Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 6/14/22

Good morning.

The June 14, 2022 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.30 a.m.

Chair's Committee will proceed to call the roll.

I don't have the agenda.

Council Member Hubels.

Here.

Council Member Peterson.

Here.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Nelson.

Present.

Council Member Mosqueda.

Present.

Five present.

for investigating complaints naming the chief of police.

We'll now approve our agenda for our committee meeting.

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

Seeing and hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

At this time, we will be transitioning into public comment.

I'll moderate the public comment period in the following manner.

Let's see, we have about three people signed up for public comment today.

So folks will be given two minutes to speak.

I will alternate between virtual and in-person public commenters, and I'll call on each speaker by name and in order in which they registered on the council's website and on the sign-in form.

If you've not yet registered to speak, but would like to do so, you can still sign up before the end of the public comment session.

Once I call a speaker's name, you'll hear a prompt, and this is, of course, for the remote public commenters.

When you hear that prompt, you'll need to hit star six to unmute yourself.

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

Speakers will hear a chime when the 10 seconds are left of the allotted time, and once speakers hear the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up public comments.

If you do not end your public comment at the end of the allotted time period provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

And once you've completed your public comment, for those of you commenting virtually, please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, you can do so via the Seattle Channel or the listening options listed on the agenda.

Again, there are three people signed up for public comment at this time.

And I will first call on Howard Gale, Howard.

Good morning, Howard Gale with seattlestop.org commenting on our failed police accountability system.

During the nine years prior to the first meeting of the Community Police Commission in 2013, The SPD had killed six people experiencing a behavioral health crisis who were not wielding a firearm.

During the nine years after that that is the last nine years that number is now 12. 12. One of those was Charlena Lyles the pregnant mother of four murdered weeks after Seattle police accountability legislation was passed five years ago this Saturday.

Her murder, like the 11 others under similar circumstances over the last nine years, was deemed by this accountability system to be, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

Chair Herbold, five years ago, after Charlena was killed, you said, quote, we are already shamed.

What I am pledging to you is to work on finding a new way of doing things so that we actually get different results.

I will use the power that I have on the city council to change what is happening in our city today, unquote.

Yet our city went on to kill Albert Fredericks, Jr., Danny Rodriguez, Ryan Smith, Terry Kaver, Derek Hayden, and the person still unnamed on Beacon Hill in January.

All, quote, lawful and proper, unquote.

Yes, Chair Herbold, the results have been different these last five years.

They have been worse.

If you want to pay justice to the memory of Charlene Lyles on the fifth anniversary of her murder by the SPD, that embrace the future of police accountability that dozens of other U.S. cities have post-George Floyd by creating direct community control of investigations, discipline, and policy.

Look forward to a future of justice and not backwards to a mythical past.

And for God's sakes, do not congratulate yourselves today for living in the past when you vote for another police union contract that allows police to investigate police.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Alex Zimmerman.

You can show people in faces, you have a mask.

Situation, what is we have right now, what can we do?

masturbation, you can go and drink coffee.

So when you go and drink coffee, this means you are after masturbation.

Sorry for my small brain, it understands what it means for after.

But I don't see it here.

You sit at home for $140,000 with four assistants, every consult process $1 million per year, part-time job.

You never want to stop at this, I understand, because you are very smart.

You're too smart.

Right now, you look like a mentally sick, like a psychopath.

You know what I mean?

For my understanding, for $1 million per year people money, you're supposed to be here without mask.

You show us faces.

I am here.

I'm Alex Timmerman.

I'm here 10,000 times.

Why you don't show me now?

You see, I'm shaking right now because I'm old, sick man.

And you make me sick for the last 20 years, every day.

Behind my masturbator.

Thank you very much.

Our next speaker is Susan Wright.

Susan is showing as not present.

We'll just pause for a second to see if that changes.

Still not seeing Susan Wright as not present, so we'll move on to the next speaker.

Our next speaker is Ms. Marguerite Richard.

Good morning.

I would like to say that in memory of my cousin, Angelo Duggins that served the fire department for many, many years.

Yeah, he passed on.

But you know what, I'm still here, Angelo, and I'm still fighting these devils, the same ones you probably had to fight to get on board with the fire department.

But nonetheless, I have to make it plain, like Malcolm X said, because y'all getting ready to juke dance and whatever for Juneteenth, but I'm not celebrating.

All this stuff is a lie.

If I have to be coming up in here and people committing fraudulent acts, okay, And then when we don't, you know how they used to do in slavery, if you didn't do what the master said, do you got a weapon?

And now it's a security up in here, you know, looking like who thought it.

OK, because over there in Bellevue, they don't play that mess.

You get up here at the podium, you say what you have to say, and you leave.

Or you can even stay if you like.

But there ain't no circus like over here, OK?

So now it's reparations time.

Ain't no dancing without the check, OK?

It's time to make the payment.

And don't tell me other folk are not engaging in it, because Boston has now come on board.

They ain't going to win.

The war is going to knock them down.

But let me tell you something.

You're not going to knock me down up in here.

I was born and raised in Seattle, unless you was wondering where I came from.

And I don't play when it comes to stuff like that.

I done had too many people that I know, friends that done died from racism and discrimination in this town.

And I'm saying right now for all the George Floyd's family, all the mother folk that they talk about the police and whatnot.

Yeah, get the check in hand.

Okay, because we ain't going through it no more.

Okay, this year, you ended and you figure out how to get the settlement going into each and every indigenous black home.

Our next speaker is, we'll go back to Susan Wright to see if Susan is with us.

She's still showing as not present.

And that is not changing.

So we will with that close public comment and move to the items on our agenda.

Thank you so much.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Committee agenda item number one, COVID after action report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you, Alex.

I'd like to first welcome Director Curry.

I appreciate her taking the time today to present the Office of Emergency Management After Action Report.

I would like to note that COVID and its various strains are still very active and this report should not be misconstrued as a declaration of the end of the pandemic.

The Office of Emergency Management is reporting on lessons learned from how the city managed the pandemic.

With that, I'll turn it over to Director Curry.

Thank you.

Hi.

Good morning.

Thank you so much, Chairperson Haribold and committee members.

It's great to be with you this morning.

Is it all right if I share my screen?

Does that work for the presentation?

Yes, please.

Thank you.

Okay, perfect.

Thank you.

You'd think we'd have this down by now, right?

So I'm very excited to share this report with you today.

Hopefully I can get it in presentation mode.

Are you seeing it in presentation mode now?

Okay.

Looks like we're okay, cool.

All right, great.

Thank you again.

I think it's also really important to note what Chairperson Herbold said and that is we are still in COVID.

So this is really about the first year and a half, if you will, of the response for the city.

And we are still responding.

This was the most intense period.

I also wanted to point out that we did hire a contractor as a facilitator to be the to be the entity that was a neutral party to gather all the information from everyone that was involved in the process.

So the after action process that we went through to gather information both written by surveys and in person was very lengthy.

So just a reminder here, an after action process is done as a matter of course, after any big incident or exercise.

And it's a way for us to look at what did we do well?

How did things go?

Are there improvement areas that are needed?

Are there recommendations for next time?

It's also super important to note that it's not something that's graded and it's also not a gotcha process.

It really does help us continue to improve what we're doing and do the best that we can for the community and everyone that works for the city.

So it's also important to note that we are ahead of our jurisdiction partners, that most people in the region have just started their after action process and ours has already been finished.

So, whoops.

The overview of the entire process was that coordination for the response began in January of 2020. We didn't actually send everyone home until a little bit later, but we started coordinating with partners and listening to the CDC and public health in January.

We then had surveys biweekly with responders during the event.

So all through spring and summer of 2020, we were checking in with folks all the time.

Part of the funding for what we needed to do from COVID came from something called the Emergency Management Performance Grant, or EMPG.

which is a grant that we use quite often in emergency management.

Burke is the company that helped us facilitate the after action review process.

And they worked for us from September, 2020, all the way until December of 21. The first assessment that we did of formal assessment was in November of 2020. Also, the final report, while it was in December, it was not officially approved by all of the committees that needed to look at it within the city until March of 2022. And that final committee was the Emergency Executive Board, which consists of operational department heads, department directors here in the city.

So that happened in March.

I also wanted to point out the unique nature of COVID.

We had never responded to anything like this before.

and that was true across the nation.

And even those of us that had pandemic response plans, no one had planned for an event that was this long.

So it really was unique in so many ways and really put a lot of stress on the city, our ability to provide services, and to do everything that we could possibly think of or imagine for the community and also in response to what they were telling us were things that were most needed.

Public health was the lead agency.

This was also unique.

We never had a public health emergency of this magnitude where public health was the entity that was really in charge, if you will, or was guiding everything else we do was from the public health guidance that had never happened before either.

It also involved all levels of government and impacted everything that we do in our personal and public lives and our work lives.

School was impacted, just everything you could possibly imagine.

EOC operations moved to virtual, which we also had never done as completely as we did this time.

There are some definite challenges with that, as you might imagine.

The global scale also meant that resources for personal protective equipment, which is PPE, vaccines, and cleaning supplies, all of that was exhausted fairly quickly, and we were all across the nation and really across the world competing for the same kinds of supplies.

Also, the duration of this event compacted all of those factors and made it incredibly challenging.

So the major findings from this report, and this is in the summary report that I had sent to you.

It is also can be viewed publicly now.

So if you can't see all the details on this chart, it is in the after action report itself.

So we really had a strong commitment in collaboration with the mayor's office to commit to science-based approach and really looking to public health to give us guidance on how we best help people based on the science.

I think it's also important to note that in times of calm or when you're not in a public health emergency, the things that public health does, they have a lot of time to research and look at how a disease outbreak or other public health issue is changing.

So the fact that they had to make decisions in a very short period of time not only caused confusion but I think also caused some people to not trust what they were hearing because the public really wanted to have answers in a hurry and that's not the usual course of events in a public health setting.

I think that's important to remember.

We also were forced as a city to make an unprecedented number of policy decisions, mostly around personnel issues, how people were going to work, how we were going to do remote work, how we were still going to provide services.

Policy decisions, as you know, are also not usually done in a really rapid We did a good job of focusing on that staff all felt like, city staff felt like they were included in what we were doing for the public.

So the purpose and the structure of the report, and there's a lot of data here, so I'm going to talk about the report and then explain to you how I've organized this presentation, understanding that there is a finite period of time this morning, But I've organized a report so that whatever we don't go through, you should be able to follow and have a look at on your own.

And I'm also happy to come back or answer questions either on the telephone or email or in person again, if that's something that you desire.

So the structure of the report was to look at what are the strengths, what are the lessons learned, how could we, and then how could we improve.

We looked at three overarching core criteria for the whole, the whole report.

So what was the effectiveness of city response.

And then we looked at deep dives into, it says seven functional areas, but we actually ended up doing eight.

Efficiency, we started with seven and then we added one at the end.

So my apologies for that.

Efficiency, did we make effective use of our resources, our staff time?

that we're looking at.

We're looking at.

The partner time so with neighboring jurisdictions or community partners.

And then the report will highlight what those efficiency recommendations are any kind of any kind of response we do moving forward and then also looking at everything with an equity lens was were targeted to those with the greatest need first.

So the eight sections that I'm gonna talk with you about are those deep dive functional areas.

So these were the eight areas that we looked at.

And now as I go through the presentation, I'm going to first talk about the success for that particular deep dive area and then the recommendations for moving forward.

The recommendations then are what will be included in the improvement plan.

that will then have lead and supporting departments to work on those improvements related to what the recommendations are.

So you'll see here on this slide that number one means that this is the first functional deep dive that we did.

And then subsequent presentation slides are numbered just so you can follow the successes and recommendations of each of those number deep dives.

So policy setting and operational coordination success, the mayor's office served as the policy setting body.

As I mentioned, we followed the science.

We were very tied to our city, county, and state partners on messaging and action.

So we had a very well-coordinated regional response, and we were all doing the same kinds of things.

We rapidly created new policies with strong focus on equity and social justice.

The cabinet met via conference call daily at the beginning of the response, and then we moved to a little bit less frequently as we moved on, but we started with daily calls.

Then the mayor's office actively reached out to all levels of government, including the federal government, And the CDC and federal departments and agencies at the federal level, which was super important for what are we going to do, moving, moving forward and making sure we all are on the same page.

So for this deep dive, some of the recommendations are this, increasing the accessibility of emergency planning documents.

And why that matters is that we've spent a lot of time on those documents.

and laying out what the procedures are for how we coordinate, talk with each other and work together.

So making those more accessible and including training and exercising of those so that it's second nature for people to use that structure is really important.

Training and exercising on those is part of that socialization.

Then also some plans for rapid decision-making In emergency management, we use something called the incident command system, which has very defined standard roles and responsibilities that everyone's familiar with.

That's a good planning tool, and we can use those roles and responsibilities and that structure for really managing any large incident.

So it's incumbent upon us as a city to use that structure for any type of emergency.

Also, making sure that the EOC reps, the Emergency Operations Center reps, not only understand the process, but have the authority to commit resources on behalf of their department.

Some of the other recommendations for policy setting and operational coordination were that we had a number of challenges with virtual coordination, So reviewing and revising those protocols for how we do that.

We've learned a huge amount about what we can and can't do remotely.

I know that you've been involved in that as well.

Strengthening our project management practice and using additional tools for that.

And then also whatever external partnerships we have.

making sure that those roles are clear about what the expectations are for what we want them to do and how we expect them to engage with us.

The second deep dive was continuity of operations, how we continue, yeah.

Do you mind if we just take a quick pause for each section, just to take a quick scan to see if anybody has questions about a section before moving on?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm sorry.

I was trying to go quickly.

Any questions on section one?

All right.

Thank you.

You can move on.

No?

We're good?

Okay.

We're good.

Perfect.

Thank you so much.

Yeah, you bet.

Thank you.

So continuity of operations are how we continue to provide services to the public regardless of what has impacted the city.

Fortunately, prior to COVID, we had looked at department coops.

But again, we hadn't really looked at a long pandemic response.

So we did have some places where we needed to change things and pivot a little bit off of what we had laid out already so we could continue to provide service to the public.

The information technology department did a really excellent job of giving people laptops and figuring out how to support us doing work remotely.

That was very new.

We did develop new programs and policies to support employees, everything from what could they take home, equipment, how they were gonna connect with their supervisors, all of those things were new.

SDHR also developed tools to optimize staffing.

So the recommendations for continuity of operations were better involved department directors in those continuity plans.

We found that not all of them were as familiar with the department COOPs as they could have been to make that a smoother transition to activating those plans.

Also, a regular review and discussion of our city-wide continuity of government, or COG, by leadership, so cabinet, and also involving all of you, so that everyone's clear on how that will work.

And then also codifying some pandemic-driven changes to those department COOPs, and also making sure they align with what we're doing in our emergency management planning.

Some recommendations in the COOP continuity of operations space are to continue to expand the use of technology, realizing that there are challenges that will always occur and understanding what we can do remotely and what needs to be done in person.

Using technology and providing in-person services for residents.

There were a lot of services for residents that came back fairly quickly because of the challenges that not everyone is able to use technology.

for what they need, continuing to have some grace for people's flexible schedules and doing that work-life balance, and improving employee communications and what the strategies are so that staff is hearing across the board, across the city, what those evolved in response are doing and making sure that everyone hears at the same time and understands what's happening as some people did not feel like that was necessarily happening.

Okay, so before I move to logistics and supply chain, any questions here on COOP?

Thank you.

I do have one question.

You mentioned one of the recommendations coming out is more trainings on the COOPs.

I'm just wondering, will that training curriculum also, moving forward, include drills or exercises on the continuity of operation plans?

Yes.

who would participate in those?

Okay, so yeah, great question.

Thank you for that.

Yeah, it's always a good idea to pair exercising that with the training.

So the training is really the, you know, making sure the department is familiar with, everyone in a department is familiar with their COOP plan.

What are those essential services?

And then absolutely doing exercises, not only, individually, so departments doing those but then also as part of what we do with emergency executive board so the department directors, we would do that with those meetings as well, because it's important to make sure that the individual department coups are aligned with what we would do in a citywide response like this.

So that you flesh out any of those areas where there might be things that are overlapping or in conflict with each other.

So absolutely.

Great question.

Thank you.

Seeing any others, move on to section three, please.

Okay, so logistics and supply chain management and some of the successes that we had were FAS and implemented policy and protocols for ordering and distributing of supplies.

I can't stress enough what a big undertaking this was.

They did a really amazing job.

Also, FAS, OEM, and other departments set up the mass testing and vaccination sites.

Some of that was in conjunction with fire.

It really was just an incredible effort.

And as you know, we had Lumen Field and some other mass vaccination sites.

We also used other partners such as Swedish and the University of Washington.

It really was a kind of all community effort.

We also engaged community partners to help people go through vaccination and testing.

So there were actually instances of people who had an individual person that guided them through all of it from how do you make an appointment, making sure they had transportation and then walking them through that appointment when they got there was really an amazing processes that made this all work for the community.

Also, there's a new logistics management mechanism and additional new warehouse space that we can use for all kinds of disasters.

So also just as a reminder, logistics and supply chain includes all of those things that are needed for the city to request, order, purchase, track, store, or distribute critical supplies.

So some of the recommendations are, there was not a regional process for working with the county and the state for logistics.

So we are working on that.

Retaining some of these centralized purchasing and warehousing functions for other supplies and to get ready for the next emergency.

Also the need to preserve budget to maintain supply of equipment and materials.

which you know is always a challenge.

How do we keep some funds in advance for what might happen, knowing that we might in fact need that budget for other things.

Some other recommendations were improving coordination between purchasing and finance functions.

CBO now has access to WebEOC, which is the emergency logistics mechanism that we use to share information with our state and county counterparts.

So if we are sharing supplies or we need their help with supplies that we don't have.

So now CBO has that access as well.

HSD also is learning the requesting process for resources right this week.

The Cascadia tabletop exercises are happening this week.

A very scaled down Cascadia this year, but we are doing some training and some resource request practice.

So that's happening as we speak.

Updating our training to make sure everyone is really clear on how the logistics work.

And then also expanding department use of that logistics system for other disasters.

Okay, so before I move to public information, are there other questions here for logistics and supply chain management.

I'm not seeing any from my colleagues.

I do have one related to the fact that you reported out that one of the challenges was that the departments don't have funding to do emergency response and that you relied on departmental reserves.

Is there a recommendation that we should consider moving forward on that particular finding?

Yes, I know there's a there's a city wide fund for emergencies.

And I know that we spent a good deal of that during Kobe, I don't have specific numbers for you but I can definitely get that.

We spent, I think, more of that reserve for COVID in the last two years than we ever have as a city.

And I can definitely get numbers for you on what we spent, what's left, and if there's a recommendation on that.

Yeah, happy to do that.

Okay.

Any other questions or comments?

Go ahead.

Thank you.

Okay, great.

Thank you.

All right, so area four is public information.

Not sure how the four got on that side of the phrase.

But for public information, so this is not only giving information out to the public, but also looking at what's happening in the public.

How are they responding to what we're doing?

What are their needs?

It's a two-way communication a deep dive, not just what we're putting out.

I think that's important to note.

So the coordination between the governor's office, King County executive office, the mayor's office and public health was really extraordinary.

Doesn't mean there weren't some hiccups, but it was definitely better than we've ever done.

And having all of those government entities work on that together was really not only was it important, it really was something that we hadn't done that well before.

So we also spent a lot of time looking at making sure that we're reaching BIPOC communities and those with limited English proficiency, meaning that we had to rely on different methods.

All the messaging could not be done with technology.

Some had to be person to person.

We used what we call culture brokers a lot.

So those folks that had a relationship with government and also were connected to community partners.

So people were hearing from those they trusted and it wasn't just government messaging.

The city also assisted the public health Seattle King County with staffing for their joint information center.

And just as a reminder, the joint information center is where you have public information officers from different jurisdictions or agencies come together to write a coordinated message.

So that works really well.

Some of the recommendations for public information were having a more formalized function for information sharing with the county and the state.

I think the reason it did work well this time is because we were talking all the time, all the time.

And also having a liaison position for that established ahead of time instead of in the midst of the chaos.

The city joint information center staff participation in regional exercises again so we're like how are there.

communication protocols different from what we're doing and what is it that we need to make sure we're on the same page about.

We also need joint information staff from all city departments.

The bigger ones and the ones that are typically involved in emergencies all have a public information officer.

We found that it really needs to be every department.

Understanding that it might be someone who doesn't do that full-time.

Also, identifying additional supervisory staff who can run the operations, if need be.

More formalized protocols for opening and closing of that joint information center.

Also making sure that we have more accessible communication methods.

So for folks with access and functional needs, if someone uses a reader, somebody doesn't have technology, what are all of those things so that everyone in the community can get the information they need?

It's also important for departments to spend some time on socializing and practicing their language access plans.

So that's also in the works as we speak.

Any questions on public information?

I would just like to make a plug for considering formalizing the relationship with the legislative department and specifically the city council as far as public information.

We all have deep connections to our communities.

And I think, you know, we were all very focused on trying to get information out and it happened sort of I think in an ad hoc way, but to the extent that we can formalize a relationship with the ELC on that piece, I think that would be very useful to serve the public.

Yeah, absolutely.

I agree.

Thank you for that.

Yep.

All right.

Noted.

I just want to do a quick time check.

How much more time do I have?

About another 10 minutes.

Okay.

Perfect.

I'll keep an eye on the time.

Thank you.

All right.

So we're moving to testing and vaccination.

As you know, the programs were a model both regional and nationally.

And within five months of the initial pandemic response, fire expanded from just doing first responders to nursing homes, mobile teams, and community sites.

We set up clinics all over, starting with those mobile teams from the fire department.

We had pop-up sites.

We had firefighters going to in-homes and also fixed sites.

I think it's also important to note that Seattle was instrumental in getting state permission to use paramedics to do vaccination.

They are qualified as you know paramedics are very highly trained.

but to be able to use that to augment giving vaccinations had not been done before.

So that was really extraordinary and other cities throughout the state copied us after that.

We did provide over 260,000 vaccines to 134,000 people over a seven month period.

And we did concentrate and were successful at reaching high numbers of BIPOC individuals in all age groups.

So some of the recommendations were making sure that that protocol that we used for using first responders for testing and vaccinations that that can be replicated.

It's not a one time thing.

Maintaining an inventory for 12 weeks supply of PPE is going to be important.

Also advocating for this legislative change to hasten that process for first responders to provide tests and vaccinations.

I know that's being worked at.

I don't know the status of where that is now, but I can definitely find that out if you are interested.

Also developing a local funding plan for these types of operations for both testing and vaccination.

recommendations are additional spots that are easy for people to access, stockpiling generic testing materials, developing plans for not only priority setting, but also vaccination logistics, formalizing roles with regional partners and streamlining how we do the contracts and purchasing.

Also establishing parallel messaging for online and direct delivery for non technical messaging which I talked about earlier was really important in this arena, especially making sure that all of the sites are ADA compliant.

We had a few issues with that that were quickly remedied.

Also with signage at the sites, making sure that those were accessible not only for limited English, but also for people with other functional needs.

Continuing also our investment in community navigation using models from the other departments that you see here, OIRA, Department of Neighborhoods, and Public Health.

Also working with partners for a single phone information line instead of multiple.

I know that at some point, Washington 211 was engaged, but having a single place for people to go instead of multiple, making sure that we are keeping with, so everyone's doing the same message.

There are not multiple places for people to get that.

Lastly, for testing and vaccination, investing in public health, that trust building prior to the next event, you know, we've all seen a kind of erosion of trust in government, also maintaining this three-pronged approach to reach those most vulnerable.

All right, any questions on testing and vaccination?

Not seeing any, thank you.

Go right ahead.

Okay.

So the next area is social and human services and the successes here are starting with services for aging and disabled populations or people with access and functional needs, mass care and hygiene for those experiencing homelessness.

We also worked on emergency childcare.

We rapidly de-intensified or spaced out shelter sites to keep people safe We deployed more hygiene stations throughout the city.

We did vouchers for 1 million meals for people experiencing homelessness and another 1 million served to older adults.

And also the Department of Education and Early Learning did their own after action report or process.

And that has led to a new emergency childcare plan, which is really awesome.

Some recommendations are to involve community partners in those plans and in the exercises we do for pandemic operations, including those partners also in purchasing logistics and access to personal protective equipment through the city.

We were able to provide some of that through our relationship with the county to community partners free of charge, but it was not enough.

Also, developing plans for accessing resources, resources such as the National Guard for emergency operations that was also not well defined, and they do have the ability to support vaccination and testing.

A public health emergency also included new external partners that we hadn't worked with before.

So making sure that we do that sooner and that that includes multicultural planning and also exercising.

So some more recommendations.

There was a lack of a pre-existing infrastructure and resources to scale when we got funding.

And so, as you know, kind of midway through we got this influx of the American rescue plan funds $300 million.

So, that was spent on digital equity childcare housing and homelessness services services but.

because we didn't have a mechanism to do that scaling initially, it took longer to be able to to deploy that money.

And so we're looking at how we how we do that.

And then also continued investment in foundational infrastructure, same for the provision of money in a in a more timely way.

Okay, so any questions about human services.

Not seeing any.

Oh, and just one additional thing on the foundational infrastructure for funding.

There were different requirements for COVID funding in terms of how we distributed it.

So Instead of just getting a pot of money and being able to spend it on whatever we wanted, there were a lot of requirements attached to that funding.

So we're working on looking at contracting changes that will give us more flexibility and how we work with the state.

So if we get money and we can't use it for a particular area, are there ways that we can look at having that communication with the federal government to apply that money to other things?

All right, so area seven was support for businesses and economic recovery.

I will mention that, of course, as you know, this is ongoing.

And really, we thought that we were going to have a lot of business recovery starting in the summer of 21. And that didn't happen at the magnitude or the pace that we had anticipated.

So as you know, we've had to kind of rethink what that's gonna look like, what do we need to continue to focus on?

So the successes though in this area, we're starting with a small business stabilization fund, which provided $7,000 in grants for businesses, I'm sorry, 10,000 in grants for businesses with 25 or fewer employees.

BIPOC owners were 66% of the rounds one and five of that and then the one round that was particularly focused on restaurants and bars.

There was a heavy focus on BIPOC owners of restaurants and bars.

City paid sick leave and safe time for those that were still working.

was important for this recovery.

We had new ordinances that you all are aware of and were involved in for gig workers, strong interdepartmental coordination for technical support for small businesses, including how do we do the social distancing capacity limits.

operating in the public right-of-way, so all the businesses that had operations, restaurants, and whatnot outside, all of that happened really quickly and was really, really helpful to helping businesses get through this.

The public space activations of things like the Welcome Back Weeks and also support to downtown businesses was really important and worked well.

The recommendations moving forward are capturing the lessons to target support to business owners that are not supported by those.

The funding that comes from the state and federal government, what really looking at what are those and how can the city help.

So part of that would also be holding listening sessions with large employee employers to understand where they might need support.

We focused a lot on small businesses.

And once in a while, large businesses reached out to get information.

So we're looking at how best to support them as well.

Institutionalizing those processes to expand the small, the funding for small businesses, and then making sure that we maintain the race and social justice index, also displacement of folks during the pandemic, how can we help those that have been displaced, including businesses, and then other targets or other data, excuse me, for making sure that we're really targeting the limited resources that we have.

So some other recommendations are to document the actions that happen between departments to support businesses, labor, housing, food security, and childcare.

Expanding communications and technical assistance for business owners who speak languages other than English.

Also expanding workforce development and retraining.

So we're working with the Office of Economic Development and also Labor Standards on this and on helping them have an emergency staffing plan for their departments.

for further leverage inter-departmental collaborations and community partners for access to resources.

And really tying those resources to what is it that the community needs.

Where the most needs is and making sure those resources are targeted there.

All right, we just have one more section on staff redeployment, but any questions here on business and economics.

Thank you.

Our economic development chair Councilmember Nelson.

Thank you very much.

I'm director mayor on regarding large employers.

The, the executive summary says on page 14, that it's important that the city listen to the interests of large employers and share at least information that can be helpful which I agree with, and then you talk about listening sessions.

So these points were reinforced in the, you went into more detail in the report, or Burke did.

So I think that large employers, because they're large, are a great way to get information out.

And, you know, even if it's not possible to speak with large employers, you could use the chamber or DSA or neighborhood chambers or whatever to help get information out for the potential next major civil emergency, I would say that.

So, cause I just assumed that they would be, disseminating this information.

And then I had a question about the Business Stabilization Fund, Small Business Stabilization Fund, and I don't know if you would know this, but, or maybe my colleagues know, how much was deposited in that, and is there any left, or how many businesses were aided by that?

And if that's not known by folks here, I can follow up with the executive.

So my understanding was that, excuse me, that there was $10,000 that was provided to small businesses through grants.

I don't know if there was more available in that fund that didn't get distributed.

And I don't know if any other committee members know that.

If not, I can find that out.

I'll follow up.

Okay.

Okay, and also I very much appreciate the information about the information sharing with large employers and also the chamber.

We're also for emergency management, always remember that even though the large employer has a lot of resources, the individual employees also, you know, where people that live and work here and sometimes they need our help.

Thank you very much for that.

I appreciate it.

And I know you had a lot going on.

So this is not a.

There's always ways to improve and communication always comes up for every event I've ever been in.

Communication always is a place we need to expand on.

So thank you.

All right.

Anything else on business and economics?

OK, I'm almost finished, I promise.

Okay, cool.

All right, staff redeployment.

So this is the movement of staff, city staff, into a job that's not their normal job.

Meaning, what is it something they could do to help with the emergency that's not part of what they do?

And as you know, there were people who had to move to remote operations that maybe their job didn't lend itself to that.

And so how can we use them in the most efficient manner possible?

A lot of talented people So we're looking at making sure we do that not only in a thoughtful way but that we have some policy, we make sure people are compensated all of those important things about that.

So, early in the pandemic redeployment was kind of, and when I say personal, it was, you know, conversations that people had had there was not a formalized process so that's not necessarily a good idea.

Later, we looked at how do we formalize we talked a lot with labor and the mayor's office and other department directors of looking at how do we have a agreements to protect people and make sure they're compensated we use their skills well.

ITD did develop a technology platform for large scale redeployment, but we don't yet have the policy.

So looking at, first of all, making sure everyone across the city understands what it means to redeploy folks.

We would never put people, for example, in something they're not comfortable with.

And we also want to make sure that people are fairly compensated if they're doing something outside their normal work.

So we did some agreements with labor for that, but it really needs to be, there needs to be a policy also looking at augmenting that technology platform so that it would include an inventory of skills, what are the skills most needed, and then also practice redeployment when we do exercises.

So having an enterprise-wide system and centralizing the HR that needs to happen around that.

So sorry, I didn't mean to do that.

So right now SDHR has is in the process of looking at developing a city wide policy for this.

It even comes up in smaller instances for example right now.

You heard about the big fire that happened at the Madison Apartments.

There was a number of people displaced and we're looking at shelter staff to augment parks and whatnot.

This is really something that can come up quite frequently, not just when there's a really big disaster.

You'll be hearing more about that.

SDHR is looking at it as well as the other department directors will also be engaged in that.

All right, any questions about redeployment?

Just want to say that this is an area that I felt like we were sort of figuring out as we went along, but I'm just so pleased and it's one of the things coming out of this emergency, this crisis that has really given me a lot of reason for optimism and a lot of you know, just really warm and fuzzy feelings about the city family and our willingness to push up our sleeves and all work together.

So really, really appreciate that so many did so many things that they weren't necessarily prepared to do, but just there's a lot of strength in our workforce here.

Yeah, yeah, thank you for that.

I agree.

It was really amazing.

And then we also use that kind of those ad hoc practices during the winter storm last year, too, because we needed additional staff.

So, yeah, it is great.

Thank you.

All right, so the next thing that happens is an improvement plan.

So looking at all those recommendations I talked about, how do we do this?

So it's not just like, oh, this is a good idea, but how are we actually going to make sure this happens?

So we are almost finished with that.

Departments have input.

It will go to the strategic working group.

There'll be a timeline included.

So again, and we'll just be like, yeah, it's a great idea.

How long is it going to take?

Do we need money?

So you will see all of that based on those recommendations and each deep dive that will be lead and supporting departments for that.

And then some of those improvement items will be in this infectious disease plan update.

So who knew we would need an infectious disease plan, but we're also working very closely with public health for that.

Other issues refer to that emergency operations planning update.

So last thing, the input on partner and jurisdiction organizations after action plan.

So our effort now that we're finished is also informing what our partners in the region are doing.

We did ours first and we will continue to work on those improvement items and I will have that plan, along with the calendar and all of that for you soon.

So.

That is the end of my presentation.

That's a lot, thank you.

Council Member Nelson.

Nope, nope, you're all good, okay.

Fantastic, well, really appreciate you, Director Mayer for the work that you and your team at OEM have coordinated during this emergency.

And thank you, of course, as well for this after action plan.

It's such an important tool to collect feedback and analyze our actions and identifying areas needing improvement.

I really appreciate this in depth review so that we can show our commitment to continuously work through improvements.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I really appreciate it.

Thanks for the opportunity.

It's always good to be with you.

And it really was a city wide city family effort.

It was just really incredible.

I was I feel very privileged to have been part of that.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number one.

Committee agenda item number two, 2021 Seattle Fire Department Race and Social Justice Initiative report for briefing and discussion.

Thank you so much.

Welcome Chief Scoggins and his staff to the table.

Can we do some quick introductions and we'll just hand it over to you to walk us through it.

Sure, good morning, Council Member Herbold and members of the Public Safety Committee.

We really appreciate you allowing us a few minutes to talk about some of the work that's going on in the Seattle Fire Department.

I have with me our two change team leads today who will be doing the presentation, Captain Doug Johnson and a member of our professional staff, Julie George.

So we're gonna walk you through the presentation and we'll take questions as we go.

and then we'll wrap it up when we conclude.

So I'll turn it over to Captain Johnson and Julie.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Okay, so for 2021, COVID-19 and other challenges, big challenges were severe staffing shortages, altered work schedules and institution inequities.

RSJ focused on updating workplace policies and practices, targeted firefighter recruitment process, increasing retention of firefighter recruits, and our analysis and outcome were workplace assignments, promotional processes, firefighter recruit application pool, and recruit school retention that we'll be talking about in this presentation.

COVID-19 challenges.

In 2021, we had 117 uniform separations.

We had four deaths within a period of three months.

Two of them were very unexpected.

We had 22 dismissals, 31 resignations and 60 retirements.

That's a lot of movement and loss in the department in a short period of time.

We had 113 firefighter vacancies.

We had a total of 623 isolated or quarantine employees and a significant segment of professional employees with alternative work arrangement schedules.

Some days you would come into work, you would be trying to help out in other departments because you were the only one on the floor and the phone's ringing and you dove in and you helped out.

Before we move on to just over what period of time are we looking at here.

I'm sorry I couldn't over what period of time, are we looking at this is 2021. So this is for the year for the year.

Thank you.

The one thing I think about when I when I see this quote great leadership requires that you surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives, who can disagree with you without fear or retaliation.

And I'm myself and the change team are huge proponents in employee empowerment.

And one of the things that we do appreciate is the fact that with Chief Scoggins and Helen Fitzpatrick, that we are all at the table.

We have the same goal.

Sometimes our roads are a little bit different getting to that goal, but we're always at the table.

If something comes up and at times we do disagree, but we still keep moving forward and that's appreciated.

Updating workplace policies and processes and a lot of the institutional disparities that the team focuses on is the low overall percentage of women and people of color participating in promotional processes.

The strategy is to be inclusive, have inclusive language added to department memos and policies and operating guidelines, but not only have the language added, but to practice it and not just let it get lost in policy and operating guidelines, but to be intentional.

Also equitable changes in the promotional process to allow it to be more inclusive.

So on the next page is an example of one of the policies that we have in our policy and operating guidelines.

And it's to let people know that, you know, when there's an opportunity to work on a committee or to be part of developing a training or participate as a facilitator in classes, those are all things that help somebody as they wanna move forward in life.

and not to have discretionary choosing, but to let everybody have an opportunity and an opportunity to be a part in that.

So like I said, even though it's written in our policy and guidelines, but let's be intentional and about looking at it, understanding it and utilizing our new policy.

So if you look at our current makeup of the department, there's 240 officers, lieutenants, captains, and chiefs.

95% of the leadership is male, which leaves 5% female leadership.

80% of the leadership is white, leaving 20% of other racial makeups of the department, which 20% is not a lot.

So going forward, one of the things that we talked about in the last slide was making things intentional so people can be a part of something in order to move themselves forward.

And one of them was to look at the oral board.

So historically, marginalized groups do better on oral boards than they do on the standardized testing.

So thanks to Lieutenant Bakke for taking the lead on this.

She and Captain Johnson worked on a new promotional scoring process.

Can you flip the slide, please?

So the old process was 60% waited for a written exam, 40% was waited for the oral board with a 70% passing score.

With the work that they accomplished, the new process is 50% wait for written and 50% for oral board with the 70% passing score.

Any questions?

Yeah.

The next intentional thing that we work on is the targeted firefighter recruitment process.

Currently there's 964 representative employees out of that 898 are male.

So we have 66 female firefighters.

74% firefighters are white, and then it goes down to 1.5 American Indian 5% Asian 6% Hispanic Latino 6% African American 7% two or more.

We had.

Due to the staffing shortage, we did have an accelerated targeted recruitment, which focused a lot on the outreach to the community.

It was open from March one.

And the final day that you could take your test was April 19th.

which is generally our process would be open for three months during the summertime to capture people coming home from college.

So a lot of work went into being intentional in these six, seven weeks that we had it open.

One of the things that we did is Seattle Fire hosted the King County Fire Chiefs Association have a diversity and equity recruitment workshop.

They have them two a year.

Chief, do you want to speak on that a little bit?

So the King County Fire Chiefs, this is an issue that's facing our region, our state.

So we are trying to take intentional actions.

So we've done a number of things through our diversity, equity and inclusion committee that I serve as the chair of.

One of the things we started was a diversity recruitment workshop.

Our goal is to do two a year.

and we're rotating it around King County.

We've done two so far.

In December, we did one in Bellevue, and in April, we did the second one in Seattle, and the next one will be coming up in the fall in Renton, and we're planning our events also for 2023. The other thing that we've done is hosted women in EMS and fire events to give women in our region a two-day experience, hands-on experience of what it means to be a firefighter.

They get to put the gear on, they get to do the work, We've done seven of those over the last four years.

So we were trying to be very intentional in our efforts and how we recruit and how we communicate.

So this event, it's good for the young people in our region to see all the different patches in the room because Seattle can't hire everybody.

So our goal is to try to increase diversity throughout our region.

So that's what this event was on April 9th.

Thank you.

I did have a question about the continued use of the oral boards.

Can you talk about whether or not we are continuing their use given the good outcomes that we're seeing from them?

Can you repeat the question?

The use of the oral boards, are they continuing?

For some reason, I had recollected that there was some issue with their continuation in 2022.

Oh, as far as I know in chief, maybe, you know, can speak to it also.

As far as I know, we still do the oral boards for promotionals.

Are you talking entry level?

Entry level, yes.

Entry level.

It's a little different because we're a little rushed on trying to get people through because of our short staffing.

And we are doing the oral boards.

It's on the side of the fire department now.

And chief, can you elaborate at all on it?

Sure.

Yes, we will continue the use of the oral board.

So the written has been done.

We'll receive a list from public safety civil service, probably in the next two or three weeks.

And that'll be the certified register.

And then when we get the register and we start our hiring process for our February of 2023 class, the first piece of that will be the oral boards that will take off probably in August or September.

And that should give us enough time to get enough people through the process to get them hired by February of 2023. Thank you.

So here was just a look at some of our social media outreach of different pictures that we had advertising that we had open application period.

And on the next page, we had up to five languages for the social media ads that went out to different local community newspapers.

We did a huge hit on the internet versus Facebook, Instagram.

And then we had to get a little creative.

So six weeks really is a short period of time when you're testing for the department.

One, you want to make sure that the word gets out, everybody knows.

We weren't having as many things in person as we generally would.

So one of the things that we did for the month of March is we had these three different webinars that were live webinars that people for free could go on to Facebook and participate.

The first one talked about just an overall view of what to expect when you're in the hiring process.

The second one, which is a mystery to a lot of people, is, you know, what do you expect when you're in recruit school?

So we had two different firefighters who recently graduated out of recruit school head up that webinar.

And then the last one was different opportunities that there is within the department.

And all of these webinars were well received.

At the end of the presentation, the public could type in questions through Facebook and get their questions answered.

And then from there, if they still had further questions, they could give us a call in the office the next day.

And we were more than happy to answer their questions.

And, you know, it should be noted that the webinars were recorded.

So even if the individual couldn't attend the live webinar, they were able to go to Seattle Fire, SeattleFireJobs.com and they can click on and watch the webinar, any of these.

That was really helpful because a lot of people due to life and their work schedules, they may not fit the exact timeframe when it's live.

But what we found was many people went back and watched it later and some people watched it multiple times.

We, during this time, we had a few in-person events.

We continued to plant the seed and participate with high schools and their programs to give the kids an opportunity to learn about the career as a firefighter.

There was a couple of community fairs.

And then recruit school retention.

Yeah, as you can see, the recruit school retention really, this whole presentation is, has three prongs to it.

We have firefighters, we're trying to recruit people.

And thirdly, we have recruit school, which we have always have some challenges in that we are trying to instruct or teach people how to respond to any emergency in the city within 16 weeks.

So that is a big bite of an apple when these individuals haven't even ever masked up or put bunking gear on or even know where to sit on a fire engine.

So right now we're trying to do classes of 80. This slide says 35 to 40. So we are really trying to up our numbers.

And that is a challenge.

for people that are new, because we have to have repetition and reps. To be able to operate a chainsaw safely, you're gonna have to cut with a chainsaw repeatedly.

Same thing if we are attacking a fire in a residential structure in a basement.

So getting those reps through with 80 people in 16 weeks is a big challenge for us.

I do wanna take a second and just, not only thank the chief Scoggins to my right, but also the person behind me who's Helen and really advocating and pushing for all of these.

And one of the things that they do in leadership is put people in the right places, you know, at the right time.

And right now we have a deputy chief in training, Melissa Kennedy, who I believe is the right person at the right time and really advocating for a lot of the challenges that we have in keeping women and people of color in the recruit school, as well as making sure they're trained adequately to the national state and state standards.

So the women recruit retention significantly diminishes in recruit school right now, or the challenge is we lose about half the women in recruit school.

every time.

So we have some things in place that they can come back, do some exercises, work out, and make sure that they're psychologically and mentally mentally ready.

Also people of color, we've had some challenges and right now it's the challenge of Asians staying in recruit school.

So we've done curriculum changes to create more equity in candidates without prior firefighting experiences.

And I think that is on the next slide, what those curriculum changes are.

Class of 113, which is August of 2020, we had of those 16 weeks, we chose week five as a rest and recovery week.

There's a lot of book work and testing that week.

They're not as on the drill court as often.

It gives them a chance to have that body heal.

They also adjusted, or we also adjusted having both engine and truck for all recruits to maintain skill retention.

In the past, we would, We have the school separated from truck work, which would, for example, be cutting with chainsaws and forcible entry and engine work, which is using and manipulating the hose lines.

We have combined those, so we have more retention and we don't have skilled degradation over the two week period that you're on just doing one skill.

February of 2021, The leadership and training decided to refine the methodology and rotations to increase equipment experience.

I believe that we stopped pumping in recruit school in the past, and also focusing on what they are going to be doing when they go out to operations, which is riding the tailboard, pulling hose, forceful entry, et cetera.

Under analysis and outcomes, one updating policies and processes, actively monitoring the percentages of historical disadvantage of groups and fire service supply for promotional opportunities for meaningful increases.

So we constantly are looking at the numbers of who is not going forward and keeping, I would say more people are involved in this than what we've had in the past.

And then we also continue, which is really tough sometimes during a staffing shortage is changing the current process and policies of discretionary selection.

Like for example, it would be tech teams, whether hazmat team or technical rescue team.

When the list is exhausted, the captains have the discretion to go out and do their own selection for who is gonna take that seat.

And we're still continually trying to mitigate against institutional racism and improper bias by doing that.

But some of these things are tough when you're short.

The second part of the analysis and outcomes is targeted recruitment process for 2023 that we just went through that we're reaffirming local community engagement, getting to know where the community better partnership with the community and outreach is resulting in significant percentages of applicants in our backyard.

So with this last process, we did have 530 applicants from 98118, which I thought was pretty incredible.

We're also looking at determining why there is a pattern of significant applicant drop-offs in the early part of the process.

And you'll see this on the next slide.

We have talked to Seattle HR and NTN in the application and scheduling and testing.

to help us look at and implement new specific and individualized assistance for these loss applicants from historically disadvantaged groups.

And then next slide, this time on the register that took the test, there was 2,022 from Washington and there was 932 from out of state.

So we had a total of almost 3,000 that applied.

And if I can just ask you to pause right there, that's in six weeks.

So from March 1st to April 19th, we had 2,900 people turn in applications to join the Seattle Fire Department.

To me, that's pretty significant.

It showed that our marketing and recruitment strategy worked with our public affairs team and our recruitment and outreach team.

So I told our team that we should really be proud of that because in six weeks, we received 2,900 applications for the Seattle Fire Department.

So I just wanted to make sure I pause and acknowledge that.

It's definitely worthy of a pause.

For sure.

It's amazing.

So on the next slide, you'll get to see for, Oh, did it flip to the next slide?

So an example of what I was talking about in the earlier is if you look at black or African American, you had 352 that applied.

You had 256 that scheduled the exam, but only 184 completed the process.

And that number goes on to show like the number of females that first applied was 354, 301 scheduled, but only 231 completed the process.

So we're curious to what happens to those people that drop out.

And I'll be curious to see once we get the numbers from NTN and Seattle HR is out of the 530 that applied out of the zip code 98118, how many of them stuck with it?

And if they didn't stick with it, why, what are we missing to keep them engaged in the process?

Thank you, just a pause here, Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

Thank you for everything you're doing for daylighting these numbers for us.

I actually went through an academy in California many years ago, so I'm a little bit familiar with this process and just looking at the numbers.

So if I take the information from slide nine, 15 and 20, let's just stay on this slide 20. So slide nine says there's 7% female in the rank and file.

Slide 15 says the recruits sort of go down over time.

And slide 20, if I look at the female row here, It looks like the percentage from the applied all the way to the end stays at about 11%, 11 to 12%.

So, it seems like what would need to happen is to go further upstream.

to the high schools and maybe a first year community college, and to get people to study fire science, to get involved earlier in high school, and perhaps through those studying to be EMTs, getting them interested in firefighting.

So going further upstream, high school and EMT programs seems to be, because if you've got 7% currently, and you've got 11% making it through here, it seems like you won't move the needle dramatically unless you get more applicants to get that 11, 12% of applicants to go up.

In terms of why people drop off during the process, since this happened in April, perhaps there needs to be an exit interview process, maybe done by HR, you know, why people dropped out and then you can re-engineer upfront how to prevent that drop off.

But it just, it seems like the way to get the number up for female recruits is to go earlier in the process to high schools.

But I don't know your thoughts on that.

To be honest with you, I'm a big proponent for the high schools.

I just had a daughter graduate and I find that high schools right now are really looking at the kids going into college, which I think is a great avenue.

And sometimes you have a kid who's, that's not the avenue that could be for them.

But I tried to get invited to the table saying this is a viable, this is a viable opportunity to have a career.

And we're finding that the high schools are being, it was hard during COVID, but once we come, they're always like, oh my God, will you come again next year and let us know.

So that is a very important one for just me sitting at the fire department, that we continue to plant the seed.

I think the other part of this is continue with the fire and the women in EMS and have them believe that, yes, you could do this job as well.

Do the community, follow up question, Chair.

Do the community colleges offer fire science programs that are connected with the departments in the area?

So to answer the first part of the question on the high school.

So we partner with Seattle Public Schools.

Daniel Goldson is the principal of Seattle Public Schools Technical Programs.

They have a fire program at Seattle Public Schools.

So we work with them.

Matter of fact, last month, the students in the program just came out to the fire boat.

We gave them a ride to close out their year.

So we are connecting with the public schools and trying to get further upstream.

In September, North Seattle College started the fire science degree program, really well received by the community.

They thought that they would get two classes of 30. They actually got four classes of 30. And so we continue to partner with them.

Later on this summer, we're working on setting up a career fair at North Seattle College.

and continuing to expand that.

So we're thinking just like you also are, as Julie mentioned, our women in EMS and fire program is we're big supporters of that.

And then continuing to get out into the community to turn the light on in the room, to let people know that this is a really good opportunity for them.

Thank you.

Can we go back to that last slide really quick?

So I wanted to just point out we had 2,900 people apply.

We had just under 2,000 complete all phases of that process.

So we'll be doing a debrief with public safety civil service this month on the why.

So to try to understand how that fall off happened.

But as Council Member Peterson just pointed out, you can look at the trending from the percentages of those who apply to those who completed the process.

And about 35% of our population that completed the process is actually people of color.

If you look at our list from the past, it wasn't that high of a number.

So our recruitment efforts are paying off.

They aren't where we want them to be.

but they are paying off if you just look at the trending there on how the percentages are.

And all of those percentages on the far right column are higher than the percentages that we have in the department.

So we are trending in the right direction.

It's gonna take some time to get there, but I believe our efforts will start to pay off over time.

Under analysis and outcomes, number three, recruit school retention.

We're continuing to partner with the equity committed training division to increase retention of female and persons of color.

Recruits serve beneficial and incremental changes in recruit school, which is huge.

For many years that I worked at the department, there was no changes in recruit school.

And now that we're at the table talking about it, for me, it's a big win.

And then monitoring or serving success recruits to better understand what additional changes could enhance and could enhance more retained diverse recruits.

for tomorrow's firefighters and EMTs.

They're always welcome to suggestions, to have meetings.

And like I said that years ago, that wasn't part of the face at the fire department.

So now to have that, that we can sit down and have conversations is a great improvement.

Diversity is being invited to a party, but invitation is not enough.

Inclusion is being asked to dance at the party.

Participation is the key to effectively combating racism and discrimination.

From the RSJ team, our envision is that people being hired into the department, whether you're a civilian or uniform, that you should know on your first day that you should be able to bring your dancing shoes with you.

And we're making changes, sometimes not as quick as the team would like to see it, but we appreciate all the support that we get from Chief Scoggins and from Helen and the leadership in order to move things forward.

Any questions?

Just, I want to note that these are efforts I know the department has been working on for a very long time, I know that all of our departments throughout the city have had RSGI goals and.

focus on policy adjustments to live those values.

But my recollection is that the fire department has been really working hard towards diversifying the department in a way that predates those intentional objectives of the RSJI initiative.

And I recognize as well that the reason why you do this work is because you recognize how important it is to live your values as a department, help us live our values as a city to make sure that we do have a diversified workforce serving the public.

And I also just want to take a minute The policies and recruitment efforts aside, I appreciate all the work of all the men and women in the Seattle Fire Department, but really want to thank Chief Scoggins for his commitment to this work and the individual actions that he has taken himself to make clear to everybody in the department, what the expectations are of the department to let everybody know that the fire department has no tolerance for racism and anti-white supremacy within the department, and they the efforts that he has made to express that in a way that is clear and something and just holding folks accountable for that.

I think it's just a really important example for our city and important to make sure that new people coming into the apartment feel welcome and secure and safe in doing the life-saving work that you all do.

So thank you.

Thank you.

And if I could just thank Captain Johnson and Julie George for leading our change team.

I know it's a really hard job.

We have some very honest and hard conversations, but that's how we make change along the way.

We know we have a very difficult job to do as the community got to see once again on Sunday evening.

at 8th and Madison.

Our firefighters did an absolutely incredible job with eight rescues.

Some of you may have seen the picture of one of our firefighters bringing the mom and the baby down the ladder.

There were more people came that came out of the building two are still in critical condition, but we know it's a very, very difficult job.

So we have to make sure our folks are well trained and we don't do anything alone.

We were there on scene with our partners from SPD, the mayor showed up to talk to the residents and then the work still goes on today as director mayor mentioned on her presentation with OEM and HSD and the office of housing and parks to try to continue the work to make sure those people get a place to live.

So we know it's a hard job, but we're gonna continue to push forward and thank you for your ongoing support.

It is appreciated.

Will the clerk please read in agenda item number three.

Committee agenda item number three, first quarter Seattle Police Department finance and response time report for briefing and discussion.

All right, switching back to a virtual presentation.

Thank you.

This is a presentation on the quarterly updates requested by council from the Seattle Police Department.

Greg Doss of Council Central Staff will be presenting.

The staffing portion of the quarterly reporting was included in a previous meeting, so we're gonna be focusing on the finances and response time report.

Greg, could you please lead us through the presentation?

Thank you, yes, good morning, Madam Chair and committee members.

Greg Doss, Central Staff, as the Chair mentioned here today, because I'm going to talk with you about SPD finances and response times.

I'll try to make the finance component as painless as possible and go as quick as possible.

As Council Member Herbold mentioned, these are presentations that come quarterly and normally would include a component on staffing.

However, this one will not include the staffing because we handled the staffing, the Q1 component of that on April 26. in order to address the hiring incentives discussion and the resolution and bill that was before the committee at that time.

So we're just going to jump into finances and response times today.

So with that, I'm going to jump right in and feel free to ask me questions along the way.

So finance monitoring.

Okay, so After a couple of years of these presentations, members are probably getting familiar with the fact that almost all of SPD's expenditures fall into essentially three big categories that make up about 96 to 97% of all department spending.

And as you can see, that's still the case here in the first quarter of 2022. As you can see, we've got three categories here, salary and benefits, overtime and allocated costs, allocated costs being the expenditures that are made for, oh, the buildings, the fleet, various kinds of heating and cooling, all of the kinds of facilities that you would expect.

And the big picture here is that spending is once again down.

It's down by about 9% from 86 to 79 million.

And that is because staffing, the largest expenditures that the agency has is in the area of salary and benefits.

And so with the decline in staffing, there's less of a need to pay officers and so spending is down overall.

We'll get down into the details here in a little bit.

But really what the other big takeaway from this donut chart is that overtime as a percent of spending has doubled.

And that is a result of, again, staffing issues at SPD and the need to rely on overtime to be able to deliver services.

And so we'll talk about that as we move along.

This next table that is in front of you takes a look at those three big categories over the last two years.

As you can see, you've got on the left 2021 and on the right 2022. It takes a look at the expenditures for those categories, and then it adjusts those expenditures or measures those expenditures against the budget.

So how far are we spending against the adopted budget?

And so if I take, for example, that top line, salary and benefits, and I jump to 2022, you'll see that so far through March, the agency has spent $58 million, and that equates to roughly 23% of its annual budget for salary and benefits.

What does that mean?

It's underspending its salary and benefits budget, and I think members all know that's because there have been more folks that have left officers have left than was originally estimated by the staffing plan.

And so there are some salary savings that are available right now about 4.5 million in salary savings and we've had some discussions about how The executive and the council are using those salary savings.

So not going to go into that, but you are seeing that here.

When it comes to overtime, you'll see that the overtime expenditures have doubled compared with last year.

Now, this is not too surprising because the pandemic was in full swing last year.

So a lot of the events and things that were requiring SPD services, weren't requiring them.

But that said, it is somewhat worrisome, at least to me as an analyst, that the department is at 24% of its budget through March.

And I got a sneak peek at its April budget.

And I know that if you look through April, the next month, it's actually 35% spent.

And that's a bit of a problem because when you look at SPD overtime spending, most of its overtime spending is going to occur in the warm weather months when you have events and you have a need for public safety patrols, either on Alki or related to violence in specific areas.

And so, if you have 24% now or 35, as I just mentioned through April, that's a bit of a worrisome sign that that the overtime budget might not be sufficient to make it through the year.

That is me saying that that is not the department saying that they have confidence that they will make it through the year.

And, and I was told such, and, you know, we'll have to just watch that one that measure as we move through the year.

So moving along.

The next categories we see are.

The next categories we see are some of the smaller ones.

And so the smaller ones you see here are separation, pay, services, consultant, legal, other, travel and training, discretionary purchases, and other charges and capital.

So one thing I want to note right off here is that SPD did have a mistake in its coding of expenditures.

So when you're looking at the absolute dollars that were spent in 2022, and you see 3.3 million, it's actually more like 2.9.

they wound up putting some grant expenditures, a few hundred thousand into other charges that didn't belong there.

And the capital piece doesn't belong there either.

That was also a, an error.

So those two pieces shouldn't be there.

And it's actually a little bit more like 2.9 million.

But that said, These numbers that show that the expenditures are quite low relative to budget, let's say 6% or 12% or 13%.

I would caution.

I would caution members to.

take those with a grain of salt.

The department in these areas has put in encumbrances where they have more or less blocked off some of their budget authority because they are planning to make some big purchases.

You'll see under my second bullet here that in the area of services and consultants, they're planning on making about 2.5 million of services and consultants and 1.3 million in services other.

And what that will do is that will bring that line to about 60% expended.

And then in the discretionary purchases line, they're planning to spend just about $2 million there.

And that would bring that line to 58% expended.

So when you look at these numbers here against the budget, I don't want you to get the perception that there's a lot of money sitting around.

Actually, they've locked up a lot of money.

in contracts where they are expecting to spend the money.

The money that they're expecting to spend on services consultants and services other are primarily around the technology projects that the council funded them for this year.

As you may recall, there are about five different very expensive technology projects that they're going to be undertaking.

And then the discretionary purchase one, those purchases that are online are for a backlog of tasers, ammo, ballistic armor, and helmets that add up to about $1.8 million.

And so more of that category is spent than what you see here.

In terms of separation pay, you'll see that it's 31% expended through March.

That probably shouldn't come as a surprise.

We know that there are more separations than expected in the first quarter.

The thought was originally that there would be about 24 separations, and it turns out there's about 43. So I've thrown a lot at you in the last five minutes.

I'm going to stop and ask if there's any questions before I move on to overtime.

Thank you, just wanna put a pin in the discussion around discretionary purchases, since there's been some interest over the last week around that particular line item.

I think to sum up, according to the report at this time, the budget control level for SPD for discretionary purchases is 4.5 million for the year they've spent.

about a million through this report.

They've encumbered about another 2 million.

So they have about 1.5 million in the discretionary purchases BCL.

I also want to highlight that their SPD does have authority to move funds between BCLs without authorization.

The exception to that, of course, are the BCLs related to salaries and costs associated with salaries.

There is, I think, more flexibility within SPD's budget than some might assume from public discussions around purchases recently, but I think the upshot from the discussions around repairing assets owned by the police department is I'm very interested in learning more about the process that the police department goes through in identifying requests for the Seattle Foundation and how, for the Seattle Foundation to fundraise and how they prioritize around the use of their discretionary understand some of the things that Greg mentioned as costs that there are, have already been encumbrances for obviously high priority items for the department.

But I would posit that a $25,000 expenditure to fix an asset already owned by the department is a good idea.

a high priority as well.

So looking forward to learning more about how the department communicates with the foundation on priorities for fundraising.

Moving on.

Okay.

All right, moving on.

So into overtime monitoring.

Overtime monitoring.

I'm going to start out with some of the smaller categories of spending.

And as you can see, the biggest problem area for SPD in 2022 is the miscellaneous category.

And the miscellaneous category is one that contains emphasis patrols, which were effectively defunded in 2020, but, or I'm sorry, defunded in 2021, but which were being used extensively in 2020 after a major shooting downtown, as you may recall in the Pike Pine area.

So that's why you see such a large bar there in 2020 and almost nothing in 2021. In 2020, 80% of that bar that you are seeing is for spending on those four areas that I have below.

Pike and Pine, Twelfth and Jackson, Shots Fired, and Nightlife Emphasis.

And it is the case that That is, those activities are taking a lot of the department's overtime through the first three months of the year.

It has taken about 8,400 hours and about $710,000.

Also up in this chart compared to the last couple of years is criminal investigations.

Um, and I note in the slide that violent crimes is up, including homicide, but it's really all of violent crimes.

And so it's, it's everything that goes along with that.

That would include say evidence over time, uh, and also over time for crime scene investigation.

And that would make sense given, um, that we're seeing over time for shots fired areas and, and, and other violent crime scenes.

So those are two areas that are particularly stretched.

Other areas are not as out of sorts with prior years.

Then move on to the next one, which is the major three drivers of overtime, as I would put it.

And these I put into a different category and onto a different scale.

And moving left to right, Um, one of the biggest drivers patrol operations, um, you can see is, is, is uncomparable at this point to, um, the last couple of years.

Um, as I go through and I look at the data for patrol operations, I can see that 55 to 88%, depending on which precinct I'm looking at of the overtime for that particular precinct is pretty much for patrol augmentation and sickly backfill.

Um, it is the case that that's just being driven by the staffing shortage.

It's the case that the community response group that is that group that fills in on 911 response, their overtime is up 100% since Q1 last year.

Then in events, events fall into sort of two categories.

One is events that are just general citywide events.

And these include the Seattle Center events.

And then the other is the sporting events and both of these are up.

If you look at the middle one events, including Seattle Center.

Uh, not as high as 2019, but, um, fairly high.

And this is, if I look at the data here, what I see is that a lot of these events are climate pledge arena concerts.

Um, the climate pledge arena is creating a lot of business for SPD.

Um, and definitely in the last category in the sporting events category.

As I looked at the data there, what I found is that the Kraken events are taking a lot of hours, about 4,100 hours for Kraken events at a cost of about 382,000 to the city.

Those are dollars that receive some reimbursement.

I'm working with the city budget office to figure out how much we receive from the Kraken for those events.

But would note that SPD does not receive any appropriation authority for those events.

So that does make it harder on their budget to have to absorb that.

All right.

So I'm going to.

Yeah, thanks.

Sorry, I should have stopped again.

Just trying to understand a little bit about how this is laid out.

Page seven and page eight are both called overtime hours by category, but they're not all on the, is it just that the chart wouldn't all fit on the same page?

Or is there another reason why these are broken out into two slides?

Or does- It's the scale.

These other categories can basically go under 16,000 hours, and these are our bigger ones.

They can go up to 30,000 hours, and these are our bigger drivers.

Got it, and then what is the thinking?

I understand that they're probably coded differently, but what is the thinking or what should we be thinking about the fact that there are two separate categories for events?

Why not just combine the two if you really wanna see how much overtime is going for events and to try to compare it to other categories?

It looks like we're deflating it by breaking it out into two different categories.

Well, I think I can't speak to, what can I say here?

These two categories are treated differently from a cost reimbursement standpoint.

Prior to Climate Pledge Arena coming on board with the Kraken, and I don't know the situation with the Kraken, sporting events, events that happen at the stadiums, they have contracts with, say, the Mariners or the Seahawks, and we get pretty good cost recovery there.

Those events are close to 100% cost recovery.

The teams pay for the manned posts at the street closures and they pay for traffic control.

Events including Seattle Center, those events are governed under the SMC on special events, and those events do not receive good cost reimbursement.

Those events are at best 67%, I believe, and go down from there, depending on what kind of arrangement the city has with the promoter that happens to be putting the event on.

So from a cost recovery standpoint, it helps to track them separately.

SPD manages them somewhat separately in the sense that the sporting events are predictable and they can schedule them in advance.

The other events are not and sometimes come in very quickly.

those are some differences.

Why they wouldn't put them together is something I can ask them and get back to you on.

I think that's a pretty good explanation.

If we're focused on the issue of the costs, it's helpful to know that the events that we're receiving nearly 100% reimbursement is coming in a little bit under 10,000 hours.

But if what you're looking at and focused on is the prioritization of overtime among different functions of the department and seeking to have a conversation around prioritizing overtime for, for instance, patrol operations or criminal investigations or other types of that only police officers can do, it might make sense to consider the events as a single category for purposes of that comparison.

But I definitely understand the logic from a financial perspective for breaking those out that way.

Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

Oh, thank you.

So do I.

Appreciate that.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thanks as well to Greg.

I recognize from central staff you're reporting out on a report that SPD has sent us and appreciate that.

the rationale might not be one that we have formulated or perhaps even on council agree with, but I appreciate that you're in the position of reporting out on these issues.

Madam Chair, there's two questions that I have, and first was actually on the cost reimbursement for sporting events.

Greg, I think you provided a little bit more clarity on what we really mean when we say partial recovery or pretty good recovery.

for some events and not others.

And I was trying, and we actually had an earlier correspondence about this via email earlier this week because I was trying to remember in the pre COVID years, how much the reimbursement was for sporting events, and in those pre COVID years we didn't actually have a ton of events.

You know, as many events I should say at the Seattle Center and now we do and I'm very thankful for their presence and not only for sporting events but for concert venues and it's an impressive building, but I'm really concerned about the lack of full reimbursement from all of the sporting events.

but especially the lower percentage for Seattle Center.

So just because you brought that up before I get to my second question, is that something that is in SMC, Seattle Municipal Code, that we on council have the ability to correct for?

Or what would be the process for correcting for getting fuller reimbursement from Seattle Center events?

That's a good question.

The SMC does.

Control how costs are recovered for special events that receive a permit in the city.

I think that some events at Seattle Center receive different kinds of permits, and so I don't know that they necessarily necessarily go through the same process.

I think that some of the larger events, say like the bumper shoots, They have more like contracts with the city for cost reimbursement.

So, some of them may be on a case by case basis where the city is negotiating with the promoter.

For the big three, I'm thinking Bite of Seattle, Bumper Shoot, and there's one other in there.

Is it Folklife?

I think for those particular ones, if the city wanted better cost recovery, I think they have to work directly with the promoter.

And then in general, events around the city, that would be under control of the SMC, which you would have the ability to raise the cost recovery rate on.

Okay, thank you very much and Madam Chair if I may just ask my second question while I have the mic.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

So thank you for that, Greg.

I will follow up with you and others on the team for central staff.

I think you and the chair have flagged a really important issue.

We really cannot have cost recovery dependent on which promoter is coordinating an event.

And given the current use of the Seattle Center venue and our hopeful continued and expanded use of the center for more sporting events and community events in the wake of COVID, I'd very much like to figure out how we get those cost recoveries to near 100%, if not 100%.

The second question I had is, could you elaborate a little bit more on the status of the council's request to look at the expanded duties of the PEOs as described in slide 05B002?

The slide stated that we are requesting SPD to provide a report that analyzes the cost of using PEOs and other non-SPD officers instead of sworn officers with a gun to do things like traffic control during special events and contracting sporting events.

I know that this is stated repeatedly, but I want to make sure that we say again on the record, this council has been very much over the last two years looking at ways to move this work to others within our city who are qualified and skilled in helping to manage traffic and ensure the safety at large events that does not often require a gun and a badge or sworn officer who's then being taken away from other duties.

So we do appreciate that the work has been ongoing, but looking at this chart, these charts today and the heightened need for us to scale down over time, I am really interested in making sure that we're following through on getting these responsibilities either to the PEOs or others to make sure that these officers are not actually accruing over time for this type of work, and especially not at events that are not reimbursing us fully for the cost of the large sporting or entertainment events.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member.

I think that the executive had identified some potential labor issues with a large transfer of those duties from SPOG to SPIOG, the two unions that are involved.

And I know that the executive is working on those issues and working to resolve some of those issues in a way that would allow more PEOs to work events in the way that you're describing, although I can't go into much more detail.

Thank you.

Thank you, Greg.

And before I hand it over to Council Member Lewis, I do want to note, there was a few years ago, an audit on cost recovery around special events.

And my recollection is the lower cost recovery is less with the large events and more with the events that were, that the, special events permitting offices categorizing as free speech events.

And they're rather broad categorization of what constitutes a free speech event.

But there were some recommendations coming out of that audit that we should take a fresh look at.

And I think there's also nuance in, they did redo the permitting fees.

And so if it's a nonprofit, the permitting fees are different than a for-profit event that is not

Yeah, there was some intentional subsidizing of some events.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold.

Just to speak to that exchange briefly at the beginning of my remarks that we just had.

I know for some organizations, I mean, Folklife is a great example, right?

Where cost recovery would be a burden on that festival since it is a free festival at the Seattle Center.

So just being really intentional about how we have that discussion about cost recovery for certain activities is certainly something I wanna do.

I mean, clearly there's a big iceberg here of potential cost recovery.

So I think it's more exceptions than completely overdoing the entire rule, but I think there's some, Folklife comes immediately to mind and there may be others.

So as we look into that, I agree with the comments of Council Member Herbold and Council Member Nelson of being intentional on the impact of that.

So Greg, I don't know that I'm so much asking a question.

I'm just gonna make a brief statement as we look at the slide.

The combination of the sporting events and the events, including Seattle Center, wherein I think there's broad agreement, the bulk of those duties could probably be served by other employees in the city family.

is a continued area of interest.

For me, as I know it, it is for Council Member Mosqueda, as she just indicated and others on the council.

In the aggregate, it looks like those two bars go over 20,000 service hours.

And separate from the discussion on cost recovery, which has mostly been our focus for the last couple of minutes, it's also important to note that those gray bars represent personnel.

And as we've, you know, been discussing over the last several months, there is a greatly diminished amount of personnel in the Seattle Police Department.

It begs questions not only around urgency of retention and recruitment, but also around prioritization of the personnel who we currently have on what duties they are and aren't doing.

20,000 service hours, regardless of if it's being reimbursed or not, is bogging down SPD personnel in jobs that I think in the mind of the public do not triage to where we absolutely feel the exigent priority is right now for where those officers should be spending their time.

So I do just want to, as Council Member Mosqueda and Chair Herbold did earlier, just join by putting that on the record.

that while we need to continue our efforts around retention and recruitment, we also need to have a really critical conversation about significant pre-prioritization of large areas of this overtime ledger to focus on the things that we know the public is most concerned about, including violent crime, investigations of accusations of rape and other really critical urgent things.

And you don't need to necessarily respond.

This is mostly just to go on the record supporting those statements, but appreciate this graph kind of displaying how the overtime is being allocated and the room that might be there for reallocation going forward.

Thank you.

Before we move off of the topic of overtime tracking, I think this has been a good conversation about how overtime is used in the department and how it's prioritized among different functions of the department.

I do want to lift up a slightly different issue.

Overtime tracking systems is something that the press is interested in.

I know members of the public are interested in ensuring that officers are receiving overtime in a way that is consistent with the policies and practices of the department.

In 2016, the city auditor had a series of recommendations about the tracking of overtime for SPD and key to these recommendations was the work scheduling and timekeeping project that the council funded to update and modernize overtime tracking.

I did request that the city auditor take a look at its 2016 recommendations and report out on how the department has performed in addressing those recommendations and Some of the recommendations were focused on what to do during the period of time while they're still working to implement the work scheduling and timekeeping software solution, and the auditor had recommended that SPD regularly conduct manual payroll auditing tasks such as queries, spot checks, and analyses of payroll data to identify issues with SPD's overtime usage.

And SPD has reported that they are not performing auditing of overtime and off-duty work, but they are doing spot checks to ensure policies and procedures are being followed.

And so that's sort of partial responsiveness to the city auditor's recommendations.

But more troubling is that we've learned that the work scheduling and timekeeping software solution will, there are some issues with it and implement, they report that implementation issues beyond SPD's control led to the decision to not implement the work scheduling and timekeeping solution and that SPD will be exploring a different software solution.

So I think what that does from my perspective is while identifying this new technology solution, we still need to be making sure that The department is doing both spot checks as well as more systematic auditing of the assignment and usage of overtime, but hopefully some more on that soon.

Any other council member Nelson?

Yes.

So on this slide, speaking of events, it looks like rough combination of both events columns is about, I don't know, 15,000 or so.

And that is far less than the patrol column itself.

So to me, that is the significant issue because it gets back to your point, Greg, in earlier that SPD has used about 24% of its overtime and you would have expected less because it's the winter.

What are we gonna do about that?

Because summer is coming and we can all imagine that overtime needs will be even greater for patrols.

So is there any planning for the overtime budget as a whole adjustments to it?

And this is for my education offline.

I just need to understand better how the, Who makes the overtime budget and was it anticipated that so many officers would have continued to leave?

I mean, I'm assuming that this is driven by the vacancies, but anyway.

And I have a second question after that about separation.

So Councilmember what I can say is that SPD is certainly aware of this situation, and I talked with their finance director last week and she had some ideas about how they might attempt to control overtime on the backside of the year.

I don't know if she would want me to lay those out now, so why don't I get back to you on that, but to tell you that they are working on some things and they're hopeful that they're going to be able to finish within the year.

I'm not as hopeful as she is, but we'll see how things work out.

Got it, thank you.

And then why were separations, let's see, in 2021 separations, the budget for separations was 1.4 million and this year it's almost 900,000.

So was there a deliberate reason why the separate, was the thinking that the trend would reverse and there wouldn't be as many separations and that's why it wasn't allocated as much this year as 2021?

So the original budget for separations in 2021 reflected historical spending in that area, and it was wholly inadequate.

I don't recall the exact number, but it was very small because they weren't expecting the kind of mass separations that they've seen.

And then, as we progress throughout the year, the council allowed SPD to use some of its salary savings to address its separation problem and so they move some of the salary savings into their separation budget and that started to grow their separation budget for 2021. So as you look backwards into 2021, you start to see a bigger separation budget looking historically.

This year, they figured there weren't going to be as many separations and they hoped that the trend was going to start leveling out.

Obviously, that is not entirely the case as we're seeing so far this year.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you.

And my recollection, I agree with Council Member Nelson.

If you look at those two gray bars on the events, they look like they would come up to be about 15,000, but my recollection is that the total number of events over time hours for the purposes of this report was 23,000 hours.

Am I remembering correctly?

Are you talking about last year?

No, for the first quarter overtime budget, the hours for events totaled to 23,000 hours.

I recall that that's what I was told last week.

I'd have to get back to you.

I don't recall right off.

I'm just, yeah, I'm just noting that I agree with Council Member Nielsen.

stack up those two gray bars, it looks like it's around 15,000, but I recall when I inquired last week, I was told that the number for events was 23,000 hours, but let's return to that after the meeting.

Let's move forward.

Thank you.

Okay.

All right.

Yeah.

Okay, so one other thing I would, I would mention to Councilmember on Councilmember Mosqueda's point is that.

If you all would like to see something different here, I am not sent this presentation by SPD.

I'm sent raw data files.

And so I am able, I take the raw data files and I interpret the data and I create this presentation.

And so I could certainly put these two categories together.

originally broke out when I was at SPD, the various kinds of events, because when I was at SPD, I wanted to track them separately.

But in this role, I can put them together using the data files that they sent.

So just let me know.

Thank you.

All right.

Response times and call triage.

All right.

So we have been talking for a few years about what the department calls priority response call handling.

And that is a system that they have discontinued.

But I'm going to go ahead and just recap what that was for the public and for those who may not be familiar.

When SPD resources were short, if something was occurring that was limiting their ability to respond to 911 calls, SPD would call over to the 911 center and would request to go into something to the effect of priority call handling mode.

And what that means is with certain exceptions, priority three and priority four calls, callers would generally be told that SPD was suffering from a lack of resources and that they should call back at another time.

And generally the 911 call taker would give them a time that might be good to call back.

Like I said, there were some exceptions on the types of things that would still be allowed to go through and still be dispatched, even if they were priority three or priority four, but in general, that's where it ended.

And so there wasn't a lot of tracking of the, of the calls that were getting missed.

Instead, what was being tracked was, as you can see on this table here, the days that were, that had some, component of a priority call status alert.

And so a priority call status alert might be maybe it's only five or six hours that a major event is going on for SPD and they can't take those lower priority calls.

But the 911 center would track those number of days and you would know that Say in 2021, there were 223 days where they had to go on that alert and they had to not answer some priority three and priority four calls.

So that was the old system.

The new system is a bit different.

Under the new system, all calls that come into the 911 center are going to be dispatched by the 911 callers.

And then what's going to happen is that if a call taker receives a lower priority call, such as a noise complaint or an unleashed dog or a beach campfire, something to that effect, then the caller will often be asked if they are simply responding, reporting, or if they would like to be contacted by an officer.

SPD has indicated that those calls will accumulate in the queue until a supervisor can get to them.

If a request for a call back was made by a caller, then the supervisor will attempt to do that.

Otherwise, at that point in time, the supervisor will look at the notes for the call and make a decision as to whether or not that call is going to get a response or is going to be cleared with what they call a z-disposition action.

And that is essentially just deleting the call.

And so when that happens, it is, of course, tracked in the CAD.

And in future briefings that I give to you, we will hopefully be able to display a table that shows you the number of z-disposition calls, calls that were essentially not answered by SPD due to a lack of resources.

And that is the future of SPD's call triage policy.

Stop and ask if there's any questions before I move on.

Greg, for the Z disposition calls that don't receive a response, are there criteria for how, through the triage, those calls are identified?

The criteria are identified by the supervisor at SPD.

So the SPD supervisors make the determination looking at the notes.

They make the subjective call.

using a particular criteria, a Z protocol criteria, as to whether or not the call should be answered.

And then, as I said, if there's a request for a callback, my information right now is that they attempt to make that callback.

And I appreciate that we did request that SPD participate so that we could ask some of these questions.

And they were unable to join us today, but I'm not hearing any questions.

that you're saying they're subjective decisions, but is there any guidance or any policy that defines how those Z categorizations are made?

There is a protocol policy, but I don't know necessarily that it is the same kind of criteria that you're you're asking about.

That's a level of depth of question that I would leave for the department to answer.

And I apologize, I don't want to speculate.

Yeah, no, I appreciate.

We only learned about the switch from the priority response handling approach rather late in the development of this presentation.

So appreciate that we're doing the best we can with limited information.

Okay, let's move on.

Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

Council Member Mosqueda has a question.

I'm sorry.

Thank you not doing a very good job looking at the virtual participants, my apologies, no, I completely understand.

Thank you so much, Madam chair.

Thanks, Greg for this summary and Madam chair that's thanks for the context here that you all just found out about this is as recently as just putting together this presentation so it sounds like previously a 911 dispatcher was in a really impossible and probably uncomfortable position of having to tell folks who are calling 911 for priority three and priority four calls that basically we aren't taking these calls right now and please call back later.

And I can imagine for a 911 dispatcher, that's an incredibly uncomfortable and hard conversation to have with someone who has made the decision to call 911 for whatever reason.

And I appreciate that this is trying to also not put those 911 dispatchers in that terrible position.

I guess I have some questions though.

about who makes the final decision about calls, right?

There's been a lot of coverage recently that there was seven new officers that are now being sent to encampments versus going to the work that they had previously done on sexual assault investigations, for example.

So where in the decision-making process does the person who's answering the phone or now the second person who's reviewing the calls make the decision on who gets sent out to things like investigating property crimes or investigating encampment disturbances versus the issue that someone is calling about in the moment.

So I think if I understand your question, where in the process, It's the case that if it is a Priority 1 or a Priority 2 call, if it's a high priority call, and I think that some of the things that you just mentioned, something actively going on in an encampment would fall into a Priority 1 or a Priority 2 call, then they go immediately.

It would not be a candidate for this Z disposition call.

If it is the case that it is a candidate for this particular Z disposition, then it's by a supervisor subjectively at a later time when whatever crisis they're responding to, let's say it's a shots fired incident or some sort of violent incident.

has resolved itself and the supervisor is able to return to the CAD system and look at the queue and look at the notes and see which calls are calls that he or she thinks should be attended to.

I don't know if that's getting your answer out.

Yes, thank you so much.

Council Member Peterson.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Mr. Das for this presentation.

Had a question that's related to this slide.

We are, I believe, still waiting to get the data from the executive on which calls could be handled through alternative responses other than traditional responses, I believe.

SPD is compiling that information and presenting it to the mayor's office for analysis of which calls could be responded to through alternative means.

Do we know the timing of that when we can expect that?

Because I think that's the bottleneck in terms of how we're supposed to then design the best alternative responses for community safety.

Yeah, thank you, Councilman.

We do have a briefing on the 28th to this committee about next steps around that analysis, but just wanted to get that date out there.

Didn't mean to interrupt, Greg.

When is that date, Council Member?

The 28th, our next committee meeting.

28th, okay, thank you.

But I just wanna be, I don't wanna raise expectations.

This report on the 28th is less about the outcome of the analysis and more focused on the process and who's involved and the next steps.

But Greg, maybe you could add a little bit more texture there.

Council Member, I can't add anything.

You are completely on top of it.

Central staff is actively working with the executive work group on this on this effort.

Am I, am I correct in saying yes, yes we are.

The idea is is is exactly as you articulated on the 28th, the executive will sit down and will lay out their plan for for both.

presenting this Research Demand Analysis, RMD study, the one that you talk about, Mr. Council Member Peterson, and also how they would use that data with various stakeholders for the next step to determine which calls might be answered by civilians.

So that meeting on the 28th is really going to be answering your question both in terms of when the data will be available and how the data will be used going forward to get to the ultimate goal of alternative 911 response.

Things are starting to move though.

Thank you.

I look forward to it.

Council Member Nelson, yes.

Just responding to Council Member Miscada's point about responses to encampments that she characterizes disturbances, we do know that I believe the number that I remember is that 20% of homicides this year were associated with an encampment.

And we also know that people living in encampments are much more likely to be victims of crime.

And so they do have a responsibility, SPD does, to respond to these incidents.

And so- Council Member Garbaldo.

Council Member Lewis.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member Nelson.

Well, were you done with your remarks?

Yes.

I'm sorry.

I appreciate Council Member Nelson raising the correlation that we're all aware of and that's been extensively reported on the massive concentration of particularly violent criminal activity that happens around encampments.

A couple of important pieces of context though, and maybe this is something the department can report back on or central staff can find.

My understanding is that the staffing council member Mosqueda is referring to is police hours that are spent accompanying parks workers when they're in the process of a removal rather than hours spent investigating criminal activity in an encampment.

We have lots of models to the point Council Member Mosqueda is making of outreach methods that don't require police presence, at least not in the same way, or at least not in the function of police being used essentially as a conduit for the removal activity, but rather being more focused on the law enforcement component of their mission.

Just care in particular is a good example of that.

There's never been a requirement or an expectation that police be present at a just care removal.

I mean, they wouldn't, they don't even use the term removal because they are able to plan for all residents of the encampment.

So there's never anything to really protest or, you know, boycott when those operations are conducted, which doesn't necessitate the presence of police.

So my understanding is what has been reported on and what's been covered in the news has been scrutiny over the exercise of having the police present when parks employees are conducting removals and would just indicate that we know that there are models that can minimize the need to do that, to the point Council Member Mosqueda has made, that we should continue to lean into, like Just Care, which we're going to have discussions about later this month on some plans to and potentially expand that model, which again, does not necessitate a significant apportionment of police resources to effectuate as we've seen countless times over the last two years.

So I just wanted to clarify my understanding and Council Member Muscata can correct me if she's wrong, but I think it's important that when we talk about the police interaction with encampments, there's two different ways that that is occurring currently.

And I think there is room to see if there's a more efficient way to use police time and resources in that respect.

Yeah, just in general, I think it's important that we don't conflate responses to scenes of violence, shots fired or investigations associated with those crimes to conflate those with planned police department staffing of encampment removals.

Those are two different things for purposes of this discussion.

Yeah, and I was responding to the word disturbance.

Thank you.

Not a planned one.

All right, moving on.

Right, so this is my last slide and not too much to say about this.

It sort of speaks for itself.

This is the response time data for priority one, two, and three in each precinct.

What I can tell you is that the citywide numbers are for the average for quarter one, 10.37 for priority one and 51.93.

If you're looking at the median, it's 7.34 for priority one and 22.9 for priority two.

Those are the averages for the entire city.

Can you say that one more time?

Sure, if you're the averages for the entire city, so you can see here by precinct what the 2022 quarter one is for each precinct.

But if you got the average for the entire city, it is 10.37 for priority one.

And the median for the entire city is the median is 7.34.

And when we refer to the sort of national best practices standard of setting a seven minute response time for priority one calls, are we referring to the average or the median?

For many years, SPD had used a seven minute average as its time, as its goal.

I would have to ask them now what their overall goal is.

I can't respond to that.

Thank you.

And then on the priority two, the average is 51.93, and the median is 22.9.

Looking to see if there's questions on this slide.

Yes.

Council Member Peterson, yes.

Thank you, Chair Herbold.

I know many of us want to craft policies and budgets based on the data.

And so once again, I believe we've got very disturbing data in front of our eyes here.

The number of police officers is dangerously down and the response times are dangerously up.

I'm looking at the North Precinct comparing 2019 to 2022, for example.

This confirms a lot of what I've heard from constituents who are concerned as well.

I recently attended six different roll calls at the start of patrol shifts and heard directly from our public safety officers about their low morale and lack of trust.

They're overworked, as we saw from the overtime data.

King County Jail often refuses to book the suspects.

SPD officers risk their lives to bring to justice and services.

They feel the city leaders aren't doing enough to retain officers while other jurisdictions offer bonuses, allow officers to take home their patrol cars, and provide technology to keep them safe.

Just nine months ago, I introduced legislation to help retain police officers, but that did not pass.

Recruiting new officers to replace the hundreds of officers departing Seattle is vital.

And yet we should also acknowledge that recruitment takes a long time.

And for those officers listening in, please stay in Seattle.

We need you to stay to help us bring these response times down.

Please know that we value the good work you do and the experience you have.

I'm very hopeful Mayor Harrell's public safety plan due within the next couple of weeks includes immediate and robust retention actions to prevent Seattle from losing more officers and to get a handle on these response times.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I also wanna just flag that back in June, March of 2021, the department indicated that a loss of 50 patrol officers would increase priority one response times by three minutes.

It does appear that that prediction is in line with the loss of police officers in the response, but just wondering, Again, I'm not clear whether or not the response times that they were speaking of in March 21 were averages or medians and whether or not, given that lack of clarity, if that prediction has been realized here.

Not sure if you have any- Yeah, and that's a good question, Council Member.

I know that when, When Doctor Fisher moved in to his position, he changed the way that SPD looked at response times and brought in the median measure, which hadn't been used prior to his arrival.

And so that's why I want to check back and see.

Since his departure, I'm not sure.

I'm not sure where their current goals lie.

And I need to check back with them to get you an answer.

And I apologize I don't have that today.

That's all right.

And my recollection, and maybe this is also something that has changed, is that the priority one response time goals are not just the departments.

It's a national best practice that the department follows.

So again, I think having a better understanding of that is going to be really instructive for us in digesting what these increases mean.

Other comments or questions?

I'm looking for both for real hands as well as virtual hands, not seeing any.

And Greg, is that your last slide?

Yep, that was it.

OK, great.

We'll look forward to learning more both about the new real time triage system as well as the response time standard that we are seeking to meet for specifically for priority one responses.

And really appreciate your work on this, Greg, as well as the continued reporting from the department on these questions that are questions that the council has asked for the department to do regular reporting on.

Thank you, Madam Chair and council members.

Perfect.

Thank you.

The last item we're going to do an abbreviated sort of just quick touch on the changes to the bill.

Since the last time we've talked about it, we're not planning on voting on the bill, not even planning on voting on the substitute, which is what we had originally aim to do is that we were going to get the substitute in front of us and at least vote on it.

But given our time today, and hopefully Anne is hearing us now, hoping to do an abbreviated version of the briefing that we had planned.

Alex, can you please read agenda item four into the record?

Committee agenda item number four, Council Bill 120337, an ordinance relating to civilian and community oversight of the police, establishing a process for investigating complaints, naming the chief of police, adding a new chapter.

to Chapter 3.29 of the Seattle Municipal Code and amending Section 49 of Ordinance 125315 to renumber the existing Subchapter 5 of Chapter 3.29 and Sections 3.29-500 and 3.29-510 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

Thank you so much.

So as noted at the last meeting, the bill is intended to address a technical issue from the 2017 accountability ordinance, which did not specify how complaints that name the chief police should be addressed.

This is the second meeting for the development of this legislation.

As mentioned last time we met, I became aware of this issue early in 2022 and was notified by the Office of the Inspector General of some outstanding complaints against the former police chief.

On the background on this particular version of this bill, the legislation was introduced to the referral calendar on June 7th.

So given the timeline for committees that meet on Tuesday morning for the introduction and referral calendar, we sent it in on May 25th.

Since then, we've continued to meet and consult with the Office of Police Accountability and the Office of the Inspector General, as well as consider the changes suggested by the Community Police Commission.

The substitute version in the Central Staff Memo is the result of this continued conversation.

And with that, I'll hand it over to Anne Gorman, Council Central Staff.

Good morning.

Thank you, Chair Arbold and committee members and Gorman Council Central staff.

In the interest of time, I will refrain from going over Council Bill 120337 in depth.

And I will just focus my presentation today on the changes that are reflected in the current draft substitute bill.

And I want to emphasize the reason for the draft substitute bill is because all stakeholders in this bill really recognize the importance of crafting airtight legislation that will be responsive in the event in the future that there is a complaint to OPA against the chief of police.

And I think that everyone also has an interest in being transparent about that interest in ongoing engagement.

That is why we are discussing the draft substitute bill today.

And the major change in it is a different rubric for the classification of complaints.

Typically, OPA classifies complaints in one of four categories within 30 days of receiving them.

And that is reflected in the introduced bill that the Chair Herbold just described.

As we've continued to work on the bill with OPA and OIG and with the input of the CPC, what we've realized is the complaints against the chief really do need to be treated differently.

The substitute bill would therefore impose a new rubric in which complaints against the chief are evaluated for as long as it takes to determine whether or not they should be investigated.

So in the draft substitute, there are only two categories, investigation or no investigation.

And a few sets of changes flow from this change.

For instance, OPA's typical process is aligned with the collective bargaining agreements that cover uniformed SPD officers.

The chief is not covered by a CBA, so the draft substitute removes extraneous language related to CBAs and clarifies the chief's non-represented status.

Substitute bill also spells out OIG's consultative role as OPA is evaluating a complaint, and it creates a new notification requirement beyond those in the introduced bill if OIG determines that this evaluation process is taking longer than it should.

And the main effect of these changes is to ensure that complaints against the chief will be treated as separate and distinct from other complaints that OPA receives because of the gravity of the circumstance and that OPA investigators will not feel any time pressure to classify a complaint.

The changes also clarify OIG's oversight role in these complaints consistent with the police accountability ordinance And they make clear something that was very important to stakeholders.

And that is that there is no role for SPD in investigating complaints against the chief.

All of you have a summary table describing the changes in the draft substitute bill as well as the draft itself.

And as Chair Herbold mentioned, we continue to work on this.

Thank you.

Any questions about the status of the bill of contents?

None?

All right.

Well, more coming up in our next committee meeting on June 28th.

Thank you.

Any other thoughts or comments for the good of the order?

All right.

Seeing none, the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, June 28th, 2022. If there are any absences that are planned, we'd love to know them now.

Not seeing any.

And before we adjourn, there are no further comments from my colleagues.

Nope, none.

The time is 1224 p.m.

and we are adjourned.

Thank you.