Select Budget Committee Public Hearing 11/15/22

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, good evening, everyone.

Thank you again for joining the select budget committee meeting.

This is a meeting solely dedicated to public hearing for members of the public both online and in person.

The time is 5.01 p.m.

and the date is November 15th, 2022.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Peterson.

Present.

Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Herbold.

Council President Juarez.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Six present.

Thank you so much.

And I do know that I saw Council Member Strauss on the floor, so I'm sure he's on his way out here.

And as other Council Members join us, we'll make sure to announce them.

public comment.

Councilmember Sawant is here for the record as well.

Okay, folks, currently we have about 120 people signed up for public comment online and my records indicate about 30 people in person.

We are going to get through everyone tonight just like we did in the last two public hearings.

We will also As folks know, yesterday, the release of the initial balancing package was posted online and shared at about 930 a.m.

with members of the community, members of the press, and then we had an opportunity to walk through that proposed balancing package.

I am going to encourage everybody to, if they can, We're going to go ahead and get started.

So if it says reduce funding for, it's often that there's still possibly funding in another line of revenue or just a reduced amount.

So I don't want folks to necessarily think that there's reductions made to the underlying bill if there was things that are of concern to you.

And also there's just a lot more context to go with some of those amendments.

we're going to have a Q&A session at the end of the meeting and we're going to have a Q&A session at the end of the meeting.

If you have any questions, of course, we're here to help answer those questions and provide a little bit more context to what is included besides dollar amount, if there's policy direction, things like that, that we're adding, it will be in there.

Wednesday November 16th at noon and then we will have a public hearing on Monday November 21st at 9 30 a.m to to hear more about those amendments and throughout the rest of that day we will be voting throughout the day to make amendments with the final vote taking place the week following we would have a public comment session on Monday, the 28th.

We would then have a committee meeting at 930 in the morning.

That does not have the opportunity for public comment like next Monday does because that meeting is more technical in nature.

So at the end of next Monday's meeting, the series of amendments that we will vote on actually form the full package.

So that's the day to weigh in final vote will take place on Tuesday, November 28th at 2 p.m.

There will of course be opportunity for public comment as our good president will be stewarding that meeting for the final vote and there's always public comment at 2 p.m.

on Tuesdays.

I really appreciate all the feedback that we've received throughout the last eight weeks.

Just to put into context as well, we had to delay a week because of the declined revenue forecast, $64 million reduction again in the real estate excise tax, $9.4 million reduction in general fund.

and $4.5 million reduction in sugary sweetened beverage tax, which funds things like food assistance.

So if you tuned in or saw any of the coverage yesterday, we tried to shift some items around to make sure to prevent austerity and prevent cuts.

For example, making sure that the full funding for the $1.2 million that was otherwise gonna be a reduction to food security programs, that that received funding.

And we did that by reducing some of the administrative costs from the Jump Start Progressive Payroll Tax.

because it's such a huge priority.

Looking forward to hearing more about what you all have to say and please do reach out to council members as well if you're interested in amendments to the proposed budget.

You can always submit comments to the entire council at council at Seattle.gov.

And as folks know, there was the opportunity to sign up for public comment online and in person.

Given the hybrid nature of this meeting, I'm going to be putting back my mask on after I make these opening comments and encourage folks as well to be masked up in the room.

There's some masks at the podiums up here and outside.

Thanks to Freddy de Cuevas and the clerk's team for helping to make sure folks could get signed in.

I want to just make sure that we run through the run of shows.

Madam Clerk, instead of running the video today, I just want to let folks know we're going to take 10 people at a time, 10 people online, 10 people in person, 10 people online, 10 people in person.

Everybody will have a full minute to speak.

You'll hear a chime, ding.

When you have 10 seconds to wrap it up, please do wrap it up because your microphone, both online or in person, does conclude at the end of that minute.

And we want to make sure to hear from the full 150 plus people who've signed up for public comment tonight.

So when you hear the chime for folks online that you have been unmuted, That is your indication that you need to hit star six to unmute your line.

Double check that your phone is also not on mute.

And then go ahead and launch right in because we'll have called your name.

We want to make sure to get as much of your public comment as possible.

When you're done testifying, please do hang up and dial in on the listen in lines or continue watching on Seattle Channel.

Thanks for broadcasting the Seattle Channel.

For folks in the room, the same is true.

We're going to call 10 people up to the podium.

I think we'll call one at a time, just for the sake of COVID, to make sure that people aren't lining up behind the podium.

But do note that we will try to let you know where we're at.

When you signed in, you probably saw what number you were signed in as.

So currently, again, I have 30 people in the room signed up for public comment.

You'll have a minute to speak, and we'll have a little clock on the screen here.

You'll hear a chime, ding, at 10 seconds when you need to wrap it up.

and then anything else that you didn't get a chance to say, we have notecards, right, Madam Clerk?

I believe we have some notecards.

We can get some.

I'll ask to get some.

Yes, the public comment notecards.

Yeah, we do.

Okay, we have extra notecards as well in case you don't want to speak but you want to write something or if you didn't get to say something, you can drop it off and we'll make sure to distribute those to the council members as well.

And again, please do let us know if you didn't get through all of your comments by emailing at council at seattle.gov or any of our individual council offices.

with that, Madam Clerk, we are going to open up the public comment and go to the first 10 people that are signed up online, and then we'll go to the next 10 people in the room.

And I will just turn it right over to our clerk's team to walk us through that, and I'll put back on my mask.

Thank you again for your feedback tonight, folks.

Thank you.

Our first three remote speakers will be Jody Nathan, Allison Isinger, and Castille Hightower.

And we're going to start with Jody Nathan.

And a reminder just to be sure and hit star six when you hear the message that you've been unmuted.

Just checking with our IT team.

I don't see the folks teed up yet.

So we might need just a second.

Is that right?

There we go.

Hey, Jody, sorry for the delay.

Good evening.

Can you hear me now?

I can, yes.

Hi, I'm Jody Nathan.

I live in District Two and I'm here to express my support for the solidarity budget, ask you to say no to shop slaughter and eliminate all ghost cop positions.

It is just not enough to get rid of only 80 unfunded police positions, particularly given the huge deficit the city faces.

Keeping 120 ghost cops in the budget, thereby giving the Seattle Police Department over $14 million for positions that they have no plan or ability to fill is fiscally irresponsible.

Is every dollar going to SPD is one less dollar for food, housing, ending pedestrian deaths, and the things that actually make our community safer.

I also think supporting ShotSpotter is a foolish million dollar investment that literally does nothing to enhance community safety.

It's been shown to be useless 90% of the time, has proven to be dangerous in other cities, and I really like to think that most Seattleites are smart enough not to be fooled by the rhetoric that ShotSpotter going to curb violence and create safety.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alice Lockhart, who will be followed by, I'm sorry, it's Alison Isinger, who will be followed by Castille Hightower.

Alison.

Thank you.

Good evening, council members.

Alison Isinger on behalf of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, here to offer hearty appreciation to budget chair Mosqueda, council members Herbold, Morales, Lewis, for sponsoring and Council Member Sawantin Juarez for signing on to and understanding the vital importance of adjusting human services contracts for inflation.

I want to thank you also for keeping dozens of people home for good.

We're urging support of Council Member Mosqueda's technical amendment to allow funds that are already allocated for this important program to be carried forward to serve the people who need the assistance.

I want to just also add that we are here to urge you all to support the amendment to use short term rental transportation network and jumpstart Seattle revenues only for this biennium and only in the ways directed.

And I'll send the rest of my comments on email.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Castille Hightower who will be followed by Marsha Wright-Soyka.

Castille.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Firstly, I want to thank Council Member Mosqueda for introducing Budget Amendment SPD-101A, as well as Council Member Herbold and Morales for meeting with us to begin the process of the city acknowledging, addressing, and being accountable for the generational harms created by police violence in the form of resources directly to victims and their families during one of the most traumatic times of our lives.

As someone who has lost a loved one to police violence, my brother, Herbert Hightower Jr., I know firsthand the continued harms we suffer at the hands of city employees, Seattle police officers, and the harms of city policies, which are exacerbated by the failings of its accountability system, as well as hostile and often re-traumatizing bureaucracies.

This step is of utmost urgency given the continued killings and violence by Seattle police that feel as if they have no end.

Again, thank you to council members Mosqueda, Morales, and Herbold.

It is my hope that all nine Seattle City Council members see the importance of this amendment and offer strong public support to ensure it becomes a part of the final budget in the coming weeks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Marsha Wright-Soyka, who will be followed by Sarah Robbins.

Marsha.

Thank you.

Hi, I'm Marsha Wright-Soyka, Executive Director of Family Works and District 4. I would like to urge Council to maintain HSC 1B1, 2A2, and 12B1.

I would like to thank Councilmembers Mosqueda, Herbold, and Strauss for their leadership on preserving the Inflation Adjustment for Human Services, as well as emergency food funding.

FamilyWorks works hard to provide food and family services to thousands each year.

At the same time, our resources to do the essential work of caring for others have not kept pace with increasing costs.

Our staff is already making tough choices each day to find affordable child care, pay their rent, and travel from far locations to serve its residents.

Without the inflation adjustment, the choices become impossible.

An exercise in spinning plates where an already maxed dollar needs to cover increased rent, food, fuel, and more.

For our food bank in District 4, we have seen a 100% increase in the number of households we've served over the last year and have doubled spending on food to barely keep up.

We must do better and these amendments are huge steps in the right direction.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker, I believe is, was that Sarah?

Our next speaker is Sarah.

Our next speaker is Sarah Robbins will be followed by Jesse Simpson.

Sarah.

Good evening, Chair Mosqueda and members of the council.

My name is Sarah Robbins and I'm the Senior Policy Manager at the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness and a resident of District 2. For my testimony today, I want to focus on thank yous for this balancing package.

First, I want to thank Chair Mosqueda for making essential homeless, housing, and human service workers a priority and including the 7.6% inflation increase in the budget as required by law.

I also want to thank the co-sponsors and signers, Council Member Herbold, Morales, Sawant, Council President Juarez, and Lewis.

I also want to thank Council Member Morales for the $3.9 million to maintain homeless services.

And lastly, thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for offering technical amendments that will allow funds already allocated for the Home for Good program to be carried forward to serve people who need assistance.

I helped create this program in 2018 while working as a public benefits attorney, saw disabled adults losing their housing and becoming homeless.

This program is critical and lifesaving.

Thank you our next speaker is Jesse Simpson who will be followed by Laurel Redden, Jesse.

Hi, I'm Jesse Simpson, Government Relations and Policy Manager at the Housing Development Consortium.

First, I'd like to thank you for the record $253 million investment of affordable homes made through this balancing package, as well as the salary adjustment for human service providers to keep up with inflation.

The need for affordable housing funding is still substantial, but I applaud this council for making real progress on this pressing need.

These investments were only made possible through Jump Start Seattle.

I know that the council faced a tough budget year this year with substantial projected deficits.

Given that Jumpstart is projected to raise revenue above what was originally estimated, I support Council Member Muscato's balancing package and its use of excess Jumpstart revenue to temporarily address the budget shortfall over the next two years, so to avoid austerity in continued core city services.

However, I ask that Council remain true to the promise of Jumpstart's affordable housing investment and explore new progressive revenue options to meet the projected long-term general fund deficit.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Laurel Redden, who will be followed by Steve Daschle.

Laurel.

Yes.

Hi.

Good evening, council members, and thank you.

I'm Laurel Redden.

I'm the director of communications and policy with the King County Sexual Assault Resource Center.

I just want to say thank you to the council for supporting the full inflation adjustment for human service workers.

That is critical and we appreciate it.

At the same time, I'm here to urge the council to do everything in its power to add funding back into the final budget for gender-based violence survivors.

Even $750,000 a year would help ensure ongoing services to our area's most marginalized survivors.

We are just one organization experiencing big increases in demand for service.

We have experienced a 23% increase in demand in just the last five years.

And last year we served over 5,000 survivors and family members for the first time ever.

We are struggling to keep things moving, and I know that we are not alone among gender-based violence providers.

We have heard reports that moving the parking enforcement back under SPD would save money that could well fund gender-based violence services.

We hope you'll continue to deploy all creative means to ensure that this item is funded.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Steve Daschle, and our last speaker for the remote group will be Alice Lockhart.

Steve, go ahead first.

Good evening council members.

My name is Steve Daschle.

I'm the executive director of Southwest Youth and Family Services and co-chair of the Seattle Human Services Coalition.

I'm here this evening to thank you for your support of our recommendations to fully fund the central holistic human services our organizations provide.

We are grateful for the enthusiastic support many of you have expressed as you have sponsored the amendments to Mayor Harrell's budget that are necessary for us to continue to be able to serve your constituents all over Seattle.

I want to reiterate that every recommendation in our packet is essential.

Our communities are still reeling from the impact of COVID and historic inflation increases.

It is paramount that current successful community health and human services funding is sustained with true inflation adjustments so that the necessary services our organizations provide are sustained.

Your work to retain the CPI-based adjustment is greatly appreciated.

Over the next year, we look forward to continuing working with you to address wage equity We thank you for your continued support in this.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last speaker for the remote group is Alice Lockhart.

Alice, you may need to press star six.

Okay, we will skip Alice and try her again later.

Our last speaker for this group will be Camille Baldwin-Bonnie.

Camille?

Good evening, council members.

My name is Camille and I'm a longtime resident of Seattle.

I'm a member of People Power Washington and the co-chair of People Power Seattle Committee.

My oldest sons attend Ingram high school and my younger son will start next year.

I am incredibly inspired and proud of my beautiful children who marched at City Hall yesterday.

And in Op-Ed, members Peterson and Nelson rely on fear-mongering and tough on crime rhetoric that is responsible for the defunding of housing, defunding health and human services, defunding of community-led initiatives and violence interruption programs, and the defunding of mental health.

No, Sarah Nelson, ShotSpotter will not save lives.

If we pay for shot spotter and see these results of communities destroyed through racial profiling, false arrests, and if one of these false arrests leads to the death of one of our South Seattle residents, like it did for 13-year-old Adam Toledo in Chicago, will you take responsibility?

But despite this dangerous rhetoric, I am hopeful.

Councilmember Mosqueda's balanced budget packet does not allocate funding

Thank you.

We're going to now move into the in-person speakers, and our first two speakers that are signed up in chambers today are, I'm sorry, my vision's not very good, Victor Beach, or Victoria Beach, followed by Kendra Morgan.

Hi, I'm Victoria Beach, and most of you know that I chair the African American Community Advisory Council, which none of you except Sarah has ever cared to show up.

I'm four-shot spotter.

Lisa Herbold put out false information.

You guys should have educated yourself.

I've had two meetings.

Actually, there were three.

None of you showed up.

You didn't do your homework.

I'm tired of my young black, men and women dying.

You're not doing anything.

You're throwing out money to all these agencies that are not held accountable.

We don't know where the money's gone.

Try something.

It didn't have to be permanent.

You could have tried it at, I'm for my black community.

None of you are with any of the weeping mothers and fathers.

I've sat with them.

I've heard them.

I want the violence to touch, to stop.

I think all these seats except you, Sarah, it's a waste of space.

You don't work with all the community.

You have divided the black community and shame on you.

And remember, your seats are up soon, and I'm gonna fight.

Thank you.

Our next in-person speaker is Kendra Morgan, who will be followed by speaker number three, Rick Robertson.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Kendra Morgan and I'm a participant of Share Wheel.

We are an organization built by homeless people and formerly homeless people.

We strongly oppose of funding or any increased funding of sweeps.

Sweeps kill and cannot be morally supported.

Instead, fund low barrier shelters, create tiny homes, villages and create indoor and outdoor shelters.

We currently do not have enough beds in our shelters to house everyone.

So why aren't we focused on that issue?

Offer safety and hope to those who are most vulnerable.

Stop fighting homeless people and start fighting poverty.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Rick Robertson and Rick will be followed by speaker number four, the Reverend Harriet Walden.

I'm going to turn it over to Rick Robertson.

I would like to speak about the perception of homelessness.

Homelessness is too often seen as only the ratty tent sitting on the street corner with the occupant to match.

What you don't see is the single mother of two working two jobs whose rent has gone up six times in the last two years and now all three are living in their car.

You don't see the hundreds of people displaced by the pandemic who are still struggling to get their lives back.

You don't see the tens of thousands of people of all ages, all backgrounds, all tax brackets who are struggling week to week, paycheck to paycheck because costs have increased so much.

Too many of these people are one setback away from being homeless themselves.

Please, more affordable housing.

Thank you, our next speaker is the Reverend Harriet Walden, who will be followed by Tiffany McCoy.

Good evening, thank you.

My name is Reverend Walden, and I'm with Mother's Police Accountability.

We're here for the support as a spot shot of all the information that people are saying is rhetoric and it's not true.

Shame on Council Member Herbold, when she sent out her email, she put all the stats in there, it was not true.

New York City has gone through the process and it is currently in New York City, Oakland, California, Houston, Texas, Detroit, and next is going to be Oregon, Portland, Oregon.

So a lot of the things is not true.

Also, we have surveys and we surveyed by African Americans and they're tired of living in a violent community, but you all don't care.

You don't want to change.

This is really all bogus.

If the police had killed 40 people, everybody would be saying black lives matter.

But since this is violence in the black community and how we handle what's happening, you all do not care.

And next year might be a different reality for you all.

And also no changes in Lake Washington Boulevard.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tiffany McCoy and Tiffany will be followed by Camille Gix.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Tiffany McCoy.

I'm the Advocacy Director at Real Change, and I want to say that regardless of historic new investments in affordable housing, we have to be honest with ourselves and the public that we need more options to meet our needs and that ultimately relying on what the federal government will finance will never meet our needs.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, for incorporating a new model of housing to meet our affordable housing needs.

And thank you to Councilmember Lewis, Sawant, and Peterson for co-sponsoring the municipal housing budget provision, encouraging folks to continue to vote for that so that $500,000 makes it into the balancing package.

Also, climate change is here, if you haven't heard, and we need to make sure that we're investing in a workforce that can build climate-adaptive buildings.

Let's invest in apprenticeship and certificate programs for current building trades workers.

Thank you, Council Member Morales, also for this, and for Louis Straus and Sawant for co-sponsoring.

We need two more Council Members to get this over the line.

I know where to find some money.

There are some ghost cops in the room.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Camille Gicks, who will be followed by Jacob Scheer.

Camille?

Good evening.

My name is Camille Gix.

I work at Real Change.

I'm a student at the University of Washington and I'm a member of UAW 4121 and IBEW 89. I am here tonight in support of the solidarity budget, specifically the amendments that would create uh green building trades person programs for union laborers another year of increasingly long periods of fires and we still have no plan to protect our residents from this growing crisis we are in a deep need for climate adaptive and crisis mitigating housing that is affordable for everyone We need housing that is built to the highest green standards and a workforce that is prepared to do so.

We must stop this false dichotomy of labor versus the environment.

And the only way we can do this is by passing these budget amendments that will create programs for our union building trades to become trained and ready to build green New Deal housing.

Thank you to council members Sawant, Lewis, Strauss, and of course Morales for believing in this vision.

I urge the rest of the council to support these programs so that we can start constructing a greener city and defund the ghost cops.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jacob Shear, who will be followed by Seattle Raging Grannies.

Thank you.

My name is Jacob Shear.

I'm an organizer in the Real Change Advocacy Department as well as a rank and file member of IBEW 89. And I'm here today also to speak in full support of the solidarity budget as well as to demand that council include the three amendments put forward by Councilmember Morales to create green social housing in Seattle and to fund a municipal housing administration.

And thank you to Councilmember Sawant, Lewis, Peterson, as well as Morales for sponsoring these amendments.

A budget is a moral document, and to not include these amendments shows that council members are refusing to add new models and try new approaches to meet our affordable housing needs.

We urgently, urgently need programs like the Municipal Housing Fund, which will identify city-owned property that can be developed into permanently affordable housing.

We are counting on all council members who want to take up the mantle of progressing housing champions to add their names to the Municipal Housing Amendment and to show us, not tell us, that you are committed to addressing our housing crisis.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speakers are the Seattle Raging Grannies who will be followed by Harriet Sasslow.

And Chair, my apologies for being late, just wanna recognize I'm here.

That's okay, Council Member Strauss is joining us for the record.

Yeah, we're the Seattle Raging Grannies.

♪ There's money in banks that will never get used ♪ ♪ And people who need it for housing and shoes ♪ What a wicked system has such a result, must have been built by some mean, greedy cult.

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim-tree, the cops must be stopped from their sweet tambourines.

Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim-tree, if you don't have it to stop, it might happen to you.

If the cops don't sweep chimneys, that's not what they do.

They harshly enforce the regulations.

So we must stop them a lot is at stake.

Don't want the wealthy to steal a whole cake.

A chimney must have a stove and a room to use it.

and never get cold.

If you think that's something that we all need, stop funding the homeless community.

Thank you very much.

Thank you are glad you're here since we've seen you all for bringing that back.

Our last two speakers for in-person comment for this group will be Harriet Sasslow and Draven Loki.

Harriet.

Good afternoon, council members.

My name is Harriet.

I live at Nicholsville North Lake.

Nicholsville operates the only self-managed tiny house villages in the city.

We have two locations, one in the Central District and the other in the North Lake area.

We want to open more and we need more.

We need more and more people More and more people are becoming homeless every day and we have to meet basic needs.

We urge the City Council to join Councilmember Sawant in rejecting the austerity budget and increasing the Amazon tax by $140 million so that the richest in our city will pay for the economic crisis and recession.

We've been suffering through the pandemic.

We are facing unprecedented inflation and skyrocketing rents.

Now city council is getting ready to cut essential services and pinch pennies for funding for renter organizing, eviction prevention, tiny house villages for homeless people and raises for human workers.

Stop the sweeps now and address the housing affordability.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last speaker for the in-person, this group will be number 10, Draven Loki.

Then we'll go back to remote for another 10.

Good afternoon, City Council members.

My name is Draven Loki.

I also reside at Nicholsville North Lake.

I would have been lost after a pandemic without Nicholsville's self-managed tiny house villages.

The sweeps only serve to displace those in need.

Again, we urge City Council to join Council Member Swann in rejecting any decreased budget and increasing the Amazon tax by $140 million.

We also support Council Member Morales' amendment for the Municipal Housing Administration team.

Thank you.

Mind if we go back to number nine, Madam Clerk, on the online platform?

Sure, Alice Lockhart.

Yeah, we will go back and see if Alice Lockhart is now logged on and she will be followed by Karen Gylan.

Alice.

We see you on the line, Alice, but it looks like you have to hit star six possibly.

Okay.

We'll come back.

Now we will move on to the next present person, Katie Garrow, who's number 13. Katie Garrow.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Katie Garrow.

I'm the elected leader of MLK Labor.

the umbrella group for unions here in King County.

I'm here tonight to express my appreciation and the labor movement's appreciation to Council Member Mosqueda for the inflationary increase for direct service providers and $120,000 for MLK Labor's virtual hiring hall that you included in the balancing package.

Our virtual hiring hall has been able to do a lot of good.

for workers with the small amount of money that you awarded to us.

We've been able to couple it with other unions' donations, as well as the support of partners in employment, our workforce development partner.

Our virtual hiring hall addresses three community needs.

It helps get BIPOC workers into good union jobs, addresses the racial wealth gap, and rewards employers and their workers with dignity.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda, for championing Jumpstart two years ago.

so that we would have extra resources to fill our budget holes this year and next.

We'll be with you to fight for additional progressive revenue in the years to come.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Karen Guilan.

Guilan or Guilan.

Karen number 12 who will be followed by Ryan McFerrin.

Karen.

Thank you.

My name is Karen Guilan and I am a lifelong resident of Seattle.

I implore you to fully fund the mayor's proposed budget for the police department, despite the projected revenue shortfall.

Until our streets are safe, spending on other programs will be a waste of taxpayer money.

I also ask that you return parking enforcement to the police department.

This will save administrative costs and rectify the damage made by a change that did not serve any beneficial purpose.

We've seen over the past several years that pulling funding away from the police department results in a much larger impact than loss of budget alone.

We learned that our officers can and will leave en masse if they perceive that the city does not support them.

I hope that you will take the lead of council members Sarah Nelson and Alex Peterson as outlined in their excellent op-ed in today's Seattle Times and fully fund the police.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Ryan McFerrin, who will be followed by Dennis Sills.

Ryan.

Good evening.

My name is Ryan McFerrin.

I'm speaking on behalf of United Way of King County in reference to HSD 0278. First, I would like to thank you for considering the restoration of funding for our free tax preparation campaign.

Tax credits are the tools through which United Way provides Seattle residents with the annual direct cash since they rely on to pay overdue utility bills and put a little extra food on the table.

Thanks to the introduction of the Working Families Tax Credit next year, these families will have as much as $1,200 extra to put towards their expenses in 2023. and they will be able to visit a United Way free tax prep site to both file their taxes and apply for the Working Families Tax Credit at the same time, which some paid tax service providers like TurboTax are not planning to offer.

In 2023, Seattle residents will need our free tax prep services more than ever before.

The passage of the Working Families Tax Credit was the result of years of collective work involving state legislators, advocates, and community service providers.

Now that the credit is nearly here, it would be a shame if Seattle residents were unable to claim it.

$100,000 from the city will allow United Way to ensure that does not happen.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Dennis Sills, who will be followed by JJ Strong.

Dennis.

Chair Mosqueda and committee members, on behalf of more than 1,100 residents and 250 staff at Plymouth Housing, thank you for the opportunity to comment.

My name is Dennis Hills and I work at Plymouth Housing.

Housing challenges and homelessness in Seattle have grown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As costs increase more and more frontline housing workers find themselves facing the same challenges as those they serve.

Investments in housing and workforce are critical to ensuring we can continue to operate the poor of housing in our city.

Thank you for the record $253 million investment in housing in the balancing package.

This funding helps support development workforce and services for residents.

Thank you council members for supporting housing human service workers by providing and upholding legislatively required 7.6% contract adjustment in 2023 and a foot adjustment in 2024. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be JJ strong followed by Donnie Willetto.

JJ.

Hello.

Hi, JJ.

Go ahead.

Hi.

So I would like to call to say this is possibly going to lead up to a modern day tale of tears type situation.

The amount of money that's already being poured into musical chairs of the homeless is pretty scary.

I mean, there's other cities that have managed to take budgets of less and do a whole lot more.

I understand that, you know, things are expensive and everyone's gonna criticize every single type of plan that the city could come up with, but, you know, marching us till, I'm a homeless person and marching us till we can't march anymore is pretty unkind.

I mean, you know, Until a couple of weeks ago, I had a job and a working vehicle.

And now I currently am living in a geo metro with my boyfriend.

I understand you hear all sorts of soft stories.

And I apologize for some of the people who are very rude to you guys, but.

Thank you, JJ.

Our next speaker is Donnie Willetto, who will be followed by Josh Castle.

Donnie.

Hello, council members.

My name is Donnie Willetto, and I'm the Chief Development Officer at Child Care Resources.

I'm here to advocate on behalf of all not-for-profit organizations with City Human Service contracts.

We are asking that your budgets reflect the reality of inflation and the value of work we do.

CCR, like other organizations, receives City taxpayer funds to help families, preventing them from experiencing homelessness and providing critical support for families currently experiencing homelessness.

but the cost of these services rises each year with the cost of doing business in Seattle.

The city's budget cannot keep up, and then we have to either reduce expectations and impact or rely heavily on private fundraising dollars to implement services the city has promised its taxpayers.

The 1.2% inflation adjustment in the proposed budget is unacceptable.

We ask that the bare minimum of the reflected inflation adjustment be set to 7.6%.

In considering this, I do hope that you keep in mind the many organizations that support the communities we all live in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Josh Castle, followed by Kerry Cooley.

Josh?

Good evening.

I'm Josh Castle, Community Engagement Director with Lehigh.

I want to express my deep gratitude for the $2.8 million budget action to support tiny house villages.

I thank you for listening to the residents, community members, staff, and volunteers who have testified and shared personal stories about the importance of villages in improving lives, safety and health, recovery from trauma, and serving as a crucial stepping stone from homelessness to permanent housing.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis for sponsoring and all the co-sponsors.

We also stand with the Seattle County Coalition on Homelessness and the many nonprofit providers, resident and community leaders and advocates in making you for the budget actions to ensure workers' wages are at least matching the rise in inflation.

Thank you for sponsoring these two budget actions, Chair Mosqueda and Council Member Herbold, and to the co-sponsors.

Grateful to the entire Council for your tireless work on the balancing package.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carrie Cooley, who will be followed by, we'll try one more time, Alice Lockhart, and then we'll move back to our in-person speakers.

So, Carrie Cooley.

I live in Council District 3 and work with Catholic Community Services a part of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

I'm speaking in support of the 20 Seattle shelters in jeopardy of closing doors with the end of federal COVID relief dollars.

With relief funding humanity grew in the form of new and improved shelters with services.

Hundreds of vulnerable people living in homelessness found compassion stability hope services and permanent housing.

Our doors at the Bunny Wilburn and the Inn remained open and our staff worked faithfully through the pandemic to support guests and their healing.

We support the technical amendment for funds allocated for Home for Good and ask the city honors its commitment for the 7.6 inflation adjustment.

Thank you especially Chair Mosqueda and council members Herbold and Morales for championing amendments to serve those most in need.

And thanks to all council members for your public service and hard diligent work.

Thank you.

Our last speaker for this remote group will be Alice Lockhart.

And Alice, if you're online, please press star six.

Thank you.

Hello.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Excellent.

So many times pressing star six.

I'm Alice Lockhart and I volunteer with 350 Seattle and other 350 folks are outside City Hall supporting the youth rally.

We stand with the youth who voted in record numbers last week with the youth outside and in the room.

and particularly with the solidarity budget demands.

I personally want to thank Chair Mosqueda, staff, and all of you who wrote amendments to make the budget more humane, particularly to pay a living wage to human services workers, and Chair Mosqueda's strong stand to protect Jump Start, as well as Council Member Morales's and sponsors' work to craft amendments to support I-3135, all deeply appreciated.

Finally, I'm emphatically not grateful that cyclists and pedestrians are dying on our streets in record numbers.

I really hope this committee can find its way to finding $150,000 to support making bike lanes and be too much safer.

If one district has safer bike lanes, people will use them, we'll all want them.

Thank you.

We're now going to move into our next 10 participants in person for public comment, starting with number 11, Anita Freeman.

will be followed by Fatima.

Anita.

Thank you.

My name is Anita Freeman, Anita with an R, and with Wheel and Women in Black.

Last week, we gave you a letter with a map mapping out the 216 outside and violent homeless deaths this year by council district.

These deaths make it urgent that survival be a priority in a moral budget.

I want to point out tonight that shelter is more, even more than survival.

Special COVID funding made it possible for our two wheel shelters as well as others to begin operating 24 seven instead of night only.

The result was beautiful.

One woman said, being fully rested is like coming back to life.

Thank you for that.

Create more of it.

And stop the bloody sweets.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 12, Fatima, followed by Cliff Cawthorn, possibly.

Cliff, number 13. Good evening.

I spent the greater part of a decade in so-called self-managed homeless communities, mainly Cher and Nicholsville.

They were defined by homeless on homeless, total abuse of power, especially horrendous abuse of women.

For women, it was coercive control, every bit as intrusive and all-consuming as intimate partner abuse.

These communities are far too small and the humans in them far too flawed for any meaningful election to choose one or more of them to be handed that level of power over anyone, even if elections were free and fair, which they aren't.

Self-managed homeless communities should be defunded until a model is developed which gives homeless people far more say over decisions other than discipline and far less say in barring each other and by extension terrorizing each other with the threat of a bar.

There also should be no public funding for any organization which is.

Thank you.

Thank you, Fatima.

Our next speaker will be Cliff Cawthron followed by Rachel Scott.

And apologies, Councilmember.

We usually try to make sure other Councilmembers get a chance to speak first.

I didn't see you until you moved over here, so good evening, Councilmember.

Oh.

Of course.

Hello, my name is Cliff Cawthon.

I'm the FCM Policy Manager for Habitat for Humanity Seattle King Kittas County.

First of all, I want to thank you for making the bold move to invest a record $253 million in affordable homes in this budget, as well as investing in making sure that human service providers have a living wage.

and we still have a tall hill to climb both in Seattle and also regionally.

And when it comes to fully funding housing across the continuum from unhoused to housed, we have to remain resolute and we have to remain committed to this.

So I'm here to support Councilmember Mosqueda's balancing package and It's use of access jumpstart revenue to temporarily address the budget shortfall over the next two years so we can fully fund services, so we can avoid austerity for homelessness and housing services, as well as fully continue to invest in much needed affordable housing.

and we also encourage the council to make this temporary and to consider looking at progressive revenue sources moving forward to fully invest in housing and the people's needs here in the city of Seattle.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

And thanks for your service as well on the regional homelessness authority that we sit on.

I'm not, that's the wrong term.

The regional housing authority board that we sit on.

Appreciate your leadership there.

Our next speaker is Rachel Scott and Rachel will be followed by Christophe Hamilton.

Good evening, Council.

My name is Rachel Scott and I'm an outreach worker and case manager working in Seattle.

I'm a resident of D4 as well.

For the last several years, I've also been supporting the work of women and black to track mortality and stand vigil for our unhoused neighbors who are dying.

at increasingly disturbing rates.

Over 220 unhoused people in our county have died this year so far.

And as the temperatures begin to plummet, these numbers will only increase.

Each of these deaths is avoidable.

I'm here to speak out against the funding for encampment removals and advocate for funding of housing, as well as the essential case management services that are on the ground doing the work right now.

From the perspective of outreach workers, we know that encampment removals or sweeps do not improve circumstances for anyone.

People do not just disappear.

Sweeps only lead to the further marginalization of our most vulnerable community members, pushing people into further isolation and increases in deaths of despair.

We need to fund deeply affordable units.

non-congregate shelters, housing vouchers, and well-paid supportive staffers to work these spaces.

Without shelter, people will die.

So please remember this when making your budget decisions for 2023. Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 15, Christophe Hamilton, followed by number 16, Latanya Sevier.

How do you do?

I'm Dr. Chris Hamilton.

I'm here.

We have a public safety issue pertaining to a build on.

It's 1200 Stewart.

When I was hired to come to this town, it was pertaining to as a fire marshal and engineer.

It was one of the first disasters I had to deal with was that they started building on unsafe, hollow ground pertaining to our public utility, Horizon Electricity is a old Holland.

We're originally a boat city from the water to the first mile.

So there's a building that's being constructed on and I don't know how, but I urge the city council not to approve any grants pertaining to 1200 Stewart.

It's gonna take me at least six to 18 months to litigate with my law group.

And I hope that execution pertaining to this issue of 1200 Stewart.

It's a public safety issue and it will fall.

It's a teeter-totter wobbly building and I really just can't have people build on it and putting people in there, what they are doing is...

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Latanya Sevier followed by Peter Condit.

My name is Leitanya.

I'm a black non-binary renter in D2.

I support solidarity budgets, budget to live, budget to thrive, which advocates for a budget that actually meets people's needs and shows that we don't throw people away.

Why the amendments for municipal housing and workforce development weren't in the balancing package is a strong indication that many of our elected officials don't take housing and homelessness seriously.

Fund municipal housing administration team and fund at 550K Greenhousing Tradesperson Certification Program at $220k and Greenhousing Construction Apprenticeship Program at $2.5 million.

You can fund all of this and more by moving funds from the ghost cop positions out of SPD.

I dressed as a ghost cop today to show how ridiculous it is for a city with a deficit of $170 million and lower than expected budget forecasts for the future to throw money at positions that SPD and everyone in this city knows they can't hire.

Move this 17 million out of SPD and say no to ShotSpotter, which doesn't save lives or prevent gun violence.

It only leads to more cops in BIPOC communities, wrongful convictions.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is, excuse me, Peter Condit followed by Kaz Han.

Good evening.

This is Peter Condit.

I got to thinking earlier about the law and order theory of change that some of you support, that to prevent something from happening, one must surveil and punish or penalize the person or activity in question so others are, in theory, disincentivized from doing it.

Not only is there an immense human cost to this strategy, it also just doesn't work.

Most of you know that.

Fortunately, there is another option.

It's called defunding the police.

Its theory of change is strong, but defunding the police only works for everyone if you actually do it.

Otherwise, it's the same failed law and order strategy.

So abrogate cops that don't exist, no-ghost cops, no-ghost cops, no-ghost cops, move that 17 million out of SPD, defund sweeps, reject shot spotter, and build solutions recommended in the solidarity budget.

No to COPS, defund SPD.

No to COPS, defund SPD.

No to COPS, defund SPD.

No to COPS, defund SPD.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next two speakers will be Kaz Han, followed by Nancy Gran.

Hi there, my name is Kaz Han.

I live in District 1. I'm also here in support of the solidarity budget and just want to reiterate that it does kind of seem to defy logic that a city department would be able to keep $14 million in their budget if they knew they weren't going to be spending it.

It just doesn't seem to be fiscally responsible or good planning on the part of the mayor or the council.

And I am confused by this because I have heard each of you come out consistently in support of alternatives to police.

So I just urge you to remove that money from the Seattle Police Department's budget.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you.

Our last two in-person speakers for this group will be Nancy Graham, followed by Margaret Graham.

Nancy?

Okay, it's Nancy Gratton, and I'm here on behalf of the Gunfire Detection System.

I attended two meetings that were put on by the African American Community Council.

I go to meetings that I think might have an answer to the gun violence.

This shot spotter was amazing.

They're able to, it takes 9-1-1 response time in the South Precinct, 11 minutes for priority calls.

With shot spotter, it's able to almost immediately alert officers on patrol the exact location of gunfire and officers are also able to respond quickly enough to save a victim from bleeding out and we understand that they're more likely to determine who fired the gun.

A lot of money is being given out to organizations to stop the gun violence.

This is in 130 cities, including New York, Chicago, Detroit, Portland, Houston, and Oakland.

Seattle, you have got to do something to stop the violence.

Do something.

Try something.

Our kids are dying.

Our adults are dying.

Do something.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last speaker in this group of in-person speakers is number 20, Margaret Groton.

Is Margaret Groton still here to speak?

We will now move into 10 more remote speakers starting with Teresa Dillard will be followed by number 22, Tom Donnelly.

Teresa, are you available and ready to press star six?

Good evening council.

My name is Teresa Dillard.

I am with the Housing and Essential Needs Program at Catholic Community Services and a member of the Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness.

Thank you for your hard work advocacy and continued partnership on behalf of the people we serve.

I am calling tonight in support of and with deep gratitude for Chair Mosqueda's technical amendment that allows funds already allocated for the Home for Good program to be carried forward to serve the people who need and qualify for this assistance.

The Home for Good plays a vital role in keeping Seattle residents with disabilities housed.

Please support this technical amendment to keep our clients home for good and moving towards a long-term and permanent housing solution.

We appreciate your consideration and thank you for your time this evening.

We look forward to continuing our partnership, serving some of the most needers in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 22, Tom Donnelly, who will be followed by Mary Davis.

Tom.

Hi, thank you.

The eroding of Seattle Police Department as proposed in this budget is in direct conflict with the desires of the majority of the citizens and businesses in the city.

Public safety has suffered too much already and further erosion of public safety should not happen.

From looking at the proposed budget, it appears the council is planning to do the same things over and over again while expecting different results.

Instead of looking at wasteful, possibly inappropriate spending The inevitable funding gap caused by this budget is to be filled with higher property taxes.

These higher property taxes impact businesses, renters, homeowners, and especially harmful to those on fixed incomes during an inflationary period.

Instead of raising taxes, all departments should be subjected to a thorough audit to reveal wasteful spending.

Projects should be required to show a return on investment to the public with solid data.

Projects must provide real benefits for all the public.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next two speakers will be Mary Davis, followed by Carlin Upham.

Excuse me, Mary Davis and then Carlin Upham.

Good evening, members of the Seattle Council.

My name is Mary Davis.

I'm here as a citizen who has had about 35 years of work with people in jail and prison in a church ministry.

I'm here to support LEAD and CoLEAD because I have seen people come in and out of the jail who with a little bit of help could have been turned into or helped to become productive members of society.

LEAD is so effective at helping to prevent recidivism, I would love to see its funding be restored to full funding if that's at all possible, but at least the funding that it had a year ago.

I've seen it help those who are ready to take advantage of help to return to society with members and becoming a blessing to themselves and to all of us.

So it is my hope that the funding for LEAD and CoLEAD can be maintained at least at.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carlin Upham, followed by Keith Irvin.

Carlin.

Good evening, council members.

First of all, I want to thank council members for supporting the full inflation adjustment for human services workers.

And my name is Carlin and I'm the Domestic Violence Program Director at Refugee Women's We have seen an influx of refugees and immigrants communities seeking domestic violence services.

And refugee and immigrant communities need access to equitable services, just like any other.

We all worked hard in order to survive in this competitive economy.

The number of calls for DV services has increased since the pandemic, and housing needs and mental health services are on the rise.

This is a critical and vital services for our community, and I would strongly like to urge council members, even just to include 750,000 K a year into the budget for gender-based violence.

And it will be a tremendous help for our agencies.

Thank you, council members for your support and hard work and dedication.

We are proud and grateful for what you do for the communities we serve.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Keith Irvin, who will be followed by Becca Johnson, Johnson, Poppy, Keith.

And Keith, you may need to press star six.

Okay, we'll come back to Keith.

The next speaker in line is Becca Johnson-Poppe or Poppe.

Becca, number 25, 26.

Hi, good evening.

My name is Becca Johnson-Poppe and I'm here as a District 6 resident and as a board member for youth care.

I've people I deeply care about who experienced homelessness while growing up in Seattle, and as we know, the youth who most often experience homelessness are the same young people already dealing with multiple forms of oppression.

I'm grateful that the budget funds an inflationary wage increase to support our staff who put their hearts into ending youth homelessness.

I'm also grateful that council put $3.9 million toward maintaining homelessness services, and I'm hopeful that the Regional Homelessness Authority will be able to contribute as well.

Youth Care relies on this funding for its three engagement centers that serve over 500 young people each year.

In particular, our South Seattle Center operates on a 24-hour basis with overnight shelter beds, and every single night these beds are needed.

As someone who manages half of the county's budget in my day job, I can appreciate the incredible challenges youth face in this process.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, for your leadership, and thank you, Council Members Herbold, Lewis, and Morales, for sponsoring amendments that support Youth Care's work.

Thank you.

Our next two speakers will be Iris Antman followed by Daniel Alvarado.

Iris.

Good evening.

My name is Iris Antman.

I live in district two.

I'd like to thank you for your hard work on the balancing package to the mayor's budget proposal.

I'm gratified by your decision to maintain jumpstart funding and the Green New Deal Oversight Board's recommendations for its original purposes, including specific funding for climate issues Specifically, I want to applaud your decision to include Council Member Morales' amendment requesting a one-time appropriation of $455,000 to help fund the completion of a community-led resilience hub on the campus of Bethany United Church of Christ on South Beacon Hill.

This project combines decarbonization and environmental and social justice within a community setting and can serve as a template for other projects seriously and materially address the climate crisis.

This is the work that needs doing to protect and care for our residents and communities.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Danielle Alvarado who will be Danielle Alvarado who will be followed by Nick Straley.

Thank you.

My name is Danielle Alvarado.

I'm the executive director of Fair Work Center and Working Washington and also a member of LFAC.

We strongly support the increase in funding for OLS included in the balancing package, Chair Mosqueda and Council Members Herbold and Lewis.

We appreciate your leadership in ensuring Seattle's workers have access to nation-leading robust enforcement of their rights.

This investment will support economic growth by ensuring Seattle's workers receive their hard-earned pay which they put right back into our local economy.

It also will ensure high-road Seattle businesses are not undercut by employers whose values do not align with ours.

We also support Chairman Mosqueda's amendment to redirect JumpStart funding to specific projects this biennium to prevent austerity and strongly urge the council to take a proposal for progressive revenue as soon as possible.

This budget environment requires creative leadership to uphold the safety and dignity of Seattle residents.

Thank you for standing with Seattle workers and helping our economy to thrive.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Nick Straley and then we'll try one more time for Keith Irvin before we go back to the in-person commenters.

So Nick Straley followed by Keith Irvin.

Thank you.

Good evening.

My name is Nick Straley and I'm here tonight as a District 6 resident and board member with Youth Care.

I'm also an attorney with Columbia Legal Services and that is where I see how important Youth Care's work really is.

My work at CLS, I represent adults locked up in our prisons and jails, many of whom, had they had the resources and access to services, programs, and care that YouthCARE provides, would not likely not be facing years in prison or wasting away in solitary confinement.

YouthCARE saves lives.

It's as simple as that.

As a board member at YouthCARE, I'm in awe of the work our staff do every year, every day for young people in crisis.

The inflationary wage increase included in this budget is extremely important to make sure that our staff can continue to serve you.

But as you know, more is needed to ensure that people who are on the front lines actually receive a living wage.

We thank you for your commitment to wage equity and are excited to continue working with you towards that essential goal.

Thanks very much.

Thank you.

And our last remote speaker in this group will be Keith Irvin.

Keith, if you're there, please press star six.

Yeah.

Council members, do you hear me?

Yes.

I will try one more time.

Keith, we could hear you if you want to hit star six one more.

There we go.

We could hear you.

Council members?

Yes.

My name is Keith Irvin.

I don't know why it didn't work.

I'm a member of a community partnership working to create a South Beacon Hill Resilience Hub.

This facility will provide a safe refuge for residents during life-threatening climate emergencies.

City support for this initiative would come through the Green New Deal, which represents a necessary down payment toward the task of ending climate pollution and protecting our most vulnerable citizens.

I ask council members to support the Green New Deal, particularly funding of climate resilience hubs.

The South Beacon Hill Hub is already being created under community leadership with private funding and we ask the city to become a public partner.

I thank Council Member Morales for introducing funding, co-sponsors Lewis, Herbold, and Sawant, and Chair Mosqueda for including this funding in the balancing package.

Thank you.

We'll now move into numbers 21 through 30 on our in-person public comment, and we're going to start with number 21, Jess Mogg, followed by Ty Mattox.

Jess?

Hi, my name is Jess Moak and I'm speaking in support of the solidarity budget.

I'm one of a handful of public health professionals who volunteer with women in black and wheel in the data mortality work group, homeless mortality work group.

We do the heartbreaking work of combing through the list of deaths to determine who died outside or by violence in our city.

These deaths happen all over the city and each of the council members received a map detailing the deaths of unhoused constituents in their district for 2022. This work has gotten logistically and emotionally more challenging in recent years.

As you know, Women Black stands vigil on the winter solstice every year.

They stood for 139 people in 2020, 178 in 2021, and there have already been 216 homeless deaths outside or by violence this year.

In one of the richest cities in the richest country in the world, this is downright dystopian.

Stop the sweeps because they're cruel.

Stop the sweeps because they're unnecessary.

Stop the sweeps because they're a waste of funding and they kill.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 22, Tai Mantox, followed by Tanya Wu.

Good evening, I am here on behalf of the coexist like Washington community coalition to address the money allocated in parks district funding.

to construct a, quote, protected biking and walking path from Seward Park to Mount Baker Beach, unquote.

There is the potential for this path to be constructed at the expense of people who drive.

Restricting access to Lake Washington Boulevard for people who drive is inequitable and adds further insult to longstanding community members, particularly black and brown community members, many of whom have already been gentrified out of South and Central Seattle.

Closing down one or both lanes of any portion of Lake Washington Boulevard to people who drive is essentially privatizing one of the last remaining stretches of public lakeshore in our city.

It is elitist, privileged, and entitled.

And Coexist Lake Washington is vigorously opposed to any efforts to do so.

Please see our letter submitted for additional comments.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tanya Wu will be followed by Randy Ng.

Hi, my name is Tanya Wu.

I'm with the Chinatown International District, friends of the Chinatown International District.

I also volunteer for the CID Community Night Watch.

So I am back here again asking for budget funding about $4.43 million.

We have four community safety plans that the community has developed these last three or four years, and we just need funding to actually be able to deploy them.

I mean, we're not asking for very much, hopeful, I mean, in terms of the community put together a plan and we would like to get funded so we can enact that plan, which also includes like peacekeepers as well as other ways in which our businesses and our residents can feel safe because we're not even there yet.

There is not a standard of safety.

There's 4,000 people who live in the CID, but you don't see people outside.

They're afraid to go out.

We're a community of refugees and immigrants and no one feels safe walking outside.

That's the basic standards.

And, you know, we're not even there where we can ask for other things because we just want to feel safe.

So please consider this for multiple reasons, especially the neighborhood plans that we have all developed these last years, as well as other plans that we see other neighborhoods are thriving are using as well.

Thank you.

Oh, thank you.

Our next speaker then will be Merle Adels, number 25, followed by Malik Hassan, number 26.

I'm with 350 Seattle and also SA as a volunteer, not speaking for either group, but Aircraft contributes to 42% of our greenhouse gases.

Right now, a UW study shows that there's ultra-refined particulates that are landing into our students' lungs, we'll say, in areas nearby the airport.

We see these studies as being rather novel, but also they found that the ultra fine, ultras are actually predominantly what we find in these schools.

And this novel finding, I think, should be addressed by continuing to build a more affordable housing that includes HEPA filters, which the elected officials in those areas around.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Malik Hassan followed by number 27 Hayes Ueski.

My name is Malik Hassan.

I'm a Youth Program Manager Assistant and also a youth with the Creative Justice and Community Passageway Program.

I'm here today to ask you guys to defund the Seattle Police Department because we fear them in our community.

We don't feel like we're being protected.

We don't feel like they're serving us.

We're losing fathers, we're losing brothers, we're losing cousins, and not enough is being done.

I feel like you guys should invest more, fund more, with the youth-led programs that actually give us hope to be somebody in life, to actually do something with our lives.

Because the communities that we come from, we don't have high hopes because statistics show that we won't make it to a certain age.

And these programs that we are in, that are being brought out here, giving us the opportunity to do something with our lives, there need to be more of those.

And thank you guys for giving me the opportunity to say that.

Our next speaker is Hayes US key followed by and I'm not sure about this name earnest areas.

Every areas.

Hello, my name is as soon as.

i'm a first generation American of Mexican descent and I really just want to acknowledge the privilege that you guys have currently.

And I also want to acknowledge the power in the community that's in the room right now.

I want to thank you guys for everything you guys do, but I do think it would be detrimental to ignore everything that was said in the last, what, like two hours?

As an individual who comes from a marginalized community, ShotSpotter does not work.

I'm also here to support the solidarity budget.

You guys already know this, this system is a white supremacy system.

Anybody who supports it is now with the movement.

They do not care about America as the, whether it be the history, anything, you know what I mean?

So I just wanted you guys to acknowledge the power that you guys do have.

I do see you guys are probably trying to just get through this as fast as possible, but there's real stuff being said right now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 28. And I believe the name starts with an E and the last name is an A, but maybe Ernest Arias, number 28.

Thank you.

My name is Ezekiel Arias.

So my name is Ezekiel Arias.

I'm here by behalf of Creative Justice and Community Passageways.

I'm here to talk about, um, to the funder SPD, because I've been in many scenarios with my experience in my life where I felt not safe, not cared for, and I attended to when needed, especially in the lives of my loved ones that, um, were facing death and we needed help and especially in our communities too.

So we're trying to fund like our youth led programs.

We're trying to fund, healthcare, we're trying to fund all of our basic needs in our communities and everything we can get to help our people.

I used to not be, I used to not know how to understand how things usually run and how I can do it, something about my community.

But once I started being around youth-led programs, I started to get an idea and an image and a vision in order how to help my community.

Thank you for your guys' time.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last two speakers for this group of in-person public commenters will be Rose Harriet, number 29, and Jayden Crawford, number 30.

My name is Rose, I am a coordinator at Creative Justice.

I have the privilege of working with these brilliant young folks.

I hope you're really listening to the magic that they're bringing to the table.

When they say defund SPD because the SPD is violent to them, violent to our communities, they're coming to you with the answers.

That to have our basic needs met is the strongest correlation with safety.

That if you look on a city level, a state level, on a country level, the correlation between poverty and crime is directly related.

So if you would like to see safety in our communities, then you will fund programming, you will fund youth-led programming, and you will defund these violent systems that they've already told you scare them, that take away their family, take away their loved ones.

So I just wanna give it up for these young people here who could be anywhere else and are choosing to be here letting you know exactly what they need.

So that's it.

Thank you.

Our last speaker, in-person speaker for this group will be Jayden Crawford.

Good evening.

I'm Jayden Crawford I'm a youth leader and organizing youth consortium and a first year student at the University of Washington, I come to you in all of those identities and as a constituent of district four.

I want to start off by expressing my full support for solidarity budget.

I'm also here as someone who empathizes with my community.

I empathize for the houseless man who calls the concrete we step on home.

I empathize for the people across the street isolated from their friends and family at your guys' correctional facility.

I empathize for the biker I saw pedaling through traffic with death just a couple feet away from each tire.

I'm upset these people, these humans, don't receive that same compassion in spaces like these.

And because of that, I came in here angry and ready to tell y'all off.

But I believe in extending you guys all that same empathy and compassion that I extend to the rest of my community.

So I came here person to person to ask you guys, one, why do you believe you are all fit to represent us, the people inside this room, inside your correctional facility, the bikers on the streets and the people that live on them?

Two, you know that this 22, 23 budget will hurt some people, many of whom have been relentlessly marginalized and hurt by your leadership, past budgets and past and current, These are your constituents.

What will you do to reduce further alienation and neglect?

As a constituent, I expect your responses in the form of action.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll now move into the next group of remote commenters, and we're going to start with number 32, Tawny Franson, who will be followed by Marinthia Torres.

Tawny Franson is next.

And Tani, you may need to press star six.

Can you hear me now?

Yes, thank you.

Greetings council members.

My name is Tani France and I'm the deputy director of asset management at Compass Housing Alliance.

On behalf of our staff, I thank you sincerely for including the full human service funding that ensures wages keep up with inflation.

Compasses essential workers serve people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in our emergency services, enhanced shelters and affordable housing programs throughout King County.

It is essential to use a trauma-informed lens as we walk alongside folks on their path to stability and staff must build trust with those we serve.

It is much easier to build trust when there is low staff turnover, when we are able to pay competitive wages that help retain qualified staff We can promote their career growth and longevity in this field.

Staff retention strengthens the relationships with our guests and residents, thereby better assisting with their housing retention.

Our entire community is stronger for it.

Continue to invest in us as we invest in our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Actually, our next speaker will be Sam Wolfe.

I skipped over number 31. Sam Wolfe will be followed by Amarenthia Torres.

Sam?

Hi, am I unmuted?

You're good.

Oh, sorry, my name is Sam Wolf.

I'm a senior project manager for LEAD here regarding the budget cut to LEAD and CoVid.

I just wanted to name a few special projects that LEAD has engaged in in recent memory.

One is the Everspring Hotel, which has about 50 households in North Seattle, all of whom began in extreme poverty with complex behavioral health needs, and many of whom have moved on to stability with our continued support.

We are currently case conferencing in multiple neighborhoods, frequently problem solving for people who are falling through the gaps of systems much larger than we are equipped to address, but we're trying.

We're trying to take on third ave and we're working with the CID to improve outcomes for our people and our communities.

The data shows that we are successful when we have the chance to try.

I appreciate the difficult task of balancing this budget as well as the partial restoration we received.

However, we still have almost a $6 million cut, and this is going to impact our ability to work.

I say all of this just because I hope in the future we can find a way to support the client-centered and data-driven approach LEAD uses when we talk about public safety.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Amaranthea Torres, followed by G.B.

Wolfe.

Amaranthea, please press star six and see if that works.

Good evening, council members.

My name is, perfect, thank you.

My name is Amarthea Torres.

I live in District 2, and I'm speaking on behalf of the Coalition Ending Gender-Based Violence.

We work with over 35 community-based orgs towards gender equity and an end to gender-based violence.

While we were pleased that the amendment to preserve the inflation adjustment for all human services contracts made it into the balancing package, and we urge you to support it in full, we were disappointed to see that our amendment funding survivor-driven advocacy to survivors was not included.

We understand the difficulty of this budget given the anticipated revenue decreases, and we need you to know that the situation for victims of sexual and domestic violence is dire.

Programs are short staffed, buy-in for programs are underfunded, survivors are on wait lists just to talk to an advocate, and calls for services are up two to three times as survivors continue to resist and try to survive lethal violence, abuse, and sexual assault.

We urge you to do everything you can to add funding for gender-based violence back into the budget, even an additional 750K a year would go a long way to some of our most marginalized communities.

Thank you for your time and opportunity to speak today.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is G.B.

Wolf who will be followed by Ebony Nelson Nevers.

G.B.

Yes.

Good evening council members.

My name is G.B.

I work at Crisis Connections for the One Call program and I'm in District 2 myself.

Anyway, the reason I'm talking here today is to let you know, I could tell you all about the program, but not in 60 seconds.

So I'm just going to tell you about one case without mentioning names.

We were able to recover a lost person who was indigenous, female, young adult with a mental developmental disability last summer.

It took a few days, literally like three, and I lost a lot of sleep over it.

But because of one call, we were able to find this lost human being.

And she did not get, was not hurt.

And she was able to get the mental health care that she needed.

So please, please help us out.

And thank you Strauss for the sponsoring and Harold and Lewis, Harold, excuse me, and Lewis for co-sponsoring.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speaker is Ebony Nelson-Nevers, who will be followed by Naomi Natsuhara.

Ebony.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Ebony Nevers.

I work with Catholic Community Services' Money Will Burn Home program.

BWH is a single adult women's shelter.

We permanently house 88 women in less than two years.

It would be tragic to close our doors due to lack of funding.

The women we serve and our staff on a day-to-day have built an important sense of family, belonging, and community.

Relationship means a lot to these women.

Wanting to be heard shown love and feeling safe are things we all need and deserve as humans.

It took some convincing to have our shelter in this community.

There was pushback but as time progressed the community has embraced us.

The work for me has been the most humbling experience of my life.

I have grown personally and I am thankful and proud to be a part of the housing and homeless community.

Please support BWH's beautiful ladies in all 20 Seattle programs who will need to close their doors to clients staff and communities.

without continued funding.

The harsh reality is that some staff will be in jeopardy of being in position as the ladies we serve.

Thank you to all council for your hard work and leadership.

And thank you for this opportunity to speak.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Naomi Natsuhara followed by Colin O'Keefe.

Hello, council members.

My name is Naomi Natsuhara.

I live in district five and work in district four as grants and contracts manager for Solid Ground.

I'm calling in support of budget amendments to provide full inflation adjustments to human service contracts.

The cost of delivering services rises every year, and many of our contracts don't cover the full cost of doing this work.

Our team is already working at max capacity to fundraise against this widening gap.

Alongside record inflation impacts and stagnant funding levels, providers are also facing severe staffing shortages that limit capacity to implement critical priorities already funded by the city.

Additionally due to capacity limitations we've had to say no to new opportunities that would fund work aligned with our mission and that would provide invaluable support to Seattle residents.

Before providers can engage in new work to meet emerging needs we must stabilize and maintain the core services our communities rely on by ensuring our contracts keep pace with inflation.

I urge the council to make sure the final balancing package includes the full 7.6 percent inflation adjustments for human services as tangible acknowledgement for the critical work happening on the front lines in our communities.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Colin O'Keefe, who will be followed by Madeline Fouch.

Colin.

My name is Colin O'Keefe.

I'm a homeowner in D6.

Public safety is at the center of Seattle discourse.

There's a member of this council, the owner of a corporation worth hundreds of millions of dollars and claims the mantle of the everyman who said she was put on this council to address public safety.

Public safety is about more than throwing money at cops.

They don't prevent crime, and they're not effective at solving it.

We have three members of this council who posted a selfie at one of the epicenters of the largest civil rights protests in American history.

Protests with clear demand, and they proceeded to throw more money at Seattle PD.

It's embarrassing.

If you want to improve public safety, allocate scarce resources to things that materially improve or even save people's lives.

Seattle needs world-class social housing with no strings attached.

People are dying on the streets in the heat and the cold.

Get them inside.

on dying in the streets.

The number of people who have and will die at the hands of traffic violence in 2022 is 22 people, the size of a large school shooting.

And finally, at Ingram High School, the students have asked for clear demand to take money from SP.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Madeline Fouch, who will be followed by Paul Park.

Madeline Fouch.

Thank you.

Good evening, Chair Mosqueda and members of the committee.

My name is Madeline Fouch.

I'm here representing SEIU 775, the Caregivers Union.

I'd like to express our deep gratitude and strong support for the funding included for the Office of Labor Standards in the proposed balancing package.

Our Union of Caregivers is deeply grateful for the Council's effort to make Seattle the national leader on labor standards.

Seattle's continually raised the bar for workplace protections nationwide, and I urge you to continue that leadership by ensuring OLS has the resources it needs.

We know that without this funding, LLS will be unable to perform adequate enforcement, which would weaken our labor standards that are on the books and undermine our shared goals of worker protection and economic prosperity.

Thank you for your important work for the city and all you do.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Paul Park and Paul Park, number 43, will be followed by number 44, Kyle Kuhn.

Paul?

Hello Council Members, my name is Paul Park.

I live in Council District 2, and I'm the Senior Director of Programs at Solid Ground, as well as a primary care physician at FQHC.

I'm calling in support of the budget amendments to provide full inflation adjustments to human services contracts.

The City of Seattle has long been a beacon of progressive innovation in human services, in large part due to strategic partnerships with community-based organizations.

However, the current realities of resource limitations not only suppress the opportunity to improve our equity-driven work, but we cannot even maintain our current work.

For example, the current crises in housing and food insecurity, which disproportionately impact people of color, require a comprehensive approach that includes addressing mental health.

Unfortunately, the current financial realities of our programs do not allow us to properly address the cyclical nature of mental health and social suffering.

I urge the council to support the budget amendments that provide the full 7.6% inflation adjustments for human services.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our last remote speaker for this group will be Kyle Kuhn, and then we'll move back to our remaining speakers in the council chamber.

So Kyle Kuhn.

Hello, council members.

My name is Kyle Kuhn.

I live and work in District 4, and I am a grant writer at Salt Ground.

I'm calling in support of the budget amendments to provide full inflation adjustments to human service contracts.

With record inflation levels in contracts that don't keep up with inflation, providers are hard-pressed to hire and retain workers and are facing severe staffing shortages to carry out essential work the city's already allocated funding for.

This year, due to severe staffing shortages, we had to turn down applying for the Fresh Fruits and Vegetables Program to offer nutrition education in Seattle schools.

And it's unfortunate that when a nonprofit passes on funding, it's not just us who are affected by it, but also our participants and those who rely on our services.

Keeping contracts up with inflation is the bare minimum to be able to sustain services, stabilize the workforce and work towards our shared goals for the city.

I urge the council to support the budget amendments that provide the full 7.6% inflation adjustment for human services.

Thank you for your attention to this issue.

Thank you.

We'll now move into the remaining speakers and chambers and I'm on number 31, which I believe it may be Harry for.

And I could be pronouncing this totally wrong.

Thank you.

And hello, Carrie.

Just before you start, we have asked folks to do this as a signal of support instead of applause.

Wanted to make sure that the youth who were testifying had support as well, because this is an exciting opportunity.

But if folks can remember to do this as well, that'd be helpful.

Please go ahead, Carrie.

I'm a youth from Seattle.

And the reason I'm here today is because I'm in support of solidarity budget, which basically demands for youth programs and investment in jobs, employment, housing.

I'm a survivor of domestic violence.

And for the last 10 years, it's been so hard for me as a youth to get housing for me and my brother.

This shit is super defunded.

Like I've called 211, I've called 20 resources, but nothing is helpful.

And which is why we need to invest in youth programs.

We need to invest in housing for the youth.

and people that are in need of it.

A lot of survivors of domestic violence, they don't have that.

You guys spend most of your money on police and prisons locking people up.

There's been times a cop came to my house and he was about to lock me up for some shit that I didn't even do.

You guys are quick to lock people up and dehumanize black and brown people, then support and invest in our communities.

You guys need to take action.

And that means investing in our communities by defunding the police, using those funds to invest in real solutions that we are asking for, such as youth programs and transformative justice programs.

Okay, that's it.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 32, Nia Shah Saru.

Number 32. OK, you sure?

OK, then we're going to go on to 33 Isaiah Jones.

Good evening, council.

My name is actually Nikita Oliver.

Isaiah asked me to take his place.

I currently live by Coastley.

I work here in the city of Seattle in District Three.

I am the Executive Director of Creative Justice.

And I just wanna uplift all these young people who self-organized to get themselves here, to generate their own demands.

I wanna lift up the young people who showed up yesterday.

They were not asking for 120 ghost cops.

They were not asking for expanded policing.

They were not asking for more charges.

They're asking for a real end to gun violence.

They're asking for housing.

They're asking for restorative justice.

They're asking for food.

They're asking for shelter, truly affordable, beautiful housing to live in.

So I hope that as y'all put out this balancing package, you will put out things that help make sure our workforce can be green, that ensure that we have strong municipal housing, and then make sure that the demands, the requests of young people, some of whom cannot vote, actually receive the things that keep them safe.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 34, Dwayne Lind.

Lindy, thank you.

They both work, sure.

So my name is Dwayne Lindy.

I live in Seattle in the Chinatown and I'm a tech worker.

I have two words, tax us.

We make a lot of money.

The money that Jeff Bezos has is obscene.

The money that Elon Musk has is obscene.

Microsoft is in Seattle.

Amazon based out of Seattle.

Twitter in Seattle.

Expedia in Seattle.

Facebook Meta in Seattle.

I could go on and on and on.

They're not paying their fair share.

Why wait for Jeff Bezos to donate his money?

when you can just take it and provide it to all these programs that need to be funded desperately.

It is absolutely inexcusable that someone can have $100 billion and two blocks down from their house, there are people freezing to death or choking to death because they don't have the funding for housing.

Take it.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 35, Ruby Royal.

Ruby still here number 35 Okay, we're gonna move on to number 36 Which is Cortez Jones.

Cortez here.

Thank you, City Council.

This is Cortez DeAndre Jones.

I just wanted to answer a question that I do believe that Council would like to ask everybody else.

And I know it's something that you're asked a lot.

Before you get up here again and ask something, the question is, what would you fund?

Not about what they're going to fund.

The question is, what would you fund?

I see people making transactions on a daily basis that basically represent them.

I don't know, coffee, meals, weed, anything that you like.

But the question is, what would you fund?

What we're asking them is that question.

What would you fund?

To me, I start with a word called deprivation, deprivation of color state law.

What would you fund?

Suicide doesn't exist because of this word to me.

What would you fund?

Murder is the only thing that exists to me because of deprivation in the color state law.

What would you fund?

Thank you.

Our last two in-person speakers signed up are number 37, Ella Sean.

Oh, we'll have four more.

Number 37, Ella Sean, followed by number 38, Maya Cutforth.

Hi, I'm Ella Shawn and I live and work in D5.

I'm a child care worker and I just want to say there's nothing I can say that's better than what all the youth here have already spoken to.

So I just hope that you're taking this opportunity to listen to them.

I'm speaking in full support also of the solidarity budget.

And yeah, I just want to keep it simple.

I think that we keep each other safe and programs keep us safe and housing keeps us safe.

And child care keeps us safe and cops do not keep us safe.

So, yeah.

And I also want to mention that I think that we should keep parking enforcement officers in SDOT.

There's no reason why that needs to be part of the car show system.

That's all.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 38, Maya Cutforth.

Hi, my name is Maya Cutforth.

I'm a constituent of District 3. I'm here to speak in support of the Solidarity Budget.

I also speak in support of Councilmember Morales' Municipal Housing Administration Program budget amendment.

As someone who recently moved here, I can speak to how difficult it was to find housing that was not tailored to the ultra-wealthy.

This amendment is critical in that it would create a program at the Office of Housing to work with public developers and culturally or community-based orgs to develop high quality and permanently affordable mixed income housing.

I also support funding that is directed towards providing essential services for unhoused community members rather than forcibly removing them from where they are.

Investing in this work would also create public jobs and support a diverse and stable workforce to help our fellow community members.

Seattle should be investing in work that supports those most in need and fosters solidarity across differences and actions that perpetuate state violence.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last two in-person speakers for this group will be number 41 Trevona Thompson-Wiley, followed by number 42 Jack Hogan.

Hello, everyone.

My name is Trayvonna Thompson-Wiley.

You've probably heard me call many times.

I go by Tray.

I'm a community organizer, and I work for Creative Justice, a part of Solidarity Budget, and quite a few other community organizations.

But I'm really here as a concerned community member, as a third-generation Black woman.

I've had Sarah Nelson tell me straight to my face that she can't go behind the defund movement, but yet city council and a lot of other agencies love to defund education, love to defund healthcare, and literally our youth are literally screaming for you to fund what it is that keeps them safe.

Most of y'all like to talk about gun violence.

How many of y'all in the city council have been impacted by gun violence directly?

My classmate Devon Pickett Jr. was killed.

in front of his wife with gun violence.

We have a literally open wound, but y'all wanna put band-aids in it by putting cops out here when that's not solving the problem.

The problem is what the youth are talking about as funding is what they need.

The problem is that we're funding SPD and we're not funding the youth-led programs and more of their demands.

You can see it in the back of my shirt as I walk away.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next, our last speaker for this group of in-person public commenters is number 42, Jack Hogan, and then we'll move back to remote.

Hi, my name is Jack Hogan.

I also recently moved to Seattle and I'm here to speak in support of the solidarity budget, and also Councilmember Morales is municipal housing administration program, 08, the amendment 0H002, 0H002A001.

I grew up in Los Angeles.

It is a moral abomination, the number of unhoused people who sleep on the streets every night in a city that is so incredibly wealthy.

I moved to Seattle looking to settle down here, to create roots here.

And it is also a moral abomination that there are unhoused people sleeping in the city too.

And we have an opportunity to do something about it before it reaches the incredibly terrible proportion that it is in Los Angeles right now.

And that requires you all spending money to address the problem.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next group of speakers will be remote and we'll begin with number 45, Barbara Finney, followed by number 46, Amanda Locke.

Barbara.

My name is Barbara Finney, delegate to the MLK Labor Council for AFJI Local 3197, speaking in a personal capacity.

Increase the Amazon tax by $140 million to fund public needs.

Washington State has the most regressive tax structure in the whole country.

The Amazon tax is a progressive tax on the rich.

It seems an abrogation of your duties, Council Democrats, not to increase the tax mechanism that's working, the Amazon tax.

Support the $140 million increase in the Amazon tax and support Council Member Sawant's amendment to publicly fund and make abortion access free for everyone in our city.

Abortion rights are workers' rights, and make abortion free in Seattle, and zero city funds should go for the flawed shot spotter technology for police.

Make the rich pay for this crisis, not working people.

Support council members to increase the Amazon tax by $140 million.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next remote speaker is number 46, Amanda Locke, who will be followed by Stephanie Areza.

Hello, my name is Amanda.

Due to the powerful work done by Wheel and Women in Black, we know that this year has been one of the deadliest for being unhoused in Seattle.

This case manager works with people who are unhoused I've worked with people who have died because they did not have a place to live and not receive the care and support that they deserved.

These are people who were generous enough to share themselves with me.

I had the privilege of getting to know them, what their sense of humor is like, what excited them, what their talents were, how they create a community and how beautiful their hearts were.

I also learned about their pain and frustration in the face of policies that are set up to make people struggle and not to thrive.

People have lost so many loved ones needlessly.

is we do not prioritize housing and care for people in the city.

This is not normal and it is not acceptable.

I do not accept the needless death of our community members.

I'm demanding that you look to a solidarity budget and prioritize the dignity and care of people.

Sweeps are costly and they need to stop.

They're making everyone less safe and they worsen the conditions and isolate people.

Defund sweeps now and fund housing and pay our essential

Thank you, our next speaker is Stephanie Ariza, followed by Leanne Reese-Jones.

Stephanie.

Good evening, council members.

I'm Stephanie Ariza, I live in district two, and I'm the program manager for the Inn Shelter with Catholic Community Services.

With the federal COVID dollars, the city of Seattle funded new programs to help combat homelessness.

The Inn Shelter is one of them.

Over the past two and a half years, we've supported 137 adults couples and their pets experiencing chronic homelessness mental illness and substance use.

The money you spent is working.

The in-shelter staff helped 87 amazing people find housing.

We need every single dollar to continue helping folks who spent decades on the streets finally come inside.

Without federal dollars we won't exist.

We need every dollar to provide a place for transformation a place to get sober get food get a warm bed.

and the most dedicated staff deserve raises and not fear of losing jobs.

Please honor inflation commitment.

It would be tragic to the city of Seattle and King County if the shelter and our 19 sister programs closed our doors.

Thank you to chair Miscada members, Herbold, Morales and Lewis for all the leadership on housing and homelessness.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Leanne Reese Jones followed by Vivian Moritz.

Good evening, council members.

My name is Leanne Rhys-Jones.

I'm a lead program supervisor and live in the district six.

Thank you council for the allocated funding for the next two years.

But tonight I'm here to ask you for the full funding that is required to continue the intensive case management support that is needing for our lead and co-lead programs to continue.

I'm here as a program supervisor, but I'm also a voice and advocate for our clients.

We develop trusting relationships to those that are most vulnerable, have experienced personal trauma, experienced chronic homelessness, experienced behavioral health and addiction challenges.

We step into that client's lives to help provide them a simple hot meal, a Washington State ID that gives someone an identity.

I recall as a case manager standing in UCIS with a client who broke down in tears to know she was in the system and therefore had an identity.

We provide the client listen to be heard, to assist our clients to access medication, and to not cycle through the jail system.

And I could go on and on with the goals that we help through case management.

We make small changes in our clients' lives is a small win, but those wins where we house our people and get them to a point where they address their addiction

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Vivian Meritz, followed by Tony Pettet, number 50 and number 51. Vivian, followed by Tony.

This is Vivian Songarich.

Vivian, you went back on mute.

Can you hear me now?

Yeah, I can.

Thanks.

Thank you.

This is Vivian Songarich, School Board Director for Seattle Public Schools.

I thank you for consideration of mental health supports for our students and tonight I'm speaking in support of the mayor's allocation for Memorial Stadium.

SDS is prepared to replace a 75-year-old facility with something that meets the needs of school athletics.

But by joining as a financial partner the city can ensure the project is integrated with Seattle Center and serves broader community needs.

Last May I toured it with a group of BIPOC high school students.

They shared their experiences and hopes for a new stadium.

One student shares this is a space where he sees students from all across Seattle coming together for sports and community activities.

He feels connected to Seattle by coming to the physical heart of the city and doing what he loves best playing football.

The students all agreed a major renovation is needed but that it has much much more potential.

Community connection and play.

These are the things our kids and adults crave.

We should not underestimate how fulfilling these needs directly contributes to the vitality and health of our city.

Thank you for your consideration.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 51, Tony, I believe, Pettit.

Good evening, council.

My name is Tony Pettit, and I am here on behalf of the Friends of the Conservatory at Volunteer Park.

I'm currently the vice president of the board of directors.

I'm here on behalf of our board of directors, our members, staff, supporters, and citizens of Seattle to express concerns about a 50% increase in admission fees the Volunteer Park Conservatory that is currently proposed by the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department.

For the 2023 and 24 biennium Seattle Parks and Recreation has proposed increasing the conservatory's admission fee from $4 to $6.

This increase is anticipated to generate approximately $89,000 in new revenue in 2023 to help mitigate park fund revenue gaps in the short term as post-pandemic revenues across the department have not stabilized.

Well, we understand that this proposal is intended to alleviate some of the shortfall forecast in the Seattle Parks and Recreation budget.

We assert that there are other unfactored consequences of the speed increase that have not been adequately considered.

We believe that this runs counter to the goals and values held by both Friends of the Conservatory and Seattle Parks and Recreation, and we are urging the City of Seattle to postpone modifications to

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 52, Brandi Flood, followed by, excuse me, Dana Sims.

Brandi?

And Brandi, you may need to press star six.

Okay, we'll come back to Brandi.

Let's see if Dana Sims, is Dana Sims- Can you hear me?

Oh, yes, we can, Brandi.

Thank you.

Yes.

Hello.

Thank you.

My name is Brandi Flood.

I'm the Director of Community Justice for REACH.

I'm a Rainier Breach resident and alumni.

I'm here to thank the council for the funding they've given COLEAD and LEAD so far, but we do need to mine that $6 million gap.

We work with the most complex people in the city, the people who've been victims of the extreme affluence in our community that creates and perpetuates extreme poverty and violence in our communities.

I want you to remember that we showed up for some of the most complex folks at every spring motel.

They were members of the, they were part of the criminal punishment system since they've been used.

They struggle with drug use and they were not able to access the white supremacist system set up that are supposed to serve people.

Those are folks that need creative alternative solutions.

Co-lead and lead were the organization that showed up to do that for those folks.

Please our program so we can stay citywide.

and support our staff and serve the most complex folks.

We have over a thousand clients that won't be served without that programming.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 54 Dana Sims followed by 55 Tiffany Coleman.

Dana.

Hello.

My name is Dana Sims.

I'm a small business owner in downtown Seattle.

I also reside in Bitter Lake Um, I'm calling today to urge the council to reconsider adding back in the addiction treatment pilot program, which was proposed by council member Nelson, uh, right out to the front door of my business.

I've been dealing with rampant homelessness, uh, for quite some time.

I've seen a lot of money thrown at this problem, but nothing seems to work.

But one thing that is consistent in my experience with the homeless downtown.

is a majority of the chronic homeless are addicted to drugs.

I personally feel that a core part of our homeless problem is more inclined to drug addiction than people who have fallen on rough times.

I think this would be a great program to try something new to move in a good direction to combat homelessness.

And I urge you to consider the pilot program

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Tiffany Coleman, who will be followed by Sierra Jones.

Hi, my name is Tiffany Coleman.

I'm a resident in District 1 and a firefighter at Station 37 in the south end of West Seattle.

Thank you, Council Members Herbold, Nelson, Morales, and Mosqueda for the support and work in ensuring that responding to life emergencies is important and a priority in West Seattle.

The greatest impact in funding Ladder 13 and Medic 26 is recognizing these are unique skill sets that engine companies do not perform.

If funded they appropriately shorten response times to critical life and fire emergencies.

With increased population multilevel apartment buildings traffic run type and volume we need these units in place as a fundamental emergency resource.

Longer than four minutes is detrimental in regards to outcomes.

West Seattle is the only district that has one assigned ladder truck and one assigned medic unit.

When those units responding to a call, the next truck or medic unit are greater than 10 to 15 minutes away.

We need to keep up with growth and run volume.

We are grateful for your continued support in keeping funding in the package.

Thank you very much for all of your hard work.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sierra Jones and Sierra will be followed by Hector Herrera.

Sierra.

Sierra, you may need to press star six.

Hello?

Hello?

Hello?

Go ahead.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, thank you for your time.

I'm personally in support of the solidarity budget defending the, or defunding the SPD and against the shot slaughter.

Now I'll speak on behalf of one of my unhoused neighbors.

They wanted me to let you know that they believe that there are funds in the city budget

Go ahead, Sierra.

I kind of messed it up.

Sierra, we can hear you.

We're going to give you some of your time back, but could you, if you're by a speaker or the TV is on, could you turn it down a little bit?

Yes, let me go somewhere.

Sorry about that.

That's okay.

It's just, it's the Seattle channel.

Yeah Seattle Channel's kind of delayed so it comes on a little bit later.

Yeah so if you could start your time over that'd be great.

Thank you so much.

I'm sorry about that.

Okay.

I just wanted to say hi.

Thank you for your time.

I am personally in support of the Solidarity Budget defunding the SPD and against Shot Spotter.

Now I'll speak on behalf of one of my unhoused neighbors.

They wanted me to let you know that they believe there are funds in the city budget to give the unhoused population access to pet companions.

This looks like adoption vouchers.

there is a high need of pets to be adopted in the city.

And there's a high need of people looking for a companion for their loneliness, mental illnesses, and their PTSD.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Hector Herrera, who will be followed by Devin Maycutt.

Hector.

Hi, thank you for your time.

Thanks.

My name is Hector Herrera, and I'm a supervisor at the LEAD program.

I'm here to first thank the council for fighting for the LEAD program, but also to ask that you fully fund LEAD and co-LEAD programs for the next two years.

The LEAD program accepts referrals from law enforcement officials of the most vulnerable people cycling through the carceral system.

With our harm reduction approach, we make creative service plans and connect these folks to housing, mental health, substance use treatment, while coordinating with prosecutors and defense attorneys to dismiss their charges so they can rise above the injustice carceral system perpetuates.

Our case managers are on the streets every day, outreaching folks that fall through the cracks.

We've talked a lot about public safety tonight, but what about the safety of our neighbors living with mental illnesses and substance use disorders caught up in the carceral system?

Council members, I ask you, don't turn your back on the over 1,000 LEAD clients and fully fund LEAD and call LEAD.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Now we'll now have Devin Maycutt and then we'll have two public commenters that are in the council chambers.

Devin.

Hello.

Hello.

Oh, hi, good evening.

My name is Devin Maycutt and I have the honor of working at the LEAD program at REACH with Hector.

I am here tonight to say thank you for the support that has come through for the city council.

not to expand LEAD but just to help us maintain our current operations.

I want to live in a city where public safety means we prioritize the safety of individuals who are the most unwell and most in need of services.

The over 1,000 people who are currently in the LEAD and CoLEAD programs cannot be abandoned just because of some crunching of numbers.

I really, really want to request full support of our current budget so that we can maintain funding for some of the most unwell folks living in this city.

I want to thank you so much for your time and for all of the young people that spoke during this evening's meeting.

Thank you.

Our next two speakers are in person.

They will be Nellie Jasper.

Sorry if I ruined your name.

Anna Karisa Marikawa.

And just want to do a quick announcement.

I see some folks signing up.

If you are interested in testifying in person and you haven't signed up, please do so now.

After we go through these in-person folks, for everybody who's online, we will take a 10-minute recess because we're going to switch out the staffing of the IT systems and we'll get through everybody else online, but that would conclude everybody in the room.

So if you haven't signed up, you're welcome to.

Please go ahead.

Hello.

Hi, my name is Nelly.

I work at a youth serving organization facilitating farming and food justice programming at an urban community farm in South Park.

And I want to say that we are bombarded by pollution from every direction.

I have to tell the black and brown youth I work with not to touch the soil with their bare hands or play in the creek nearby because there's toxic roundup, heavy metals and motor oil.

from the nearby highway.

I have to tell them to speak up over the planes that fly overnight every 90 seconds and we had to cancel the program three weeks in a row due to poor air quality because of the wildfire smoke.

This is just frankly apocalyptic and it is environmental racism.

I had a city employee tell me in a meeting the other day that we just live in a polluted world as if we should be resigned to that.

And I have to say, I did not consent to that.

The youth I work with did not consent to that, and neither do our unhoused neighbors who can't escape these environmental pollutants.

They did not consent to this.

So I fully support funding the Green New Deal and environmental justice demands within the solidarity budget, including affordable social housing.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Carissa.

Hello, my name is Carissa Morikawa.

I wasn't planning on talking, but as I was sitting here, I was getting more frustrated with the shock that none of the three Green New Deal social housing amendments that Council Member Morales put forward have been approved and included in the budget.

I've been working in Seattle with youth and young adults and their families for the last 10 or 11 years.

working with folks who are experiencing homelessness, homelessness at shelters, I was doing rapid rehousing.

And it's honestly embarrassing to be a person who's funded to support people in finding housing.

And then you go and you look for housing, and there is no affordable housing for them to live in, even with the subsidies that we were offering.

And even if we got them in a place, it wasn't sustainable.

Even as a person myself who works in nonprofits, I am getting pushed out of the city as well and cannot even afford to live here to support the people that I'm serving.

So please reconsider putting the social housing amendments into the balanced budget.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our last in-person speaker before we recess is Jasmine Smith.

Hi, thank you all for being here and for taking the time to work on such a really challenging budget and a time when we are just not having the money to find things and I think it's really important that we.

focus our money on our people, our communities, and how we can keep people housed, keep people safe, and make sure that that's where we're making our investments.

I've heard a lot of amazing young people tell us where we want our money to go and how we want our community to serve us and how we want our city to serve us.

and I really encourage uplifting those voices and making sure that we aren't throwing money into a broken system that isn't going to keep us safe, that is going to continue to harm us, that is not going to be accountable to us or above them, and that we have the opportunity to focus on housing, focus on making sure people have livable wages, that we don't get pushed out of our communities.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So I just want to double check.

Is there anybody else in the room that wants to testify that didn't get a chance to sign up?

Okay.

Well, you are all welcome to after the recess to if you change your minds for folks online, we're on caller number 60. So we will continue on and we will come back at 715, 715. So please do not hang up the line for anybody who's waiting to testify.

We will come back to you.

715, we will come back.

If they're hearing an objection, we will go into recess for the next 11 minutes.

and we'll reconvene at 7.15 PM.

you you

do

Are you ready?

We're ready.

We're at 715.

And are we live still?

We are live and recording.

Thank you very much.

Welcome back to the Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee meeting.

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

We will reconvene from the recess that we just took.

Thanks so much for letting our IT and support team get a little bit of a break.

We're going to go to the one person left to testify in the room, and then we will go back online for all of the online callers.

We're going to start again at number 60. Welcome, and please state your name for the record.

Hello, his name is Osh Morath Storm.

He may state it also.

Yeah, Osh Morath Storm.

This is me, hey.

I apologize if I smell, because I was supposed to shower, but this took precedence.

So I wanted to bring up that it's kind of like a cage around stairway to help residents get in more safely, and also for a camera to be there.

Because at 77 South Washington Street, somebody got assaulted, and it looked unprovoked.

And he had a dog.

Yeah, I was told that that could have been avoided if there was more surveillance and a security guard and a gate over the thing like all the other neighbors have to keep their stuff protected.

Also I'm vegan and a lot of people ask me why and I say, why not?

That's all, thanks.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We'll move into remote speakers and we are on number 59, Suzanne Grant.

Hello, I am Suzanne Grant.

I'm going to talk about something you haven't heard about yet tonight, but everyone loves trees.

I know that the City Council will be cutting programs, but I hear that you will be retaining programs that directly benefit communities that especially need help.

So I want to speak in support of retention of our mature and exceptional trees to help you achieve your goal.

The Seattle Comprehensive Plan has set a citywide urban forest canopy cover goal of 30%.

We need to create tree equity for the underserved communities of our city, and have much less canopy cover than that.

Trees provide health benefits for those living beneath them.

The air quality index was better, cleaner here on Queen Anne Hill where I live, than it was in the rest of Seattle during our recent air quality alerts.

Why?

Probably because we have more trees and big trees.

The rest of the world seems to understand that trees are important.

How about you all?

A city urban forested position is needed now within the city OSD to facilitate our comprehensive plan goals that are currently moving toward decline rather than gain.

Please reject this $500,000 cut in.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Suzanne Dale Etsy.

Number 61, Suzanne Dale Etsy.

Good evening.

I'm Suzanne Dale Etsy and I'm here for the Seattle Building and Construction Trades Council.

On behalf of over 20,000 construction workers and their families and our 19 affiliate unions I want to thank you Chair Muscata for maintaining an investment toward Memorial Stadium.

However we are disappointed in the reduction from the commitment of 40 million dollars to 20 million and ask for passage of an amendment to fix this.

I'm also here as a Seattle Public Schools parent whose kids play in Memorial Stadium and an STS alum who played soccer in that same stadium 35 years ago.

Memorial Stadium has been pathetic for decades.

It is unsafe and accessible and it doesn't provide the opportunities and world-class facility that our students and community deserve.

Memorial will be built as part of the building trade student and community workforce agreement.

It will create equity and economic opportunity for the disadvantaged.

Over $66 million was already approved by the voters in the last but we need the full $40 million commitment even in out years to be successful with fundraising for the remainder.

Thank you.

Thank you, our next speaker is number 64, Patrick Dunn, and Patrick will be followed by Ben Carson.

Patrick.

Hi, my name is Patrick Dunn.

Unmuted.

Go ahead, I think you were unmuted.

Tristar Six, one more time, we had heard you.

There you go.

Hi, my name is Patrick Dunn from District 1. I'm calling to say a sincere thank you to each council member, specifically Nelson Morales and Chairperson Mosqueda for supporting Lisa Herbold's amendment to continue the service of Seattle Fire Department's ladder truck and medic unit currently working and making a difference in West Seattle.

Addressing the longest response times in the city is a big step forward.

Supporting first responders is crucial to a strong and safe city benefiting all of us.

Thank you again, that is all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Ben Carson and Ben will be followed by Christopher Persons.

Hello.

Is this Ben?

Hello.

Go ahead Ben.

Hi, my name is Jessica Hale and I'm a resident of Seattle and I support the solidary budget.

We Thanks.

Hold up.

What is it?

Defund SPD, house us all, stop the suites, pay service providers, support the food banks, and add services, not suites.

Yay.

Go ahead.

Okay, our next speaker will be Howard Gale.

Howard, go ahead.

Good evening.

Good evening.

Howard Gale with Seattle Stop.org.

Two years after George Floyd, the budget, the council is now considering still proposes more money for the police and waste over $11 million on a police accountability system that still has police investigating police and denies victims of police violence, any semblance of justice, accountability, or even a right of appeal.

Despite this council members, Mosqueda, Morales, and Herbold met with advocates for families impacted by police violence recently.

resulting in Council Member Mosqueda taking a huge and important step by introducing Budget Amendment SPD-101A to start a process for supporting families impacted by police violence and investigating, creating an appeals process for adverse decisions made by the Office of Police Accountability.

This is a small but important step in ameliorating the harms that Seattle's police training and policy create.

It is a moral and practical statement that offers a glimmer of hope.

Thank you to Council Members Morales, and I hope all councilmembers will support this.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 81, Harold Hillseth.

Number 81, Harold.

Hi there, can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, good evening, y'all.

My name is Harold Hillseth, Policy and Advocacy Manager for Chief Seattle Club.

I'm here today to express our support and gratitude for Council Member Mosqueda's balancing package and reallocation of funds to commit to paying 2023 7.6% mandated raises to the club and our citywide partners, human service providers.

Here's a quote from one of our frontline staff members who cannot be here tonight that I want to share with you all.

Quote, as a rapid rehousing case manager, I assist homeless members and families in the apartment search process and ensure they gain access to the necessary financial funding that assists with moving costs and subsequent rental payments.

Providing critical work to this population is demanding and social service providers cannot continue to expand and address the increased demand without proper wage payments that meets the rising living costs due to inflation." I also want to note our support of fully funding Mayor Harrell's proposed budget item to reopen and revitalize City Hall Park right around the corner from All All as one of the only green spaces near the club that our members can enjoy. Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 82, Maureen Ewing.

And following Maureen will be Alan Smith.

Good evening.

Good evening, Council.

I'm Maureen Ewing, Executive Director of UHERTS.

We are supportive of Chair Mesquita's amendment to ensure that human service worker wages keep up with inflation.

Workers make an average of 20 to 25 an hour and should be better compensated to ensure that Seattle is an equitable city.

The labor shortage is gutting our workforce and it is critical that workers are adequately paid for meeting the basic needs of our most vulnerable populations.

I also wanna give a big thank you to Council Member Strauss for sponsoring increased funding for vehicle residency outreach and to Council Member Peterson and Council President Juarez for co-sponsoring We are underinvesting and serving the nearly 50% of unhoused people who live in cars and RVs.

And we need to increase outreach efforts, safe lots, and adjust SNPs to allow RV safe zones in the right of way.

These programs are a win-win and address constituent concerns while providing a pathway to housing and services.

Thank you all.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alan Smith.

Alan will be followed by Taylor Riley.

Alan.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Can you hear me?

Okay, great.

So my name is Lindsay Surface.

I'm speaking today on behalf of my friend, Tanya, who is an unhoused member of our community.

Tanya was regularly housed.

She had a community to call her own.

She had her own place.

She owned her own property and she paid rent that was $500, which was an amount that was affordable to her in a trailer park.

until five years ago when the city made her move her home and steamrolled over that in order to put a parking lot and a dog park.

And Tanya has been homeless ever since and unable to find stable housing that she can afford in this community and in this city which she has called home most of her life for the last five years.

And so she is furious, she is sad and she is heartbroken that the city is even contemplating giving more money to police giving more money to the world, some world cup budget and absolutely not.

She does not want the money spent on that.

She wants resources.

She wants to be able to find a home.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Taylor Riley and Taylor will be followed by Christian Anderson, Taylor.

Hi, I'm Taylor, a resident of D3, and I support the solidarity budget.

Thank you to the council members who listened and whose amendments make a more humane budget.

I continue to support parking enforcement staying in the Department of Transportation and out of SPD.

I also support cuts to SPD for an advertising campaign, new guns, surveillance, and retention bonuses.

Removing this wasteful spending from SPD's bloated budget is just common sense when we're facing a revenue shortfall.

The new amendments removing 80 ghost cop positions is a great start and we need to go further.

The budget still keeps 120 ghost cops that SPD has no plan or ability to fill.

It's past time for SPD to engage in reality based budgeting like every other city department has to do and cast out the ghost cops.

We also need to defund sweeps and fund survival.

Sweeps don't make anyone safe yet the balancing package still provides tens of millions of dollars for sweeps and our of our unhoused neighbors.

Money for sweeps and ghost cops should be reallocated to food security pedestrian and bike safety.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Christian Anderson will be followed by Shirish Mulherkar.

Christian.

Hi there.

My name is Christian Anderson.

I'm in District 3 and I want to thank Tammy Morales for her support earlier on in this process.

I'm representing Seattle Jazz that is a board member and as a jazz musician and a resident of the city asking that we have the allocation of $1.5 million put back in the budget to help build a facility on Rainier, South Beacon Hill, North Beacon Hill rather.

It'll be affordable housing, building for after school music programs, providing jobs for musicians, teachers, And just really really important I think for that part of the community and we would love to have the support from the city that you know we previously felt we had.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Sharish Mulhorkar followed by Anne Mulhorkar.

Yeah.

Hi.

Good evening.

My name is Sharish Mulhorkar.

I co-founded Seattle Jazz Ed.

with a team that included the great educator and musician Clarence Acox.

And I'm here calling in today to urge the City Council to reinstate in part or in full the $1.5 million that was allocated to Jazz House in the Mayor's 2023 proposed budget.

Through this building, Jazz Ed and Community Roots Housing together will provide music education to over 4,000 kids, and there will be also over 100 units of much-needed affordable housing in Rainier Valley.

The city needs to focus on the future, on our youth and affordable housing for residents who are being pushed out due to high rents.

Jazz House will be transformational, a vibrant, inclusive community anchor in South Seattle and a model for other mixed use projects.

I urge you to support it.

Thank you, Council Member Morales for championing this project.

Thanks to all of you for the work you do to make the city one that we can all be proud of.

Thank you, bye.

Thank you our next speaker is Anne Mulherker.

Hi I'm Anne Mulherker resident of District 2 calling to urge you to reinstate the budget allocation for Seattle Jazz at new building project in Rainier Valley.

Not just an arts project Jazz House combines a music education center with over 100 units of affordable housing in partnership with Community Roots Housing.

When we look at the crises facing Seattle today I should not need to explain that affordable housing is key to the solution.

JazzEd provides educational equity in the arts that's sorely lacking in Seattle.

It serves students from 82 zip codes with pay what you can tuition and loaned instruments.

With its specific focus on racial and gender equity JazzEd will support 4,000 students in its new building bringing together widely diverse populations from all over the city.

Jazz House is a win-win project with its focus on both affordable housing and the pervasive achievement and opportunity gaps faced by our city's youth.

Thank you.

Please support.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 99, Lipika Mukherjee.

Lipika?

Hello, my name is Lipika Mukherjee and I'm a resident of District 3. I support Seattle Jazz Ed and for the funding for the development of Jazz House.

My daughter has benefited from this amazing teaching program.

She found joy friends and a musical voice.

Please help Jazz House provide access to education community homes jobs and above all hope at a time when our youth need it more than ever.

Jazz House will build 108 new affordable homes over a facility for affordable music for all.

Jazz House will grow a mission of hope and joy that deeply impacts future generations.

Seattle Jazz House has a meaningful impact on its community and Jazz House will provide good paying jobs through its construction.

Not all youth have access to music education.

Music education should be accessible to all youth.

It builds confidence community and is an art form that touches us all emotionally.

At Seattle Jazz House you pay what you can for free and no questions asked.

Thank you so much.

Okay, Madam Clerk, I believe you said we were on item number 99, is that correct?

We're on number 99 of the people who've been present, but there are a number of people who are no longer or have not called in and are listed as not present.

Okay, I'm going to read the folks that were listed as not present, and I'm going to also ask that we tee up Deliana Other Bull, who is listed as present and wasn't there earlier.

So if you were within the first hundred people that signed up but were not dialed in, I'm going to read your name.

So if you're listening, you know that we've passed your number.

You can still speak, but you need to dial in.

here very soon so that we don't conclude before wrapping up.

You need to dial in so that we can come back to you.

So number 20 was Camille Gix.

Number 30, Tiffany, oh, Tiffany, I already misspelled.

Number 39, James Miles.

Number 40, Shauna McCann.

Number 42, Jacob Scherer.

Number 48, Julia Buck.

Number 53, Perry Smith.

Number 60, Andrea Smith.

Number 63, Zoe Ammer.

And then the rest are all in the 60s through 80s.

And that'd be Christopher Pearson, Michael Wilmoth, Dom Davis, Zachary Kirschbaum, John Chow, Bill Crowley.

I think Geraldine maybe have spoken already.

Geraldine Kinsley, John Jones, Myrna Ellis, Dovana Foles, Regina Beck, Nick McCabe, Eli Swift.

And then we have a set of folks in the 90s, Jennifer Lee, Aubyn Kingston, George Jones, Julie Howell, Allison Iverson, Sam Smith, Allison Wright, Cecilia Gerard, Sammy Smith, and Lauren Fay.

That gets up to 100. If you have heard your name called, we have gone through those items, and we will come back to you if you dial in.

That also includes Nancy Lindsay.

Nancy Lindsay, you're number 98. So at this point, let's go back to Deliana Otherbull, and we'll also come back to Marco Maurice, and we'll continue with the rest.

And then that gets us from caller number 100 to 132. If anybody dials in that's not present previously, we will come back to you.

Deliana, thanks for your patience.

Are you still there?

Star six to unmute.

I see you on the line, Juliana.

Star six to unmute.

Okay, let's tee up Marco Maurice.

Marco, good evening.

Star six to unmute.

One more time.

Hi, Marco.

Please go ahead.

Hi there.

I'm actually calling on behalf of Marco.

who could not be here to comment because unfortunately there was a situation where they are camping in regards to a fire.

So this just exemplifies the serious crisis of what's going on that the city needs to instead fund housing services, not SPD, not ShotSpotter, and fund services for people who are unhoused.

I'm a community volunteer.

I've been to many suites where I've witnessed the trauma and the harm that SPD, that Parks and Rec, that SPU, that parking enforcement simply does upon people who are impoverished, who just simply need support and services.

And so I urge you to support the solidarity budget and please, support life-affirming options.

Thank you.

Deleona, we still see you on the screen.

Star 6 to unmute.

Otherwise, we'll go to John Jones.

Oh, hi, Deleona.

Star 6, go ahead.

Thank you.

Hi, there.

Hi.

Hi, there.

This is – hi.

This is for John Jones.

Oh, sorry.

Just one second.

Sorry.

Okay.

John, you're welcome to go.

Deliana, I saw you come off mute, so we'll come back to you.

Go ahead, John.

All right.

One sec.

Here we go.

Oh, now you're back on mute.

Okay.

I see both John and Deliana online.

Star six to unmute.

We're going to call your name if you are not present.

All right we'll move to number 104 Nival Malik.

Number 104 followed by Sarah Linson number 105. But Nival.

Hello.

My name is Nival Malik.

I'm 16 years old and a junior at Ingraham High School.

As you all know there was a tragic shooting that took place on November 8th that resulted in the loss of a student.

Just by the sheer number of students at yesterday's rally it's obvious the impact this left on all of us in the Seattle School District.

It's obvious the momentum there is behind this movement.

There were so many factors that led up to the events of the shooting but one of the most important is the aspect of the mental health epidemic we are seeing in schools.

The bottom line is we need money to hire the therapist that our students need.

I urge the city council to move money from the graffiti removal fund into kids' mental health support in order to prevent this from becoming the reality us students have to live with.

Your decision on this will truly show us whether you care more about buildings in the city or the children of the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker.

Our next speaker is Sarah Linson, and that will be followed by she will be followed by Kathleen Strauts Clark, Sarah.

Sarah, you may need to press star six.

I see you, but you look like you're still muted.

Excuse me.

Okay, we're gonna move on from Sarah for now to Kathleen Strauss-Clark.

Kathleen, are you available?

Star six.

My name is Katie and I'm a senior at Ingraham High School.

I'm asking all council members to remove money from graffiti removal and put it into kids' mental health support and prioritize kids over property.

There is not enough proper mental health support for children in schools.

We cannot hope to prevent tragedies like the shooting that occurred on Tuesday morning at Ingraham High School if we do not address this fact.

This proposal will allow the district to hire licensed mental health therapists that can help students work through issues that they are not equipped to deal with on their own.

Children should not be expected to solve problems that they do not have the tools to solve.

We as students and children should not be in the situation that we are in.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Harold Branford, number 109, and Harold will be followed by Vanny Jane, number 110. Harold?

And Harold, you may need to press star six also.

Okay, we're gonna move on for now to Vanny Jane, number one, 11.

Hi my name is Bonnie.

I'm a senior at Ingraham High School.

I encourage all of the city council to move money from graffiti removal which is property into kids mental health support.

This money is necessary for the students across our district suffering from a lack of mental health support.

My counselors should not feel the burden of students mental health when their job is to provide guidance to graduates.

I should have access to a licensed therapist in school.

And not only that, there needs to be enough therapists in school to sustainably support us all.

With proper mental health support, we hope to prevent tragedies like what occurred last Tuesday at Ingraham High School and what continues to occur across our nation due to gun violence.

It's clear to me that if this request is not met, the city council values property over the lives of the children that they represent.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker looks like a new person is now present from the previous group.

Number 94, Lauren Fay.

Lauren, are you available?

You may need to press star six.

Okay, we will come back moving on.

The next speaker will be Harold Branford.

Harold Branford, number 109. And we will move on to Katie Figueroa, number 111, Katie Figueroa.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

My name is Katie Figueroa.

I'm a junior at Ingraham High School.

I encourage all our city council to move money from graffiti which is property and to kids mental health support.

Students and I across the district should be able to access licensed therapists.

It's especially important that these therapists reflect the diversity of the student body in each in each Seattle school.

With more mental health support from these licensed therapists it can help to prevent incidents like the one we experienced last Tuesday November 8th at Ingraham High School.

This money from the graffiti removal into mental health support is an important need because some don't have access to support in their homes and not everyone is privileged enough to have role models to look up to that can teach them how to manage conflicts.

So please listen to us and choose kids over.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Julia Barras, number 113. Julia Barras or Barrus, I'm sorry, I'm not sure which.

Julia.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi, I'm Julia and I'm a sophomore at Ingram High School.

I encourage all of city council to move money from graffiti removal into kids' mental health support.

This money is needed to help stop suffering from a lack of mental health support and get lessons for kids.

The school's counselor's job is to help students pass classes and set them up for college not carry the burden of students' mental health.

Each student should have access to a therapist but not all kids do.

If we put therapists into schools not only will kids have access but it will likely prevent tragedies like the one on Tuesday morning at Ingram.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 118, Corey Grier.

Corey?

And Corey, press star six.

Okay, we will move on.

Oh, yes, we can.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Durkin, I'm homeless, all right?

I'm a college educated, and I'm actually a publicist author.

And if you walk the streets out here, you see that we actually aren't homeless.

We have homes.

And they may not be brick and mortar, but they're our homes nonetheless.

And when you sweep us, all it does is creates a larger rift between us and marginalizes us so that we are hated and despised, and creates even bigger problems that you may not even see.

But the ones of us that actually have gotten homes, have turned their lives around and gotten jobs, they're clean and doing what they can to stay off the street.

If we actually had the opportunity and given half a chance, maybe my dead friends and brothers and sisters that have died out here every day maybe would have had a chance, but I guess we'll never know.

But you can change that by actually fulfilling what you guys said you were gonna do with the millions of dollars for homelessness, and actually.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is David Moring, number 119, David Moring.

Thank you, David Moring, architect and member of TREE PAC.

Please support the citywide funding for hunting trees, pages 206, 207. As you may know, Seattle is welcoming over 600 people from around the nation here, urban forestry advocates, on Wednesday and Thursday this week.

And they're including within their presentations financing the urban forest.

So the Seattle Comprehensive Plan, as you know, has established a goal of 30% canopy cover, and we're at 28.1 and dropping.

We need tree equity in the Guwamish area, which is Just 15% canopy and other underserved communities.

Seattle needs 1,000 acres of canopy to cover in order to achieve that 30% in our comp plan.

That equates to 100,000 trees.

If Seattle cannot plan a budget to meet this goal, we must alternative sources.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 122, Karen Taylor.

And Karen will be followed by Richard Ellison.

Karen.

Hi, my name is Karen Taylor and I'm a renter here in Seattle.

I am just calling to make sure that we do the most we can to defund police.

I think we're removing some ghost cop positions, but as many as possible.

that is a really bad idea.

And I hadn't heard about this moving graffiti removal funds over to mental health, but I think that that's an excellent idea.

And I applaud the youth who have spoken about that.

That's what public safety looks like.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Richard Ellison.

Excuse me.

Richard Ellison will be followed by Emma Allen.

Richard?

Looks like you're ready to go, Richard.

Can you hear me now?

Yes.

Hello?

Hello.

Hello?

We can hear you.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

OK, thank you.

I'll start again.

I'm sorry.

Council members, I'm Richard Hilson with TREPAC.

I live in district four.

Please add an urban forestry position, OSE, and add jumpstart to SDOT and plant more trees.

Our communities with low tree cover and environmental needs need more coordinated help.

Today and tomorrow, Seattle has an urban forestry conference occurring, yet Seattle doesn't even have an urban forestry position.

Seattle instead has nine different departments behaving like a blind office, each arm doing its own thing.

We are losing our mature trees and new development and climate change and record heat and smoke and neglect are killing our newly planted trees on streets, parks, and in housing construction.

Residential zones are built out without space for mature trees on private property.

By 2060, we'll have half the trees we have now.

And many urbanists argue that saving trees is not possible in order to build enough affordable housing.

How can we save existing healthy trees, building more multiplex housing?

How do we do this?

How do we provide families that needed new housing and open space?

Please need an urban forester coordinate the position and money for new.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Olivia B and Olivia will be followed by Emma Allen.

Okay.

Hello.

I'm a homeless resident at King County and I too share the opinion that it's unnecessary to increase spending or budget towards previously proven ineffective methods.

I think that you should instead focus on improving training methods that better prepare preexisting staff to better serve the general public, as well as residents who are in need of services.

I just don't think you should allow a temporary situation to permanently alter the public's opinion of you and your organization.

Thanks for your time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Emma Allen.

Excuse me.

And Emma will be followed by Carolyn Perkins.

Go ahead, Emma.

Hi, this is Emma.

I'm with Seattle Radical Women and Puget Sound Mobilization for Reproductive Justice, and I'm calling to support the people's budget to allocate funding for reproductive rights and abortion procedures in Seattle and King County.

The demand for reproductive services has been going up, and I think the city could pay for abortion procedures the way it did for COVID-19 testing.

And also I wanted to support the culturally specific gender based services to help those who are trying to flee domestic violence situations as the need for that has also gone up.

And I think with an increase in the jumpstart tax there should definitely be enough money to go around for housing reproductive services and assisting those who are escaping domestic violence situations.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is number 128, Carolyn Perkins.

And Carolyn, you may need to press star six.

And if she's not available, I do see a new person that's now present, which is a number 112. Flora W. Flora, are you available?

We are now at the end of our list.

So if you are signed up to speak and we are waiting for your name to be called, now is the time to dial in.

We see a handful of people who started to dial back in.

We are going to come back to those listed as present now.

You're still tuned in and want to provide public comment, you're welcome to before we conclude.

Number 100 is Lindsey Zerfas, 101 David Yesmurkski, 102 Sammy Lang, 103 Mike Mann, 106, Nancy Lindsay.

108, Mason Pugh.

114, Ruby Royal.

115, Rose Justice.

116, Tanya Wu.

I think Tanya spoke.

117 is Robert Eagle.

120 is Miles Hagopian.

121, Joe Mama, Joe Mama.

Number 24 is Catherine Whitehill, 127, Atlas Hoover, 129, Jennifer Adams, Daniel Goodwin, Cassidy Lewis, and Coco Weber.

Again, those are all the people listed to speak today, but not present in the last half of our sign-up sheet.

And if you've heard your name earlier, or have signed up for public comment, now's the time to dial in.

So we see in the queue, Flora, and we also have ready to be teed up, Sarah Lesson, Harold Bradford, Lauren Fay, and Caroline Perkins.

All of you are able to push star six, and we'll let you know when you're up.

Good afternoon slash evening, Flora W. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Okay.

Yes, we can.

Hello, I echo the demands of the solidarity, Hello, I echo the demands of the solidarity budget and the impacted people's budget.

Also note a shot spotter.

A lawsuit this July against the city of Chicago showed that it was faulty over 90% of the time, despite misleading claims of 97% accuracy, and a lot of targeted misinformation being spread recently by the Seattle Police Commission.

I've also learned that a quote unquote confirmed gunshot from shot spotter allows police to subject anyone in the area to blanket stop and frisk.

So really all that shots butter does is increase opportunities for police violence and brutality and permanently embed surveillance in residential neighborhoods for profit.

Thirdly, the council cannot approve the mayor's proposal to snatch $86 million from the jumpstart budget and funnel 20 million to SPD and 38 million to violent suites.

It's ridiculous to take money away from the housing budget and then use it to punish poor people for not having housing.

Finally, I support all cuts to SED's budget, including for advertising, new guns, retention bonuses, and ghost positions, that money should go to pedestrian safety improvements, ADA compliance in parks, affordable housing, climate infrastructure, and mental health counselors for public schools.

Great.

Madam Clerk, do you want me to start calling up some?

Sure, it looks like Carolyn Perkins might be available now.

Yeah, Carolyn Perkins, good evening.

Yes, hello, and of course, I've just lost my words.

Anyway, thank you very much council members for hanging in here this long night.

I'm here to speak on behalf of Seattle Jazz Ed and Jazz House and to ask for your financial support for the future of Jazz House.

Again, my name is Caroline Perkins.

I'm speaking tonight to ask for your support As a former teacher in Seattle Public Schools, a parent of former high school jazz musicians, longtime member of the Seattle Jazz Ed Community and Central District, community member, I've witnessed so much that is positive about providing excellent music education and performance opportunities to our kids.

Excellent music education requires financial means and access.

With a pay-as-you-can model, Seattle Jazz Ads offers excellent music education to any interested student, regardless of background.

Additionally, jazz has...

Oh, shoot.

Sorry, you got cut off there.

Please do send in the rest of your content.

Lauren, thanks for being ready to go.

It's your turn.

And Lauren, your phone might be on mute itself.

Can you just double check that?

Okay, Lauren, we can't hear you.

Any chance your phone's on mute itself?

It looks like you already pushed star six.

Oh, it's a bummer.

Okay, we'll keep you up there, Lauren, in case we can hear you again in a minute.

Harold Bradford, would you like to hit star six to unmute?

Harold Bradford.

OK, Madam Clerk, do you want me to go ahead and go?

Actually, I see a couple more now that are now present.

So we're going to jump down to number 130, Daniel Goodwin.

And Daniel will be followed by Jennifer Adams.

Daniel, please press star 6. Hi.

Thanks for your time.

I was listening on another line and didn't.

I wasn't in the appropriate spot.

Anyway.

I work at Ingram for eight years, and I'm really excited to hear the voices of the youth talk about budget priorities and ending gun violence in our city.

I support the solidarity budget, specifically the call to defund Seattle Police by 50%.

I feel that the Green New Deal priorities and amendments that have been suggested for this trimmed budget are crucial, absolutely crucial.

For every dollar this city spends on the Green New Deal, so far they spent 40 on police.

This is not in line with what the city needs and what the broader world at large needs.

Air pollution deaths are estimated between 100 to 200,000 per year by the American Chemical Society, with half of those deaths coming from burning fossil fuels.

I applaud efforts to move us away from fossil fuel burning, and I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Jennifer Adams.

And then Jennifer will be followed by Lauren Fay.

Jennifer.

Yes.

Go ahead, please.

Thank you.

Thank you, ladies and gentlemen of the council.

I appreciate your time.

This is a lengthy thing.

I had to speak last week too.

I guess I had to write it.

I didn't quite get in there.

Please listen to the children.

Please hear them.

216 deaths on the street this year that we could have prevented if we had services that work.

We, our vehicle resident outreach group, formerly Scrappaw Mitigation, we have housed, well, housed is a weird option, sheltered and got in a tiny house village, women in their 70s, two of them.

We are seeing that living in their vehicle is the new affordable housing.

We'd like to make sure that we get our funding and that you fund all providers and that we make humans our number one goal this year.

Getting humans off the street and into provided amazing housing so that they can flourish.

Thank you.

Our next speaker will be Lauren Fay, and Lauren will be followed by Nick McNabb.

Go ahead, Lauren.

Okay, it looks like Lauren did star six, but we still can't hear her, so we're gonna move on to Nick McNabb.

Nick, go ahead and hit star six.

I have some background.

You have some background noise.

I have to maybe wait.

Nick, we have too much interference.

The TV's on in the background.

So Nick, if you could push mute on your TV because Seattle Channel is delayed, that would be great.

And then we'll unmute you again.

But I think you've got to turn your TV down, Nick.

Let's try again, star six, Nick.

Nick McNabb, you can try star six as long as the background noise has been turned down.

Hello.

Hi.

OK, yeah, this is Nick McNabb.

Hi, this is Nick McNabb.

Calling from District 6 in support of the solidarity budget.

Alright, and I think one problem we're having is there's no constant reliable informational resource for the undecided straddling the line.

Out here I live in a car with my lady friend and, uh, well, we're kind of moving around to be honest, you know, we're, uh, we're getting swept around here and, uh, well, we're tired of feeling like trash and, uh, and so.

Thank you.

Okay, well, we've called these names.

We'll try it one more time.

Is Lauren Fay available?

Please press star six, Lauren Fay.

And following Laura, we will ask Sarah Linson one more time to press star six.

Lauren and Sarah.

Sarah, we see you.

Go ahead.

Yay.

Hi, this is Sarah Linson.

I'm a resident of West Seattle.

And I just wanted to thank you for the proposed budget balancing package that includes keeping our ladder truck and medical unit in West Seattle.

If we lose those emergency response vehicles, our response time, especially for the most vulnerable areas of West Seattle, could be dangerously long.

So with the population growth in West Seattle in recent years, including the construction of many mid-rise apartment buildings, Ladder Truck 13 and Medic Unit 26 are critical.

as our next closest units would have to come from the other side of the West Seattle Bridge.

And as a mother who's had to call 911 for injured grandparents and children in my home, I can't imagine having to wait up to 10 or more minutes as lives hang in the balance for fire and medics to arrive due to the underfunding of West Seattle fire resources.

So thank you so much to the council who have supported this in the amended budget.

We really appreciate it in West Seattle.

Thank you.

We will try Harold Branford.

Harold Branford.

We can see you online.

It looks like you would need to press star six.

Excuse me, and we'll give one more try to Lauren Fay, who also looks like it needs to be pressed star six.

Lauren, it looks like you're good to go.

All right.

Nope, still no sound.

Harold Branford, are you available?

Harold Branford, Star Six.

And after that, it looks like that concludes our list of present speakers.

public comment.

I'll turn it over to you.

Thank you so much.

Thanks very much, madam clerk for getting us through this evening.

We have heard over three hours of public testimony.

I really appreciate everybody who dialed in.

If you did not get a chance to speak and would like to, of course, we'd still love to hear from you.

public comment.

If you would like to make a public comment, you would have the chance to sign up online two hours before starting at 730 a.m.

or you can come to council and please do wear your mask, but we will be happy to have you sign up a half an hour beforehand.

I am appreciative of all of the public comments.

There was two issues raised for us that I was not aware of.

and in chatting with central staff, and I'm looking at the public safety chair, I know we're going to follow up on this, I'm sure, but it's under our understanding that that was actually a program that was put on hold with his desire to put $20 million of mostly council priorities on hold in the budget, and then it was never fully implemented, so then there was a reduction in this year's proposed budget.

I think because of that reduction aligning with funding that hadn't been previously allocated, it wasn't on my radar as being a reduction.

So there was no cut made in our proposed budget, but we may want to consider how we address that proposed reduction to previous allocations from the council.

So thanks for flagging that.

Really, I want to thank as well the youth who testified today.

I'm going to go back to our vice chair.

I should have said yesterday that the base 500,000, the half a million dollars that the vice chair had asked for for mental We were able to put that in immediately.

We were planning to put it in already.

But then in the last 24 hours before the budget was finalized, we were able to add that million that I mentioned yesterday.

So I wanted to make sure to thank the vice chair for her good work to put that amendment forward.

And we were just able to build on that, adding 1.5 million each year, 3 million.

and the Biennium for mental health services.

So thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for that initial amendment, and looking forward to continuing to work with all of you and the community to build on that, and so many other items that were mentioned today.

So thanks to everybody who dialed in, to our colleagues who are still here with us.

Really appreciate you listening in throughout the last three hours and 15 minutes.

And with that, if there's no other business for the good of the order.

We will be adjourned and we will reconvene on November 21st, 9.30 a.m.

Amendments due tomorrow at noon.

Thanks, colleagues.

Thank you.

Bye-bye.