struggle to make ends meet.

This has created an operational sustainability crisis among our housing providers.

There's long-term implications for that instability, and there's an immediate need for near-term relief for these housing providers.

I'm excited that we have an opportunity here to partner with our state and our county to offer solutions to ensure that we can help provide additional support for the providers who are providing services on the inside and allow for people to remain stably housed.

This amendment provides funding for the Office of Housing to convene a work group to develop an assessment of the operational sustainability needs of non-permanent supportive housing providers with the goal of working with the state, county, and other funding partners on short- and long-term solutions to identify issues and ways to close the gap.

We are asking the Office of Housing to submit a report on the operational needs identified and the short- and long-term solutions that are recommended by the workgroup will be presented to the Housing Committee or the Successor Committee by mid-year next year.

Thanks so much to the Housing Development Consortium and our housing provider community for continuing to work with us on this concept.

Item number 41, please.

OH802A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $4.6 million of Jump Start funds to the Office of Housing for the Multi-Family Housing Program.

This restores the funding levels to the 2024 endorsed budget levels.

Thank you so much.

As we noted at the beginning of this presentation, one of the major changes that we worked on in the creation of the chair's balancing package was to move additional jumpstart funding into the affordable housing investments to the tune of about $5 million.

This amendment accomplishes that, and we know the long-term impacts on our community of not having sufficient housing hurt our economy and our health.

And so this helps to ensure that there's funding in the pipeline for projects and that we're able to build as many housing units as quickly as possible, units coupled with supportive services like small businesses, childcare facilities, community space, and much more.

Two-thirds of JumpStart was specifically dedicated for affordable housing.

That's why it's so important that we continue to ensure that we make good on that commitment.

These are long-term investments that have generational value.

Let's continue.

OH803A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $330,000 of Jump Start funds to support the forgiveness of a loan to Community Roots Housing.

The use of these funds is contingent upon the Council approving an ordinance authorizing the Director of the Office of Housing to forgive a loan that was provided previously.

Thank you very much.

Thank you so much.

We have been in long conversations with Office of Housing and Community Roots Housing due to ongoing financial hardship that I just described above and due to the ongoing impacts of the pandemic.

We are hoping to convert this loan into a grant so we can reduce some of the financial strain on this housing provider because this is actually compounding the issue of lost rent and increased needs in affordable housing.

CBO assumed a payment on this loan to the proposed budget and an amount equal to that is now being replaced in the balancing budget to instead treat this like a grant instead of a loan.

This uses jumpstart funding, which has already been used in the past to fund similar operational stabilization efforts for housing providers during the pandemic.

Again, I want to thank Community Roots Housing for their work on this, serving our really most vulnerable community members and putting this on our radar last year.

Happy to follow through on this conversation here in partnership with the Office of Housing and our commitment to ensuring that we can help stabilize additional housing for more vulnerable community members throughout Seattle.

We can continue.

Item 43.

OIRA 801A, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, would add $25,000 one time of general fund to the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs to support a conference on human trafficking intended to provide an overview of the problem, barriers to combat trafficking, and recommendations for policy and programmatic action.

Thank you so much.

As folks probably know, the City of Seattle has been longstanding partners with the University of Washington, specifically the University of Washington's Women's Center, led by Director Sutapa Basu.

They have been convening the Human Trafficking Coalition for over 10 years.

I used to be a member of that.

I know that Councilmember Jeannie Cole-Wells has been a member while at King County Council and prior to that while she was a state senator as well.

They're a statewide leader and frankly a national leader as it comes to raising awareness on the issue of human trafficking and anti-trafficking efforts and using a public health lens and really collaboration between employers and workers to lift up the issues around human trafficking and create mitigation strategies.

Our region is one of the has one of the highest rates of human trafficking throughout its corridors.

And hosting this conference here, helping to find solutions, and having the city of Seattle be a partner, not only in the larger conference, but helping to support translation services is a great way to show our continued support for their work at the University of Washington Women's Center.

OK, number 44.

According for OIRA 802A, this would add $200,000 to OIRA to support migrants and asylum seekers.

This could include funding for public health interventions, housing or shelter support, training for homeless service providers, capacity building for local community organizations, serving immigrant and refugee communities, and developing a long-term coordinated response to the emergent migrant crisis in the Seattle area.

Thank you so much.

And again, I want to thank the folks who came and testified earlier this week on the emerging humanitarian crisis that is occurring in our region here.

They lifted up what we had heard through the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs, through community partners like One America and Casa Latina, that Seattle Police Department officials are bringing individuals who are from immigrant and refugee communities to our neighboring jurisdiction of Tukwila.

And the encampment there has grown to over 300 people.

We know there are currently 11 babies on the way with two brand new newborns in the encampment.

And given the nexus and the connection with Seattle having a contribution to the number of people coming to that region and the humanitarian crisis tied to these individuals being refugees and the status that that accompanies that, we thought it was important to put a down payment towards the request that was being made by community leaders, including the Church Council of Greater Seattle.

in those discussions that we heard just this week.

And again, I will go out there with the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs Director Hamdi Mohamed tomorrow to learn more about what is occurring there and look forward to being part of a regional solution to ensure that King County and our local jurisdictional partners have solutions for immigrant and refugee community members who are currently living in the encampment, recognizing this is an array of not just homeless services, but also ways that we can help those with limited English capabilities and additional needs that the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs is most poised to support.

And with that, I'll turn it over to Councilmember Morales.

Did you have anything you'd like to add on that item?

Okay.

Only that I appreciate this.

We got a call early a couple days ago and or I should say late in this process, but understand that this is a looming and urgent thing for us to support and address.

Thank you so much.

We weren't able to provide the full request, but I appreciate that we are working hard to make sure that families are safe.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I will also note, thanks to Mayor Bruce Harreld, I believe that there is $150,000 included in his proposed budget with a specific line item for immigrant and refugee community support.

So look forward to hearing more about how these efforts maybe could be combined.

Item number 45, please.

OLS 801A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $100,000 of jumpstart funds to the Office of Labor Standards to support continued development of a portable paid time off policy for domestic workers.

This includes $60,000 for outreach and education to domestic workers and employers who are covered by the paid sick and safe time ordinance.

$35,000 for consultant research on publicly funded options for pay time off for domestic workers, and $5,000 for necessary translation and interpretation of materials.

Thank you so much.

And as part of our efforts about four years ago to pass the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights, we included the Domestic Workers Standards Board, which was tasked with identifying possible policy enhancements for the council's consideration, as we did not want legislation to just sit on a shelf and think that it was stagnant and good enough.

We knew that there's a number of additional protections that domestic workers need given that they are largely excluded from both state and national labor standards.

The Domestic Workers Standards Board identified the desire to advance policy analysis and deliberation on a possible portable benefits policy.

This funding will go to support outreach and education of domestic workers and employers covered by the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

And it will also go to furthering research on options to expand I appreciate that this amendment builds on the past work that helped to establish coverage for communities that were often left out of previous labor protections like paid sick and safe leave, and that we were able to expand services to a subset of workers in the past, but look forward to how we can continue to expand leave policies to other workers who are currently not covered.

Thank you very much for your joint partnership on this.

And I think Council Member Morales, is there anything that you'd like to add?

I don't know if we were gonna add your name to this or not, but wanted to make sure to flag that.

Yeah, would love to.

We've been working with the coalition for a little over a year now to try to develop this and really appreciate the support and look forward to working as well with OLS to get this done.

Excellent.

Thank you.

We will make sure to note your name as well as a co-sponsor on this item.

Item number 45, OLS 801A1.

Excellent.

Excellent.

Let's move on to number 46.

OLS 802A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $137 to the Office of Labor Standards Funds to the Office of Labor Standards for staffing costs.

This would allow OLS to fill a vacant investigator position that otherwise will be held vacant to achieve a vacancy rate target assumed in the proposed budget.

Thank you so much.

I'm just going to build off the comments that Councilmember Herbold mentioned earlier about the certification member from the Office of Labor Standards identifying the ongoing need for there to be investments in staffing, staffing to do both education and outreach along with enforcement.

It is critical that we continue to provide additional supportive services for the Office of Labor Standards so that the policies that we're passing are not just words on paper that they actually yielding additional enforcement and thus compliance with the law.

I appreciate that there is a certification memo that helps to illustrate the ongoing needs of labor costs of cost to the Office of Labor Standards every year.

I encourage council members to take a look at that certification memo every year.

We receive it in about September.

As noted in the proposed budget that we received, the Office of Labor Standards was asked to offset ongoing needs by holding a 4.5% vacancy rate, which would leave vacant an investigator position.

Our interest here is ensuring that this position, among the investments that we talked about earlier, that also invest in Office of Labor Standards, will help to ensure that we can add at least one more investigator.

Again, folks, I want to emphasize the importance of investigators not just yielding additional money for compliance for the workers, but there is a multiplier effect when companies who are not complying with the law see another company held to the standards of the law.

Then more people benefit from having an investigator be able to lift up examples, situations, so that more people know what the law is, they can comply, and thus more funding goes to workers and circulates in our local economy.

It's a good return on our investment here.

Council Member Nelson.

I'll just note for the record that the best way to ensure compliance and to prevent violations is to make sure that our employers know about what all the new laws that we pass.

So I've noted in the past that the resources allocated to educating businesses about changes to our labor laws is, I think, about one third.

if that, of the resources allocated to investigations.

So at some point, I'll be looking at how to balance that out.

Thank you so much, and I'll look into the ratios there a little bit more as well.

I appreciate you flagging the importance of education and outreach on the front end.

Item number 47, please.

37 OPCD 801A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add 130,000 jumpstart funds to the Office of Planning and Community Development for community engagement work related to the Seattle Comprehensive Plan major update.

The Comprehensive Plan major update will be completed in 2023. However, release of the draft plan and draft environmental impact statement have been delayed and most outreach and engagement related to the draft plan will not will now occur in 2024.

Item number 47, correct?

47, yes.

I want to thank you, colleagues.

I think there's a number of people who are interested in this item as well.

In the past, we have sponsored the racial equity toolkit on Seattle's growth strategy, and we requested and funded an equitable community engagement strategy to ensure inclusive conversations in preparation for a change in our zoning code that would allow for more diverse housing and inclusive housing.

Over the last six years, we've been helping to lay the groundwork for the upcoming comprehensive plan that is coming next year.

The work is nearing completion and it is not done yet.

The next year's comprehensive plan will be an opportunity for the community to truly engage and inform council's final deliberations.

And we know that there will be subsequent zoning changes as required by the state through the middle housing bill.

We want to ensure that there's adequate resources for OPCD to conduct the needed community engagement on these important conversations so that we can have a city that grows to meet our future and current needs.

This amendment adds back in funding that was reduced in the mayor's proposed budget for the specific purpose of community engagement on the upcoming comprehensive plan.

Thank you so much.

And I know that there's many council members who are interested in this, so I will just note shared interests across the council in ensuring sufficient funding for outreach and engagement on the comp plan.

Number 48, please.

OSC 801A sponsored by Council Member Morales and Chair Mosqueda.

This would add $30,000 Jumpstart Fund to the Office of Sustainability and Environment to support additional outreach and engagement for the forthcoming Tree Canopy Equity and Resilience Plan.

This will bring the total amount of Jumpstart Green New Deal funding for this plan to $180,000.

This increased funding is intended to provide resources to ensure that the plan is developed with extensive community engagement and a particular focus on residents in environmental justice priority areas.

Excellent.

Council Member Morales, would you like to speak to this amendment first?

Sure, thank you.

So this proviso was requested by several stakeholder groups, including the Beacon Hill Council, the Green New Deal Oversight Board.

So this CBA would direct OSC to form a stakeholder work group with the purpose of performing an equity analysis and providing recommendations related to the tree ordinance that we passed this year as part of the Sorry, I'm losing my place here.

The hope is that this work would allow us to be more deliberate with our investments in areas specifically that are lacking tree canopy like those areas in district 2.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you.

I just want to say I appreciate that you brought this forward and as part of our commitment earlier this year, one of the things that we committed to was following up in the budget to ensure that there was funding for outreach and education.

And I think that this is part of that conversation to ensure that there's equitable expanded opportunities to tree canopy throughout the city and this complements the tree equity and resilience plan.

So I'm glad that there is some of the jumpstart progressive payroll tax revenue that is freed up through other efforts to realign jumpstart funds and that we've been able to support this important environmental justice request.

All right, item number 49, please.

49 OSC 802A sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

This would add $50,000 of general fund one time to the Office of Sustainability and Environment to develop in collaboration with the city's urban forestry management team, a citywide urban forestry outreach and communication strategy to increase community care for trees.

This work would include, but not be limited to, providing information related to the recent update to tree regulations on private property, volunteer opportunities, tree care and incentives.

Excellent.

Thank you.

And I'm going to turn it to Councilmember Peterson.

I want to also acknowledge that this is a slight adaptation between a proposal that I think both he and my office were considering.

So, Councilmember Peterson, I recognize this may be a work in progress, but wanted to flag our joint interest in that.

And I appreciate that we've put your name there, but there might be some more work to be done on this.

Unless I'm confusing this with another one.

Please go ahead, Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I really want to give you credit for taking the initiative to recognize that the Urban Forestry Commission did send us a letter on October 8. They had some gratitude to provide to the mayor's budget proposal, and then they had additional requests, about seven additional requests, modest amounts of funding, and appreciate your office.

When we discussed the list, your office lifting this one up.

This is a very good one, and so I'm happy to have my name on it.

I'm looking at the rest of the Urban Forestry Commission letter to see if there is something else that is a priority for them.

My office was in contact with them yesterday.

There might be another item about the same amount of money that they're also interested in, but just really happy to have this here and we'll see what we can do as part of the amendment process.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much.

And as I just noted in the previous amendment as well, I did want to make sure that we committed to supporting the tree canopy ordinance.

Thank you again to Council Member Strauss for his leadership in shepherding that through the Seattle City Council and for Central Staff's long-standing engagement on that issue too, so that we are expanding and protecting the tree canopy in our city.

I appreciate Council Member Peterson, the joint work on this.

Maybe I'll ask to add my name to this as a co-sponsor as well.

because part of what we wanted to do was ensure that there was follow-up to do the outreach and education.

And I think this amendment, as Council Member Peterson noted, pulls from the Urban Forestry Commission list of requests for communication strategy on trees in the city with a focus on making sure we have the information, getting out to folks about the new code changes.

So thank you for the joint interest in this, and I'd love to add my name to this as a co-sponsor.

All right, let's go to item number 50.

Item 50, this SDCI 801A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda would add $1 million general fund to SDCI, the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, for eviction prevention resources to be administered in conjunction with eviction legal defense contracts.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank the Housing Justice Project for their deep engagement with Aaron House, Chief of Staff in my office, who provided us an update with the ongoing needs.

The evictions have increased as COVID protections and relief have expired.

Many households are struggling to pay rent, and many of the households in the eviction process due to one to two months of unpaid rent.

So let me rephrase that.

Many of the evictions that are in the process, families are there just due to one to two months of unpaid rent.

The likelihood of falling into homelessness greatly increases when households are evicted.

With many sources of rent assistance, including federal funds, exhausted, this could be one of the only sources to help prevent households in the eviction process from being evicted.

Thanks again to the Housing Justice Project for flagging this ongoing need for us.

Council Member Nelson.

I'll just say what I said last year, which is that if we have extra money, we should be helping tenants stay in their units.

And I would like to know if there is any direct funding specifically for to pay people's back rent.

Councilmember, I want to turn to central staff just to see if we have a quick answer to that because my understanding is that this does directly help prevent eviction by helping to pay for rent directly.

That is correct, Chair Mosqueda.

That is my understanding and colleagues, potential staff colleagues on the line, if you have other information, let me know.

But this money is typically used with organizations that provide legal or eviction defense services to cure the back rent.

So it is often the strategy to avoid an eviction when there are funds available to help tenants cure that unpaid rent.

You're correct, Council Member Nelson.

There's another investment that we've made over the past few years that help people when they're in the process of paying legal funds.

But this one right here is directly paying so that people can stay in place and prevent people from falling into homelessness, I think, to your point.

Right.

Item number 51. I just want to make sure that it's not just going to lawyers.

It's going to actual the payment of rent.

And it's not just our It's not just private housing providers, this will also hopefully help our nonprofit housing providers as well.

Thank you very much.

Item 51. Item 51, SDCI 802 S A.

Sponsored by council member Peterson.

This is a statement of legislative intent requesting that the Seattle Department of construction and inspections provide a report on options to improve complaint response, including off our emergency housing and tree cutting complaints.

The report should identify options needed.

and resources needed for improving response time to achieve the 2018 performance targets for construction, housing and land use complaints while achieving same day or 24 hour response times for emergency housing and tree cutting complaints.

Excellent.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you for collaborating with my office on this concept.

A lot of our offices get phone calls and emails over the weekend when they are concerned there might be a code violation, perhaps a a tree being removed and they want clarification as to whether that is appropriate.

And so this happens a lot on Saturdays and Sundays.

And so we want to explore ways to enable there to be someone to pick up the phone and to try to prevent any sort of illegal activity over the weekend.

I know we tried hard to find a way to do this more immediately without a statement of legislative intent, which will take longer to figure out.

wanted to make sure we comply with all of the considerations about having people work on the weekends.

So that's why this is here.

So I appreciate your including it.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Peterson.

Thanks for flagging that need.

Item number 52.

Item 52 SDCI 803A sponsored by Council Member Morales would add $50,000 general fund to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspect, excuse me, Inspections to convene a tenant work group on strategies to protect the health and well being of Seattle renters.

This could include, but it's not limited to the work group contemplating creating a new office.

dedicated to enforcing current laws and establishing new laws, requirements, and standards.

And this should also include considering the costs and implementation steps associated with any recommended strategies.

Okay, thank you very much.

We trailed off there at the end a little bit.

I know everybody's getting a little tired.

We are nearing the finish line here.

Council Member Morales, please go ahead.

Thank you.

This is a CBA requested by tenants, advocates, and tenant service providers to convene a stakeholder work group that would strategize on how to create an office of rental housing standards.

The office would consolidate work that is spread across both OCR and SDCI.

specifically related to enforcing tenant rights.

And would also explore further policy changes to protect renters.

Seeing the success of the office of labor standards, this group of advocates envision an office of rental housing standards with a similarly structured organization.

And so this funding would allow us to convene a work group of tenants and tenant attorneys and others, including city departments to contemplate what creating an office like this should look like.

Thank you so much.

Appreciate your sponsorship on this and to the advocates, including the Tenants' Union for speaking up on this on public hearing.

I'm glad that this was elevated in that discussion and that we were able to accommodate it in the balancing package here for future planning.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for your leadership on this.

Let's continue.

53. Item 53, SDHR 800A, sponsored by Council President Juarez, would impose a proviso on one-time funding of $1.1 million that is from multiple funds in the Seattle Department of Human Resources that is intended to conduct the first phase of a citywide classification and compensation program review.

This proviso is building off of a report from the Office of City Auditors' Workforce Equity and Promotions Audit.

Where they identified gaps in the city's existing methods for collecting gender identity information in the human resources information system that only provides 3 options for gender identity, male, female and unspecified.

The auditor reported that gaps could prevent opportunities to identify and resolve disparities impacting non-binary and genderqueer employees.

This proviso would be lifted once the council determines that SDHR has demonstrated that the city's collection of voluntary employee demographic data includes two-spirit, female, male, non-binary, transgender male, transgender female, and other gender diverse identities to better inform performance audits and workforce equity initiatives.

Thank you.

Council President.

Thank you.

I have a little bit more background, but thank you, Ali.

You did a great job.

And I again, apologize.

Got caught a little flat footed here on this on some of the background here just briefly.

So, I may be repeating a little bit of what Ali share, but I wanted to make this point.

Why we're bringing this forward so currently H.

R. Design does not include, as Ali said, gender does not include transgender male or transgender female identities and omitting these those identities continue to the city's efforts to evaluate workforce data.

and improve personnel practices.

Data from the US Census Bureau and the Williams Institute indicate that 53% of transgender people in the United States would not see their transgender identity reflected in the new HRIS platform at its launch.

So when we talk about the gender identity terminology, a little background here, which is important.

Back in 2015, The mayor issued an executive order and the city council passed a resolution recognizing that the gender identity terminology, gender identity information should be more inclusive.

It's, of course, self identified those that wish to identify.

And so the importance of this is we are need to be more inclusive to gather this data.

But the information is needed to a better measure, not only workforce data, and recruiting, but also better understand and measure the impacts of anti-trans bias, which can impact the workforce, not the city's workforce.

And we've looked at a few other studies that did this.

So revising the gender identity categories in time for the new HRIS platforms launch in 2024 should allow the city to better measure the impacts of anti-trans bias which again, impact the workplace.

So we're basically trying to accommodate and keep up with the promise that we made back in 2015 to this, to that community to be counted, if indeed they choose to be counted, but we should, for all kinds of reasons, be collecting that data.

So thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Thanks for your leadership on this.

All right, let's go to the next one.

The next one is 801A sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

This is the budget action that would implement the strategies to address the issues in the transportation revenue streams that were described in a bit of detail in the introductory slides.

And so I will go into those details now, unless council members have questions.

Thank you so much.

I think we covered in unless there's questions that council members have.

I want to also underscore the importance of the work that Calvin has done on central staff to identify ways to reduce the impact of the reduction in funding for transportation and infrastructure projects.

The last thing we want to do is to have Any of our transportation advocates whether they advocate for bridges or roads or sidewalks or bus lanes or bike lanes To ever feel like they're being pitted against each other with scarce resources So we have maintained our full commitment in this budget to the full portfolio of investments That already were deliberated last year and continue in this 2024 Second part of our biennial budget.

So thank you very much and councilmember peterson.

I see you off I'm going to turn it over to the transportation chair.

If you have anything you would like to say as the transportation chair, feel free.

I want to thank you and central staff for the realization that these investments are important.

had declined for various reasons.

I do want to point out that the real estate excise tax, I know traditionally It does go to transportation projects, but it goes to capital projects across all departments.

But I do appreciate your using that source to restore these investments.

Also, we'll take a look at what the executive is telling us about the doubling of the school zone .

We want to make sure they are doubling the traffic safety camera program that the Council authorized last year.

I think this is restoring the dip in those revenues and we also want to make sure they are doubling that program as Council requested last year because that program ultimately does bring in revenue.

let our Office of Intergovernmental Relations know their interest in having the state legislature amend the state law so that we can clarify that other city government employees can issue the tickets for automated enforcement.

It shouldn't be just sworn officers.

That's created a bottleneck in the system.

So as we try to deploy more of these safety measures.

We need to make sure that on the back end we have efficiencies built in to enable the expansion.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember.

All right, let's keep going.

I thought 803 a sponsored by Council President whereas would impose a proviso on $600,000 in the Seattle Department of Transportation for paving improvements in the vicinity of the Seattle storm training facility.

Specifically, this would reserve funds in the non arterial street resurface surfacing and restoration.

CIP project, which supports repair of deteriorated asphalt and concrete panels on non-arterial streets, says that this would restrict the use of $600,000, and the total budget for that general CIP program is $2.4 million in the 2024 proposed budget.

All right, Council President Stutas.

One second.

She is on mute still.

button was not working and I really said some great stuff.

I'm sorry you all missed it.

Let me start again.

So before we just I want to put this in context how this all came to be.

I'll be very quick and next time around you all will be receiving a quick little memo on some background.

But the legislative history is very important here not only for my colleagues that some of you already know but for the public.

So the legislative history goes back to 2020. And I want to thank Lish because Lish worked on the on the rezone piece.

And I want to thank Kelvin because he worked on the Sound Transit piece.

And I want to thank the mayor's office.

I want to thank Council Member Lewis and Strauss, who back in 2020 worked with me to get the rezone done.

Now, the reason why I say it was a long-term legislative plan and to contextualize how we got here is the long-term planning was more than just a training center.

We started with the rezone in 2021. which we knew that in this city council passed that unanimously.

And then in 2022, with the mayor's office and myself being a board member on Sound Transit, we did additional studies.

We modified the Sound Transit alignment.

We reduced the cost by $33 million, and we moved the line over one block to avoid displacing Seattle City Light property and the future Seattle Storm Training Center.

So there are a lot of parties involved the sound transit, the mayor's office in Seattle City Council.

So that brings us to where we're at now in 2023. So, where we're at in the training facility.

For interbase, you heard me say earlier about bringing vitality, activating further activating this neighborhood in this community.

And of course, the incredible value added of having light rail 1 block away and hopefully all the good stuff will come with this type of desk density that we've seen with at least up in district 5. with Northgate Station and now the 130th Street Station.

I see good things happening for that neighborhood.

The ripple effect starting in 2020 to today from the rezone and the work that we did and the work we did with the Mayor's Office and Sound Transit and my 18 other Sound Transit members, thank you very much for passing the motion to get this done, is inherent to this whole concept that we've been talking about at least since 2014, the whole transit oriented development and what that means.

And it is beyond just building housing around a sound transit light rail station, which is important, but there are other things that can grow around there as well.

And Councilor Mosqueda, I know you've been a big supporter for me and other folks.

And when Councilor Gonzales was here on, you know, transit oriented childcare as well.

grocery stores, daycare, all those things that you need around light rail.

Once you have that, there's a ripple effect.

I think the stone, if I can go with this analogy, the pebble in the pond was the first rezone.

Then from there, hopefully those ripple effects, they can be measured in brick and mortar.

But more importantly, I think they can be measured inherently by what they bring to the neighborhood.

Really, I want to thank Council Member Lewis and Council Member Strauss because they worked hard with me on making sure and understanding the vision, the long-term vision of why we wanted to see all of this happen when these discussions started back in 2020. So with that, I hope my council members see the big picture, and I have also put together a chronology that you will all get in your inboxes probably before close of business today.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Let's move on.

Hello again, folks.

I am going to pick up with Seattle Fire Department.

SFD801S is a slide sponsored by Councilmember Herbold that requests the Seattle Fire Department to report on the Post-Overdose Response Team Pilot, also known as Health 99. This program engages people who have recently received emergency services for a drug overdose to connect them with services and support.

Council Member, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

This time I really mean it.

I have nothing more to add.

Thank you, Esther.

All right, let's keep going.

Next is the Seattle Municipal Court.

SMC 801 SA, sponsored by Chair Mosqueda, requests that the Municipal Court convene the police department, the city attorney's office, our new care department, and FAS, and report back on how to implement the Office of Inspector General's recommendations regarding increased compliance with vehicle equipment regulations to ensure that people in Seattle are driving safely.

The report also asks for an update on SPD's efforts to determine how to de-prioritize traffic stops regarding vehicle equipment violations, like a taillight out.

Thank you so much.

I want to thank Melanie Cray in my office who's done a tremendous amount of work on this.

The concept here is to try to reduce any barriers that we have to individuals paying these small dollar amounts and ensuring that more people can have access to flexible funds necessary to comply with citations.

We want to prevent people from being pulled back into the cycle of penalization or criminalization simply just for having lack of funds to pay these services.

So I look forward to future work to be done here and want to thank Melanie Cray for the work on this and hope I did this item justice as I got a little off of my notes here.

Thanks to Melanie and the ongoing work of the community who's been asking for this for a long time.

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Okay.

Item number 57 asks for is the ask is sourced from the recommendations from the Office of Inspector General for Public Safety for making non-safety related non-moving violations more equitable.

This comes at the result of their and my staff's participation with ACLU Washington and a cohort of the Vera Institute of Justice on Traffic Safety, and is modeled off of the Washington State's ACLU Traffic Safety for All bill that unfortunately stalled in committee in the state legislature last year.

The ask requests institutional stakeholders to convene to figure out how to stand up a vehicle equipment compliance fund, which would ideally replace monetary penalties for non-safety traffic violations, like having a single burnt-out brake light or tail light.

a noisy muffler, or expired registration.

Because of these violations do not impact car or pedestrian safety, we want to free up officers to focus on unsafe driving that puts passengers and pedestrians in danger.

This change also helps us avoid disproportionately penalizing low-income drivers who likely are not fixing these items on their vehicles because they cannot afford to.

after providing for their basic needs like food and shelter, meaning they could also be dragged into debt with monetary fines.