Budget Committee Meeting Session I 09-28-26

Good morning.

The September 24th, 2025 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order.

It is 9.31 a.m.

A little late this morning.

I'm sorry for that.

I'm Dan Strauss, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

And Councilmember Rivera is excused as she is attending to our Association of Washington City's duties, where I should also be, but this is my primary job.

So great to see everyone.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Sacca.

Here.

Councilmember, excuse me, Councilmember Foster.

Here.

Council President Hollingsworth.

Council President Juarez, sorry, Councilmember Juarez.

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Linn.

Here.

Chair Strauss.

Present.

Five present.

Thank you.

We are gonna move directly into public comment period today.

I will reserve the chair's report for after public comment, but we do need to approve the agenda first.

So after public comment, we will have an introduction and overview of the budget process.

We will have the city budgets office overview of the 2026 proposed budget and department presentations from Seattle Parks and Recreation, Seattle Center and the Office of Arts and Culture.

for folks bringing banners today and signs, the rule that we have, and I'll ask for clarification, but you cannot block other individuals' views or disrupt participation in that way.

So what I'm seeing from the clerks is maybe if you could be in the back instead of the front row.

We also can't even see it when it's in the front row, so that's also a Just sharing.

Okay.

Well, with that, we're gonna move right into public comment.

I'll save chair's report for afterwards.

pulling up the rules now.

Opening the hybrid public comment period, public comments should relate to items on today's agenda and within the purview of this select committee.

This is the first of six public comment periods and two public hearings which we will have during this budget process.

Here's how the public comment period works.

If there are fewer than 30 people signed up, each person receives two minutes.

If there are between 30 and 60 people signed up, each person will have one minute.

If there are more than 60 people signed up, I will adjust the time as appropriate, whether it is 30 seconds or 45 seconds, to ensure that we are able to get through everyone as best as possible.

Clerk, how many folks do we have signed up in person today?

So far we have 20 in person and eight, sorry, six remote.

Six remote, and are there still folks signing up right now?

We've got 23 in person and seven remote.

And so we will have, everyone will have one minute today.

Sorry, 30 people.

Yep, one minute.

Thank you.

I'm gonna go through this list.

We're gonna do in person first and then we're gonna move to online public comment.

I'll read names in groups of 10 so that folks can stand up and get ready.

I suggest the tall microphone here in the middle.

It is the best.

Also grab it and make sure it's close to you.

With that we've got Angelique Wilson, Kenny Stewart, Jeff Miller, Ryan Ellis, Liam Ronnie, Orion B, Tom Burke, Riley Dolan, Helen Gilbert, and Howard Gale for our first 10. So as soon as you are ready, come on up.

And I see Council President Emeritus Juarez is with us as well.

Good morning, my friend from D5.

I know that the firefighters will, you know, you responded to a house fire in Lake City just this morning.

So we appreciate your service and I'm good to see you.

As soon as you start talking, we'll start the clock.

Good morning.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Yeah.

Good morning, Angelique.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good morning.

My name is Angelique Wilson, founder and director of Skills to Live.

We've talked a lot about getting people housed, but housing is not successful because someone gets a key.

Success is being able to keep that key.

Our program provides practical housing, transition support, life skills, daily stability, communication, understanding your lease, and learning how to successfully maintain housing.

I have submitted a six month skills to live proposal and budget to Councilmember Strauss' office.

Today I'm asking this council to help connect skills to live to the right city partnership so we can put this to work and into action because our goal is simple, not just staying, not just getting housed, but staying housed.

Thank you.

Thank you, Angel.

Up next is Kenny Stewart followed by Jeff Miller and Ryan Ellis.

Good morning, Kenny.

Good morning.

My name's Kenny Stewart.

I'm a firefighter in Ballard on Latter 8. I'm president of Seattle Firefighters Union Local 27. I took an oath to protect and serve the people of Seattle, and today I'm here to do that.

Seattle's been a rapidly growing city, and the demands on our fire department have grown with it.

Since 2010, Seattle's population has increased by more than 30 percent.

Fire department calls have grown more than 40 percent.

yet firefighter staffing has not kept pace.

In fact, we're struggling to meet our staffing minimums and national fire response standards already.

We understand the city is facing a budget deficit, but the proposed $7.1 million reduction to critical public safety services is not the place to find the funding.

Public safety is the city's highest priority, but if this budget takes effect, people will wait longer for help when they call 911. This reduction is being called a decrease in overtime, but is actually a decrease in service.

This morning nine firefighters were injured in a collapse and this cut will also reduce firefighter safety.

As you consider this budget, please compare how much our city has grown, how much our workload has increased, and the actual staffing required.

Thank you Kenny.

Up next we have Jeff Miller, Ryan Ellis, Liam Ronnie.

Good morning, Jeff.

Jeff Miller, firefighter.

I work Capitol Hill Station 25, Ladder 10. And here today, we do more than put out fires.

When someone's son is drowning, we send in scuba divers and rescue swimmers.

When someone's dad is working in a trench on a city sewer and the walls collapse, we send firefighters in to pull that dad out.

When my mom, she has another heart attack, we send firefighters and medics to do CPR and hopefully give me another day with a loved one.

Every citizen in this city deserves that same shot at a second chance.

Someone gets shot, our medics show up, our fighters show up, and that person walks out of the hospital.

It's nothing less than a miracle.

What I'm asking today is the $7 million cut is reverse that cut because our citizens all deserve that shot.

All deserve another shot after a heart attack, a shot from not drowning when they would have drowned and another shot at a second chance at life.

Please reverse this cut.

Allow a satellite fireman to be staffed fully with no reductions so that every neighbor does a fire engine and a medic unit and truck to show up and save a lot of one's lives.

Thank you.

Thank you, Jeff.

I'll reserve my comments for tomorrow's committee, but I'll just let you know right now I'm one of those people that you gave a second chance to at life, so thank you.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Ryan Ellis.

I'm the paramedic officer that was actually at the building collapse that we had this morning, and also the paramedic officer that was charged with the triage, treatment, and transport at the by Seattle shooting.

So, I've been doing this for quite a long time, as well as these other fellows, but I wanted to just say, no matter the emergency, Seattle firefighters are ready to answer the call.

From house fires and medical crisis to earthquakes, vehicle collisions, and major emergencies like mass shootings, our job is to protect lives.

Seattle has built an internationally recognized emergency medical response system with cardiac arrest survival rates that are two to three times higher than anywhere in the country.

They're also in the top five in the entire world.

This proposed budget reduction would cut fire engines, fire trucks, and medic units increasing the risk of delayed responses.

Please recognize what this proposal means for emergency readiness in every neighborhood.

Thank you Ryan.

Up next is Liam followed by Ryan and then Tom.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Liam Roney and I work on Ladder 3 in the Central District at Station 6. Seattle firefighters are asked to do so much more than fight fires.

Every day, my fellow firefighters and I also respond to people experiencing medical emergencies, behavioral health crises, and drug overdoses.

Firefighters save lives and put people on a path to recovery.

Programs like SFD's Health One and Health 99 are major innovations in public health and safety, expanding our ability to help vulnerable residents connect people with treatment and services and address some of Seattle's most challenging issues.

but our ability to serve people in crisis depends on having the personnel and resources to respond quickly and effectively.

This budget does not meet that need and would mean fewer firefighters available to help those in need every day.

As opposed to the fire department budget, please restore needed investments and staffing and recognize the full range of services our firefighters provide as well as the people who depend on them every day.

Thank you, Liam.

Up next is Orion followed by Tom and then Riley.

Good morning, everybody.

My name is Orion Baker.

I'm a firefighter paramedic, and I live up in the north end in Lake City.

With just one minute, I guess I want to maybe talk about one example of what it means to have a longer response.

An opioid overdose, where somebody stops breathing, if you have a three-minute response, that means that our firefighter EMTs can deliver bag mask ventilation, rescue breathing for that person, give them Narcan, quite frequently.

That's really easy to reverse.

They can wake up.

They can go to the Orca Center where they can get further care and treatment along their path to healing.

They can go to the emergency department if that's what they need.

If that unit's out of service and there's a delayed response and it's instead of a three minute response, it's a six minute response.

Now you're looking at a protracted CPR, where the outcomes tend to be tend to be more negative.

That's just one example.

The same is true for cardiac arrest.

Minutes without defibrillation lead to poor outcomes.

So these cuts really mean delayed response, and I'm asking you to consider that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Orion.

Up next is Tom, Riley, and then Helen.

Good morning.

My name is Tom Burke.

I'm a firefighter with Seattle Fire.

I work on ladder nine in the University District.

And I live in Lake City.

So when I'm on duty in Seattle Fire, that responds to my wife and kids if there's an emergency.

I want to explain what's proposed in the $7.1 million cut to the Seattle Fire overtime, what that actually means.

The word overtime makes it sound like this funding is providing extra or gratuitous staffing and service.

This could not be further from the truth.

Our department relies on overtime to meet minimum staffing requirements.

Until the department is able to hire and train enough firefighters, this funding is part of how we maintain our daily emergency response.

Reducing it would mean cutting the number of firefighters and paramedics on duty every day and rotating outages of engines, trucks, and whole stations in our neighborhoods.

To support this cut, fewer firefighters, paramedics, engines, and trucks to support this cut is to support longer response times.

Please provide the necessary support so we can keep our neighbors.

Thank you.

Up next is Riley followed by Helen and then Howard.

Good morning, my name is Riley Dolan.

I am a firefighter on ladder 11 in West Seattle.

Firefighters take an oath to protect our community.

We run towards danger when others need help.

We can only do our job if we have enough staffing to respond, and this proposed cut of $7 million would reduce our minimum staffing from 222 per day to 209, which would mean four to six units out of service every single day.

We've been stepping up and we've been working extra shifts in order to maintain our staffing.

And this proposal would create additional challenges for an already stretched department.

Ask that these cuts be restored so that the people of Seattle don't have their emergency services cut.

And I think it's also important to know that The Seattle firefighters have been doing more with less for years.

We have less firefighters per 1,000 residents compared to other major cities and yet we're able to step up and meet these concerns and we're able to respond to emergencies.

Thank you.

Up next is Helen Gilbert followed by Howard Gale.

Helen, welcome.

Hi, I'm Helen Gilbert.

I'm speaking for Radical Women today.

We're a socialist feminist organization, and although much has been made about the so-called socialist mayor, I think it's a real discredit what she has proposed to the people of Seattle.

It's a gift to business and developers, and that's hardly what we as socialists stand for.

This is not a time for status quo and keeping things as they are.

The federal government is taking away aid to childcare, Head Start.

We're losing access to affordable healthcare.

Trans people are coming to this state for safety.

People who need reproductive health are coming to this state for care they can't achieve in their own states and stay alive.

and our city has a responsibility to help the people out there on the streets right outside this building every day without houses, without medical help, without mental health care.

We call on you to serve the people of this city, not to accommodate.

Thank you, Helen.

Up next is Howard.

I appreciate everyone clapping, but it's hard to get the next person up.

We use jazz hands.

Thank you.

Howard, welcome.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Right now, as of this budget, Boston has increased their budget from 2020, 2021 by 17% for police.

Seattle has increased it by 54%, now bringing us to twice, 2.03 times the cost per officer compared to Boston.

and Boston requires police to actually live in a very expensive city.

How is that even possible?

You've heard from people today, we need more money to save lives, not money that ends up taking lives.

And we need money to ameliorate the harms that we've done, particularly for those who have been harmed by police violence.

For those who have been shot by police, it should not make any difference.

If you want to address gun violence, it shouldn't matter if the person who pulls the trigger is a cop, or as someone else.

That has to end.

We need money for the victims of police violence.

We've seen victims just in the last week.

Thank you.

Thank you, Howard.

Up next, we have Lucky Jordan, Kennedy Lucas, AJ Randall.

Good morning.

I'm a District 1 resident.

SPD murdered Keenan Pearson less than two weeks ago after kneeling on his neck.

Days later they shot and critically injured a woman minutes after contact.

Now Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson wants to increase the police budget by $68 million with zero dollars allocated to victims.

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson's proposed budget increases Seattle police spending by $68 million, the largest in city history.

Since Mayor Wilson was elected, there have been at least four people who have been killed by Seattle police and even more brutalized with little to no accountability.

The mayor has mentioned none of them.

Victims of police violence do not qualify for victim compensation funds, as Howard was just saying, even though officers are given tax-funded paid leave when they shoot and kill someone.

The mayor has been made aware several times that victims are in urgent need of resources in order to bury the loved ones SPD have killed.

or access healthcare after being severely injured among other needs.

However, she has chosen to continue to ignore the loss and trauma that people impacted by police violence are forced to endure by not including anything to address their needs in the budget.

I strongly encourage all of you to pass the people affected by police violence program and the council budget action advocating 50,000.

Thank you, Lucky.

Up is Keandre, AJ, Suresh.

Good morning.

Good morning.

I want all of you to look behind me.

The people you see on this banner are people who have been killed by police.

And though not all of them were from Seattle, we do have victims of police violence here in the chambers today.

For all the land acknowledgments we do, for all the acknowledgments of LGBTQ rights we do, none of those mean anything if we don't actually put these into policies.

Victims of police violence need support, and they are here in this chamber right now asking for that.

So please, I'm asking this council to do the right thing to acknowledge the victims of police violence, of Seattle police violence, especially the ones that happened in the last two weeks.

Thank you.

Thank you, Keandre.

Up next is AJ Suresh Neal.

Good morning, my name is AJ Randall.

I have a YouTube channel called Squid Tips, and I'm here to support Castile Hightower in her efforts to help those who, like her and her family, have had their lives irrevocably harmed by police violence.

Although I'm someone who's been fortunate enough not to be murdered or have a family member killed by police, I've been moments away from death at the business end of their service weapons, and I've had my life completely upended by overt acts of gross misconduct by King County sheriffs and Seattle police officers.

The only reason there's ever been accountability for cops who have abused their power and broken the law to fuck with me is because I'm a straight white man with a platform who's not afraid to name and shame every one of them.

Because this city and its amazing three-pronged accountability system that I keep hearing y'all speak so highly of has completely failed to protect this community from bad policing.

If you do not have the courage to do the right thing and hold cops accountable for their crimes, then the least you can do is support the individuals and families victimized by them.

Thank you.

Thank you, AJ.

Up next is Suresh Neal and then Castile Hightower.

Hi, my name is Suresh Chanmugam.

My family lives in District 3, and I'm here, like others, to speak about the proposed 2027 budget.

Roughly one out of every three homicides in America where the victim did not know the person who killed them was carried out by a police officer.

I'm asking for the council to include resources for victims of police violence in next year's budget.

Victims and their families often struggle to pay for funerals, burials, medical expenses, behavioral health care, legal fees, lost wages, and more.

I'll use the remainder of my time to remember just some of the members of our community who lost their lives in this city due to carceral violence.

Christian Nelson, Michael Rowland, Herbert Hightower, Charlena Lyles, John T. Williams, Jack Pilele, William Michael Stevens, Rigoberto Brumbia, Terry J. Caver, Ryan Smith, Danny Rodriguez, Shun Ma.

Thank you, Suresh.

Up next is Neil, and then Castillo will be right after Neil.

Morning Chair Strauss, Neil Patel, ex-tech, private investor, Georgetown Business Association.

We've all met before.

In Georgetown, we are constantly beset by crime.

You would think that we are in favor of more public safety.

I'm here to tell you why that is not the case.

Three weeks ago, there was a shooting in our business district.

Bullets were lodged in local shops.

This is a combination of several reported disturbances to police.

Community members rallied.

We collected witness statements.

We instructed neighbors to call for patrol, and our police did nothing.

even now after I called the city attorney myself.

And this isn't a new thing.

I recognize there is scarcity, but this city has a problem of always trying to do the same thing and getting the same result.

We spent money on housing, and there's a surplus of housing.

None of it's affordable.

Cops with pepper bombs that cause miscarriages and SUV tanks.

And every time I call patrol, I get ignored.

Why don't we try doing something different for each

with communities and working for victims like everybody on that poster back there.

Thank you, Neil.

Thank you, Neil.

Castille Hightower, Stephen Lee, Cassandra, and then Andrea.

Good morning, Castille.

My name is Cass Steele and I am the sister of Herbert Hightower Jr. who was murdered by Seattle police.

The mayor's proposed budget includes an increase of 68 million in police spending, making it the largest in the city's history.

Meanwhile, at least four people have been killed by SPD since the mayor was elected.

One being Keenan Pearson, who was murdered less than two weeks ago by SPD after they kneeled on his neck until he stopped moving and still refused to release the body or dash cam video.

Six days after his murder, a woman was critically shot by SPD minutes after they made contact.

SPD's violence is out of control and families are forced to pay the price with no accountability and zero allocated from this budget to even bury someone SPD kills.

We are asking the City Council to step in and allocate at least $50,000 to support work towards the creation of an office to provide resources to victims of police violence.

If this city actually cares about public safety, it needs to include those most impacted by its own employees.

Thank you, Castile.

And I misread the names here.

Next is Ophelia.

My apologies.

Don't worry, we got time.

Don't rush, just don't rush.

That's all I ask.

We're gonna take a minute and then Lucky, if you wanna use the smaller mic and just bend it down right now, she won't have to get out of her wheelchair.

Sorry about that, Ophelia.

Good morning, Ophelia.

Welcome.

Okay, thank you.

Good morning.

Good morning.

Today I am here to support that all of the people here, thousands of people in this state and city who have been affected by police brutality and their untimely death of all of our young people, it is just outrageous.

And so I am a mother of a son who was murdered by the police.

and what we and I have spent more than $50,000 trying to get justice for my son and other young people who cannot speak for themselves and some of their parents can't speak for themselves.

So we are asking support.

It costs money to try to get justice for our young people.

It takes money for us to go from place to place.

We pay taxes.

We want you today to consider

Thank you, Ophelia.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And for...

Thank you.

And for my colleagues...

Thank you.

For my colleagues and the general public, I just used the elder exception for cutting people off.

You may have noticed I even cut the union president, the firefighter union president, whom I appreciate deeply.

I cut him off.

But when you have an elder in the room, you sometimes just let them speak.

So thank you, Ophelia, for coming on down.

Up next, we have Steve Lee, Cassandra Jackson, and Andrea L.

Good morning.

My name is Steve Lee.

I'm a member of the United Front for Work Workers Party and I want to say that a five or ten percent cut to the social programs in Seattle that is authorized by the mayor is a travesty.

Seattle is a rich city.

Seattle has lots of money and you're cutting back what is needed to social programs.

The idea of giving $68 million to the police while you cut the firefighters who actually save lives is ridiculous.

This budget needs to be rejected and you need to come up with a budget that funds human needs and not the needs of rich people and repression.

It's time to support the victims of police violence and enact the commission that they're talking about.

This budget needs to be rejected and you need to go back to square one.

Thank you.

Thank you, Steve.

Up next is Cassandra, followed by Andrea.

And I'll ask again for jazz hands instead of clapping so we can keep on moving.

Cassandra, welcome.

Good to see you.

Good morning.

Good morning, Councilman Strauss, Councilman and Councilwomen.

Can you guys hear me?

Yes, we can.

I prepared myself for two minutes, but I guess I only have one, so I have my lead.

Yeah, I'll read the rest of it after she's done with the first minute.

Did you sign up?

Yes, sir.

I'm Andrea Longino.

Oh, you're up next.

Great.

Welcome.

Good morning, Cassandra.

Okay, for those who don't know me, my name is Cassandra.

I'm the Executive Director of Clean Queen Incorporation's Nonprofit RV Outreach Program.

We are in the RV community daily doing the work, and I'll tell you, there's so much to do.

I have seen it firsthand.

And even though the much-needed services and resources we provide, like hygiene and cleaning essentials, gas cards, help with some vehicle repairs and weekly meals, and even a safe lot for RVs is but a fraction of what a successful outcome to help provide stable housing for our RV community looks like.

We recognize that for too many people in this community, it's devastated by substance abuse and some kind of mental, physical, or emotional health that lacks sufficient role models, case management, medical treatment, and different types of counseling to help guide and stabilize them during their most vulnerable times.

The Clean Queen Nonprofit RV Outreach has a team, and we are working diligently to disrupt this.

Thank you.

And Andrea, good to see you.

Welcome.

We have put together an estimated budget for the first year of operation that could cover startup costs, staffing facility expenses, and resources for outreach services.

We are good stewards of our finances and the public trust.

We are welcoming, life-affirming, and nonjudgmental.

We are respectful in our communication, honest in speech and action.

We are collaborative, team players working toward the common good of the organization and the public at large.

We are accountable and professional to each other, beneficiaries and public at large.

As I stated before, we are eager to do more with the Clean Clean team and self-funded, and they're asking the Council to sponsor us with the budget so we can continue the community service.

and thank you for listening.

So since I didn't add, I'll add on my part.

So I personally have lived in the RV environment.

I'm a recovering addict and I'm peer support specialist certified.

So I walked it and I understand the living situation, understand it firsthand.

So I just want to be of help with somebody that helped me because outreach helped me and I want to reach out and help others.

So please assist us with this budget.

Thank you for listening, God bless.

Thank you, Andrea.

Thank you, guys.

And up next, we have Summer, EM, Jason, and I think we had one more person just sign up and then we are going to go to remote public comment.

I'm going to let those folks know their order right now just so they can be ready.

We have Cedar Bouchoux, you are not present.

Nicole Pearson is present.

Haley Sexton is not present.

Steven Woods, Janice Clark, Alberta Pearson are present and David Haynes is not present.

And so for the folks online, you will start in about four minutes.

Summer, welcome.

My name is Summer Miller.

I'm a member of Labor Militant United Front for a Workers' Party.

Katie Wilson's budget proposes a record-breaking $68 million increase to the police budget.

In just the last week, Seattle police murdered 47-year-old Kenan Pearson and shot at least one other person.

And this quote-unquote socialist mayor is proposing to reward them with $68 million in additional funding.

The Democratic Party is happy to give $68 million to the cops, but it has repeatedly obstructed basic resources for victims of police brutality.

Since 2020, Castile Hightower and others have been demanding an office for people affected by police violence, which provide resources to support funeral and burial, medical expenses, travel costs, and the costs that families take on when their family members are injured or murdered by the police.

It's very clear from this budget that the Democratic Party is more concerned with protecting the cops than the community members brutalized and murdered by them.

We support the demand to pass the proposed workgroup and the $50,000 that Castile Hightower has just asked for, but we're also demanding that there is a quick and unobstructed path to creating an office for people affected by police violence.

Thank you, Summer.

Thank you, Summer.

Up next is E.M.

Smith, followed by Jason Thiel.

E.M. Smith.

M. M. Smith.

Thank you.

Thank you, Summer.

M. Smith, then Jason Thiel.

I'm a member of Labor Militant, United Front for a Workers' Party, as well as Seattle DSA.

I wanted to start by just saying solidarity to the brothers and sisters of the Firefighters Union.

This council is looking at a budget that Katie Wilson proposed that cuts $4.5 million from the firefighters budget.

That is, and even more from that from the overtime fund as part of that.

That's part of tens of millions of cuts that are being proposed, including $68 million in cuts to housing.

That's the same amount of money that's being increased in the police budget.

I also want to say solidarity with Castile and Ophelia and those here fighting for this office for people affected by police funding or police violence.

And we demand funding for that office and a rapid and unobstructed process to the creation of that office.

It is shameful to be even considering this level of cuts public services in one of the richest cities in the world.

We have 500 signatures that we've collected demanding no cuts to public services, no layoffs of city workers.

Thank you, Em.

Up next is Jason Thiel.

Jason Thiel.

Jason Thiel.

Jason, welcome.

Jason, I'm also a member of Labor Militant, United Front for Workers Party, and Seattle DSA.

This budget is a naked attack on working class people by a so-called socialist.

Katie Wilson is not a socialist, she's just another Democrat.

This budget has across the board cuts to public services, including housing, transit, park services, firefighting services, and disability services.

There's supposedly no money for workers, but there's 68 million new dollars for the cops.

There's always more money for cops, but no money for victims of police violence.

And Katie Wilson has claimed that she's only cut $50 million, but that is incredibly misleading.

So much of the balancing that the Democrats are claiming is by raiding the Amazon tax, which is supposed to fund affordable housing.

More and more of that fund is being misappropriated to plug budget holes.

And more and more of the cost of funding of these programs, like transportation, are being thrown at working class people through sales tax increases, sugar taxes, parking fees, levies, and property taxes, instead of taxing the rich.

We should not be taking $5 million from the firefighters as we're facing increasing threats of climate change.

Thank you, Jason.

Thank you, Jason.

Up next is Rachel Ketola, Lee Cardove, Paul Dell, Daniel Wang.

Rachel, welcome.

Hi.

Just one second.

The mic's coming right back on.

I think you're good to go.

Thank you.

Good morning, Rachel.

Hello, council members.

My name is Rachel Cattola.

I live in District 5, council member Juarez's district.

I'm here today as an organizer with the Church Council of Seattle, but also as someone who was raised in Seattle, has lived and worked here in local nonprofits for the last 10 years.

For too long, as I've grown up in the city, I've seen the politics bend to the interests of corporations and billionaires, believing in the false promise of trickle-down economics.

And now we're seeing the fruit of that investment, mass layoffs, unaffordable housing, and empty high-rises and offices that are just sitting vacant.

As you all know, because you hear people come in day in and day out, we're struggling.

We're not doing well.

And the city council cannot afford to continue to pass the same status quo budget because these are not status quo times.

Services that are life affirming and dignity enhancing.

You know what your community needs.

And the question is, who will you be for us in this cycle?

Thank you.

Thank you, Rachel.

Up next is Lee followed by Paula and then Daniel.

Third request for not clapping.

Thank you.

Morning council members.

I'm Reverend Lee Curldove.

I'm pastor of Seattle First Baptist Church.

I'm also here with church council of greater Seattle.

My church is in council member Hollingsworth district.

I also live in that district.

As we enter into yet another budget season, I'm here to say that we can do much better than what is proposed.

Budgets are a moral document.

They reflect our values.

And right now our budget tells me that we value policing and the wealthiest among us.

Much more money could be invested into the communities that need it most into essential public services if revenue was generated through a tax on the wealthiest among us and diverting the increase in the police budget.

The reality is that the wealthy have more than enough and a tax wouldn't even be a blip for them.

But it could change the lives of many in our city who need it.

This budget season I ask you all to reject the notion of scarcity and embrace abundance.

There's more than enough to go around and we can be a city that leads the way in caring for our neighbors, investing in affordable housing, schools, childcare, resources for victims of police violence and the fire department.

Thanks for your- Thank you.

Thanks Lee.

See you again soon.

Paula and then Daniel and then we'll transfer online.

And then Daniel, if you want to come up too, you're more than welcome to.

Good morning, Paula.

Good to see you.

I'm Paula from Open Police Archives.

And I wanted to mainly direct my comments to the audience as well, because we know which side the Democratic Party and City Council stands on this question.

essential services, including the firefighters for this city and finding millions of dollars for the cops and millions more to defend them when they actually shoot people down and kill them.

And we say open police archives.

We think that the road forward, which is something Katie Wilson could actually do if that's what she was committed to.

But that's not what the progressive Democrats are all about.

And we think expose their dirty secrets, unite This struggle needs to unite us all, working people, all those victims of cop terror on the broadest possible basis in order to fight for advance the struggle for black people, for all the oppressed, and get some relief for the families.

So I would like to talk to people out there about how to move.

Thank you.

Thank you, Paula.

Thank you.

Up next is Daniel Wang.

Daniel, welcome.

Good morning.

Hey, I'm a member of United Front for a Workers' Party.

And until recently, I was a worker at an Amazon warehouse.

And I bring this up because what the firefighters were talking about in terms of understaffing, under budgeted, people having to work overtime to fill holes, really reminds me of what was going on in my own workplace shortly before I lost my job.

Amazon, this multi-billionaire company that really rules this city, its profits have tripled since the Amazon tax was passed to fund affordable housing.

Amazon made a big stinking cry about this at the time.

They did that by tightening the belt, making working people pay for their own profits.

That means in the workplace, we lose our jobs.

The ones who keep their jobs have to pick up the slack for being understaffed.

Everywhere else we lose our public services, have our public safety compromised, and meanwhile pay more taxes and fees to fund cops who can murder us with impunity, while big business taxes are raided to fill those budget holes to give those cops more overtime pay.

It is embarrassing we are facing an austerity budget from a supposedly socialist mayor, but that's because Katie Wilson is part of the pro-cop, pro-imperialist Democratic Party.

Thank you, Daniel.

Thank you, Daniel.

We're gonna move online to remote public commenters.

Of all of the remote public commenters, Cedar Bishu, you are not present.

Haley Sexton, you are not present.

And so I'm gonna call through The following folks in this order, and Cedar and Haley, if you become present, we'll get back to you at the very end.

So the order in which we will go is Nicole Pearson, followed by Steven Woods, Janice Clark, Alberta Pearson, David Haynes.

And so...

Nicole, Cedar and Haley, you've got about five minutes until we get to you.

If you check your email, call in now.

So we've got Nicole Pearson here already off mute, star commenter.

Nicole, whenever you want to roll, we're ready for you.

Good morning.

My name is Nicole Pearson and I'm the sister of Kenan Pearson.

My brother was killed by Seattle PD on September 12th in Georgetown, similar to George Floyd.

My brother mattered and I'm here today serving as a voice for him.

Like Castile Hightower and many others in attendance today, I'm demanding police victim resources and justice for all affected by the brutality from Seattle PD.

We as victims deserve to be heard, acknowledged and the proper resources for such injustice.

So today I employ you to provide the proper resources for victims of police violence.

Thank you.

Thank you, Nicole.

Up next is Steven Woods, followed by Janice Clark and Alberta Pearson.

Steven, I see you're here, star six to unmute.

Steven, you're with us now, but you gotta press on your phone pad, star six.

Steven?

Ready for you.

If we can leave Stephen promoted, but also promote Janice Clark at this time.

Janice Clark, is that, and I believe that's Dr. Janice Clark for the record.

I see you're already- Thank you.

Yes, sir.

OCO, which is hello in Cherokee Nation, Chair and Council members, thank you for your time.

I am Dr. Janice Clark, an elder of the Cherokee Nation, a 100% service-connected disabled veteran, the matriarch of the Ferguson-Clark Family Circle, and also founder of the Board of Safe Homes.

A mouthful.

I urge you to continue funding the Safe Homes Indigenous and Black Women Veterans Food Security and Resiliency Initiative through the Department of Neighborhoods, DUN.

I also urge you to consider funding the Safe Homes Environmental Trauma Mitigation Initiative that I spoke briefly about, but I will follow up.

I was unable to get there in person today, but let there be no mistake.

I will be there again.

A budget is a statement of values.

I respectfully ask that you ensure these women veterans remain

Thank you, Dr. Clark.

Look forward to hearing from you next time and please do feel free to email us with any additional comments.

I've got Alberta Pearson.

I see you're here, star six to unmute.

Alberta, if you can hit your keypad, star and then the number six, star six to unmute.

Alberta?

If we can leave Stephen in Alberta promoted and bring up David Haynes.

David, I see you're here.

David, star six to unmute.

Hi, thank you, David Haynes.

For years, Seattle and King County have handed over millions of tax dollars to nonprofit organizations to run pilot programs based on housing first models for repeat offenders who were bothering people in the tourist district and pre-arrest diversion that's connected to the criminal drug underworld.

We were promised these alternative policies would fix chronic homelessness and curb repeat offenses.

Instead, our streets tell a completely different story.

By failing to enforce misdemeanor drug laws, these policies have inadvertently created gray markets where rival drug gangs operate with impunity, escalating violent crime across our neighborhoods.

Worse, the very nonprofits trusted with these massive public contracts have faced serious allegations of mismanagement and fraud operating with zero transparency.

True compassion requires accountability.

It's time to stop using Seattle and King County as a testing ground for unchecked social experiments.

We must demand an immediate audit of these non-profit contracts and return to a system that prioritizes public safety over failed ideologies.

Thank you, David.

We're gonna go back to the two folks who are still here.

Steven Woods, star six to unmute.

Steven, if you're with us, star six to unmute.

Also Cedar and Haley, you are still not present.

Please call in now.

Steven, I see you're off mute.

Yes, this is Steven Woods.

Welcome, good morning.

Oh, good morning.

McKinnon's brother.

I'm just here to get information on the situation and to get justice for the situation that's going on up in Seattle.

Sometimes when words escape us, silent reflection is the best use of our time.

Thank you, Steven.

Up next and finally is Alberta Pearson, Alberta star six to unmute.

Last call for Cedar and Haley, who are not present at this time.

And Alberta, I see you are off mute.

Welcome.

Take it away.

Hi, good afternoon.

My name is Alberta Pearson.

and I'm sorry, but I just want justice for my baby.

Please help us.

Thank you.

and.

Thank you, Alberta.

I don't see any additional public comment registrants present.

Can IT confirm?

That is correct.

Thank you, Mr. G. And do we have any additional in-person?

We do not.

And so that does bring us to the end of our public comment period.

Before we begin and get into presentations, I'll just provide some, first, kind of operating instructions and then I'll give you my first reaction to this budget.

So from here we will have a number of presentations.

We'll first have an introduction and overview of the budget process now that we are in the council budget process.

We'll have the city budget office provide an overview of this budget and then we'll get into the specific department presentations from parks, Seattle Center and arts and culture.

will call for throughout this entire process from here and when central staff presents their analysis and when we have council member amendments and so on and so forth.

We will strive to have a one hour break during the day.

However, if we are overwhelmed with information It might be 30 minutes.

It also depends on how often and for how long each of us speak.

This is a kind reminder that we can use the SharePoint as a way to receive information as well as a kind reminder.

That's the only way to get information from departments at this point is we have to go through the SharePoint program so that central staff is able to track what we are requesting so that the departments and you don't have to answer it nine different times in nine different ways to the same question.

And so we will have an hour break sometime between noon and one.

Tomorrow I can already tell you is going to be an exception of this rule.

if we are able to get through or to the Seattle Fire Department by 1 p.m., that is gonna be greatly desired.

We've got some scheduling conflicts on our end that we're working through, but if that's not possible, we are going to spend as much time digging into the fire budget as we need to get the answers that we're looking for.

and so we will have the first, our departments presenting and then we'll have central staff.

I'm not gonna take Lish's presentation, I see the look, sorry, sir.

But I wanna give you, Kali, just kind of an overview of where we've been, where we are today and where we're going.

Over the past three years, we've been working to address the city's structural budget deficit while maintaining public services that working Seattleites depend on.

We've seen this budget deficit go as high as 275 down to $150 million.

We have taken a multi-year strategy because if we tried to solve 10 years of structural deficit in the making, if we solved that in one year, we would be unnecessarily cutting programs because by stepping down we are able to bring ourselves into structural budget alignment without using a saw.

Using a scalpel is always much better because in many cases, especially when it comes to city employees, we could solve the structural budget deficit by laying off city employees, easy.

but then we would need to hire them right back to do the work that we're asking to have accomplished.

We would have to hire them back to serve the Seattleites for the services and the things that they need.

And so this is just one example of why taking a multi-year strategy has been so important to getting this to, last year we ended with $150 million in structural budget deficit coming down from a $275 million high.

Together we've made great strides in doing this work together, as well as last year, Councilmember Kettle passed the six year, it was your amendment, but we all passed it, we all worked together here, requiring the executive to show how the budget balances through 2030. Since this is the first year this was implemented, we've all been pretty clear that if folks needed relief from this, that relief would be provided, but I've been impressed to see that for the most part, request has been met within a year, so I'm grateful for that.

We've done this all while facing headwinds from the federal government.

We were supposed to have slow growth start over a year ago, but we've seen the federal environment change in such a way that it's created instability in both the international and national markets.

Just last year, we faced a food emergency because SNAP benefits were paused overnight.

and I want to thank in particular the City Budget Director Ali Panucci for your partnership on all of these issues.

It's no secret to anyone in the city that there have been communication challenges, I think is the academic term, the communication challenges between elected officials in the City of Seattle and Director Panucci, I've never had communication challenges with you.

and I think that that is this budget process.

We can agree and disagree on a whole host of different things, but the process of working with you has been spectacular.

And so here we go.

With that, I mean, and at the same time, I've got concerns that are outside of the purview of the city budget director who works for a mayoral administration.

Just to be clear, the city budget director is required to balance the budget and provides direction as well as takes direction.

So what I have to say is not regarding the communication, the strong communication that I've had with city budget office.

Today, I have concerns regarding public safety, particularly the fact that the proposed budget makes significant cuts to the care department.

and halts expansion of 911 responses like community crisis responders, a team that I've been working for years to build against significant headwinds.

I have grave concerns about the impact of reductions to the Seattle Fire Department and the Seattle Police Department, particularly in reductions of civilians, recruitment and parking enforcement.

But when I woke up this morning, The first news story I read was about how the Seattle Fire Department showed up for our city in the middle of the night and pulled, I believe, a 57-year-old man out of his house.

Your firefighters were injured in the process.

You can't answer this right now because we're not in public comment, but I wonder how many people were on overtime this morning.

I'll leave it at that and continue moving forward until tomorrow.

I do have concerns with ongoing issues at the Seattle Department of Transportation and their management of the budget, their priorities, long promised programs, as well as the culture in the department.

Over the next two months, we as the council will explore all of these issues and others in depth.

And throughout this process, I'll be working hard with my colleagues to build a budget that focuses on safety, affordability, and stability.

The council has done a very good job over the past number of years of reducing the structural budget deficit without taking a hacksaw to the budget unnecessarily cutting programs and services.

It is again this year that we will endeavor to do this.

It is again this year that I'll ask each of us to dig into the departments in which report to our committees using our six year look back which I believe might be seven years at this point.

It's a very helpful document as well as the printed budget Responding directly to what I read and heard this week from the mayor about the fact that we've been kicking the can down the road, I don't take that statement to be true.

We've been addressing the structural budget deficit every single year.

We were able to provide her a smaller structural budget deficit than what we inherited, and that's something to be noticed, and that's because we took a multi-year strategy I was told that we were at the end of the road, and I don't believe that to be true.

I asked the question of, would we have to be laying off permit staff today if the MHA Accelerator program had been passed earlier this year?

Would we still have to spend millions of dollars a year on broken infrastructure in parts of our city, including the Seattle Center?

had we not been able to get a package together to reduce that general fund deficit.

I ask, we've got the firefighters here right now and I know that there's still a fair amount of challenges that we all have to work through about the fire district, et cetera.

But I can tell you that if you had a fire district right now, we wouldn't have, the biggest benefit I would say is that you don't have to worry about where your funding comes from or how much you get.

and today here we are.

And that's not putting that on y'all, that's putting it on all of us to say, when I hear that we're at the end of the road, I see additional efficiencies that can occur within our city.

And so when we look at our budget this year, I wanna make sure that we're not unnecessarily cutting programs and projects and services.

Some may need to end because others may need to begin.

And that is the iterative process of governing and budgeting that some programs no longer service and we need new programs in other places.

And I'll use one place that I'm very happy about which is the amount of funding that is going into homeless shelters and the fact that we are looking at high acuity and complex needs instead of relying on shelters that only have a front desk clerk.

And so it's a good place.

That's an example of a place that we need to have more funding.

But there are additional efficiencies in government.

And while I was very aware that Katie Wilson, before she was mayor, advocated for the creation of Jumpstart, I passed it.

and when I along with Council Member Mosqueda and many others passed that bill, we knew that Jumpstart was needed for the four priorities of economic, sorry, EDI, small business and economic development, climate, and most importantly, housing.

We knew that those were our four priorities and that we needed to backfill our general government so that we didn't lay off employees like the rest of the municipalities in our country were.

That was a known fact, day one.

And that's been a repeated process that we have used since its first day of inception.

And the reason that we've done that is to ensure that we are not unnecessarily firing staff or cutting programs.

But at the inception of Jumpstart, it was a bit like the inception of the pandemic where we all thought it was gonna be two weeks.

we all thought it was gonna be two years before we could get really back on track.

We thought we'd be back there about a year, year and a half ago, the federal environment has changed.

We are still in need of that flexibility.

And noting that the revenue is double what was predicted originally.

So I'm glad to see the use of our Jumpstart funds for important city services that are not EDI housing, small businesses or climate.

Because even in the last few years I've heard testimony against these types of uses and today I see a reversal of that position and an acceptance of what has been done since the first year of Jumpstart.

KUOW reported that this budget is more conservative than the proposals from the last two moderate mayors.

Last year we passed progressive revenue and expanded services while balancing the budget.

This was accomplished not by the council agreeing or disagreeing blindly with the mayor.

It was accomplished through agreement and disagreement, through strong communication, compromise and collaboration.

Our city council has led us through this multi-year process instead of off of a cliff.

Together we have reduced the deficit while expanding many services.

and we have set the path for a more stable future and we're here to do it again.

And so today begins the council budget process.

So I ask each of you to look deeply into your departments.

I ask you to use the SharePoint program so that we're all funneling our questions into the same place.

I ask you to choose to either make budget changes or request statements of legislative intent, but please don't do both.

and I endeavor to be on time every single day.

So colleagues, I look forward to going through this process with you, working together with the city budget office to deliver a budget that we can all be proud of.

And so as we enter department presentations, I will call on committee chair that oversees that department to give first and final remarks during that presentation.

I also ask that folks use that six year look back because it is very helpful.

and I'll allow council members and I'll allow the council chair of that department to ask the first and last questions, as I said.

And folks, just please, this is the longest time that you'll hear me talk since it's day one because it's quite hypocritical as I'm about to say, can you please moderate your time?

But I'm just aware that this is probably the longest speech you'll hear from me until the very end of this budget.

But just please, if all nine of us talk for 10 minutes, we'll be here till 2028. With that, over to Mr. Lish Whitson, our Director of Central Staff to get us started and take us through this presentation.

Thank you, and I'll be very brief.

We are now in step one of the council's six-step process to review and adopt a balanced budget before Thanksgiving.

Next slide.

And next slide.

This step included the mayor releasing her proposed 2027-2028 budgets and kicks off this morning with an overview presentation from Director Panucci of the City Budget Office.

This afternoon, we're going to be hearing from city departments, including the Seattle Department of Parks and Recreation, Seattle Center, and the Office of Arts and Culture.

Tomorrow will be our public safety departments, the police department, care, and fire departments.

and then next week we will have another six departments presenting.

Next slide.

After department presentations, there will be a public hearing on October 6th, and my staff will start presenting their deep dives into each city department on October 13th.

We will receive an updated revenue forecast on October 16th.

and shortly thereafter, on October 20th, we are asking that you submit your budget proposals by noon.

And happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Whitson.

Colleagues, questions at this time?

that means that we have done our job to bring this to the front of your attention.

I will take this opportunity to note that council member budget proposals are due October 20th at noon.

Two co-sponsors are required.

So early warning here, that's an electronic deadline, so can't be waived.

Colleagues, any other questions?

Excited to dig in.

Well, with that, for the...

I realized I didn't have the clerk read the first item into the record.

So clerk, if you could read the first two items into the record and we'll move right on to director Panucci.

Welcome friend.

Agenda item one, introduction and budget process overview for briefing and discussion and agenda item two, city budget office overview, the 2027 and 2028 proposed budgets for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, and to fill in a minute of time, departments, even if they are shown to present in the afternoon, they should be ready to go as soon as this is done, because if Director Panucci has told us everything that she's already told us before, and we have a sort of a presentation as we had with Mr. Whitson right now, will be getting right into the Seattle Parks and Recreation presentation ASAP.

Also for departments that are, if you notice that we're moving quickly, we will try to communicate, but it just means that if you're down in the line, don't expect that we will just wait.

We might bump you up.

With that, give me the head nod when you are ready to go, Director Panucci.

Welcome, good morning.

Good morning, Chair Strauss, Council members, members of the Select Committee, thank you for the opportunity to present Mayor Wilson's 2027-28 proposed budget.

For the record, I'm Allie Panucci, City Budget Director.

I forgot that part.

Before diving into the details, I just wanted to take a brief moment to acknowledge a few folks.

First, to my budget team that made this possible.

There are many, many hours of work analyzing proposals and assembling this budget, to my colleagues on the cabinet, department leaders and their finance and budget team citywide for approaching this challenging budget year with thoughtfulness and partnership.

Building this budget is a team sport and we couldn't do it without all of you.

and to Mayor Wilson and all my colleagues in the mayor's office team for their steady leadership and willingness to make some tough but necessary decisions.

Thank you to Chair Strauss for always making time to discuss all things budget and commitment to transparency and collaboration.

And thank you to all of the council members for spending time over the last several months in talking about the budget with me.

What I'm presenting today is the starting point for your deliberations, and we look forward to being responsive partners as you work towards a sustainably balanced budget that reflects the city's priorities.

Today I'm presenting Mayor Wilson's first budget, which takes meaningful steps to strengthen the city's long-term fiscal sustainability.

When I was here early in the year for my confirmation, I think I got no less than seven questions about how I'm going to help move towards greater sustainability.

You will see that reflected in this budget and in my responses.

as we move through this process together.

So with that, let's jump into some of the details.

This is just a quick guide of what I'm gonna cover today.

I will go over the approach to the budget, preview some specific funds.

I'll spend most of my time talking about the general fund, highlight some key investment, and then talk about next steps for just a moment.

Yep, sorry.

I just need to catch up.

So just a quick reminder of what we're kicking off today.

The City of Seattle utilizes a modified biennial budget process, a two-year budget process, where the City Council approves funding for one year while endorsing the amounts for year two.

So today we present a two-year balanced budget for 27 through 28. The budget itself is composed of two main documents, the operating budget and the capital improvement program.

Like I said previously, most of my presentation will focus on the operating budget with the most detail focused on the general fund.

But before I get into the details of what is in the budget, I want to talk a little bit about how we approached balancing the budget this year.

Next slide, please.

So this budget really focuses on writing the ship and really builds on the work done in developing a path towards sustainability.

And I wanna highlight some work done this year in response to a statement of legislative intent that was adopted last year, sponsored by Chair Strauss, that requested that the city budget office and council central staff work collaboratively.

Excuse me, I'll get more comfortable as we move on.

on a shared understanding of what budget sustainability is.

I'll be distributing that slide response later today that we prepared in collaboration with central staff and Chair Strauss's office.

This response builds on the years of budget reform work that Chair Strauss has undertaken, as well as the work that many of you have undertaken, including Councilmember Kettle and all of you that called for a longer-term balanced financial plan when adopting last year's Seattle Shield initiative.

This year's budget makes meaningful steps towards that long-term sustainability, thanks in large part to the groundwork that has been developed over many years.

It is in that spirit of collaboration and a shared goal of sustainability that I present this budget.

and we can move on to the next slide.

So I regularly get asked, including in my confirmation questions, how did this happen?

How did we get here?

There are so many contributing factors, so I'm not going to try to walk through it all today, but there are a number of factors that have led us here.

As Seattle's population grew quickly, so did its wealth and income gaps.

Paying for these new costs at the scale of community need has been a real challenge.

We were one of the fastest growing city during the 2010s.

City services expanded to keep pace with our FTEs growing from 11,400 in 2010 to over 13,500 today.

The number of departments have expanded.

This was in response to real community needs.

At the same time, we have real constraints on our revenue and structural challenge in how the city can pay for these services.

Our most flexible source, the general fund, remains limited by state-imposed restrictions such as the property sales tax.

And while the city has pursued many new or expanded revenue tools, those efforts have largely been needed to address growing needs and have not been sufficient to fully address the gap and continue to expand at that pace.

You add to that the regional economic boom that supported Seattle's growth that has cooled what is happening at the federal level, the big infusion of one-time federal funds that allowed for some necessary expansion and changes in services that have now been depleted.

So I just wanted to sort of highlight there's a lot of factors and we are not alone.

Local governments across Washington state and the whole country are grappling with the same combination of revenue constraints, inflation, slow economic activity, growing community needs.

As one example, the city of Portland was facing a roughly $170 million deficit this year, similar in scale to what we were facing.

Despite having only about half the number of employees in their proposed budget, they had to eliminate over a hundred filled positions, more than six times the number of Seattle is eliminating.

They also reduced investments in homeless shelters and parks and scaling back operational hours for some fire teams.

This is not a judgment on Portland's budget.

This is just a reflection of the reality that many cities are facing and just, I don't know if it's cold comfort, but we are not alone.

There's some really tough decisions that many cities are facing across the country.

Next slide.

So this table highlights how each year the city has met its legal obligation to adopt a balanced budget, but has done so with deficits projected in the next year or the next biennium.

Council has recognized this issue with Chair Strauss requesting the work this year to develop that SLI response and a shared understanding of sustainability and being a champion of changes to code, like requiring that we develop a jumpstart reserve.

Councilmember Kettle's amendment to the Seattle Shield initiative that requires a balanced long-term financial plan laid the groundwork that this budget builds on to really chart a path towards sustainability.

I believe there's shared vision here and look forward to how your deliberations maintain or strengthen the sustainability.

Achieving a balanced budget and a sustainable plan isn't an end in itself.

It's about what it enables, predictability for our city workforce, for our service partners and the community we serve, and the chance to shift from triage budgeting to address this deficit to a budget review process that can focus more on outcomes and addressing the needs of the community.

something Councilmember Rivera, who's I know not here today, but has mentioned to me many, many times, and I know many of you share the desire for a higher focus on outcomes.

That's a priority both for me and Mayor Wilson, which is why she signed an executive order on Friday that in part directs me to build a framework for an outcome-based budget review process.

And I look forward to collaborating with Chair Strauss, Council Central staff, and all of you in the coming years to develop that process.

Next slide.

So when I stepped into this role early in the year, the mayor was very clear that all reasonable options had to be considered in approaching the structural budget deficit.

We took that seriously in the city budget office and throughout the city and all of the departments.

In this budget, you'll see three main strategies deployed in order to balance aligning annual program budgets to historical costs.

that looks at looking at long-term vacancies, looking at regular consistent patterns of underspend where a program is delivering a certain level of service and is able to do so with less than what they are allocated in the budget each year.

Slowing down growth.

Chair Strauss mentioned some of the needed expansions.

Some of those expansions have not yet occurred and there is not a sustainable way based on existing resources to maintain them.

So this budget pauses on some of those expansions and then making some difficult reductions.

You heard from people today, one of the most difficult reductions in this budget was the proposal to reduce the fire department's budget, which overall is less than a 1% reduction.

So this budget implements all of these approaches in strategic ways while also making critical investments to preserve and, in some cases, expand community services.

So with that, I'm going to start jumping in to the Alphonse.

I'll just defer to you, Chair.

If you want me to pause for questions, let me know.

Thanks, I will say thank you for taking this pause.

I am hoping that we'll let folks get through presentations before we start asking questions.

I do think that this is a good pausing point for the overview before we get into the high level flavors of this budget.

Colleagues, are there any questions at this time?

Seeing none, keep on rolling.

So here is just a representation of the total city budget.

Across all funds, we have about a $9.1 billion budget proposed for 2027. That's about a 2.2% increase compared to last year's budget.

You can see in this chart that presents the budget by fund source and the breakdown of those funds.

Almost 80% of our budget are restricted fund sources, so they're legally restricted and can only be used for certain things.

I know you all know this, this is more for the viewing public, that many of the funds, while you can make some choices within them, you can't use them for other purposes.

For example, the City Light Fund cannot be used to pay for fire service, homeless services, police services.

So we spend most of our time talking about 22% of the budget, which is why most of my presentation will focus on the general fund.

Next slide, thank you.

This is another view of the $9.1 billion budget that is presented by Service Investment Area.

You can see in this chart that utilities, transportation, and environment make up the largest portion when you're looking across all funds.

In this year's budget, you see the largest growth in public safety, arts, culture, and recreation compared to the 2026 adopted budget.

Okay, so now I'm going to jump into the general fund and spend a little bit of time talking about the Jumpstart Payroll Expense Tax Fund that I will likely just refer to as Jumpstart moving forward.

So first, just a reminder of where things were left when the 2026 budget was adopted last November.

At that stage, the projected deficit was $150 million in 2027 and projected to decrease to 98 million by 2029. Next slide, please.

This is a snapshot from April showing a projected $175 million deficit in 27 and 150 in 2029. I wanna just take a minute to note that these deficit, These deficit projections are a moment in time.

It is not uncommon in any given day in the city budget office when we're developing this budget for someone to walk into my office, have a new estimate for some type of cost that impacts the city.

And it's like, good news, we found out that next year's cost for the employer for the retirement fund is going down by $5 million.

and it's just like, for a minute it's like, hey, going in a positive direction.

And then within the same hour, someone could walk in and say, our healthcare costs are increasing by $28 million.

And so I know there's a inclination to wanna be able to say, this plus plus plus this is how we address the deficit.

It is a constantly shifting situation where we are addressing cost increases, looking for opportunities to save money, allocating funds to the highest priorities.

So this is where things were, this is where things are today.

So the proposed budget no longer projects a deficit in the general fund.

And while this is just a projection, the cost of providing services could rise above expectations or the city's anticipated revenues could come in less.

It represents significant progress in that it actually represents a budget that doesn't assume a deficit in the out years and meets the requirement of council member Kettle's amendment.

This is just a quick summary of what I was just talking about.

These are some of the cost drivers that are really unavoidable that have to be considered when developing the annual budget before we can really talk about other sort of growing community needs.

As I mentioned, healthcare costs increased by 28.8 million in 2027 across all funds.

That's about 13 million to the general fund.

Our judgment and claims liabilities continue to grow.

This includes almost a $10 million increase in general fund costs in 27 alone.

Implementing closed labor contracts, those types of things are the first thing we have to do to sort of establish our base.

Next slide, please.

So how did we balance?

There are over $40 million in general fund spending reductions, and what is really key here, and I would say deviates from previous year's budgets, is that the majority of these reductions are proposed to be ongoing.

And while that is not an easy choice, it is what is necessary to put the city's budget on a sustainable path.

The proposed budget also includes fund swaps or transfers between funds.

For many years, there have been one-time proposals each year to pay for programs from a different fund other than the general fund.

This budget recognizes that in order to sustain those programs, that alternative fund swap is the best way to continue them and makes those swaps ongoing.

The proposed budget also continues to rely on JumpStart revenues to support key city programs beyond the original spending plan, including maintaining the ongoing general fund transfer that was already presented in last year's financial plan.

So it's consistent with the adopted budget last year.

It also updates the Office of Housing's approach to JumpStart funded capital investments.

freeing up about $65 million in one-time fund balance through the abandonment of 26 appropriations.

Under this approach, the Office of Housing will use 2027 and future year appropriations to pay for both prior year awards and new awards going forward, and there'll be more discussion on that when the Office of Housing is before you to present.

and the proposal shifts roughly half the cost of the city's homeless services from the general fund to the jumpstart fund.

So many of these strategies that are occurring in this budget are necessary to present a balanced budget throughout the planning period, so through 2030. Okay, this is my least favorite slide in the presentation.

I'm gonna try to walk us through it.

Many people have asked which departments are taking the largest cut by percent, by total dollars, you put in a room a bunch of budget analysts, and we could all answer that question many different ways.

What this table is presenting is by a percent of their previous year's budget after you make baseline adjustments, so after you adjust their ongoing budget from the previous year for any increases or decreases due to healthcare costs, labor implementation, that sort of thing, and breaks that down by percentage.

So that is...

what this does.

The departments listed in purple are actually, if you look at the budget book, they show a net increase in their budget.

So for example, the Seattle Police Department, there are $9.5 million of reductions proposed, but overall the net impact to the department's budget is a $68 million increase.

So there are many different ways that this could be cut.

This is one way of presenting the information and happy to talk with you all more offline as needed.

So this is the general fund proposed budget, a $2 billion budget broken down by the investment areas.

You can see on this slide that public safety continues to make up more than 50% of the investments from the general fund.

I will also just note, because I often get this question, why the administration part of the pie is so high.

There is a lot that flows through that administration category, including much of our healthcare, well, that's in the other funds, our healthcare costs, but many of the investments in capital programs that are finance and administrative services department, flow through there, so it is not just sort of administrative bureaucracy.

It also includes the budget for the city budget office, the ledge department, the mayor's office, that type of thing.

So this is just one way of looking at it, and again, the largest area of growth in this budget is in public safety, but overall, the general fund is only growing by 0.7% compared to the 2026 adopted budget.

In this slide, you can see the breakdown of the investments by category from the Jumpstart Fund.

So the bottom of the charts, the gray is that annual transfer from the Jumpstart Fund to the general fund.

In the 27 and 28 proposed budget, you can see that there is a new category homeless programs that is at the top of the chart that reflects shifting about half the cost of providing homeless services in the city to the Jumpstart Fund.

So I've highlighted a few times how this proposed budget makes real progress towards sustainability, but we do have more work to do.

The financial plan for the Jumpstart Fund shows a one-time reduction in 2029 Jumpstart investments that are restored in 2030. That is necessary to remain in balance.

In developing that shared understanding of what budget sustainability means, it would be a fully balanced financial plan without requiring any reductions in future years.

And this is why we are saying this budget makes real progress towards sustainability, and there is more work to do, both to address the structural imbalance, to have real sustainability, and to address where we need to expand to meet the needs of our community.

but even with this one-time reduction in 2029, this plan sustains the mayor's commitment in all years that at least 30% of annual Jumpstart tax revenues are allocated to the Office of Housing.

I also want to note that there remains a commitment to pursuing new progressive revenue sources to meet some of those needs as well as continuing to work on other budget strategies and want to acknowledge that without the continued support of Jumpstart for the general fund and for investments in categories outside the original intent, the city would be unable to sustain critical services that residents depend on daily as Chair Strauss mentioned in his opening remarks.

I'm gonna take a pause to have a drink of water.

Yeah, I'll just note that use of funds was a use, we use those funds day one in that way.

We've used them every day ever since, so.

Keep moving.

If you'd like, I'm gonna leave that up to you.

I'm just looking through your entire presentation.

Yeah, why don't we take a quick pause.

I'll just share a little bit about the deficit you shared about the growth that we all agree upon that we were the fastest growing city in the nation until 2020 in which growth dropped precipitously.

We had the pandemic which we've already discussed where cities across the nation just cut programs, projects and people and I appreciate you sharing the comparisons of other cities in the United States and our neighbors in other states.

I will add to that with saying in Washington state we are particularly constrained with the 1% property tax growth.

The city of Seattle has had relief from this through our levies but All 280 other cities and towns in our state are experiencing the same structural budget deficit because we cannot grow our revenue at the same pace as inflation, which means we are being asked every year to use the same dollar.

We have 75 cents from the dollar that we had last year and we're expected to give $1.25 worth of benefit this year.

and so just noting that it is even more expansive here just in Washington State.

But with that colleagues, do you have any questions at this time for this section?

I see Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much Chair Strauss and thank you so much Director Panucci as always.

I really appreciate your dedication, level of detail and just your overall spirit of service to the city.

I'm really grateful that we have you.

I wanted to just ask if you could repeat what you went over in terms of the jumpstart reduction and the outlook for 2030 for us one more time.

Yeah, happy to.

And I'm happy to provide a more detailed chart on the out years as a follow-up.

So yes, thank you.

So you can see in this slide sort of the categories by like, especially when looking at housing, economic revitalization, equitable development initiative, that is EDI on the screen, and Green New Deal.

Right now, based on our forecast and assumptions around increases in expenses, in order to stay in balance in 2029, we would have to reduce spending in those categories total by about $19 million in order to remain in balance without dipping into the jumpstart reserve.

That is then restored, so it would be a one-time reduction that then gets restored in 2030. and so I will be working with my team and the departments over the next year to identify ways to mitigate those reductions and ideally working perhaps with you, Council Member Foster, on ideas for additional revenues that could help address or help us avoid that type of reduction as well as making other really important investments in community services.

Thank you for that.

Thank you so much for that.

So it would be 19 million in additional reductions?

In additional reductions, one time, but not ongoing reductions.

Thank you for clarifying that.

And then I just have one more question on this chart.

I just want to make sure I understand, I'm noticing here just this, and we don't have the green line for youth services.

here starting in 2026, and I'm not sure if that's a cut or if that's moved elsewhere.

Can you just explain that to me, please?

Sure, happy to.

That is not a cut.

Those investments were added in 2024 during the budget process, and it was really responding to acute needs and investments in youth mental health services.

as the FEP levy was developed, those costs and those programs have been sustained but are funded by a different source.

So you can see that there have been different types of investments that Jumpstart has supported over the years and then plans to try to unwind them if and when there's an opportunity to ship those back to a different fund.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Colleagues, any other questions before we head into key investments by the mayor's office?

I'm seeing none at this time, so let's roll right on in.

And before I move to that, I think I just want to note one thing, because the sustainability conversation is really focused.

We've been heavily focused on the general fund and the jumpstart fund.

And I wanted to take a minute both to offer some props and respect from former Budget Director and Central Staff Director, Ben Noble.

As I was entering this role, and many of you have quoted this to me as well, so I know he said it to you, that this year's budget was deeply unsustainable and that I have a hard job ahead, and we all have a hard job ahead.

My perspective, this budget makes huge strides.

I don't think that anyone would describe this as deeply unsustainable.

It's not perfectly sustainable, but it is not deeply.

But there are still some funds that need more work.

You will hear more about the transportation fund, that there are some challenges there.

You will see similar strategies deployed in that budget.

And I'm gonna highlight just a couple of other funds that cross multiple departments.

right now.

Okay, so this is the real estate excise tax.

This is a tax levied on all real estate transactions in the city.

REIT revenues support projects in the capital budget, both through debt service on REIT-backed bonds for large projects such as Memorial Stadium and pay-as-you-go projects such as major maintenance of city facilities.

REIT revenues are highly volatile and dependent on the local real estate economy.

The high interest rate environment that we currently find ourselves has really tamped down both on the number of transactions and their price, which impacts our REIT revenues.

The August revenue forecast gave us a significant reduction in our projected REIT revenues.

So you will see in some of the presentations coming up today and throughout the coming days, some really tough choices where we had to reduce some of our capital investments or shifting them to other funds.

This is primarily in the Parks Department as well as the Transportation Department.

They received the largest allocation of discretionary revenues and therefore that is where we had to look to try to address the imbalance.

Another fund that we saw a pretty significant decrease for the size of the fund in the August forecast was the Sweetened Beverage Tax Fund.

It was about a $3.8 million reduction over the three-year period.

It is not a huge fund, so that level of revenue drop was difficult to address without some hard choices and required that we make some changes in order to be legally balanced.

Specifically, this fund is our investments in the base for the Fresh Bucks program and many of the food programs that the Human Services Department invests in.

It is also the fund source for the Food Equity Fund out of the Department of Neighborhoods.

In this year's budget, the Food Equity Fund is budgeted at $2.8 million, and it funds many organizations with smaller grants out to community.

In this budget, the mayor really prioritized investments that are directly serving people.

Many of those organizations are directly serving people and some are capacity building and that sort of thing.

So this was a tough choice.

The reduction, the choice in order to stay in balance in this fund was to reduce investments in 2027 for the Food Equity Fund by $1 million.

So $1.8 million remains in that budget.

and then would have had to completely eliminate the program in 2028. So 1.8 million of general fund one time is proposed in 2028. We will be working to identify how to sustainably balance that fund over the next year and figuring out the best way to sustain those programs.

This revenue source also is by design meant to decline.

Over time, we are not yet sure what is really happening here, and I hope for all of us that you get a positive revenue forecast in a few weeks as you consider your budget, but more work is needed here.

And then finally, somewhat of a...

non sequitur, but I wanted to talk about the impacts to the positions in the budget that aren't just unique to one fund.

In 2027, the proposed budget adds 169.5 FTE and eliminates 128. So for a citywide net change of 43.5, and the bulk of the additions are in the utilities to implement the strategic business plans and the work that the council has recently passed, as well as in the Human Services Department as we stand back up the Homeless Service Division as the contracts from KCRHA returned to the city.

For the biennium, excuse me, For the biennium, the proposed budget reduces FTE by about 113, most of which are vacant, 15 are filled positions, which are difficult choices, and in some cases reflect the end of a program or a body of work, and about half of those positions are in the Department of Construction and Inspection due to decreasing permit volumes and the work, the permit revenues that support those positions are in significant decline.

I'll pause here.

That'd be great.

Thank you, Director.

With employment, I'll talk specifically about the core staffing fund and SDCI over the course of all of these years.

First, we balanced some of those positions just coming out of our after the period of high growth, we were able to balance those positions because we had the core staffing fund that is a reserve fund that permit reviewers are paid by the permit fees that are generated.

And so when we have fewer permits, we have to rely on our reserve fund, which I appreciate.

We've been burning through that reserve fund at a rapid pace.

You recall two years ago, we had to lay off many permit reviewers.

It was the majority of the city staff, the majority of the only city staff that had been laid off between today and the 2008 recession.

And so again, a lot of the staff represented in the potential layoffs here are also in the permitting department.

This comes after we also increased permit fees last year.

There was two lengthy conversations that were of the same content at different points in the budget process last year where we really dug into this because we have three options.

We can lay off staff, increase fees, or add general fund in to backfill them.

We've done two out of the three and it seems like we're going back to the first option here.

But the reality is no matter what, much like the sweetened beverage tax, if people aren't drinking soda, buying soda in Seattle, we're not gonna get sweetened beverage tax revenue.

in the same way if people are not submitting and pulling permits for buildings, then we are not getting those permit fees.

We're also not getting the construction sales tax.

We're also not getting the additional new construction on top of our 1% property tax.

The ripples go deep.

And so that's why Council Member Foster I really appreciate that you are spearheading the conversation about, especially the MHA Accelerator, especially with those vested projects, because those vested projects are projects where they pause during the pandemic, during a time of uncertainty.

And we extended their MUPs, we extended their permits.

I finally said, folks, I'm not extending them anymore.

And you came in to really lead that conversation.

Thank you.

I wish that was a conversation that we had already had previously this year so that we could know if we did need to lay these folks off or not, right?

And that's not on anyone.

That's not on anyone.

It's just me saying it out loud because we're gonna be faced with a decision this year of do we need to lay folks off and then your accelerator program works and then suddenly we have permits coming in the door?

That's a deep fear of mine, right?

So I'm just kind of naming it.

There's no fault being placed anywhere in this conversation.

I just wanted to share this as information Anyone else on this section?

I'm gonna start timing myself because I'm talking too much.

I'll put you on a timer.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

I won't comment on the permits.

I think you've already made some important comments there.

I do want to turn just really quickly to the sweetened beverage tax, and this may be later in the presentation here, but I wasn't obviously on Council at the time, but I remember the conversations, and I appreciate your point, Director Panucci, of this was, you know, part of the intent here was that this would not be coming in at the same level over time.

because what we were trying to do is have some behavior changes when it comes to the consumption and the public health impacts on folks.

Do we have a sense or what is the outlook of that fund source today and how is that taken into account in the overall budget?

And happy to do follow-ups and apologies if I'm going too deep too fast on my first rodeo here, Director Panucci.

I love the detailed question and we'll be honest, I'm not prepared to fully address it, but I'm happy to follow up and do a deeper dive.

But in general, in talking with the folks who do the forecasting, it's a little bit of a tricky fund to project.

and I will note, we're not yet sure if there was a World Cup effect because at the time of the August forecast that data was not available to inform the forecast.

So I am cautiously optimistic that it will bounce back at least a little bit, but it does appear to be sort of a declining revenue source and I'll follow up with more details.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Foster.

Anyone else at this time?

Now we will roll into key investments.

I was ahead in my own PowerPoint.

Over to you, Director.

Thank you.

Okay, I'm not gonna read the entire slide.

I'm just gonna highlight parts of it.

But what I think that this is, what we are really trying to do in this budget, we often spend a lot of time talking about the incremental increases.

What are we adding?

What are we expanding?

What are we growing?

I think it's really important to recognize all of the really important investments that are in the base of that $9 billion budget and all of the things that support.

So some of what you'll hear me highlight here are just maintaining key investments that many of you were the champions of over many years or recent years.

And in some places we'll highlight where programs are proposed to be scaled down or up.

In the housing and homeless service category, there is over $340 million to the Office of Housing and $445 million to the Human Services Department.

That's over almost $800 million in investments in housing and homelessness in this investment and this budget.

This includes $183 million in homelessness investments to fund, including $37 million to fund the nearly 1,000 new shelter unit serving.

I think I misstated in my budget overview book for the viewing public.

Sometimes we make errors, but it's about, I think, 1,750 people.

I said 2,000.

It includes important investments for inflation to our human services contracts, sustains 30% of JumpStar annual revenues to the Office of Housing, adds a housing ombud to support permit expediting for our housing developers in the community.

and then I'll also just flag that it adds $6.5 million one time, two times is what I call it in a biennial budget.

That is an increase in Office of Housing interest earnings to support homeless prevention investments or often the more known type of investment is in rental assistance, bring the total over the biennium to over 15 million.

It also makes key investments or preserves key investments in food access, $57 million in total food security funding.

This includes making permanent the one-time proposal added last year to expand the FreshBooks program.

So with the other funding sources, that's over $11 million annually serving 20,000 households.

If this was not made ongoing, we would have seen 5,000 plus households losing that benefit this year.

It also makes ongoing, last year there was a one-time investment to expand support for food banks and food meal delivery that is made ongoing in this budget.

So you'll see that as a theme.

There are not as many programmatic increases or expansions as have been proposed by previous administrations.

but where they are, to the best of our ability, they are proposed to be ongoing, so it provides more stability for the future for those organizations and the people receiving those benefits.

In terms of public safety, The approach in this budget is really to take a comprehensive approach that includes investment to strengthen emergency response, target resources where violence is most concentrated, and invest in upstream community-based prevention.

This includes over a half a billion dollars to the Seattle Police Department, full funding for 1,250 officers, while also having to make some hard choices to reduce some civilian positions, most of which are vacant, and some of the recruitment and marketing budget.

In the fire department, the investments maintain core services, adds peak time aid car staffing and station renovation funding, and as you've already heard about, a reduction to the proposed overtime budget.

In the care department, they see a net increase in their budget to support expanded hours for the crisis care responders, to transfer some of the gun violence work from the human services department to the care department, investments to sustain the police accountability system as well.

In the care department, you also see some where one of the strategies I talked about is slowing the growth or pausing expansions that have been proposed without a sustainable way to pay for them.

There are 14 vacant positions in the care department, for example, on the CCR team that are proposed that aren't funded in this biennium, but the positions remain.

under the leadership of Chief Barden has still expanded their geography and their hours of operation by using a different staffing model, and you'll hear more about that later this week as well, or maybe next week.

Tomorrow.

Yeah, thank you.

Okay, next slide.

And then these are just some examples of other areas of investment.

In the Department of Neighborhoods, maintaining the community safety coordinators.

Many of you have mentioned this in our conversations this year about budget.

Over $45 million in the safe and thriving communities that funds Important investments for domestic violence and sexual assault response, crime survivor services, and so on.

And then many investments from the Department of Education and Early Learning.

Okay, keep moving.

Public restrooms.

This is one area of new investments in the budget.

There is $1.8 million proposed in the Parks Department that you'll hear more about later for two bathrooms, new restrooms in parks, increased funding for parks, bathroom restroom maintenance, and then 1.4 million ongoing in the Finance and Administrative Services Department to contract with a private entity for installation of public restrooms throughout busy areas of the city.

FAS will be working with the Department of Transportation, Parks, other key city agencies as they develop a plan of the best way to deploy this new investment.

And the budget also includes significant investments in youth programs.

This includes aligning the families' education, preschool and promise, and library levy investments.

It supports broad youth programming.

It includes new investments in Rainier Beach, high school after-school pilot expanded teen late-night programs.

Councilmember Saka left the room, but I was gonna shout him out for the pilot program he proposed last year, increases recreation scholarships, and the list goes on.

Also, it adds key investments in the Office of Labor Standards by implementing some of the feedback funding and increase to fund some vacant investigator positions.

There is one reduction in the Office of Labor Standards to a vacant policy position, but it fully funds their core services to protect workers and support businesses throughout the city.

and it adds funding to implement the fair pricing legislation, creating a new regulatory framework that you all passed this week.

Tuesday, two weeks ago.

Recently, good job.

Okay, we'll keep moving.

and then building for our future.

So this is a key investment.

I can shout out Council Member Saka again.

We have spent a lot of time talking about the Seattle Center this year.

You will see in the budget over $3 million of proposed investments to advance the work to get ready to put the initiative on a ballot to fund a major renovation to make critical investments in this key city asset.

This is backed by an Interfund loan that would be paid back from the bond proceeds once the voters approve it next year.

It also sustains...

Oh, sorry, we can keep moving.

Thank you.

I forgot.

Oh, I thought there was...

Can you go back one more?

This one.

I think I went out of order.

This budget sustains important investments to support our immigrant and refugee community.

The $4 million that was added ongoing in the budget last year is sustained.

$125,000 of that is shifted to the Office of Labor Standards to support their work specific to that community.

New ongoing support for queer and trans organization.

This is building on the work that Council Member Rink was helping lead and the work of the IDT team this year, and it adds funding, as I said, to implement the fair pricing legislation.

Okay.

That is mostly the end.

I'm just gonna make a couple of final remarks, I think, here.

Is there one more slide?

Okay, so moving forward, as I mentioned many, many times already, big strides towards sustainability, but there is more work ahead.

This is both to really address the structural deficit problem and right-sizing budgets does not allow for expanding city services or addressing the economic conditions outside of the city's control.

As demand for service grows and as those conditions outside of our control continue to put pressure on our budget, we need to keep doing the work to figure out strategies of how we sustain and preserve these important investments.

So you'll see alongside with the proposed budget a few tools that will need more work.

or that will help us move towards greater sustainability in the future.

One is legislation to establish a voluntary separation program that is often referred to as an early retirement program that would allow some natural attrition potentially in a way to achieve some savings without having to eliminate filled filled positions.

The budget does not assume any savings on this.

It would authorize the executive to establish a program and then we will be working to develop the details and likely a program that would launch early next year.

It is a way to identify some potential ongoing services.

There's also the effective government and building a resilient Seattle economy executive orders that were recently issued.

Particularly, the effective government is a lot of directing me and my colleagues in the central service departments to continue to look for ways to improve how we support our city departments in getting money out the door, looking at new ways of doing the budget process and managing our finance to continue moving us towards sustainability.

And then as I mentioned previously, a real commitment to continue to look for new progressive revenue that can support the community needs.

So this ongoing work would help us to dedicate more jumpstart revenues to the original spending categories, can help us stabilize and expand our important public safety investments, address needed improvements in our public facilities, that is a long list to address.

and then continued to expand programs to address affordability.

This includes investments in childcare, housing, food, access to arts and culture, and the list could go on.

So I am proud to be presenting this budget that I, for the first time in many, many years, presents a budget without a deficit in the general fund and recognize that there is work ahead and look forward to the continued partnership as you move through this budget process and we work together in the coming years.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Director Panucci.

It took me a minute to start talking because I am, in fact, timing myself.

Colleagues, any questions at this time for Director Panucci on key investments or anything at large?

I will ask that as department directors come up in the next few days, it is not necessarily their decision to make the changes within their budgets.

It is within the prerogative of the mayoral administration at this time.

And so that's why I hope, while I still ask you to be nice to Director Panucci, frustration at department directors might not be appropriate because it might not be their decision.

So with that, I see Council Member Kettle has his hand.

Take it away, Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I also want to thank Director Panucci, Ali Panucci, who is a true expert on budgeting and who I first learned some budgeting pieces, at least at the city level.

And I will say, I do have my challenges or concerns and all of the above, but two things that Seattle has going for it.

One is having Ali Panucci join the team, and the other one is Dwight Dively.

my hope that the two of them in terms of particularly of this area and the related areas that they can make very strong positive change for Seattle.

Now with that said, I've been speaking about budget and I've also been speaking recently about inflection points.

I have spoken about inflection points we're facing first with the bite of Seattle mass shooting and then the removal of Sean Barnes as chief of police and then the start to find his replacement.

The budget, however, is the most important inflection point, and by definition, inflection point is a moment when significant change occurs or may occur.

And to be clear, this budget submission is revealing to be a significant change, a negative change, to the work we as a council have done over the past three years on public safety.

In addition to the long-term budget planning amendment and work, I've also advocated and we included as a council a public safety element in our comprehensive plan process.

This is crucial as highlighted by Local 27's leader, Firefighter Kenny Stewart today at Public Comment.

we must keep where we will be in 2024 and 2050 as a North Star.

As we navigate along the budget waypoints, to include where we are here today along the way, to do so we'll place our city 20 and 30 years from now where we are unfortunately at today given the lack of investment in fire stations, for example, 20 or 30 years ago.

This budget, again specifically the public safety elements, is revealing significant negative developments in our efforts to create a safer Seattle that can bring about a thriving and vibrant city.

The budget ship submission is listing, however.

I often say Seattle is and will always be a maritime city.

It is, of course, a tech city as well.

And Seattle, though, is still a jet city.

And with that in mind, this budget and my concerns is that it puts us below GlidePath in accomplishing our public safety goals.

Colleagues, I just wanted to note this because when it comes to police, for example, from a comprehensive plan perspective, for example, We need like 1,800 officers.

We need to be over 1,400 officers.

That is our goal.

The 1258 goal was the intermediate goal.

and so this 1250 and my concerns about it plateauing at that level is really part of these concerns to go along with what we heard today because overtime is current services and we will have a cut in services if we cut the overtime and we really need to right size and to right the ship if you will on that front as well.

And so with these different points, I think it's really important to note related to public safety.

I do appreciate the areas in the scene of public safety, particularly the scene between public safety and public health, housing, and human services.

But still, ultimately, it's those main pieces of public safety that we need to work.

And back in, just to close too, back in July of 20th, actually, I sent a letter to the mayor regarding proposed budget reforms and addressing structural budget deficit, talking about various different things.

And one of the three areas that I called for was a priority-based budget system and withdrawing from unnecessary lines of business and updating the payroll expense tax.

These are some of the areas, colleagues, that I'd like to work with you on now that this is our budget as we move forward between now and Thanksgiving.

So again, thank you, Director Panucci, and I'm quite serious that you and Director Dively are really important pieces in terms of how we're moving forward.

And the work from a budget process, respect and appreciate that work.

Now, obviously, I have some concerns about some of the decisions that were made beyond that, but thank you for being here.

Thank you, Councilmember Kel.

Director Panucci, anything?

Yeah, I just wanted to say thank you to the Councilmember Kettle for those comments and then look forward to the conversation.

I think it's just for the folks following along at home, there are always choices in a budget.

I will just say respectfully what this budget does is it honestly presents what the city can afford to sustain at this given moment.

you as you take on this budget, and I'm happy to have it handed off, will likely consider and make different choices on how to move the dollars around within the box that we have with our existing revenue forecast.

but what it doesn't do and frankly many previous budgets have done is made commitments on growth and expansion that are not sustainable.

So I really want to work in partnership with you to look for strategies as you think about your priorities and how we can figure out strategies to do that in a way that doesn't create a deeper level of unsustainability in the future, because I don't need to debate the priorities, that is why you get to be elected, but wanna help support as you consider the options of how that can work in a way that really can be sustained and delivered on in the future.

Thank you, and I do agree, the work that you do is important in terms of the budget process, the mechanics, the macro pieces, so thank you.

Thank you.

Council President Emeritus Juarez.

Thank you.

And again, thank you, Ali.

It's good to see all you folks here.

So I'm just going to get right to the point, and I know we'll go back and forth on this.

We have a lot of time to go through the budget.

This is my 10th budget cycle, and I may respectfully disagree with you about whether or not this budget does not make commitments to future and unsustainable projects.

Again, I don't want to debate that.

That's more of a subjective analysis than I'm ready to give today.

So I'm looking at page 33, moving forward, continued efforts to stabilize.

And so when I look at new progressive revenue, is the mayor's office anticipating bringing back or considering the Seattle center tax or fire district tax, as you were all suggesting in the winter and the spring?

We are not currently working on the fire district that did not come forward.

The Seattle Center bond issuance is assumed.

There was a resolution passed by the council concurred with the mayor to move forward with developing the plans to put a initiative on the ballot next year to fund the major renovations.

That is a financing strategy to support that work.

that would be backed by a property tax if the voters approve it.

There is no specific revenue or new progressive tax necessarily, but we know that there is a need to increase our revenues if we want to fund all of the programs that we and all of you are asked to expand and address every day.

And that includes working in partnership under Council Member Foster's leadership on considering potentially a future capital gains tax, as well as like, I'm all ears if you have other ideas.

any good progressive tax ideas that are going to not negatively impact our businesses and ideally don't impact affordability.

So my ears are open if you have any.

Why do you qualify every tax as progressive?

Tell me what your distinction is.

I don't qualify every tax as progressive, but the mayor's priority is looking for a progressive tax idea.

So for example, it is debatable whether, you know, a property tax is not the most progressive tax on it.

So I wouldn't have described the fire district as a progressive tax.

It was a tool that is available to the city.

There are limits to what the city has authority to do.

So, explain to me what happened.

All from January right up until, I don't know, August-ish, we were told, basically, I was going to be frank with you, you know, the sky's falling, there's a $175 million deficit, and then back in the fall or winter and spring, we have to pass this fire district tax, we're looking at, you know, doing a bond measure for the sales center, and then it's gone.

So, as you know, we met.

Full disclosure, we all met you and I and the mayor and Esther on Zoom.

And then you say, okay, well, you gave us a balanced budget.

So what happened?

How did you close that gap?

Because, you know, we always hear this, like there's a $130 million deficit, there's 170, 175. We have to raise this progressive tax or we have to do this.

And then all of a sudden it went away.

So can you explain to me how, again, just how that got closed?

Sure, and I went over this on several slides, and it didn't all of a sudden go away.

It was through some very tough choices and looking really carefully at the budget.

So that includes, for the general fund, over $40 million in just spending reductions.

To the best of our ability, we looked for reductions that would not impact current levels of services.

So as I mentioned, that means pausing on proposed expansions in previous budgets that have not yet been implemented, eliminating vacant positions, aligning budgets to actual spending, and in some cases, some hard choices.

It also includes some fund swaps, so like I mentioned, shifting the cost, about half the cost of homeless service investments from the general fund to the jumpstart.

fund and then other types of fund swaps like that.

And then we were also fortunate to have a modest increase in the August revenue forecast.

In the general fund, that resulted in about a $20 million increase each year.

We also similarly saw a positive revenue forecast for the Jumpstart Fund that allowed us to make that shift in the homeless service investments from the general fund to the Jumpstart Fund.

I followed along on your PowerPoint, all 34 pages.

I just I just kind of wanted you to put it more in just simpler terms to just because I'm obviously will spend more time going through this and looking where, as you share that, you know, we can we can debate those priorities later.

So with that, thank you.

Thank you, Ali.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Council President Meredith Juarez.

Colleagues, any other questions at this time?

Statements.

feedback.

All right, well, Director Panucci, I look forward to digging into all of this.

I'm not gonna sit up here and debate who had the more structurally sound proposal or who has made promises without plans up here.

I will just say that we don't have unified agreement on, I forgot to start my timer.

We don't have unified agreement on all of that, but I do appreciate the level of collaboration that you engage in and the direct and honest and earnestness of those conversations.

I don't feel like there's a hide the ball with you.

Appreciate that.

Colleagues, last call.

Any other questions?

This is the most appropriate time to discuss with CBO.

All right, seeing none, we're gonna keep right on moving then.

It is 1146. Do folks want to take 30 minutes now or do parks now and take 30 minutes later?

Let's jump into parks.

Let's roll right into parks because it is still before noon and then we'll take a half an hour break at the end of that.

We'll be at ease until the parks department is ready to go.

Is that okay?

Did I do it right?

to read item three.

Yeah.

Council, Mr. Chair, how long is the break?

We're just at ease as they're getting set up.

So if you need to step away, it's okay.

Okay, thank you.

Whoa.

Yeah, I got you, yeah, for sure, I got you.

I learned that about you, in a good way.

That's why I will text someone

and if you can start sharing your screen, we are, are you ready to start sharing screen?

We need one more person.

Two, four.

You want to make the mics hot again?

They are hot.

Award winning Seattle Channel.

As soon as we get one more council member to return from being at ease, we will start again.

If there are folks watching in their offices now and you see a council member, please send them back to chambers.

Wires is back.

Wonderful council president emeritus.

Good to see you.

We have quorum.

We will start right up with the parks department.

Um, and I see Allie is not quite back, but I'm sure you're not gonna say anything that's gonna get you in trouble in these first 30 seconds.

So with that, if you'd like to introduce yourself, I'm gonna first have the clerk read item number three into the record.

Agenda item three, Seattle Parks and Recreation for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, if you'd like to introduce yourselves and then we'll dive right on in.

Okay, there we go.

Thank you.

We need Michelle to speak up a little, Michelle.

I can't hear you.

That's because I didn't have the microphone on, Councilmember Juarez.

It's a little thing that hit me every time.

Thank you.

Good morning.

Thank you, Chair Strauss and Councilmembers for having us here today.

I'm Michelle Finnegan, Interim Superintendent of Seattle Parks and Recreation and joined today by Amy Williams, who leads our budget and policy team.

We're happy to be here to present the mayor's proposed budget for Seattle Parks and Recreation.

We believe this is a strong budget proposal achieving requested general fund and REIT savings while also making investments to increase program access and address priority emergent capital priorities.

Before we jump in, I'd like to thank Amy and the SPR team who worked on our budget proposal internally, and I'd also like to acknowledge Director Panucci for her leadership and her team's support throughout the process, as well as our operations manager, Rachel Shulkin, who along with the mayor's executive team and the mayor herself supported a thoughtful decision-making leading to the proposed budget we'll walk through now.

I'd like to start by sharing that as we approach the biennial budgeting process, we centered our mission and the desire to preserve critical services for the community.

As part of developing this people first budget, we reviewed our baseline budget for efficiencies and potential funding realignments.

As you'll see, these approaches served as the basis for many of the proposals to save general fund and REIT dollars.

Some of these efficiencies and funding realignments recognize where we are on certain capital projects and how that informs spending plans for the upcoming biennium.

In developing our recommendations, we were mindful of our Park District Cycle 2 commitments and our baseline service levels.

but we've also heard you all in the desire to have a more informed capital budgets and less capital carry forward.

This review included a deep dive on our community center project schedules and park district fund balance.

As you'll see in the upcoming slides, some identified capacity from that review is proposed to offset general fund and REIT revenue impacts and some is proposed to meet emergent needs.

In some cases, the results of these proposals is that funding sources in the out years will need to be identified.

And Seattle Parks and Recreation is committed to developing options for future council consideration.

I heard Director Panucci say her least favorite slide in her presentation, and I will share that this is my least favorite slide, as it's a lot of stuff building into these big numbers, but I will attempt to walk you through our proposed budget at the highest level.

Our overall budget increases by about 10% from the 2026 adopted budget of 363 million to 400 million.

or approximately 37 million, which is mainly due to the long-term general obligation bond appropriation in 2027 for our cycle two community center projects.

It increases to 448 in 2028, which is also mostly due to additional LTGO bond appropriation and associated debt service.

We'll walk you through the general fund savings on the next few slides, but basically the increase you see here between 26, 27, and 28 is about 3% per year, and these changes are mostly related to the annual baseline adjustments like healthcare and central costs that Director Panucci walked you through.

The decrease in other funds from 2026 to 2027 is mostly reflecting a $5 million, approximate $5 million reduction in REIT starting in 2027, real estate excise tax.

Sorry, I didn't correct myself there.

And the increase in other funds from 27 to 28 reflects inflationary adjustments to the MPD, the Seattle Park District, as well as paying debt service with that fund.

Finally, I'd like to point out that the proposed budget appropriation of 134 million of general fund in 2027 and 137 in 2028 maintains the general fund floor requirement set by the interlocal agreement between the city and the park district, which would be 131.7 million in 2027 and about the same in 2028. We'll walk through our FTE changes on our final slide, so I won't go into that here.

To lay the groundwork for the various elements of our proposed budget, this slide summarizes the four main categories of changes.

As just described, the first two categories are efficiencies and funding realignments, proposed to save over $11 million in general fund.

I'll then cover the 2027 to 2032 REIT reductions, as well as the one-time 2026 reduction that is included in a companion piece of legislation, which spoiler alert also recommends some funding realignments.

We'll then conclude with proposed investments noting that these are mostly one-time savings supporting one-time investments.

As mentioned, SPR's proposed budget saves over $11 million in general fund annually.

Three and a half is saved through the slate of proposed efficiencies, following a robust review of our entire budget, not just the general fund.

These include removing general fund appropriation to repay bonds for Magnuson Park buildings 11 and 30. These were fully paid in 2025. Shifting 50% of our lease costs for one of our administration buildings to the CIP overhead, reflecting the staffing for our planning and capital development team is housed at that facility.

Removing approximately $300,000 in MPD reserves, Park District reserves, related to addressing pay disparities in the Recreation Division.

This issue, which was raised in the Cycle 2 Plan, has been addressed through reclassification and through implementation of the most recent collective bargaining agreement.

Just to note, I will reference these reserves again in the upcoming slide.

We also propose abrogating 4.5 FTE of long-term vacancies, including a senior management systems analyst on our budget team, a strategic advisor in our human services team, and two and a half administrative positions in our UCT unified care team.

Finally, we're proposing to reduce non-labor budgets to reflect our baseline spending associated with two program areas.

At the unified care team, the proposed budget reduces $600,000 for contracted services to align non-labor budgets with actual spending.

We do not expect or intend to impact service levels on that team.

For the graffiti program, the proposed budget reduces $500,000 of non-labor discretionary funding that was added by the executive in the 2026 budget.

As you'll see over the next two slides, the remaining $7.8 million in annual general fund savings is achieved through proposed programmatic funding realignments.

The 2025-2026 biennial budget shifted three arts-related programs in SPR from the general fund to the arts and culture fund, saving a little over $700,000.

The proposed budget before you proposes continuing this realignment.

These programs are the arts and parks program, a granting program by which artists and arts organizations activate park spaces throughout the city in a process coordinated in partnership with the Office of Arts and Culture.

the Teen Summer Musical, a long-standing free summer program that introduces young people to the world of theater, and the Center City Busker Program, which brings music and entertainment to parks managed under our Center City Activation umbrella.

On this slide, you'll see the vast majority of our proposed funding realignments to save general fund involve reallocating park district capital resources to the operating budget to offset a like amount of general fund.

These transfers are operationalized in the grounds maintenance line of business.

So that is the budget information shown on the table on this slide.

Similar to the last slide, the first changes continue what was planned as a one-time realignment in the 2526 biennium.

More specifically, this continues reallocation of $4.1 million of park district revenues previously supporting acquisitions, major maintenance, and the community fund to support general park maintenance operations.

In addition, the proposed 2027-2028 budget increases the reallocation from capital major maintenance to the general park maintenance operations by $3 million.

While this ongoing reduction for major maintenance and asset preservation impacts our ability to address long-term capital maintenance needs, we are continuing to address our needs and our approach to this work through the Parks and Recreation Open Space Plan and the Park District Mid-Cycle Report, which we're developing now.

Unfortunately, the reduction to park district capital funding is compounded by the demand for REIT and the associated revenue forecasts.

In addition to the one-time 2026 budget legislation, which we'll speak to next, the 27 to 2032 CIP reduces REIT resources and our proposed CIP by about $25 million over the six years or about $5 million annually.

To achieve this reduction, the proposed budget reduces REIT for the Gasworks Park remediation project in 2027 through 2029, based on the latest information we have on projected spending through this timeframe.

That saves $2.8 million.

The ongoing project supports overall cleanup at Gasworks Park, including uplands and sediments, and SPR works with SPU and Puget Sound Energy to align budgets with planned remediation work.

While $2 million remains in each of the out years of the CIP, additional funding will likely be needed for planned remediation work at that time.

The proposed budget reduces athletic field replacements by $7.1 million in 2029 through 2031, but does invest an additional $8 million in 2032 for a total of $30 million in the proposed CIP.

As you know, the ability of synthetic field turfs to absorb impacts declines as fields reach the end of their 10 to 12 year service life, which reduces playability.

Generally, synthetic turf replacements can range between $2 and $5 million, and we have approximately 12 synthetic turf fields due for replacement in the next CIP.

Given these changes, additional funding most likely will need to be identified or will move some of these replacements into the out years.

Sorry, I went too fast.

Sorry, conversions.

The out years of the current CIP included partial funding for a conversion of the West Magnolia playfield at $5.1 million.

We now anticipate this project to be eight plus million dollars and the proposed CIP eliminates the associated REIT, but continues the project in the CIP acknowledging this is a priority project for future funding.

In fact, this is the final outstanding project in our joint athletic facilities development plan with the school district.

The current CIP also includes $9.6 million for the Magnuson Park athletic field 12 conversion project we are working on now.

The proposed CIP eliminates REIT support, but replaces it with park district funding.

We'll provide more information on this reinvestment in an upcoming slide.

To meet the current citywide projected REIT revenue shortfall, the year-end supplemental includes about $12 million in reductions across several SPR capital programs and projects, including a one-time reduction of park district carry forward in the acquisition project, informed by spending plans and recognizing the proposed CIP continues a million dollars annually to support green space acquisition opportunities and as match for conservation future tax supported acquisitions.

Similarly, a one-time reduction in our accessibility project funding aligns budget with spending and is not expected to impact current efforts.

The proposed CIP continues to support this program with $2 million annually.

Regarding community center stabilization and decarbonization, SPR has been working on a package of decarbonization projects under a GCCM model, which is new for us.

With this funding identified in this project, we are pursuing decarbonization at Van Assault, our Genesee Crew Quarters and Garfield Community Center.

We are also designing decarbonization for Jefferson and Rainier Community Centers.

We have also recently begun working on a separate community center stabilization project with decarbonization for High Point Community Center.

We estimate this project will need $6 million overall, but we are retaining a million dollars to continue the planning and design, which is what we expect we will need over this biennium.

This approach overall aligns current spending projections with budget and positions all three of these projects being designed at Jefferson, Rainier, and High Point for outside funding and for readiness for cycle three of the Park District.

Finally, we are recommending abandoning appropriation in two projects.

Funding was added in cycle two of the park district for pre-engineering evaluation of one to two potential water reuse projects capturing stormwater runoff or rainwater harvest or some other funding or water source for irrigation use.

The team has begun to look into this concept and given the potential cost, SPR is recommending we focus resources on other priority projects at this time.

Finally, the project at Smith Cove is nearing completion and this change reallocates unused contingency to mitigate REIT reductions.

It does not impact delivery of that project.

The mayor's proposed budget also invests in city priorities through park district realignments.

This slide outlines our operating budget proposals and the next slide covers capital budget.

These are primarily funded with one-time capacity from a review of our community center project schedules.

The proposed budget almost doubles SPR's recreation scholarship program in 2027 and 2028, recognizing the demand far exceeds available funding.

In 2025, the program exceeded its budget by about 20%, allowing it to serve approximately 1,800 recipients, leveraging some vacancy savings.

and in 2026, you all supported an additional $200,000 through our supplemental budget process.

The proposed $400,000 per year increase is supported by planned O&M that is not needed for new facilities coming online.

The other proposed use of this one time capacity is to support our aquatics line of business.

Recognizing our pools continue to experience financial challenges, this proposal continues $1.6 million in revenue subsidy in 2027 and 2028 to ensure services are not impacted.

That said, I'd like to clarify that our aquatics line of business is still responsible for generating over $6 million of earned revenue and SPR has identified this as a key program to review as part of our park district mid-cycle report to better understand the operational and financial issues.

We are also proposing three ongoing reallocations totaling $1.3 million.

For the Federal Conservation Corps, we are proposing to reprioritize non-labor baseline funding to add two new HR positions to support the program and the team.

Activities that they would be performing range from participant selection, readiness, to identify and offer enhanced services such as onboarding, training, and performance management.

Late Night at High Point.

The proposed budget sustains the 2026 council budget ad supporting late night at our High Point Community Center.

This ongoing change also increases FTE by two different positions to a total of 0.75 FTE and utilizes remaining funding reserve originally identified to address pay disparities in the recreation division I referenced earlier.

This brings a total number of locations with teen late-night programming to nine citywide.

As you know, the teen late-night program provides safe, enriching spaces for teens aged 13 to 19 to receive educational support, cultural activities, athletics, career readiness, and just to hang out with caring adults.

The proposed budget also repurposes $600,000 identified in cycle two of the Park District for a Youth Opportunity Fund that has not been fully implemented to pilot a high school community learning center in collaboration with Rainier Beach High School, as well as expand team programming at Rainier Beach Community Center.

This proposal includes funding for contracts to support these teen services and also invest in the teens, the staff serving in these programs citywide.

Now turning to the capital side, the realignment of debt service issuance and debt payment with updated project schedules creates about $16.5 million in one-time capacity in 2027 and 2028. The proposed budget utilizes these funds and about $600,000 of one-time King County Parks Levy funding to address several capital projects, bringing the total resources to about 17 million.

As I mentioned earlier, this is how SPR is proposing to replace $9.6 million of REIT revenues for the conversion of Magnuson Park Athletic Field 12 with Park District revenues.

This project converts a grass field to synthetic turf, including lighting and drainage improvements consistent with the Magnuson Park Master Plan.

The proposed budget also invests in two new park restrooms, one at Sherrill Chow Park, which was opened in April of 2025. And as part of that project, the utility connections were included in preparation for a future Portland Lua or similar prefabricated restroom.

The proposed budget invests $900,000 for this restroom.

The proposed budget also sets aside park district resources for a new restroom in Northeast Seattle.

In response to a park community fund proposal, SPR has been evaluating the gap in accessible restrooms in this area and this evaluation is under review and we anticipate identifying a site in early 2027. The project to restore the damaged electrical and mechanical systems at the Discovery Park Environmental Learning Center is currently in design for an in-kind system replacement and is on pace to start permitting before the end of the year.

The total project cost is estimated to be about 3.3 million.

While we explore decarbonization, the cost was more than double and would significantly impact other planned decarbonization projects referenced earlier.

A portion of this project is funded with REIT and SPR intends to fund the remainder of the project with one-time park district funds.

At Little Brook Park, the preferred design required additional permitting and has experienced longer project schedules resulting in a higher engineer's estimate.

To fully fund the project, SPR is proposing to increase the budget so we can move forward with bidding the project.

SPR is also proposing to make one-time investments to upgrade safety and security cameras that are inoperable or pass their useful life at 19 sites that currently have systems.

While this could align with a future investment for sites without cameras, as well as an ongoing program to ensure they stay operational, the proposal here relates to existing community center pools, teen centers, et cetera.

These systems primarily face entrances and internal spaces, supporting staff and managing the facilities.

Inoperable and age systems have been flagged as problematic, especially after incidents have occurred at Southwest Teen Center and Poole and recent events at Yasler and at Van Asselt.

The proposed budget also includes $700,000 in park district resources to support the ongoing design development for the Camp Long Lodge renovation project.

This investment positions SPR to determine with better cost certainty what this project will need and also considers a GCCM model while it approaches, or while this would fund us reaching 60% design.

This will keep the project moving forward while we're exploring funding options for the unfunded work, including grants, state appropriation, and future park district capital funding.

Finally, the mayor's proposed budget includes $570,000 to increase the scope of work for the West Magnolia Playfield playground renovation project to include inclusive play elements.

The first round of community engagement just began for this project and the current scope includes renovating the play area to meet modern safety and accessibility standards, replacing the equipment that has reached its 20 year life with new equipment for ages 2 to 12, new safety surfacing and site furnishings.

This project will also install new accessible ramp and sidewalk system connecting the community center to the play area, tennis courts, and future skate dot.

Construction will include surrounding lawn renovation and protective care for existing park trees.

The existing community art, including the Cairns Place blocks, will remain safely in place.

This slide provides the specific position changes in the proposed budget.

This includes the abrogation of five long-term vacant positions, none of which are currently represented titles.

The addition of four positions, three of which I've already referenced as it relates to our team proposal and the Conservation Corps, as well as creates a new installation maintenance position with our golf program supported by revenues from that fund.

And I think with that, unless Allie, you want to correct me or add to what I said, I will turn it over for questions.

Thank you.

No, no corrections.

I just really want to thank the parks department who I will say like it was a really strong partnership this year and trying to find ways to preserve services, help address the citywide general fund and reach challenges and make some really key investments in our parks facilities and teen programming and other investments that are proposed.

So thank you.

Thank you, Director Finnegan and Director Panucci.

I am going to turn this over to Council President Emeritus Juarez for first statements or questions since she's chair of the committee overseeing the department.

And if you need a minute, I can call on Council Member Lynn.

I'm good.

I'll be quick because I know we have a lot of time on this.

Thank you, Michelle.

Thank you, Ally.

I know you guys, I love working with you guys in parks and I know all the stuff that we've been up to.

I'll probably come back with some more specific questions that I may direct at Ally later and that is just the reduction in the unified care team and then the reduction in the graffiti non-labor reduction and the graffiti program.

So I'm just going to put those out there It's customer her what used to say put a pin in it and then we can come back to it and kind of dig a little bit deeper when we start, you know, making some changes here and there.

So I just want to put put that out there now.

Thank you so much Council President Martis.

Thank you.

Council member Lynn.

Thank you chair.

Thank you to our presenters, and there's a lot in here that I appreciate, including the late-night teen programming at Rainier Beach.

We've certainly heard a lot from that community, the dire need for safe places for teens to go after school, in the evenings, weekends.

and so very much needed.

Certainly also interested in exploring how to go even further.

I know we're in a tough budget environment but as part of the next Parks District Levy and there's been a lot of interest in finding additional teen centers and certainly Rainier Beach would love to have one if that's at all possible.

The question is for just where in the budget could you point to for parks like Homai or Jose Rizal, which are essentially unusable by families at the moment?

And I know this is a complicated issue.

I don't have easy solutions.

But just wondering, if you have any thoughts on how do we address those parks like that which are, you know, I think about we have a new restroom that's about to be open at Jose Rizal, much needed.

There's plans to do a new playground there and I think the, you know, community is a little bit concerned of we're gonna build this new playground for kids at Jose Rizal and nobody's gonna use it or at least families won't use it given the current conditions there.

Just any reflections or thoughts?

Lots of thoughts, yes.

Thank you.

Yeah, outside of the pin that Council Member Juarez put in about the UCT, I think the way we think about park Overall, the provision of park services is kind of a three-legged stool between maintenance, activation, and enforcement, and those areas are all maintaining their base levels of service, so it's not, unless I pointed it out today, it's not additive, but we do Many of you may recall we are just a couple years into having park rangers operating citywide, and that was a huge increase in this current park district.

I think that program is supporting our parks.

We have the unified care team with in partnership with SDOT and HSD that we're working collaboratively and building really strong relationships, as well as with the SPD.

We have the summer, we've had weekly summer of safety meetings.

We're talking about all these hotspot parks and all of that continues the base level of services.

The other piece with activation, the parks that you mentioned, now that we've gotten through implementing all of the 2020 six activations.

We're talking to those teams about what hotspots to be focused on for 2027. And our summer of safety plan with SPD actually goes through September 30th.

And so we're just starting to work on like after action reporting and what do we need to do to inform how we are operationalizing that program next year.

So that is very much top of mind for all of us.

Thank you.

And yeah, I appreciate you mentioning the summer safety.

It's just sort of a similar question.

Certainly had a lot of issues.

You know, in some of our waterfront parks and the boat launches, Stan Sayers, Atlantic Street, boat launch, where they become kind of party areas, and then unfortunately that can also not only, you know, very serious noise concerns for neighbors which go late into the night, but also can lead to gun violence and other sort of serious public safety issues.

And just wondering, how can we address through crime prevention, through environmental design, addressing these large open parking lots, if there's anything we can do to discourage that activity, whether it's through activation or other improvements, design improvements.

I don't know if you have any thoughts but that is certainly something that I would be looking forward in the budget is finding ways to both address that and then again whether it's through park rangers a better partnership with SPD or care team or our outreach folks it's just I think a little bit of a bitter pill for some of our neighborhoods to have basically unusable park spaces and communities that deserve it just as much as others and simply just do not have places for kids to go that are safe.

So anything we can do as part of this budget process to make sure that we have those for all neighborhoods would be my priority.

Anything further from parks for Council Member Lynn at this time?

No, just again, those are sites that we're talking about as part of the after action plan this year.

You know, I think we have some good strategies for Lake Washington Boulevard for after hours with gate locking and installing new gates and some of the noise complaints we were really getting there actually during operating hours.

And so we're trying to kind of develop new strategies during the year.

And I do want to thank the SPD partners for leaning into some of those sites and we'll continue to continue to improve as fast as we can.

Thank you.

I see Director Panucci, and then I'm going to follow up on Dr. Rizal Park before we go to Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you.

And I just wanted to point out the obvious, but also just that, like, I think your question really expands beyond what parks would lead on.

It's a multi-department, so I'd love to follow up or have someone follow up with you to talk sort of more about the broader strategy that I don't think either Michelle or I are the best folks to sort of present the whole system on.

So we will follow up.

Thank you.

I'm gonna just jump in here on Dr. Rizal-Park.

Can you tell me when this new playground is going to be built?

I don't have that on the top of my

Is it like this year, next year, 10 years from now?

Sorry.

I believe it's next year.

The bathroom's supposed to be opening imminently, and then the plans are in place to, I think, next year was for the playground.

It's part of that Elevate project that we came and talked about with RCO funding, but I'm sorry.

It's imminent to that point.

You're totally fine.

This is not a pop quiz to get people in.

as I'm reflecting on the issues that you're experiencing Councilmember Lin and the fact that we are fixing the restrooms and that we're putting in a children's playground it makes me wonder out loud what other deferred maintenance there is in the park I know when we had this same challenge at the Ballard Commons Park that went on for 15 years well before I was elected it was it was important that we took a moment to close the park, redo all of the deferred maintenance that had occurred over those 15 years, install the children's playground and fix the bathrooms all at once rather than piecemealing it together.

might suggest out loud for that to be considered because for a park that is experiencing these types of issues, it is important that you not only rehab the park, you improve the park, but you also take the time to reset the activity that it's occurring in there.

So- Thank you.

Yeah.

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Interim Director Finnegan for being here along with Ms. Williams.

Really appreciate the briefing.

I just want to start with thank yous and this is partly for parks but also Parks Foundation and the whole ecosystem if you will.

I really appreciate the work that was done in Westlake Park, and again in partnership and so forth, Elliott Bay Connections with Centennial, Myrtle Edwards Park, and then generally the waterfront piece as well, which is clearly also a combination with Seattle Center slash SEDOT, I mean, it takes a village in that case, for all that work.

I also have been down to Smith Cove, where I was watching as things progress, and I'm looking forward to being there when that phase one, you know, the Bioswale and the dog park and so forth are set.

Looking forward to that and so thank you.

Really important too, Big Howe Park in its entirety and separately with the reno at Queen Anne Community Center and unfortunately the fix that's needed for Queen Anne Pool.

Obviously this is a one-off unique situation but something that needs to be done.

Coming down into my district, Portal Park, the people in Belltown, I appreciate the continued steps to finally create a green space in Belltown, which is so important.

And for my First Hill constituents, which I partnered with Council President on, Freeway Park, to improve those pieces as well.

And given the fact that I share Magnolia with my chair here.

Wes, I support Wes Magnolia-Playfield as well because really, that field is not just serving Magnolia, it is serving Inner Bay, Queen Anne, and areas beyond that as well.

So thank you for that.

I'm gonna be obviously working on all those with your team and as part of the budget process.

Separately, just kind of shifting to parks and public safety, to Parks Chair Juarez's point about UCT and graffiti.

I know she's but a pin on it, but here's my thumb and I'm, putting some extra pressure on it because it's needed.

It's so needed.

And when we talk about parks public safety challenges to Council Member Lynn, I say, well, we have a strategic framework plan.

We need to implement it.

And so these pieces are all interconnected.

And I would say the goal, like for SBD staffing, it's never been 1250. It's been 14 plus.

And if you go from a comp plan perspective, it's like 1800. and so that goes to my consideration because everything else falls from that, as you know, all my colleagues know.

So we'll continue to do that because, you know, I have my own issues.

I mentioned Freeway Park.

Freeway Park has a lot of public safety challenges.

And then on the other end of a different kind of sort, Cary Park has its pieces too.

So we'll continue that.

And the park ranges are very important.

Thank you for their work.

I think park range is probably an area that it's probably due for kind of like a check-in review.

at some point, maybe over the course of 27. And thank you for the update on the cameras as well.

But overall, again, appreciate the work that parks do, particularly in the maintenance piece.

They're coming around all the time.

There was a lady that helped out community on Cary Park.

I don't know her name.

If I knew the name, I would say please pass a thank you.

But it's individuals like that in the Parks Department that make such a big difference.

So thank you for your presentation.

Council Member Kettle, director, either director.

Thank you.

I just wanted to, I know we put a pin or a thumb in it, but I just want to clarify on the reduction to the unified care team funding in the parks department.

It is eliminating or removing long-term vacant positions, two are administrative support positions and one is a halftime strategic advisor.

they've been vacant that is not impacting current levels of services.

And this is areas where one, we are aligning budget to what they have been actually spending in current levels of service and expansions that are difficult to sustain in this current budget.

So I just wanted to clarify what the specific roles were.

I know that just for the viewing public.

Chair?

The only thing I would add is I referenced earlier that we're doing our mid-cycle reporting internally right now, developing that report that will come to you wearing your park district hats next year and the Ranger program because it is expanded in this cycle and city-wide in this cycle is one of the programs that we're kind of diving in more deeply to as well.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle, anything else?

Thank you, Chair.

I was just gonna note the challenges, current levels of service, particularly like related to the UCT, as we see on our streets is not sufficient.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Council Member Foster, followed by Council President Hollingsworth and Council Member Sokka.

Thank you so much, Chair, and thank you to the Parks Department for your fantastic presentation.

I want to see if you can return, I believe it's slide 19, where we have the overview of the admissions tax resources.

I just wanted to, let me see if I got the slide right, wait for you to catch up there.

There we go, there we go, thank you so much.

I just wanted to clarify, are these the only ongoing allocations of add tax to the Parks Department, or do these represent a subset?

These are the only ones.

Okay.

Thank you.

That's really helpful.

And then I also wanted to turn to restrooms as well.

One of my favorite things to get to talk about on the dais here.

So I really appreciated hearing the, in the mayor's budget, the attention given to this issue.

And I just wanted to seek a little bit of clarification.

I know there was the recent report that the auditor did provided for the city in terms of the sort of status of our existing parks restrooms.

So I know in the mayor's budget, we have the proposal for the expansion and the new restrooms using the, it's not the loo, what's the right word?

The Portland loo.

The Portland loo, okay.

Okay, well, I'll get the right word here eventually.

And I think those are fantastic.

I just wanted to also clarify, I believe there's also resources here for maintenance and care of our existing parks restroom facilities.

And I'm curious if you can share how that investment compares to what was in the auditor's report in terms of how close this gets us to what we need to do to make sure our existing restrooms are open, operable, and meet the level of cleanliness that we want for all of our residents.

Pacific crosswalk to the audit report, I'll probably put it on my notes and get back to you.

A pen or a thumb?

Well, I'll put it on my list to get back to you on, but this is additive to our ongoing restroom renovation program.

that does full renovations of our restrooms, replacements where they're needed.

We also have regular maintenance teams.

We also have the recent participatory budgeting increment that's helping us staff at Cal Anderson and at Freeway Park this summer.

So there's a lot of levels of restroom maintenance because we do understand the importance of that, but we can get you more specifics on the audit.

We have some internal training and procedure development to make sure that we're meeting our own frequency and types of cleans and have purchased new equipment to make that more positive, I guess, for lack of a better word.

So we can get you more on the audit stuff specifically.

Yeah, thank you.

I think it's really important.

I'm so excited again to have the expansion and access.

And I know that as we do that expansion, we also want to make sure that we're keeping up with the maintenance of what we have so that those are open and available, um, and that people can use them and they work well.

So thank you for that.

And then, um, you actually said the final thing that I wanted to bring up was just freeway park and you, uh, you mentioned the participatory budgeting.

It's my understanding that right now we've got the, some resources that are allocated to care of that park that are coming from a delay in those resources being used from another park location, but that once that other park location is up and running, Freeway Park will no longer have that access.

I just wanted to make sure I haven't had a chance to dig in yet.

Is that still the status here in terms of, I believe it was the park ranger that was coming to Freeway Park in the interim period?

It's actually the Seattle Conservation Corps.

They're doing our restroom staffing program.

So when we originally did participatory budgeting, the two sites that we said would be our priority were Cal Anderson and the soon-to-be-developed restroom at Henghei Park.

And our current timeline in partnership with Skipta for that site is probably late breaking news later in 2027. So we are looking and we'll be talking with the Freeway Park Association about how to partner with them for events next year at Freeway Park to continue covering restroom staffing there within what we think we would have for flexibility before the Hing Hei Park project opens.

Thank you for that and appreciate the news.

It's sad to hear the Hing Hei delay.

I know it's been a long time coming, but appreciate the ongoing work to get to get that online and to continue to support Freeway in the interim.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Anything further from the table?

All right.

We will move right along to Council President Holingsworth.

Council President Holingsworth.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And I will be, I'll be quick.

because this has probably put a pin in it.

Thank you, Parks, for your presentation and CBO for being here.

One of my questions, and this has been like for the last couple years, is when we're making budget decisions on sustainable fields, what we're replacing, how we're moving projects through the process, are they being delayed or whatever, if we look at the impact on the additional revenue that sustainable fields bring in with the lights and the fields and also the safety component, you know, that brings safety to the neighborhood because they're being used.

So anyways, that's one thing that I'll follow up with you all, because I think that's really a big decision maker.

If you see, I'm sure, if there were certain, when Council Member Lynn is talking about

design, what's the thing you said?

Great, thank you.

Thank you.

Designing to curb violence and all that good stuff.

That's exactly what I'm talking about.

So I'll follow up on that piece.

The other thing is was it even considered, and I don't know, I know when we did the audit for restrooms, District 1 was at the bottom of the list for not, in comparison with other places in the city that did not meet the amount of restrooms there was a big disparity.

So when we're looking at expansion, I don't know if that was even considered District 1. I think we approved a bathroom last year.

Okay, but still, just thinking about that piece.

So that's my second question, which we can follow up offline.

We don't have to talk about here, which is great.

And then last but not least, and I really appreciate Council Member Foster's comments regarding making sure that the maintenance for residents as well.

I also think there needs to be some type of accountability measures in the sense where we're educating people about...

Look, we had people blow up bathroom toilets down in Madrona, you know, with bombs and fireworks.

that is just unacceptable.

And I know it's not Park's fault at all.

But just thinking about things in which we can show people this is your neighborhood, how do we respect this?

I'm very grateful for the people that are at Cal Anderson that are doing that work and cleaning up after people.

But they also have to clean up after grown adults for things where I'm like, hey, how can we figure out how we're cleaning up after ourselves and we're not just putting it on the park staff that constantly have to do this.

So anyways, there's a little bit of, you know, maintenance costs and then also are we thinking about how we can better connect the neighborhood to know that this is your city too as well as the mayor talks about that this is, we have to all take care of it.

So anyways, no answer needed.

I will follow up offline, but I just wanted to make those general comments.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council President.

Anything the committee table would like to share at this time?

All right.

Council Member Sacco.

Thank you, Chair.

First off, I want to thank Interim Superintendent Finnegan and everyone at the table, frankly, for being here and all the work that went behind putting together this package.

Now the ball's in our court.

Some things that I'm delighted to see here in the parks budget side, the high point, late-night teen programming.

And especially want to thank Mayor Wilson for her leadership and bringing that to life, because that was an item that we added, and my office sponsored.

We added last year during budget.

It was a one-time thing.

She made it permanent.

Really appreciate that.

Also, the Camp Long Lodge planning investment, some of the other campus upgrades for turf in general.

We'll talk about that in a moment.

Lighting, play areas, spray parks within South Park, the South Park campus in particular.

And then some of the broader access for certain programming as it relates to aquatics.

I'm thinking about the aquatic subsidies that I would hope help protect Southwest Pool hours and fees while also expanding recreational scholarships.

Cool stuff.

On the initial impressions with respect to concerns side of things, the turf reductions of 7.1 million which was removed from replacements and then 14.7 million dollars that was removed from the sort of net new name conversion projects.

I'll plus one onto some of the things expressed by some of my colleagues and some of which we may or may not be pushing pins in or not, I don't know, but the graffiti abatement reductions and UCT capacity, I'm concerned about the impacts, the mounting impacts that we're likely to see on the maintenance pressures, specifically as it relates to potential increases in visible maintenance issues in D1.

I want to thank Councilmember Foster and Council President Hollingsworth for talking extensively about the importance of our parks' restrooms and Thank you, CP, for acknowledging what the significant disparities, because we're only one of seven council districts, but we seem to account for roughly 40 to 45 percent of the significant problem as it relates to vandalism, graffiti, that kind of thing.

So, plus one on all those comments.

I'll try to add a new dimension on the turf.

Thank you again, Council President, for calling out the importance of these projects.

I want to thank you guys for submitting that sly response earlier this month.

I read it.

It's not just...

someone isn't just writing these somewhere and goes off to an ether.

I actually read them, so thank you.

It was good to see, as an aside, that of the projects we asked you all to study, the best candidate that you chose, in terms of readiness right now, was Riverview Playfield in West Seattle.

So that was cool.

But anyway, I am concerned about the proposed removal of $7.1 million from turf replacements and 14.7 million from new turf projects.

Will parks commit to making, because it sounds like there's cycle three parks district planning going on right now.

Will parks commit to making cycle three a major athletic field investment package that first restores these deferred projects that I mentioned and then funds a substantial geographically balanced pipeline of additional turf conversions across Seattle, including some of those candidates listed in that SLI report from earlier this month.

Will you commit to that for cycle three?

So I just want to clarify one thing is that this proposed budget does reduced REIT for park conversions by the 14 million you referenced, but 9.6 of it we replaced with the park district as a one-time revenue.

So the one conversion project that is currently impacted and we are looking at figuring out a way to fund is the West Magnolia project.

Before committing to a geographic approach, we are working with our partners at the school district on the next joint athletic development proposal.

So I would like to explore that more before committing at this moment and be more informed in that.

But obviously you and your colleagues as the park district board will have a lot to say about where those resources go.

Thank you.

Would like to see a substantial, so I'll underscore, the inference should have been sufficiently clear there in my question, but I would love to see a substantial athletic field, turf field conversion package and any executive proposed renewal of that for the next cycle.

You know, starting first with that roadmap that I offered, the deferred projects, the projects in last year's SLI that you guys did a great job of reporting on and anything else.

So that is all for now.

Appreciate the work.

Look forward to learning more and continue the conversation.

Thank you.

Thank you again.

Thank you, Council Member Sokka.

Anything to add there?

Nope.

All right.

Colleagues, any additional questions?

I'll be brief with mine.

Thank you all for going before me, because you asked a lot of my own questions.

I am looking at our...

Are we on seven-year look back right now?

Eight?

Yeah, going back to 2019. So using the seven-year look back, it has flagged a couple things for me.

We keep talking about Seattle Conservation Corps.

Seattle Conservation Corps is one of the most unknown and impactful programs that we have in our city that helps people who are formerly homeless they don't provide it but they help them get housing and then do work and then get jobs.

It's amazing.

Glad to hear that we are making some of those additional HR changes.

I think that will probably help in all of that work.

I do see here on our seven year look back under Seattle Conservation Corps that it was zeroed out in the operating budget.

Is this because it was put into the parks district fund, or how did this happen?

Because I'm seeing both, and if this is something where we need to go offline, I'm just flagging it right now.

I haven't looked at the seven year look back, but there is a lot of funding from the park district.

It's a lot of earned revenue that funds it through actual capital program overhead, and then there is some CDBG funds and such.

So it is a multi-funded thing, but we can get you a breakdown of where it currently resides.

Thanks, and I might update this number when we come back from lunch, just showing in 2019, the Parks Department had $238 million in budget, and today they have $363 million, which is a 52%, 52.7% increase over the last seven years.

And we've got a world award-winning park system here in Seattle.

Want to get into, it is noted that we provide funding to the zoo and aquarium that are both fee-based, ticketed places.

Can you expand on what are our current funding levels for both of those?

Or if you just need to focus on the zoo, that's fine.

I'd have to find the exact numbers unless...

Let's come back to it so we don't...

Both of those are to support major maintenance at those locations as they are parks-owned facilities.

So that's what we fund there.

Thank you.

And you noted, and colleagues, I want to share with you the importance of something that Director Finnegan said.

You are starting to use a GCCM model.

Can you explain what that acronym, what those letters mean?

If not, I'll explain.

That's one acronym.

I didn't write down in my notes today.

Don't worry.

Properly trained by Jessica Murphy, but it does allow us to bring the folks that will be constructing a project in earlier and therefore we can get better cost estimates rather than our typical design, build, bid project or design, bid, build project.

So we are getting some great, actually at the Green Lake Evans Pool project, we are learning a lot from that model and we're seeing a lot of great results and are looking to potentially do that with Camp Long.

and our other DCARB projects they're already in line with.

Other departments have used it and we haven't until cycle two and we're getting some really good results.

Thank you.

Yeah, I highlight this because as I said that there were additional efficiencies that we can still find in government.

This GCCM model has demonstrated efficiencies as we are working on the Green Lake Community Center as compared to the old model of doing business.

And so I congratulate you.

Let's expand this.

Let's continue.

I will follow up about the Magnolia play fields.

We don't need to right now.

Can you just remind the viewing public, all 3,000 people watching on Seattle Channel right now, when does the next parks district funding cycle come to council?

2028 for 2029 implementation.

That's wonderful.

And Director Whitson, do I see you

Just briefly, GCCM means general contractor, construction manager, and basically the idea is that you bring the people who will be doing the contracting work in during the design phase of a project so that they can identify any problems as they are building the project.

Thank you.

I'll mention and then we should follow up later.

It's not my district, Southlake Union Park.

I got to go down there for the Sister Cities event just the other day.

The Sister Cities signpost, which is an internationally known place now, feels like it's left in the middle of nowhere.

and I say that because there's probably an acre's worth of pea gravel.

There is, I would say, an under-managed, what looks like a bioswale or a retention pond of some sort, but it's a little...

underutilized.

And I know that last year we had put in funding, especially to help the John Pearson Memorial.

He was a rocket scientist, but I don't think it takes a rocket scientist to get a memorial, just money.

So I'll be following up to check and to see the status of all of those projects.

Because I do know that we were able to provide $800,000 to prep the park ahead of World Cup.

and a lot of the grass issues that we had identified were addressed, but these other aspects seemed to be unaddressed at this time.

So unless you've got stuff now, I'll follow up with you afterwards.

I'll just say that there is a design charrette event in October that some of our team is going to with community on that part of the park in the John Pearson project.

There's a design charrette that they're hosting in October, but we can get you more information for sure.

We could design for years to come.

I guess I'm checking in on outcomes and when our deliverables hit in the ground.

Thank you, colleagues.

Council President Emeritus Juarez as chair of the committee overseeing this department.

Do you have any final words?

No, I just want to say keep up the good work.

Put a pin in it.

We'll loop back around.

Thank you, Ally.

This is my last budget with you for sure, for good this time.

Thank you, Michelle.

You've been wonderful working with all through the last 16, 17 months that I got back.

So I'm looking forward to doing the budget.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Council President Emeritus.

Colleagues, we are going to take a lunch break now, a little bit later than expected.

We will come back Good Lord, doing math.

Come back at 1.35.

I don't know how many minutes that is, but it's from now.

So if there's no objection, the Select Budget Committee meeting will be in recess until 1.35 p.m., which time we'll start with Seattle Center, followed by Arts and Culture.

Hearing no objection, the Select Budget Committee is in recess until 1.35.

We will resume promptly.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.