Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee 9/27/19 Session II

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you so much for coming back with us.

This is our Select Budget Committee.

It's 2.04 in the afternoon on September 27th, and we've been in recess, and so we're now back to order.

I'm Councilmember Sally Bagshaw.

I'm chair of this committee, Council President Harrell, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Muscata here with us.

Thank you so much.

And this morning, we heard from Transportation and the Office for Civil Rights and the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs.

To our Department of Transportation, they were here on the hot seat for two hours, and I want to acknowledge the good work that everybody did.

And also, just how meaningful the presentations that we had from the Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Office for Civil Rights, what tremendous work those two departments are doing, and our offices are doing, and we just so much respect that work.

So now we're going to hear, I think, from, first of all, we're going to have a public safety report, and then the Seattle Police Department will be up, then our Seattle Fire Department, thank you all for joining us now, and the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

And like we did this morning, I think about half an hour and a half or two hours into this meeting, we may call for another 10-minute recess to give everybody a little bit of a break.

We found that seemed to work.

For anyone Chief Scoggins or anyone in the office of sustainability if you want to just Take a little bit more time or if you need to take a little bit more time I just want you to know that that's possible depending upon where we are on the clock.

Okay, so also public comment will come at the end of the day.

I hope my colleagues can stay in here.

We'll see how many people are with us then.

Any questions?

If not, let's get going.

And I think our public safety pilot projects, is that going to be kicked off by you, Greg?

Sure, Council Member.

Okay, very good.

Greg Doss, Council Central staff, and I'm joined by my colleague, Asha.

And we are going to be working on the prolific offender issue.

As you're going to see in a few moments, there are a number of departments that are working on this issue, this initiative that was put forth by the mayor.

To provide a little context, in February of this year, Scott Lindsey authored a report titled System Failure, a report on prolific offenders in Seattle's criminal justice system.

This report indicated that a substantial portion of criminal offenses reported in Seattle are by a like population that is cycling in and out of the criminal justice system.

And the recommendations that you're going to hear about today are to address the frequent offenders or the high barrier folks that are cycling in and out of the jail.

Great.

Thank you all.

We'll look forward to that.

And I also want to acknowledge before things got really deep is how much I have heard from my constituents in District 7 about some of the extra work that the police department is doing.

Whether we have officers on the ground walking on their bikes, the emphasis patrols have been very welcome in downtown.

in Pioneer Square.

I know that there's been some concerns about them, but I just want to say off the top that they have been very well received by the people who are living and working there.

And I've also continually heard from Belltown that they would like to see Emphasis Patrols expanded.

So with that, who's coming up to the table with you?

Is it you and Asha or are we inviting?

No, actually we have a whole team of folks coming up here.

And then also I should mention for Council Central staff, we're dividing this issue up a little bit.

I'll be handling the police and fire portions.

Asha's going to handle the criminal justice portions with Carlos Lugo, who's out here in the audience.

And then Jeff Sims is going to be working on the jail improvements that you'll hear about.

Super.

So please, everybody who's planning to present, come on up.

And as you are coming up, I also want to acknowledge having seen King County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Satterberg, who is very interested in working on this collegially as well.

He mentioned to me the other day that their goal is to end the war on drug users and make sure that people have the services that they need, mental health, behavioral health.

and moving beyond just what we have traditionally seen as, you know, lock them up, but rather to find solutions and strategies that work.

And nice to see you, Mr. Feldstein.

Mr. Fong, would you like to get started with introductions, and then we'll turn it over?

Sure.

Mike Fong, Deputy Mayor.

Great.

Julie Klein, Public Safety Advisor for the Mayor.

Great.

Harold Scoggins, Fire Chief.

Robert Feldstein, Consultant.

Deputy Chief Mark Gershman, Seattle PD.

Van Noble, City Budget Director.

Allison too, come on.

Allison McClain, Council Member Big Show's office.

Thank you.

Tom Mikesell, Council Central Staff.

Greg Doss, Council Central Staff.

Asha Venkatraman, Council Central Staff.

Well done, all right.

And Greg, this is yours at first?

Or Tom, who's going?

Don't have any more comments.

I think we're ready for the Deputy Mayor to kick us off.

All right, Deputy Mayor, nice to see you back here.

which council members just very briefly.

to recap our approach this afternoon in terms of our executive approach to this afternoon's public safety discussion.

We are going to start off with a presentation that highlights some of the mayor's core priorities when it came to her directive to us as we built the 2020 budget around a few areas specific related to public safety, many of which you've already, we, briefed you on and have discussed but wanted to recap some of those key components.

Subsequent to that and actually encapsulated in that will be a presentation focused on the high barrier individuals work group that you have highlighted already.

Following that we will then move to specific department presentations associated with Seattle Police Department and the Seattle Fire Department.

of which our overview presentation may touch on a few of those components already.

We may, from time to time, suggest that we'll come back to more detail on those elements later on in the afternoon, but know that there may be a little bit of overlap in our high-level table setting.

Good.

We expect that.

Thank you.

Okay.

So, with that, then I will go ahead and start us off and then turn over various components to my colleagues to my right.

First of all, this first slide wanted to reinforce a few things that the mayor directed us to do and work that actually we have been working closely with you all during the course of the year, and in some cases even longer than just 2019. The first one is a focus on enhancing recruitment and retention efforts within the Seattle Police Department.

And at the same time, the mayor made it clear to us Her budget should reflect the ability to continue to maintain proactive community policing.

I know, I think just last week in Councilmember Gonzalez's committee, our team presented the SPD hiring.

work group report, which has included participation from your council central staff, as well as Council Member Gonzalez's office, SPD, our mayor's offices, innovation and performance team, as well as the city budget office.

So while we've given that presentation to the committee previously, we're prepared to speak to some of our efforts within the budget as part of this afternoon's discussion.

The second core component that the mayor emphasized for us is given the challenges that our first responders are facing when it comes to people really in crisis on our streets, looking at how we could dial up interventions and strategies that more appropriately match intervention and strategy with the needs that we are seeing in the community.

And we'll speak to some of our investments in that area.

And then finally, the third component is the six or so month conversation we've been having with regional partners within the criminal justice system and other stakeholders.

with a particular emphasis on identifying some new tools to deploy focused on individuals that are cycling through our criminal justice system with the intent of both achieving better outcomes for individuals but at the same time achieving better outcomes for community.

So with that, next slide.

We will start with some of the focus that we've had around SPD hiring and retention efforts, and I'll turn it over to Deputy Chief Garth Green.

Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman, for having me here today.

Just to start off with, the number one goal for the Seattle Police Department, obviously, is to get full staffing.

As we face a staffing shortage, not only within our city, but at national levels as well, that we see How do we improve our hiring and our retention so that we can provide quality service to this great city?

2018 was not a good year for the Seattle Police Department.

We had quite a bit of attrition through that year and we have slowly started shifting back to more positive returns where we have reduced the number of difference between our hiring and our separations to one.

It does not account for the losses that we attributed to, but just as we look to show how our hiring is comparing to our losses at this point in time, we are closing that gap significantly.

We will need to continue those efforts to ensure that we can catch that gap and then replace officers that have left where we still hold the deficit.

So with the recruiting and retention, we're going to focus a little more on later in just the SPD specific budget, but we have, with conjunction with the mayor's office, the staff, council, looked at putting a task force together for things to focus on for our retention and recruiting efforts.

We want to ensure that as we go through this with our communities that we make themselves safe and healthy and look to divert some of this underspend into different programs.

One obviously being hiring and retention.

We do know that we are going to have to spend some capital in order to improve those processes.

We look forward to doing that and enhancing those.

And then also working with reducing crime and addressing a lot of the different obstacles that we face, the intersection of mental health, substance abuse, the repetitive revolving door of the criminal justice system.

And so working with Robert Feldstein in the mayor's office and others, coming up with plans to address some of those issues and utilizing some of those funds as well with that.

But the number one being our staffing shortage and moving from there.

As we go with this Sorry, sorry, sorry chief.

I can just have an opportunity to Ask a quick question here and are we all I know that there's a this presentation is much more focused on the The high barrier individual suite of investments that were That are proposed by the mayor and I know that there's a presentation after this.

It'll be a little bit more specific granular detail about SPD's budget in particular, so if I need to wait to ask these questions until the SPD presentation, happy to do that.

But I would like to dig into the underspend that is related to the SPD staffing shortage for 2019 and the projected expenditure for the 2020 budget, because I understand that it's pretty significant.

And so, again, we can have that conversation now or we can stay focused on, we can have that conversation now or we can we can wait to have that conversation in the context of the SPD budget.

I think that'll make more sense in the context of their specific budget.

Okay, why don't we do that?

I'll just sort of plant the seed now that I am gonna wanna have a conversation about the rather significant underspend in the staffing bucket and then also related to the retro pay for the spot contract.

So just so you're thinking about it now.

Well flagged.

Okay, please continue.

So looking to expand the community service officers, which is the next portion that we're going through right now.

And there is a tremendous amount of excitement around that.

When we did open up the application process, we had over 800 applicants.

So we were very pleased with the response of going that.

So we look forward to building that program out to 18. to allow a teamwork to work at each precinct and divide them up to the cities.

Good, quick question on that.

This is one of my favorite areas because it's that intersection of taking care of the public, also identifying people that have reoccurring behavioral health, mental health needs on our streets.

And at the same time, at least it looks to me like it's supporting officers as well.

taking some workload off of your shoulders.

I hear from the community over and over again that this is what they really like to see, are these community service officers, either at their neighborhood meetings or just being on the street, that they really emphasize the officer-friendly kind of approach.

So can you talk a little bit about that?

Council Member Gonzalez talked about an underspend.

I look at community service officers as being a great opportunity, both for the public to to know that we're out there, but in contrast of having just 18, what if we increase that number?

Would we accomplish the goals at a lesser cost?

Certainly.

Thank you.

Absolutely.

So as we envision the community service officers, like you said, is to take a body of work away from our 911 responders that are actually going out to those calls.

and to allow these specially trained officers to offer a variety of different resources that the city currently has and ones that we hope will expand at some point to address a lot of the mental health issues that plague us, the substance abuse issues, and other minor problems that a lot of the folks face but honestly just don't know who to turn to.

And in that sense of not knowing where to turn to, the logical answer is 911. And so we dispatch officers and we're utilizing them in ways that maybe not be as productive as you said, and we could utilize a different monetary issue.

with that, so enhancing that group absolutely would be beneficial to us.

We believe that this would be a good starting point for us to get the program up and running as far as facilities, vehicles, and everything else that comes with it.

It's not just the person, so as we go to build that program, to start here, look at the measured impact and the resources that we're utilizing, saving, and what the community feels and the benefit that we're gaining from that.

Good, I appreciate that.

And is there an opportunity then to measure this and measure the outcomes and then a year from now that my colleagues who are sitting up here can make decisions to expand or do we have to negotiate this?

Negotiate it with unions?

So we're currently in negotiation with the unions over this right now.

I think that will all have been watered under the bridge in the year.

I think we'll be well ahead of the game and we'll be able to expand it at that point in time.

I think at the time where it is developed and up and running, the unions will see the benefit.

I think when we look to negotiate, it's always just a question of, it's an unknown.

And once it's fully in place and embraced, I think it won't be an issue at all.

We will be measuring it.

We obviously have a data-driven department.

And so we'll be looking at all sorts of different metrics for, have we reducing call loads?

Are we reducing the number of 911 calls into the system?

Not only for us, but for the fire department.

Good.

Well, thank you for that.

Just a quick point of clarification.

Just a small point of clarification.

The expansion of the CSO program here is an addition of six additional CSOs in the mayor's proposed 2020 budget.

So the 1.21 million reference in the slide It's a reference to the incremental add that the proposed budget will include in order to go from 12 to 18 CSOs.

Thank you for that clarification.

And that, of course, maps back to the broader context conversation that Councilmember Gonzalez raised, which is the executive has proposed, I guess we would refer to some of the underspend that has been identified.

given some of the hiring challenges in order to invest in some strategies that the mayor believes will help augment and support community policing.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

I just want to first off say I'm really pleased One for the great progress on rolling out the CSO program.

I'm also really pleased to see it being described as part of a recruitment and retention strategy.

I think that's a really good way of looking at this program and it's something I've been pointing to for a while is that we ask so much of our police officers that these, what are in some cases, unreasonable expectations for officers to be acting as basically social workers has changed the nature of the job in such a way that I think people may not be as interested in the job.

And then others who, who become officers may not be as interested in staying on the job.

And so I think this is a really good way to support our officers as well as addressing our retention and recruitment goals.

That said, I think, you know, when we think about the things that we as a city can do to make sure that officers aren't having to shepherd people through a social service system who don't have shelter, who have mental health issues.

There are other interventions that the city invests in that we might want to think as being under this umbrella as well.

So programs like LEAD, that's another program that I think allows law enforcement officers to get back to the traditional role of law enforcement.

while allowing the LEAD program to address some of the underlying issues of the individuals who law enforcement is working with.

So I would like to think within the recruitment and retention umbrella some other types of interventions that support police officers.

And then my question though is, as it relates specifically to CSOs, I know the plan is for deployment in 2020. I'm just looking for a little bit more information about when for the, at least for the first batch.

So the first batch, ma'am, we're hoping to have online in the first quarter of 2020. As I said, we had over 800 applicants, so it created a little different of a challenge as we were sifting through that and working through that.

And a really good challenge at that, I'm very pleased to say.

And I think, if I may for a moment, I think you were very correct that we've had tremendous response from people when we've talked to them saying, I didn't want to necessarily be a police officer, but I wanted to help.

And I think this is a great avenue for us to be able to tap into those abilities with those folks.

Yeah, and then you have officers who say, I want to be an officer.

I don't want to be a social worker.

So it's filling it out.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Please continue.

And then maintaining our community-based emphasis patrols, looking to augment public safety needs driven by data and our community input.

Again, we looked at what we did this year and the calls that we've had from the community to replicate those same types of programs next year, maybe in the same areas or different areas, depending on what our data shows us.

looking to make that part of the budget.

Good.

Just really quickly.

Yeah, please go ahead.

So because the bottom here says total $3.72 million one-time ongoing.

I mean, I know this information, but the public may not because I get to talk to you folks a lot on these issues.

So maybe you can go through and identify which one of these are one-time funding versus ongoing.

Certainly.

Dr. Noble, everybody's looking at you.

Yeah, so the CSO, sorry I have a strange angle on all of this.

The CSO is a mix of some, there's some initial startup costs and then salaries for the additional six.

The strategic hiring plan is again some of the same and I don't have in front of me the exact split.

Although I think the general thought here is that we, excuse me, we'll continue those efforts until we really see a bend in the curve.

We'll get a better sense of which of them are most effective as well.

And then the, again on the augmentation, certainly plans to continue to 2020 and then likely reevaluate the relative need there.

Right, and on emphasis patrols, that's something that the police department does year round.

This was just sort of a particular focused expansion of resources to allow the police department to do additional emphasis patrols.

So we shouldn't expect as a city council and as members in the community that suddenly emphasis patrols are gonna go away.

It's effectively overtime pay to allow officers to do additional patrol hours, correct?

Yeah, but I would, again, I defer to the chief on this because I'm not the expert, but it is really targeted additional work rather than just over time to achieve essentially a base level of staffing.

No, I think we're saying the same thing.

It's just targeted in an area, but the way that we accomplish that is we're effectively purchasing additional time of our officers to engage in that targeted law enforcement work.

Correct.

Anything else?

Okay.

Okay.

Council Member O'Brien.

Quickly on the community service officers, I know that program is just getting launched, relaunched, which I'm really excited about too.

Do we know enough or have enough experience on the hiring process to know, are we facing the same challenges about sworn officers or is it an easier job to recruit and hire for?

Forgive us, because we've gone through this already.

Oh, you know what?

Don't answer that.

I'll go look at the tape.

We've got time.

Short version, 800 applicants for 18 positions.

But the new ones, we're just expanding to six.

Sorry.

Moving on to behavioral health.

I'm going to go a little bit out of order here and just hit bullet point number two and then turn it over to Chief Scoggins.

So looking to support our crisis response unit by adding four mental health professionals, one for each precinct.

And what this is is to, as we see the growing issues within it, and Chief Best refers to in 18 months we had 15,995 individual crisis calls.

And then last year, in that year, we served almost 7,200 specific individuals with crisis.

As this becomes a more growing concern for our city, we need to have better intervention strategies and highly trained folks to interact.

not only to train our officers, but then to be out in the field with us.

And this will allow us the ability to deploy them into the field with our officers, so that when we come upon those calls, utilizing them to deescalate and basically get appropriate services and help those folks out.

Well done.

And you know, this has been something we all up here have been champing, and that takes us right into Chief Scoggins, Health One.

and our low acuity work.

Actually, before we do that, Chair, can I just follow up on this quick little piece?

So the SPD crisis response unit, that's going to be part of the crisis intervention team.

Is that accurate?

Correct, ma'am.

OK.

So there's four additional mental health professionals being added, one for each precinct.

That's on top of how many people that currently do this work?

One.

Right.

So I wanted to really emphasize that this is a growing body of work that is reflective of the realities of how policing is changing in this modern day and era.

This is an area that received a lot of attention during the consent decree process as well in terms of an area of significant need of improvement in terms of respecting constitutional rights of those experiencing crisis.

And it is now, many, many, many years later, since 2012 to now 2019, it has been an area of significant improvement by the police department in terms of de-escalating situations and reducing the number of inappropriate uses of force and inappropriate, and just, in some cases, eliminating the need to use force in the interaction with people who are experiencing crisis.

And so I see this as a key investment to the city's overall need to double down on our commitment to de-escalation of the use of serious and deadly force.

And a lot of folks don't understand that we've been doing this work with one person.

primarily.

So this is a huge area of need.

We get a lot of kudos and credits nationally for the model and the work that we do in this space and think that it really merits attention.

continued growth in this space to, again, really pair up with the reality of how policing in this day and age has really evolved.

Thank you for those comments.

My only comment was recognizing that we've just increased this by, was it 400% if you do the quick numbers?

It sounds huge.

Would you recommend in the future that we have a mental health worker on all three shifts?

Absolutely.

I firmly believe that with the number of calls we have and the largest cities we have, with the population that we have, that we should be able to field mental health professionals at all times throughout our city for our citizens.

Good, thank you.

Okay, try to proceed one more time.

Okay, so good afternoon council members the first item is the expansion of our health one program We've talked about that a lot lately.

We're on the doorstep of launching that first unit as you all know you funded Our initial unit to stand up a one-year pilot program right now.

We're in the process of training our firefighters and and selection of the case manager who will be riding with them.

What this $400,000 will do is it will expand that program to possibly stand up a second unit.

This is going to respond to those low acuity, non-emergent type calls.

that don't really need to be in the emergency room, as we spoke about when we talked about the low acuity calls.

And this could be from someone having an addiction issue, someone who's homeless, someone who's in crisis, all those different things.

And they're out creating relationships to be able to take them to different places, which is very important for us.

whether it's an urgent care, whether it's a clinic, whether it's a shelter, or a place for them to just be safe.

So that's what this will do, it will expand that service.

The third bullet on the page is adding on-site medical support to our high call volume shelters.

To identify the shelters would be 517 3F, which is the main shelter, 509, which is the Morrison, the Wintonia, which is in the 1400 block of minor, UGM, 318 2nd Avenue East, and then 1811 East Lake.

It turns out that these locations are locations that we respond to in a very high volume, a high number of calls.

Each of those locations we're at at least once a day.

The main shelter we're at as many as three times a day.

So for them to have on-site medical care is going to be very important.

It's important to note that the main shelter and the Morrison They actually have medical care.

And what we know is when their medical care is on site, our call responses are lower.

So this will actually expand that service later into the evening to help to give people what they need for the help that they need.

318 2nd Avenue East, for example, they do not have health care on site.

So this will be a new avenue for them.

And so we know this is important in getting people treated on site.

And we know that's going to reduce our call volume.

And the last bullet on the page is create a dedicated nurse triage phone line.

We did a pilot on this a little over a year ago.

And what we did is we found funding and we gave the main shelter a nurse triage line.

And what we saw was when the individuals in the shelter they use that nurse triage line, 8 in 10 of those phone calls that were made did not result in a 911 call.

And that would have resulted in a 911 call.

So that's pretty huge.

If you give someone the right resource and they use that resource, it can actually help fit their needs a little bit better.

I would just, again, I want to just express my huge thanks here.

Chief Scoggins, you have been wonderful to work with.

You have actually gotten ahead of the game, and it's been wonderful working with you, John Ehrenfeld, in your shop, Kenny Stewart, and union leaders as well, because people came together, building on some models that we know are working, but then adding the nurse triage, adding nurses on site, And thank you, Deputy Mayor Fong, and also to our mayor for recognizing the importance of this.

And I do also want to extend thanks to Leslie Brinson, who got on board on this, too, working with our crisis connections.

Suddenly, we've got that knitted network that we've been asking for.

And I know it's taken time, but I really respect the work you've done.

Many thanks.

I think the next one looks like it might be you, Mr. Feldstein.

Yes.

Good afternoon, counsel.

So I'm going to talk briefly on the work of the High Barrier Individual Working Group.

Just a brief context of the discussion earlier.

But this is a result of many agencies working for a lot of time, looking at a lot of data.

This is a population that is challenging and the systems are challenging.

There's two prosecuting agencies, there's two court systems, there's city and county health and public health providers, plus the network of private providers.

This is a group that is sort of at the tail end of most measures, 3% of individuals causing 15% of the incidents, or 3% of likewise in police reports, likewise in court, similar measures.

By reporting standards, over two-thirds showing behavioral health issues, 66% or more.

three-quarters showing homelessness, and those are probably both undercounts because they're just sort of what registers, and two-thirds engaged in some level of service, but that is overstates probably how much services they're getting because it means they're a name in someone's system, but it doesn't necessarily mean they're all engaged in services that are meeting their needs.

So this is a tiny group that does have this disproportionate impact and disproportionately challenging.

So the group did lots of work, did a lot of data and evaluated a number of other ideas that some of these other things are manifest already in the budget today and lots of work that is going on in the city already.

And then they thought about what are extra tools that will help address this situation because what But right now we seem to need some extra tools.

So they have four things that came up with.

The one that's sort of gotten some of the most attention is the enhanced shelter pilot in the west wing of the former King County Correctional Facility.

They have a very successful shelter on the first floor run by DSC where they have recruited a tough population, people who have struggled in other shelter situations.

There they've brought them in and they've had great results, higher than average results getting into permanent housing, lower than average calls to Skagans and 9-1-1 and others.

And so they've showed that's successful.

We're going to amp that up with a recruited approach, but focus just on those engaged in the criminal justice system.

So this is not just going to fill up with whoever comes in.

This is who are the people who are going to have an impact for those individuals.

and for the community if they're getting the services they need.

And we're going to be bringing on-site services.

So it is not a treatment center, but it is a center that has treatment in it.

And that's where we run into the limits of what I know as a clinician, to call it.

But that's going to take capital and operating investments by both the city and the county.

The second is case conferencing pilot.

One of the things we found out, just taking a step back, that we need as a group across all these different agencies and all the complexities I talked about is sort of identifying shared priorities, huge caseloads, the city attorney, county prosecutor, and the courts.

So cases often get, unfortunately, just sort of caught in the system as another case to deal with.

And if there's a sense of which are the ones they need to put more energy and attention to and where we can get the solutions, likewise in service providers, we can try and put some extra energy and it might be a good return on investment.

So identifying shared priorities, coming up with a shared plan so we're not corrections, they're under corrections doing one thing and then a human service provider doing another thing.

And then giving them the tools to address those plans.

So those are the three goals.

So case conferencing is really the holder of that.

Like, who are the shared individuals?

What can we do?

What are all the tools we have?

The familiar faces in forum programs, like LEAD and Vital Impact and Linked, the new tools that we're developing here, other services, that's going to happen there.

And also taking a step back, also evaluating, is this working?

We can't guarantee that.

I'm going to be very clear here.

These are all based on models that seem promising and have some evidence.

But until we put the wheels on the, and start making it happen, we're going to, and they're going to be checking to see are we getting the results we want for the individuals and for public safety.

So case conferencing is going to hold that.

What was your last sentence?

Who's holding that?

The case conferencing.

The people who are going to be meeting on a regular basis looking in to see.

Is there anybody, any one single entity or department who's going to be in charge of this work?

We are still trying to figure that out.

We understand that someone needs to be owner of that who's staffing it.

So when they come to the meeting, they say, here's where we're doing.

And we've actually had some conversations, but I can't tell you.

And that's a city decision about where that budget will lie.

Well, I certainly hope that we do that on the front end because we know and Mr. Feldstein, you, I thought, did a particularly great role in pulling, in the convening, and then you kept things moving.

And I think that's, some of my worry is these are great ideas, and I, having worked with our Muni Court judges as well, know that what has been asked for is a lot more tools for them, but places where they can direct the individuals to go.

So we're not just circling out or, you know, putting them back up in Harborview or putting them in jail or taking them to our crisis solution center and then they're right back outside again.

So, you know, I love the fact that we're opening up the West Wing.

That's great.

I'm excited that we're opening up Harborview, which I understand King County the Harborview, Harborview Hall, that that's gonna be 24-7 shelter as well soon.

We know that the numbers just keep going up, that we actually need places we can direct them.

And that means somebody's gotta be in charge.

Yep.

Just a small point of clarification, Council Member Bagshaw, but our, while the high barrier individual work group had been meeting every other week for the better part of the last five, six months, our intention is to, that convening has been highly productive, and our intention is to continue that work group's convening going forward.

Perhaps not at quite the same level of intensity, but the intention here is that given, not only is there work remaining to operationalize and implement these pilots, but there are still other areas of discussion that the work group has identified that it intends to continue to build upon some of the dialogue and relationships that have been built in that room over the last couple months.

I respect that.

And one thing as I look at this, you and all of us up here who've been deeply engaged in this know how much work has gone into it and the cross-departmental work.

I think that we have not done a great job about framing what we're doing and what the benefits will be to the public.

And you know how, and I'm going to just point to Scott Lindsey's report, that thing came out and then we had the Seattle is dying, you know, TV, whatever we wanted to call it.

I was going to use that word.

I was looking for something else.

But I don't think we have done the same work to say, all right, we've heard it, we've seen it, we have this group together, and here's what the public's going to see.

And so to the extent we can frame that so that people know what we're doing, I think it would be very useful.

point taken.

And we will continue.

My job was to help come to conclusions, but yes, the messaging does matter and actually it becomes part of whether these things happen or not and whether they're accepted.

Just to confirm.

I think Council Member Herbold's got something she wants to add.

I'm sorry.

Thanks.

I just want to add that I think it's a reasonable policy question for us as a council to ask.

When we're talking about this number of dollars for new strategy and pilot programs focused on high barrier individuals, whether or not it makes sense to invest in those unproven ideas rather than invest in proven interventions that are evidence-based and we know what their outcomes are for the same population.

So programs like Vital and LEAD.

These are programs focused on this same population of people.

They have demonstrated their outcomes.

They're very successful and they're under-resourced.

So I just want to let it be known that that's a policy question that I think we need to struggle with.

I think we're going to come back.

We can discuss that.

I think the one point I will say is that There is a sense, at least from some individuals, that there would need additional tools.

There's low overlap with some of our barrier and those programs right now.

And so there are some individuals, not just because of capacity, but because of eligibility and other issues are not being served.

So public safety concerns others.

And so there's I think all the tools are needed.

I don't mean to undermine any other tool.

It was that it was seen as an addition not in opposition.

But I understand your point.

We're not talking in lieu of we're still going to be using these.

these tried-and-true programs, but we also know not every program addresses every need that we have out there.

So I will say that I support what Councilmember Herbold was saying about we want to invest in those, but I also want to try some new stuff.

I want to try some things that have been shown to work or are promising.

Shown to work in other jurisdictions, but are promising, because I think we need to really set our sights in a higher, bigger way to address these problems that we all are seeing.

Right.

So, just to complete the list, and I think it sounds like there'll be more rich conversation, the third proposed pilot is a rapid reentry connector.

We know that most people who get any reentry services have to be there for 72 hours, but a large population is there for 12, 24, 48 hours, including a lot of our high barrier individuals.

And so being able to, at a minimum, 60-something percent of them, as I mentioned before, are engaged in a social service right now.

What's the percentage, sir?

64, I believe, is the percentage.

And like I said, I cannot tell you the full length of engagement or everything else.

So some of them maybe did an entry or an intake, and some of them are engaged regularly.

But even having someone who can say, hey, this person came through who is in your service provider.

I want to make sure there's a warm connection as they're coming out of jail.

That is a benefit add.

We know this person can link people to the West Wing as we're trying to recruit people.

You are having a hard time.

You're coming through here a lot.

There's a facility next door.

So this person will help link people to services that are eligible.

I don't want to overstate that they're going to become the, they're not doing ongoing case management, but they're a point, the jail right now is a node where these people are passing through and being able to identify individuals and what services might be available for them and link them when appropriate seemed a useful tool to a number of people in the room.

And then the fourth is the high barrier probation pilot.

We know that when these people do, when individuals do come to court, looking at the 168 individuals who had seven or more court cases, once again, less than 3% of the people coming through court, If they do get convicted, two-thirds of the time it's jail, and a third of the time it's probation.

And if they do get probation, we know right now they're failing.

17% success rate when the general probation success rate is over 70%.

So judges are often choice of jail or nothing for these people because they don't feel like they can trust.

So we wanted to find an alternative to jail to try and link people to services.

And so we're trying to do a service-enhanced probation.

where we are working with the individuals, not using the traditional model of just court-based appointments, but also meeting them at treatment providers, at community centers, at public health clinics, trying to, the case managers, the probation counselors will be trained in harm reduction by Harborview to understand some of the techniques, motivational techniques.

And looking how probation can be, there are models out there, Minneapolis and others, where probation with a select small caseload has been able to link to reducing recidivism and increased uptake of services.

We think that's a better outcome than jail for these individuals.

So we're interested in trying to see how that works too.

And actually it has two parts.

There's that piece and a treatment alternative, which is essentially People who otherwise would go to jail are in jail till a treatment option is found, and then they're put into treatment.

If they accept no one's going to go to treatment, they can be mandated, this is an alternative to jail.

If they choose this as the alternative to jail, they can go into treatment.

I think here, often, the mobility is a 28-day treatment.

But then they'll, when released from that, be often in ongoing outpatient treatment, supervised by the probation officer in the small caseload.

So they're sort of trying to link them.

It's challenging, but it's we think it's a better alternative than just going to jail, which is the current option councilmember mosquito If you if you like, I might mind a different line of questioning.

Okay Same line.

Uh, yeah, it's on this.

Oh, please go.

Okay.

Uh, thank you.

So I I mean I um This last recommendation is the one I have the most concern about.

And I'm hoping that through this budget process, I can get additional information to help me feel more comfortable.

just to understand what we're actually proposing here.

So on the high barrier probation pilot, is this as a condition of release?

Pre-conviction, post-conviction, pre-filing, pre-trial, what is it?

Only post-sentencing.

This is probation.

They can't, so this is...

It's post-conviction, post-sentencing.

And the judge is choosing as an option, it's basically jail or this at this point.

So this is an alternative to jail for these individuals.

Interesting.

So, you know, I think, so it is effectively like traditional probation with the addition of services.

Yeah.

And meeting them in the community, trying to use some of the elements of harm reduction, focused on substance abuse reduction, not necessarily abstinence.

We're working this out, but that's the goal.

And the consequence of failing to comply with the terms of supervision result in jail.

Ultimately, yes, but I think the goal, it's a work in progress and I can't speak for the final program design, and it's ultimately going to be implemented by the courts, some of whom are here, will be understanding, at least in the initial stages, often probation, and I can't speak to Seattle probation specific, but there's a challenge in probation often, which is that they have few tools, which is they have warning you you shouldn't do that, and then they have revoking probation for jail.

And so there's a sort of, you shouldn't do that, you shouldn't do that, and then jail, and that's the end of options.

And if you can develop a graduated set of responses, both rewarding people saying, these are good behaviors, these are good incentives, and graduated responses of sanctions saying, this is a problematic and here's a small response as we try and get better behavior and get our outcomes.

They have had good results.

and they've had fewer people go to jail and more uptake in services and treatment success.

Those seem good outcomes to pursue.

So I think it would be important for us to get a better understanding of some of those models, other models that you are citing to, and get into the particulars around the design of those models.

As I sort of look at criminal justice reform work across the country, many jurisdictions are moving away from supervision and from probation, period.

And it seems contradictory for us here at the city of Seattle, who's lauded as being the most progressive city in the country, to actually be doubling down on probation and supervision as a solution to addressing the needs of this population.

I the the reading I've been doing in the literature I've been looking at contradicts this theory and and I am committed to figuring out how to reconcile that contradiction and perhaps it's not reconcilable and if it isn't then I think you know I think that's gonna be part of the conversation that we're gonna have here in this in this budget process but it just seems contradictory to me for us to be moving you know running towards probation when It seems that most cities are coming to grips with the fact that probation isn't the most successful way to address the needs of these populations, and in fact, ends up being rather punitive just given the lack of success rate with actual compliance with the supervision.

I'm happy to engage in that.

I mean, I think you can look at some of the work.

I know Kennedy School came out recently with some directives on probation and challenging saying that probation often is harmful.

On the other hand, there are practices that have shown successful that are sort of problem solving and client focused and that, you know, correction officers are, sorry, probation officers are looking at.

And so, I think trying to see what can be learned from the best thinking out there makes sense, and in some places that makes less probation, in some places it means different probation.

I don't think it's one answer.

I think there's more than one answer.

Thank you.

Any other questions?

Council Member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I share Council Member Gonzalez's concern, and as Chair of Public Safety, look forward to hearing more about how to reconcile this with the data that I know you've been reading.

And the question that I have is, how does this get reconciled with the lived experience of people who've been part of the criminal justice system?

Two questions.

One is, has there been any racial equity analysis on either, any of these four pilots that are being proposed here?

And how have folks who have actually been involved in the criminal justice system provided feedback on these pilots?

Or have they been involved?

I know we're familiar with the high barrier work group, but my understanding is there's not actually individuals themselves who've been involved in the criminal legal system as part of that.

So how do we reconcile both the data that we're reading and the lived experience of folks that also should inform whether or not we move forward on these pilots?

So I think the answer is we looked at including some people with lived experience in the group, and I heard a lot of cautionary tales from advocates working directly with them about some of the experiences with some other groups who had used them.

And it doesn't mean that we shouldn't find another way to include them in the process.

But so that didn't, we sort of tried that and thought, and having heard from some people who I trust more than myself on this said.

Current models don't work, so you need to do something separate.

None of the programs are fully designed, so it doesn't preclude working directly with client populations in the final program design.

Likewise, on the racial equity analysis for any final program design, these were, as a pilot, recommended by a large group.

And as Deputy Mayor Fong and Council Member Baggio mentioned, relatively close timeline, but I think there continues to be work on saying, can we look at these, see what the results are, see what the results in other places are of similar models, see what the racial analysis is, and see if these do come into practice.

Are we doing the work that we want to do to, you know, undo structural racism and undo disproportionate racial impacts?

Yes, thank you.

So my concern here is You know, these were sort of couched as ways to go upstream but in my perspective many of these are not upstream when people are already entering into the Criminal legal system to begin with in order to get diverted and into either a shorter or different type of probation period whether they're then getting funneled into the new wing for hopefully enhanced shelter, which I I think is important for us to be building more shelter, but I wouldn't argue that that's not upstream and helping people get out of those situations.

The other question- I just want to say I agree.

I never characterized these as upstream.

If you look at the intercept model, these are all seen as pretty far downstream.

Okay, I thought I heard you say that earlier.

Okay.

You're right.

Great, we agree.

The question I have about the probation pilot, why go down this route of a probation pilot instead of using the community-based case managers that we see in REACH and DESC?

Why not enhance more of those community-based case managers instead?

I want to limit how far I can go, not being from the court who's really pushing this, but I would say that I think there are, what we heard in some of the working groups and from some of the judges is that they have seen individuals where they feel uncomfortable with a no-release option where it's not being released in someone they feel a little more control for their own public safety, what they understand of their job for public safety in terms of who they want to release the night.

That's sort of in negotiating with them.

They say we need some options that feel a little more secure.

We think there should be lots of prevention.

We think there should be lots of upstream work.

But for the individuals who get to this point with this kind of record, this is what we feel like we need.

And beyond that, I don't, I can't speak to the individual public safety choices on a particular case or anything.

And then lastly, it might just be me trying to compare various documents, but are the enhanced probation pilot FTEs, for example, and additional capacity that's needed at the Seattle Municipal Court reflected in the Seattle Municipal Court's budget?

Because I'm not...

I don't know.

Ben?

I'll repeat that question.

The enhanced probation pilot calls for additional capacity within the Seattle Municipal Court.

However, at least our initial read in our office is that we don't see those FTEs and additional resources reflected in SMC's budget.

You want me to take a stab at this?

Yeah, go ahead.

All right, so council members, and this may actually be an opportunity for us to clarify some of the budget mechanics behind the entire suite of investments as well.

On the high barrier probation pilot, my understanding is is that I think $120,000 is general fund appropriation that is held in finance general.

The $170,000 is a revenue stream that is within the Seattle Municipal Court, but we have not appropriated those dollars either from the Muni Court budget.

Is that correct, Ben?

I think it may be the reverse.

Maybe it's the reverse.

It's a 120 from SMC.

But neither of those pots of money have been directly appropriated to the program yet, which is really a statement about the entire bucket of resource, which we have currently appropriated to Finance General.

Correct, Dr. Noble?

Yeah.

So the implementation of this array of strategies is awaiting further development and refinement of the proposals in the way that has been described here, and then subsequent appropriation.

With the one exception that the enhanced shelter pilot, we could move forward with those resources that are in finance general, and we would be entering an interlocal agreement with King County to initiate that work.

And we can do that with the appropriation as it is now into finance general.

But otherwise, the resources are going to need to be, we'll have to come back with a secondary ordinance to appropriate them out to the relevant departments or to individual players.

And just to add to that, there's some intentionality behind that because we are also been explicit throughout this conversation that the development that some of the operational components and implementation components of each of these pilots is still in development.

We know we owe you and the mayor more details with regard to how some of these components will actually be implemented on the ground, in particular, The enhanced shelter pilot at the King County Correctional Facility requires a substantial capital investment of which is being matched by King County.

$2 million of city resource with $2 million of county resource.

Of which a capital investment that likely wouldn't be built out in the West Wing until at the earliest, probably mid-year of 2020. In which case, operational dollars will not be necessary until later.

We have some runway to bring back to you some more details on how we intend to execute some of these.

And the operational funding for that particular strategy represents a half year of operations.

Beyond just the cost for this, can you advise us on how have you worked with some of the community advocates, the Budget for Justice is an example.

Have they weighed in on these recommendations?

We are, my understanding is we are reaching out to them and engaging them as part of the program design.

I think that's something important.

Well, I think, yeah.

I mean, I think it's fair to say that they have not been at the table and not part of the process that led to this suite of recommendations.

That's correct.

OK.

So I don't want to overrepresent.

I don't want their involvement overrepresented or misrepresented in this context.

There are, however, in the work group that didn't include the electeds, there were representatives in that room that were some community-based and some from the public defender world, correct?

Right, that is correct.

And I should say that they're not on record supporting this.

I just want to be clear as well that they participated in the group until now, but just because this is not a consensus product of all the agencies and departments involved in the So I don't want to overstate that case either.

In fact, I think some of the folks who participated in the work group process who represent the public defense side and the community-based side have gone on record opposing some of these strategies.

I wouldn't say all of them either, but some of them.

And they've been really focusing on the high barrier probation piece as an area of concern.

And, you know, I think they're very supportive of the enhanced shelter concept.

They want more details around the case conferencing pilot to understand how it implicates programs like VITAL and LEAD and making sure that there's a meaningful connection, including resources for capacity if this is an expectation from the city.

And I think they, you know, similarly have questions around the rapid reentry pilot program.

Although there was an intent and a desire to create a structure to create that engagement in the work group process, it ultimately wasn't structured in a way that consensus was required.

So there is a lot of difference of opinion and diversity of opinion on this proposal from the mayor's office.

I have a follow-up question.

Perhaps it's more of a statement.

Madam Chair, feel free to let me know if you want me to take this offline or if others have clarification for me, but I'm having a hard time reconciling the answer to the question about these items not being in the Seattle Municipal Court's budget because they are proposed pilots at this point.

And again, I want to underscore what Council Member Gonzalez just said.

I'm not saying that I oppose certain elements of this.

Certain elements of this, I know community has been calling for additional resources in various ways, but there are areas where I do have concern.

That set aside, again, on process.

When we heard earlier in response to Councilmember Pacheco's question about where the language was included for scooter pilot or for the corrals, for example, and we have a response that says, well, you haven't passed the legislation yet, and that's why it's not included in the budget.

And now we have a question about where are these items in Seattle Municipal Court's budget.

And the answer was, we're still doing a lot of analysis.

Tell me how those are different.

I'm happy to tell you that's a question of resources versus availability, right?

So we don't have a proposal for you that would bring in revenue for the scooter pilots.

So we don't have an expenditure plan that's associated with it because we don't have, We can't appropriate revenues that we can't reasonably forecast.

What we're saying, we have set aside these revenues in the budget, so as an expenditure.

They are held in a financial reserve that we call finance general.

So these dollars, what is proposed in the budget is to appropriate them to this, I sort of think of it as a as a financial reserve, best way to think about it.

So they are appropriated there.

So they would not be spent for any other purpose but they cannot be spent by the court currently either because they don't have the legal authority to spend the dollars because they're being held in this reserve.

We would come back to you to release them once and our assumption was that you wouldn't want to move forward with individual items until you had a sense of the full suite.

So although the court might well be ready to move forward at this point and we know And some of this also is a timing issue.

When we developed the budget and moved it to printing, we were still in the development stage.

But again, the thought was that you'd want to see the full suite more fully developed.

And once that's true, we would bring forward the legislation to move them out of the financial reserve, into the department, and to grant them the appropriation authority, the legal authority to spend them.

But the fundamental difference is we are setting aside these resources from the revenues that we have projected.

And they would be available upon action on this secondary ordinance to spend in the ways that are suggested here.

So these are general fund dollars?

With the only exception of the, just, you asked a technical question, I'll give you a technical answer.

The $2 million for the Capital improvements are these unrestricted capital dollars that come from the street vacation.

So, acting.

That's the shelter pilot.

Yeah.

So, acting like general fund, but technically not general fund.

And the 120 from the Seattle Municipal Court is from the trial court improvement account, which is again, it's a restricted account.

I think we may technically hold it within the general fund, but it has restricted uses.

And the court is proposing that they be used for this purpose from that restricted set of court resources.

Yeah, I mean, I think that question fundamentally that, as I'm hearing it from Councilmember Mosqueda, is where is this money coming from and has it been booked yet?

And so I think, I don't think we have to overcomplicate the response to that.

I mean, I think the answer is it's a mixture of dollars from the general fund.

Some are restricted funds through the court.

and should we approve these investments, then they will be appropriated, i.e. booked to put on the books of a particular department.

Is that an accurate sort of, I know I'm like shortcutting it because there's a lot of color of money issues that I feel like you guys are dancing around, but.

No, no, no, there aren't complicated colors of money issues.

That is exactly what's going on.

I was trying to make the distinction that these, the reason, the distinction from the previous example from the morning is that these are resources that are in the revenue forecast that we're proposing to appropriate.

All right.

Please, let's move on.

All right.

Good afternoon.

There are a few other public safety investments in the mayor's budget for 2020 that we wanted to highlight.

This is not an all-inclusive list of the other public safety items that are included in the mayor's budget, but we thought these are ones that merited specific highlighting.

For example, there is the $1 million that OCR is working to distribute regarding restorative justice-related programs.

There's the HSD-led public safety RFP.

That's a 4.4 million dollar violence prevention program that's focused on 18 to 24 year olds that are sort of separate and distinct from the mayor's budget.

But what we have included here are, or the 2020 budget I should say, what we have here are listed a few other things that we felt worthy of highlighting.

The first being the additional expenditures for the Choose 180 program.

It should be noted that there is some additional Choose 180 funding coming out of the HSD Public Safety RFP as well.

But the mayor specifically called out $75,000, $75,000 addition for Choose 180. We're hoping that that's going to allow for double the amount of classes for young adults that's going to allow for monthly offerings.

The prediction being that it will be able to touch up about 100 more people a year through that program.

And that's a priority for the mayor.

We also have included, thanks to Councilmember Juarez for highlighting the issue and the gap currently, a dedicated outreach position that we'd like to fund for the Seattle Police Department.

hoping to build off of her resolution regarding murdered and missing indigenous women.

And the Seattle Police Department has a couple of other positions similar to this for other communities.

So we thought that it made sense and was a very important community for SPD to start repairing relationships and doing some outreach to.

We also have a $100,000 line item to accelerate the implicit bias training for the Seattle Police Department.

Currently, the Seattle Police Department is trying to get all of their officers through the Criminal Justice Training Center for this implicit bias training, which is something that with the current number of slots that they are allotted, would take years to accomplish for $100,000.

We can bring it in-house and get everyone at Seattle Police Department through it in hopefully under a year.

And finally, we felt it worth highlighting the budget realignment that is occurring in the 2020 budget, which essentially creates the Compliance and Professional Standards Bureau, which sort of formalizes and institutionalizes the Seattle Police Department units, most of which are related to the consent decree.

And the idea being we, or they're related to maintaining the consent decree ideals.

So formalizing that and institutionalizing that sort of.

maintains the mayor's office commitment to continuous improvement and professional standards at the Seattle Police Department.

Could I ask you a question about this accelerated implicit bias training?

Yes.

Is there somebody in-house who is conducting the training?

Are you bringing an expert consultant from the outside?

How is that going to work?

Yes, the idea being the Seattle Police Department would contract directly with the contractor who is doing it through the Criminal Justice Training Center and bring him in-house to do it at the Seattle Police Department as well.

And that saves us money from going down to Sue Rahr's shop?

Is that what's happening?

Yeah, it saves us time and money.

It gets all of the officers through this training years faster than it would otherwise.

So SPD can be fully trained and up to speed on that within a year versus having to slowly cycle everyone through.

Good.

Sure, please.

Thanks for sharing that.

I'm very pleased to see this kind of investment.

I think it's really important training.

Is there a way to sort of, as we look at the trainers providing the services, to have a sample first of some of the options to make sure that it's effective?

And the reason I say that is it's been my experience, not with SPD, but with many departments that go through implicit bias training, even our own department to some extent, the legislative department, that some people go through it and they'll just, there was no buy-in.

They just thought that it was not as effective.

And what I'd hate to see is this kind of investment, and it may even go over, for us not to know that it was well-received and effective.

And so maybe there's a way to sample it and get some honest feedback, because when I asked for honest feedback from a few departments over the last many years, When I asked for the honest feedback or even the anonymous feedback, some people would say, you know, I just didn't get anything out of it.

I didn't think that it was effective for my needs.

So I want to make sure that this is effective training.

Absolutely.

And my understanding is this is already underway at the Criminal Justice Training Center.

So that should be something that we could pretty easily accomplish.

And are we put in a position where we could actually get that, even if it's anonymous, that feedback from the recipients to people saying, you know, I actually learned something about myself and my behavior in this.

Are we getting that feedback?

There's another thing I got, another box I have to check.

I'm certain that's something we can track down.

Okay.

I think that's...

Or create if we need to.

I think it's absolutely critical for the success of this kind of training.

Let's see if I may just jump in.

One of the requirements for our officers when they attend training is to complete an evaluation at the end of that training.

And that then satisfies the fact that they have completed it.

So it actually is an integral part of it for us to continually to evaluate the training that they're receiving and what they're actually getting out of it.

So that's good.

But, you know, I read the Guardian, and I read blogs, and I read comments from everyone, and I read just to get feedback.

And so I just want to make sure we loop back to make sure.

I think I made the point that everyone understands.

I just want to make sure that when we complete this training, at least it's effective.

Absolutely.

Great.

We also have somebody new at the table.

Judge Eisenberg, would you like to introduce yourself?

I understand that you've got a question or two or a response that you would like to answer.

Yes, I thought I could clarify a few things for the council members.

So, I'm Adam Eisenberg.

I'm one of the Seattle Municipal Court judges and just council, I was going to say Justice Gonzalez, Council Member Gonzalez.

And Council Member Mosqueda talked a lot about why would you invest in probation.

First of all, you know, in Seattle Municipal Court, 72% of the folks that we have on probation are not part of the high barrier group.

Those are DUI folks, domestic violence folks.

people who commit violent crimes that are not divertible to a LEAD or a REACH program.

We work with LEAD, we work with REACH on cases every day.

We actually have a LEAD calendar where cases are referred.

So if an officer takes someone to LEAD right out of the gate, they don't come to Seattle Municipal Court.

you know, that's great.

We support that totally.

Sometimes they end up in Seattle Municipal Court because they got arrested, they didn't go to LEAD, and we have a LEAD calendar to work with LEAD or REACH.

But there are folks that we see, and it's a very small population, I believe 3% is the number, of folks who are repeat offenders.

They are not successful in LEAD or REACH.

And so as a judge, especially if there's a community safety issue involved, maybe they commit, you know, you know, relatively random assaults or property destruction, things like that, that don't rise to the level of, you know, a domestic violence case or whatever.

we're sort of stuck because the enhanced probation idea is like to give them as much wraparound as possible.

The idea of having probation counselors in Seattle and so forth go out to the community and meet people there is a wonderful new idea to explore.

Having them be educated and trained specifically in medically assisted treatment is also something that we're very, you know, excited to explore.

But again, this is, we're talking about a small population of folks that are the high barrier folks.

They've already not been successful in LEAD, not been successful in REACH.

And those are programs that require voluntary commitment.

So in the circumstances where you have someone who is a repeat offender who is in court, this is an alternative to jail.

If we don't have this sort of alternative, and obviously it's an experiment to see how well it works.

That leaves court, the judge is in a very difficult position.

Again, we're talking about a relatively small group of the larger pool that we see.

And it's a hugely- Best guess on numbers?

What are the numbers?

We looked in the court, we looked at just as a try to understand what happens.

People who had seven more cases in the last two years, and that was 168 individuals.

And in a given case year, about 6,000 individuals come to the court.

So 12,000 a year, 168 out of 12,000 with some overlap there.

So it's a tiny percentage.

We also have.

Council Member Herbold, did you have a question?

I'm going to actually try and find the statistic I have.

So I might come back to it if we're still on this topic.

Yeah, thanks.

If I can sort of add something here.

I mean, I think part of the struggle here is that we're talking about designing a supervision program for 168 people.

Right?

That's what I just heard, effectively.

168 people, but it's also the hardest to serve population, the sometimes most resistive to services, and the ones who most frequently come in contact with our criminal justice system, and yet we're resorting to a supervision system.

I just feel like we're overselling this as though it's a meaningful tool to modify their behavior.

And I'm not sure that that, I'm not sure that I'm convinced that that theory is going to hold true or does hold true based on the realities of the population and the complexities of the population and sort of the realities of how probation works.

I mean, probation is still, it's not as blunt of a tool as jail or involuntary treatment, but it's still a pretty blunt instrument in terms of addressing the needs of people who have a lot of complex issues that they're dealing with.

You know, sometimes it's mental health illness combined with chemical substance use issues with ongoing criminal justice issues with lack of housing, with no supports.

I mean, it's just very, very complicated.

Again, I'm not willing to go one way or the other yet, but I have a lot of concerns about spending money on a pilot project to support a tool that that I'm not convinced it's going to have the actual outcomes that we are pursuing.

So I'm going to keep looking at the literature that I have, including some stuff that I've seen from the feds around this type of issue.

But I really think we need to be very critical and think very clearly about how this tool is meaningfully going to produce positive results for for this population in particular.

So could I just respond to that?

Please do, Judge.

Again, we're talking about folks who don't respond to LEAD, don't respond to REACH, don't respond to a lot, and there are folks out there that, you know, don't, and we know they don't respond successfully because they end up back in the court system.

Judge, when you say LEAD, do you mean vital?

Or when you say REACH, do you mean vital or REACH?

both, or they've presented to us at various different levels, but these are post-conviction cases that we're talking about.

And so, in my mind, that means that they were referred to LEAD, or they were referred to VITAL, they were referred to REACH, and there's the PACT program.

There's a lot of different programs out there, and I have to be honest, they sometimes blend together in terms of who does exactly what.

But at the end of the day, We're dealing with folks that don't respond because they keep getting arrested on new charges.

And so we're trying to come up with a mechanism.

Again, if they're convicted of a charge, post-conviction, is there an additional tool that the judges can use?

Because if we don't have this tool where we can go out and have probation counselors meet them in the community, we run, I mean, jail tends to be the only alternative that we have.

Holding anybody in jail, of course, is not a goal.

I do want to caution you that when you look at studies, federal studies, you're talking about prison populations.

If you're looking at certain states, they have privatized prison systems.

We don't have that here.

We are talking about a jail population in a city.

There's a lot of different variables out there.

Our numbers actually each year of the people we actually hold in jail in Seattle Municipal Court go down.

And that's because we have a probation department that allows us other options.

like electronic monitoring or day reporting or just getting them into treatment.

Sometimes we're just referring them to the core resource center and that's all we're doing.

There's a lot of things that, I mean, there's such a spectrum of diversity in the cases that we see.

We see, we have over 10,000 cases filed every year.

So you are talking about a very small select group of folks that are truly the high barrier individuals.

So this tool is one that hopefully will be more effective.

If it proves not to be effective, then obviously we have to investigate other things.

But the LEAD program, vital program, those are all really valuable programs.

On DV cases, we're doing the DVIP program.

In DUI cases, they're state mandated to do treatment.

So there's a huge spectrum of the folks that we see, and all of that is reflected by the different services we provide, so, and the different options judges have.

Thank you for that.

And I do hear there's a difference between post-conviction and pre-conviction or diversion.

And I know you've been asking about that.

I think there's merit here in focusing on what that looks like, and also not calling it probation.

Because you're not talking probation in the standard sort of the way we think about it.

It's something else.

It's something different and new.

And if we're not investing in it immediately on January 1, I would suggest that we spend the time have the community be working together, but recognizing you need more tools.

And I don't want people in jail either without having the kind of treatment they need.

And you're talking about something other than jail, but it's post-conviction.

So I appreciate you, Judge Eisenberg, joining us.

And I can tell by what's coming in the next few weeks that we're going to have to take a little more time and get this right.

I appreciate the opportunity.

Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

So again, going back to Vital, Vital serves folks who have, it's basically the same population of people that were studied under the Political Offender Report.

They've been arrested, I think, more than four times in a 12-month period.

There are 60 people on that caseload.

So I don't know how we could possibly know that of the unserved population of people who meet this definition, that they would not respond to a program like Vital when Vital currently is only serving a fraction of the eligible population.

And of the people who do receive vital services, we know that 78% of vital clients are booked into jail less often after enrolled in the program.

And we know that, let's see, they, as compared to the three years before their enrollment, a typical client had two fewer bookings in King County Jail compared to the three years before ending the program.

So unless we are, unless we're able to, to screen and enroll all of the eligible population and make some sort of a determination that those folks aren't successful.

I don't know how we could possibly be making the claim that this population of people would not respond well to a program like Vital.

Well, Judge Shadid is the judge in our court, Damon Shadid, who actually has a Vital calendar.

He works with that population all the time, so I'm not the expert on that.

And he certainly can address that.

I would just say that at the point that they have been through vital and they're still in our court system, that's the group we're trying to address because those folks do exist.

there is a threshold where, or there's a point where people are unfortunately not, if we can get them to reach or vital, we actually do try to do that.

But there are folks that ultimately are not successful.

So you're talking about like the 22% of the 100% of vital cases.

So 78% are seeing positive outcomes, 22% aren't.

So this is a, rather than trying to expand the number of people served by this very useful program, We're trying to design a program for the small number of people who don't respond well to the program.

Would you like to have a lifeline, Judge?

You're looking over your shoulder.

Judge Shadid is here.

He actually works with that calendar, and I think he'd probably answer your questions better.

So I would like to defer to him on that.

Great.

Judge Shadid, please.

And welcome.

Thank you.

David Shadid, Seattle Municipal Court.

Is his microphone on?

Council Member Hurley, I appreciate your questions.

And it's been my honor to present LEAD and VITAL, and it's a wonderful program.

If I had my choice, I would like more people to receive these services.

And I simply, as a judge in the criminal justice system, do not see a conflict between what is being proposed here and LEAD and VITAL.

I support those programs.

What those case managers are doing in the community is not something that we can replace and it's not something anyone can replace.

However, when we have people who are repeatedly coming through the criminal justice system, and they're posing a community safety threat, we have to have a way of both serving their needs, but also serving the needs of the community and to keep the community safe.

And there are large impacts that these individuals are causing on the community.

If they are receiving services in the community, and they are responding well to that, then that is the absolute way we should be handling those cases.

When they're not responding well to that, though, we do have to think about the community and community safety, as well as the needs of the individual.

And what we're asking for here is for a tool to try to address that.

Now, what Councilmember Gonzalez said, I also agree with, that How do we effectively get through to people who have proven difficult to get through in the past, who have, on my lead and vital calendar, many times the city prosecutor will come and say, I have no mitigation to offer you based upon their services in the community.

But at this point, I am unwilling to give up on those people.

And when community safety is at such a large risk, and the only option is to take them off of the streets, that is not something I want to do.

And so we are asking for this as an alternative.

But I do want to make it very clear that Seattle Municipal Court and myself especially support these programs and I hope that they have even more success and more funding in the future, but these are not competing budget requests.

In a world of finite dollars, we have to make a decision based on what will have the greatest, I think, impact.

So I really appreciate where you're coming from and the sentiment of wanting to serve as many people that are high barrier as possible.

And I shared that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Judge, both of you for coming.

I would like to turn it over to Council Member O'Brien.

Just one clarifying question.

You mentioned that these people, by the time they get to this point have, LEAD has not worked for them, and I just want some clarity.

Are these people that were in LEAD and it didn't work, or is it an assumption that because they're at this point, I'm assuming LEAD didn't work?

It depends, because LEAD is a very fluid program.

With LEAD, once you're in LEAD, you're always in LEAD, and so it's not sort of a...

You can't flunk out of lead unless the person just flat out says, I'm not going to engage with you people anymore and walks away.

So the more accurate way of putting it would be people who have engaged with the program in a meaningful way versus people who have not engaged with the program in a meaningful way.

And so that would be.

perhaps some of the people that we would be trying to assist through this program is people who the city attorney has to file the cases when there are cases that are happening over and over again.

And at this point, they are not responding well to any of the CBO, community-based organizations that they've been referred to.

I really appreciate that clarity.

Colleagues, I know next Wednesday we're gonna have a conversation with some folks at LEAD.

My understanding with some of the preliminary conversations, I mean, first of all, I wanna just acknowledge that every program doesn't work for everybody.

And we have certain programs like LEAD that we hold up as one of the best examples, but that doesn't mean it's the perfect example for everybody out there.

And so having multiple tools, appreciate that request.

One of the things that I understand where we are with LEAD, on the good side is that I understand more and more police officers are trained in it and are seeing the benefits and want to refer folks to the program.

And at the same time, there's not enough capacity.

to keep up with the referrals.

I mean, my understanding is that the current caseload of the folks managing those populations is probably beyond the outer bounds of what someone can reasonably do and maintain the quality of the program they want.

And so I think as we work through this, one of the things that I'm going to try to understand is, as we put resources in different places, How do we make sure that we have enough resources for the programs that we know work?

How do we have a variety of resources?

What are the appropriate ones?

But I think there's a, I hear there's a challenge that as we get more and more referrals to lead, if we're not boosting that program, we will be setting it up to failure because instead of getting the kind of in-depth case management that these people require, we're gonna spread the case managers so thin that we'll see more and more people that otherwise may have been successful start to fail too, and that's just an overall resource problem.

And I'd just like to say, Council Member Brown, I think you just very articulately summarized what the problem is.

The things that we know work, and this is a point that you brought up earlier, Council Member Herbold, the things we know work, are full.

And I'm hearing that there's a real capacity problem with the things at work and we want to do that.

And I also want to acknowledge both Judge Heidenberg and Shabib, I apologize, is that I know how hard you are working and that you are looking for other tools.

And I also recognize, as a former prosecuting attorney, that Sometimes all of these good things we're trying to accomplish don't work for everybody.

And you are saying, I don't want to just jail people, I want to try something else, something in addition to that.

And I want to acknowledge and say thank you for it.

I don't know where we end up here, but I do know that there is real commitment up here on this dais to make sure that what works is funded and what may be giving something else that we don't know a try.

Thank you.

Any other comments on this one?

All of the judges at the court would be happy to meet and answer any questions and clarify anything if the council members would like us to.

Great.

Okay.

It looks like I've got another question.

Council Member Gonzalez.

I don't know if it's a question.

I think I'm going to get on a soapbox for a little bit and then I'm going to...

hang it up until the next department comes up, and then I'll get on a soapbox then.

But I guess my struggle in this conversation is that we're somehow creating some sort, or attempting to create some sort of difference between the concept of mass incarceration and and mass supervision, which ultimately for a lot of individuals regrettably can lead to a loop back to jail.

And I think that is a real concern.

It's a real threat, it's a real risk if this model isn't as targeted and specific and utilized as a scalpel as opposed to a hammer on these 168 individuals that we believe are going to be utilizers of this system.

And so when I look at things like this issue, I want to be really cognizant of the fact that this isn't necessarily being proposed as a tool to prevent people from ever going to jail.

It's to effectively, hopefully, prevent them from going to jail now.

And I just worry about about setting up a narrative where we're trying to create some sort of distinction between the realities of the fact that a lot of times supervision does result in people ultimately going to jail.

And I just pulled up an article that I read recently that's posted on NextCity.

And I wanted to just sort of share what this particular piece says from a recent initiative just launched this year on really holding local elected officials to account for reforming the probation and parole systems that we control at the city level.

I'm not talking about prisons, I'm not talking about the King County Jail, I'm talking about the things we can control.

And so this article reads, And this occurred in a press conference, but it says, announced during a press conference Monday at the American Probation and Parole Association Annual Training Institute, EXIT is focusing its efforts on reforming the role that probation and parole play as two of the largest drivers, two of the largest drivers of incarceration in the US criminal justice system.

There are currently 4.5 million people on probation or parole, more than twice as many as the 2.2 million people who are incarcerated.

constituting a nearly four-fold increase since 1980. In 2017, one in every four people who entered prisons did so because of non-criminal technical supervision violations at a cost of $2.8 billion to our overall system.

Like incarceration, Americans on probation and parole are largely people of color.

While 1 in 55 Americans overall are in the mass supervision system, 1 in 23 black people are on probation or parole.

Like the incarceration system, mass supervision has also been privatized.

These companies work for counties and other jurisdictions for free, but make money by charging people on parole and probation for supervision and other services like drug treatment programs required by their probation or parole conditions.

Therefore, mass supervision is particularly punitive for the poor since an inability to pay can mean a ticket back to prison.

Although supervision issues are present across the country, many of them are taking place in inner cities.

And the article goes on to talk about how this system is fundamentally broken.

And so I just really worry that we are characterizing this as a tool to get people out of jail when in reality, what all of the data and the statistics have been telling us is that this system is, it's a delay for jail, but it doesn't ultimately stave off the possibility of jail for most people.

And so I'm just, I'm really worried that if we go down this direction, we're gonna end up doubling down and investing in this mass supervision system, which, you know, We shouldn't shy away from the fact that it is still a punitive supervisory system.

So Councilmember Gonzalez, can I respond just a little bit?

I wish you could come and watch our review calendars.

We use the harm reduction model all the time, even in domestic violence cases, and jail is not the outcome.

You know, in the Domestic Violence Intervention Project, I have a young man who enters it.

He violates the no contact order a week later.

He's found guilty of it.

He wasn't, we didn't remove him from the program.

We didn't give him jail time.

We're like, we want to give you an opportunity to try to learn from the program.

There's so many different shades of gray in what happens in the courtroom, particularly when people are in violating their probation conditions.

It might be they didn't go to day reporting.

It might be they have a positive UA.

It might be they, and there's so many different shades of gray in how we respond to that.

Okay, you're on drug and alcohol treatment.

You're not supposed to drink.

You're not supposed to do opioids.

You smoke marijuana.

Okay.

Harm reduction would say, I can't tell you you can smoke marijuana because you're supposed to abstain.

It's not healthy for your recovery.

But I'm not going to penalize you for it because I understand that's what you're doing.

You need to work on trying to reduce it.

There are so many probation hearings where the consequence is not jail.

And I think the purpose of the enhanced probation is going to be even more harm reduction focused.

So the point is, you're giving these people structure.

Again, it's for people who haven't been successful in other models, and maybe they can be referred, but if, to lead or whatever, but if they're at the court post-conviction, we're already sort of beyond that point.

So, I just would say that if you actually came and saw how the judges in Seattle Municipal Court in 2019, and how the probation counselors are dealing with these cases, I think you'd find that it's, that we're taking those issues and those concerns, which are very valid concerns, very seriously in every decision we make as to whether to release someone, to send them back to jail, or to say, well, maybe you should try the life skills class.

So let's go try that.

It's a very, very broad spectrum of options.

And Judge Eisenberg, my comments are not intended to be personalized or an attack.

I don't take them that way.

Or a critique on each individual's capability, capacity, and reality of what you're doing every single day from the bench.

I really am sincere that I'm not making these remarks as a comment on the quality of the work that judicial officers and your staff are doing every day.

I know it's hard work.

And you're put in positions where you have to make tough decisions, and in some cases it could feel like you are making decisions that are completely contrary to the things that you morally might believe, right?

But you have to make the decision because that's why you're sitting there, that's why you were elected to do that job.

I respect that.

And I think what I'm trying to do here is I'm trying to make this less about what are you currently doing, is it good or is it bad, and I'm challenging us to think about what it would look like to move the Overton window, to think about this area in a radically different way.

Probation is something we've been using for a long time.

I agree, sometimes it works, a lot of times it doesn't.

And so now we're going down this path of knowing that and still wanting to create a probation program for the hardest to serve population in the hopes that it will work.

And I know that there's still a lot of details here and a lot of design making that needs to occur, but I just really want to challenge us to think collectively and together about about how we radically change the way we think about how to serve this population and whether or not moving down the path, further path of expanding probation services in this space is the appropriate tool to use.

I'm not saying we should eradicate the whole thing at this point.

I am saying that I worry that it's not, it might not be the most appropriate tool for this population.

That's it.

I appreciate that.

Thank you very much.

So I want to acknowledge Council Member Gonzales, what you just said about us not attacking our judicial colleagues, but I'm hearing something a little different.

I'm hearing that you're saying the probation doesn't work for many people.

and that you're looking at changing it so it's something very different.

I think we need to call it something else, something that is honorably addressing and providing you with more tools to bring forward treatment that maybe you don't have now.

I think there's enough skepticism up here that we all would like to be working with you to know what that could look like.

And I'm going to ask us to give ourselves a little bit of space for grace and say, let's hear what it is.

You come back and tell us, or we'll meet with you over across the street.

You tell us what that looks like.

And I'm happy to come meet with you, talk with you and your colleagues, just so we understand it better.

And do we have something at this point?

Anything else that you want to talk about as far as probation, or can we move on?

Thank you very much for the opportunity.

Thank you for coming up to the table.

And thank you, Judge Shadid, for joining us at the microphone.

All right, Deputy Mayor, do you have anything else here you'd like to add?

I think that concludes our overview, and then I know this afternoon you still have both SPD and SFD, and they'll continue some of the other more department-specific budget incremental ads.

Great.

So, colleagues, I'm going to have a proposal here.

It is now 344, so we're an hour and 45 minutes into this.

I'm going to propose that OSE be put over until next Wednesday.

I've done a check with Amelia and through Allison, thank you for being my runner.

And if we announce that today, pull the plug on it, let the public know that OSU will come and join us at the end of next Wednesday.

We still have two major departments to go, but do I hear any objection to that plan?

Okay, great.

I want to say thank you, all of you.

We'll move forward with our next agenda item, which is Seattle Police Department.

After Seattle Police Department, I'll check in to see if you'd like to take a break or just keep moving through.

Thank you everybody who came and for the cameo appearance from our municipal court judges.

Madam Chair, as we transition, I'm looking forward to the future conversation.

I appreciate that you've asked for space to think through these details.

The judge mentioned it would be helpful If he could serve everyone through REACH, he would.

And lucky us, we get to make a decision about where these dollars go in the budget.

I would also want to point to another article.

I know Council Member Herbold was commenting on the frequency and the types of arrests that some of these individuals face.

But another article that came out earlier this year talking about how one in five individuals who are booked into jail are booked into jail because of the sheer fact that they are homeless.

they are more frequently getting arrested.

And so as we think about the type of crimes that they're getting booked for on the first place, it does seem like the commonality here, if we wanted to redirect our funding, would be to house folks.

Absolutely.

Obviously, one of these efforts is trying to create enhanced shelters.

But if we look more upstream, I think that we can't separate the fact that these individuals are more likely to be at risk of getting arrested in the first place because we have not provided them a home.

And we've been talking about survival crimes, you know, for a couple of years now.

All right.

Well, welcome to the table again.

For those of you who are staying, thank you, Chief, for being here.

And could I start with introductions again?

Angela Sosi, SPD budget director.

Chris Fischer, executive director of strategy, SPD.

Thank you, Chris.

Chief?

Mark Erthgreen, deputy chief, Seattle Police Department.

Very good.

Tom, are you kicking this one off or is Greg?

I can kick it off.

The Seattle Police Department, just to give you a little context, is a $410 million general fund agency.

There's about 1,400 police officers employed by SPD and about 2,187 FTE in the department.

As a public safety agency, it's about 85% operations with the remaining being capital.

To provide some context over the last year, as you may know, there have been some hiring and retention problems.

The chief talked about that in the prior presentation.

The chief's going to talk about that today.

He's going to talk about some of the initiatives that the mayor is undertaking to address those issues.

And, you know, with that, I'll just turn it over to SPD.

We want to highlight a few things, but please if there's questions on any one or anything in total, please let me know and we'll delve into those as well.

One of the things that we wanted to talk about to begin with is our full and effective compliance with the DOJ.

I'm sorry, Council President.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

You got your good flow going there.

Why isn't the chief here?

We've had every department head here in all of the budget presentations.

The chief is in transit today, sir.

She was away at training and then is returning.

She was just unable to attend today.

Thank you.

Do you want to follow up?

No.

It's just that this is the lion's share of our budget, and we've had every department head here.

So I didn't know if I should be here.

So it is what it is.

I just don't know why this is our one time to review the budget.

So there might be questions you may have to take back to her.

It just seems a little inefficient.

OK.

Certainly, sir.

Just to continue with the full and effective compliance, obviously with the consent decree, we continue to maintain the compliance with the 10 for 10 and our sustainment period through that portion, continue with our reports.

With that, we are awaiting the judge's order on the new issue of accountability.

and to see what we need to do with that portion as well.

But to continue funding, where we were talking earlier about the compliance bureau, that's our force investigations team, that's our force review unit, all of those portions that deal with the consent decree to shift the money to bring them whole, if you will.

Obviously, as we talked about earlier, our staffing shortages that plague us.

We should acknowledge the hiring incentive ordinance.

It has been helpful for us in retaining, not retaining people but rather hiring people both lateral entries from other agencies in other states and also for new hires as well.

The recruitment and retention report was put out and we look eagerly to implementing most of those if not all of the 12 ideas that were there to I think that is a very good point and I think it will help with our staffing shortages.

Obviously our priority is service excellence and that is maintaining our service levels despite our sworn staffing.

looking at how do we continue to maintain that level of service to the public with a reduced staffing.

Somewhat of working smarter, not harder, but also then to augment our dwindling numbers at that time to ensure that we have coverage throughout the city at all times.

With that, obviously, we talked about earlier the community service officers and being able to bring that program online to divert some of those calls from the 911 responders out there to those organizations so that they can take care of those things and alleviate the calls to the 911 center, to the Seattle Fire Department, and obviously to the Seattle Police Department as well.

So we're eagerly awaiting that.

Hiring the Native American liaison.

As we said, we have some of those positions already.

We're looking to replicate that type thing.

We're still working through the study of where necessarily in which bureau that this person should be housed and how it will be formally set up.

But we're very hopeful and thankful that that need was recognized with us there.

Obviously, we tried to set the national standard, and I think Councilwoman Gonzalez was pointed it out earlier with our crisis intervention training and our de-escalation training that lead the way both nationally and internationally.

We've had folks coming from all sorts out of country as well to learn what we are doing and why are we being so successful with it, both in the reduction of crime and the reduction of use of force by officers out there.

So, working with that continually with the mental health professionals to bolster that program with people in crisis and to continue leading the way with that continuous improvement and innovation, as the Chief likes to say.

Moving on there.

So we move to continue the consent decree, the sustainment period, with the ultimate goal of completing the 10 for 10 assessment in January of 2020. As I said, we are eagerly awaiting the judge's rulings in other areas to see how we progress there.

and then continue on.

We're already building in systems right now with the Office of the Inspector General, the Office of Police Accountability.

As these 10 for 10 metrics start to phase out, how do we then incorporate them?

Because they're not things that we're willing to give up.

These are things that we're looking to expand and to put in annually within our own audits as well and so working with those levels to complete that.

Obviously with the Office of Police Accountability also adding civilian investigators there to bolster their numbers and to allow for more transparency within their investigations.

Obviously our hopeful outcomes would be improved perceptions of public safety and that we continue to foster greater community trust.

The second priority I wanted to touch on was reducing crime and disorder, and that's to continue to driving reductions in all of our major crime areas.

The last update I had when I was pulling the numbers is that crime is down overall 7% in the city, and we continue to try to reduce that crime.

We have been fortunate while we've had some upticks in some certain areas, overall we are still a very, very safe city compared to any city our size that serves this type of population as well.

Chief, thank you for that.

I also know that that's not the perception.

You know, all the data that we've got and we put out, there's still a sense of that crime is growing, and I'm not entirely sure why that perception continues, unless it happens to you.

Then, of course, it's, you know, it's problematic.

But I do want to ask, what are we doing to get this information out, maybe not just in statistics, but in actual stories?

Councilmember Bagshaw, before the chief answers that question, I just want to add a little bit of a nuance here because we've been digging into this data in my committee quite a bit and thanks to the police department for coming to committee to talk about some of those public safety issues.

I would agree that the perception of criminality seems to be at a little, probably much higher than what is reflected in reality.

But that being said, there are certain areas of crime that are and have been on the rise.

And I think when you slice the data from citywide to precincts and neighborhoods, We do in fact and are in fact seen an increase in certain types of crime one of the areas that has Not seen a downward trend our physical assaults for example And in certain neighborhoods property crime is in fact up and so I think I want to I want to just acknowledge that That is not all the perception is not all fantasy.

There is there is some reality when you do slice into the data around public safety.

And in fact, that's exactly what led to the justification of the police department to launching additional emphasis patrols over the spring and the summer is precisely that data.

And so I don't want the public to hear your question, Council Member Bagshaw, as being a discount of some personal experiences that people might have.

In some instances, albeit Limited they do they the data does support an increase in certain classes of crime So I just wanted to offer that up before the chief and others at the department Venture to answer that question.

That's of ebikes.

For example exact like ebikes.

For example, that would definitely probably be in that property property Theft area.

So with that being said, I just wanted to make sure that I added that

Context absolutely correct that depending on the neighborhood and the type of crime we have seen some increases in certain areas in which Obviously did leave us lead us down the path of declaring some areas emphasis areas and putting additional work into those areas as well where we're trying to work with a lot of this is a One, through our social media, the blotter, the Twitter, things along those lines of getting information out as well as our dashboards.

We just completed, thank you very much by the way, a transition of our record management system to Mark 43. We went away from VersaTerm.

So we are still working through rebuilding our ability to put public facing information out.

So we've got some of it.

We're continuing that.

We hope to get back to where we were.

So we will be able to provide more accurate data to folks as we continue down this process with it as well as a lot of community engagement, trying to get the word out through the community because you're absolutely right.

Perception leads the way a lot.

And when you see a person standing on the street yelling, while it's not a criminal nature, you may feel fear.

We all have a visceral response to that, correct?

And so trying to look at ways that we can enhance those types of interactions.

and then support things with our public as well and get as much information out as we can in all avenues that we can.

Again, looking forward to that community servicing officer program as well, which we think that will be very beneficial with that.

Good.

Thank you.

Before you move on, I just want to give Council Member Juarez both some kudos and an opportunity to speak to the proposal to hire a Native American liaison.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

I apologize for being late.

You have a good excuse.

First of all, this is a long time coming.

I did not invent Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

We've been all working on this for decades.

We knew about the Seattle report.

We knew about the Canadian report.

But more importantly, what we found most startling, and of course the state law, is that Seattle was the number one city with Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

And we know a lot of that is about misclassification.

In fact, in the days that I was a public defender, With victims and defendants, when we would look at the police reports and the charging documents, sometimes they would either have an I or an M, meaning, and then a question mark.

Is it an Indian or a Mexican?

And then people would come to me, the resident native Latina, to say, what is, do you know this person?

And so I guess my point is this.

We are so excited to say that we're the first city in the country to, we're above the state and everyone else, and my friend who's the, Lieutenant Governor in Minnesota.

I got to talk to her last week, and she was shocked.

And everyone's been asking for copies of this legislation from Alaska down to New Mexico to Minnesota to copy our legislation, because it has money attached to it, an actual person who's culturally attuned to work with Native communities, but more importantly, to leverage the resources of what tribes have to offer with their own police departments.

and the services that they provide, whether it's missing, whether it's identifying, whether it's bringing our women and children home.

And that is one piece, and we owe it to the 29 tribes in this state that have worked with us on this.

So I want to thank you.

Chief Best was phenomenal.

Pete Holmes, the mayor, of course, my colleagues up here.

So I want to say thank you, and we are nothing but excited to be working to find that person to work within SPD and make sure that Seattle gets rid of the dubious reputation of having the most missing murdered indigenous women and girls.

So thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

I have a quick question about that investment.

Is it, is this intended, is the liaison going to be a civilian or a sworn person?

We believe at this time it will more than likely be a civilian person.

Generally, we're able to reach out and grab, I don't want to say more educated sometimes, but people who have a degree, greater degree of experience and knowledge.

with that, rather than for me to try to go find an existing police officer that I have to do it.

So I think we'd be better served that way.

I'll tell you what we're doing, Council Member Gonzales, that's a great question.

That person will be a civilian person and we are working with Abigail Echo Hogg and Esther Lucero at the South Linden Health Board, what that job description looks like.

So it will be a civilian person at SPD.

Thank you.

All right, please continue.

Certainly.

Obviously, as with the reducing crime and disorder, we were talking about the emphasis areas and that we've heard from the community loud and clear that they would like these emphasis areas either to continue or be replicated at different times throughout the year when we see a rise.

What I'd like to highlight with this is while we have a portion of that or the overtime, really these emphasis areas are a multidisciplinary approach.

to attacking the kind of issues that those communities face from leveraging Seattle Department of Transportation, Department of Neighborhoods, our outreach folks, to really take a holistic look at what is the issue there because we know The actual criminality of that is a small percentage, but there's a larger percentage of things that actually the city can do to reduce fear, crime, and disorder in those areas.

So we look as we move to go forward into next summer, where we look to do more of these things that were based on evidence.

And then working with our partners to do that, whether it be just cutting brushbacks so people see the stop sign so they're not running it and getting into an accident along those lines.

It's not necessarily that I need to deploy an officer there.

I think a person with a brush cutter could achieve a much better result for me.

And so working holistically like that, we look to do that.

But if I can just say thank you to your team, the work that was done around Yesler Crescent this year, and that includes City Hall Park.

But it became a friendly place.

And whereas before, people were afraid of it because there wasn't the activity of really positive actions.

And thanks to Parks working with you, we made a lot of changes.

But I feel positive that that is the same model that we saw with Occidental and with Westlake.

where you brought in better behavior, more activity, tables and chairs, but you were visible too.

So I just want to acknowledge that and say thank you.

Thank you very much, ma'am.

And then, as we talked about earlier, increasing the mental health professionals with the department, allowing for that intersection of substance abuse, mental health, and crime to give us a better tool for the toolbox, rather, to intercede with those folks and to actually gain resources and help for them that is not incarceration.

And also to alleviate that you have while our officers are extremely well trained in fact a national average for crisis intervention trained officers Deployable in the field is about 30 some odd percent the Seattle Police Department our patrol officers around 80% that we deploy they're fully trained so we are well above the national average and And the remaining officers still receive a mandatory eight hours per year.

And actually, if you aggregate that, we've already surpassed that 40 hours for everybody within the department.

And so we look to continue that.

But even realizing, even with that breadth of training, we still have limitations.

And really leaning to other professionals to assist us and come in and do this.

So the outcomes that we would be looking for, obviously, there is a reduction in our use of force.

Obviously, with people in crisis, a reduction in the number of crisis calls and more stability out there, as well as the perception, as you pointed out to Madam Councilwoman, of what's going on out there with that.

Obviously, one of the benchmarks of any department is honor and professionalism and ensuring that that is a high priority for us.

Obviously, hiring the correct people.

and hiring the right number of people to actually work within the city and work within the population.

And then to reduce the number of officers that are leaving our departments to go to other departments as well.

The number of retirements are well earned.

And we wish those folks well.

However, the number of lateral people leaving to other agency, we saw quite a big increase in that.

And I was with the chief of Tacoma Police Department in DC just a few weeks ago.

And he told me, thank you very much.

He goes, the best trained officers I have have come from Seattle.

So very hurtful.

He's just trolling you.

That's not very nice.

But it is true.

We have very, very well-trained officers far and above beyond most of our agencies.

But with that is to retain those officers to do that really good level of work here in the city.

So as we go forward to looking to implement our recruiting and retention recommendations.

to really bolster our department and take us to that next level as well.

Again, that continuous improvement and innovation.

How are we doing compared to other agencies?

I know the chief of Bellevue came out and said that they're full.

They didn't need any more.

We'd like to say we're over full.

We want people in waiting.

And so that's kind of our hope to get there with that.

Obviously, our outcome is realizing the net increase in our sworn workforce for there.

And I'm not sure if it was earlier, there was a question.

Yes, sir.

Council President Harrell has a question.

I notice in the fire department's strategic priorities, they identify their continuing commitment to RSJI.

And this isn't one of the police department's strategic priorities.

But my question is, as it relates to the hiring, Given the fact that I-200 was changed in the state legislature, it gives us an opportunity to strategically target diverse candidates.

And is this one of the priorities?

And what's the department's thoughts about how to achieve that, given the fact that I-1000 was passed, which allowed us to be a little more intentional about trying to achieve diversity?

So it absolutely is a priority for us.

I don't know, Dr. Fisher, if you know any of the hiring numbers.

We were in a meeting with Director Fields the other day.

We were talking about that, that we have increased by a large amount our diversity hiring, both of race and gender.

And we continue to push and to try to increase and continue to increase and evolve in that area as well.

So what are there things you may do differently now that I-200 has been lifted?

I would have to defer honestly to Director Fields in the form of hiring because I'm not sure on the legality of the legal nature of the pathway of how we do the hiring.

What I can tell you is that we are actively out there and hiring in diverse communities.

Sometimes where we probably historically have not hired, you know, done hiring fairs.

and solutions in those areas.

We are actively going out to try to recruit those we've increased in.

I appreciate it.

And my style has never been gotcha.

So I don't mean to catch a flat foot on any of this.

This is one of the reason why I thought the the chief should be here to sort of address.

The question is what I've heard for over a decade is we can't do this because of I-200.

We can't do this because of I-200 and we've been shackled by that restraint.

It's now lifted.

And so it was seen to me that if I were in your position, or at least the chief's position, I would run to the law department and say, now what can I do strategically to recruit diverse candidates?

And I'm also taken by the fact that I hear you saying it's a priority.

It's called out in the fire department, but I didn't see it called out in your priorities.

I know you're trying to hit your hiring targets.

It seems to me that the police department, we have that issue on hiring because of a lot of issues, and trying to achieve diverse candidates.

And so it'd be ideal during this budget cycle, and I'm trying to come up with some answers too, by the way, during this budget cycle, on what can we do differently while we have this window.

Because there is, as you well know, an attempt to overturn I-1000 that can get some attention on the ballot this year.

So while we have this window, it would seem to me that we would want to invest in either those that can help us with recruiting to find out what we can do differently.

Because we have an opportunity to do something differently now, and this is the first budget time we've had the opportunity to do something differently.

And I was hoping before I got the budget I would see

It called out we're going to try to do something different next year because we have this invest We have this opportunity and this is what it's going to cost us and I don't see this at all in the in the budget Absolutely, and what I will do because I I don't know sir is that I will meet with director fields come monday And we will come up with a plan reach out with the city attorney and I will follow up with you, sir Thank you very much.

Certainly

May I follow up really quickly?

Thank you, Council President, for that line of questioning.

I think my favorite part of that line of questioning is the fact that it invites a very healthy and wonderful ongoing rivalry between the police department and the fire department, which we all know how much you all love.

I have learned this as a member of the fire pension board and the police pension board, that that healthy tension exists.

So that's great setup to incentivize compliance with the ultimate goal of making sure that we have a clear strategy out of the police department to center some of these race and social justice equity goals that we are in a lot of ways not encumbered from pursuing as we were in the past.

That being said, I will say that the hiring incentive report that we were able to receive in committee last week, I think that was last week.

It feels like it was much longer ago than that.

This doesn't speak to the underlying numbers, Council President Harrell, and I think there should be some followup on those.

The hiring incentive to both new hires and lateral hires is showing some promising trends in terms of actually being the one-two around increasing diverse recruits to the department.

So the report that we got indicated that of the total 36 entry level and six lateral incentives that were paid out thus far this year or since we've approved the hiring bonuses.

Of those receiving the incentive, 40.5% were people of color in that pool, 16.7% were Asian, 9.5% were black or African American, 7.1% were Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% identified as two or more races, and the remaining 59% were white.

And of that pool, 21.4% identified as female.

So I think we're seeing some good trends in terms of the hiring incentive, particularly on the new hire side, leading to the additional benefit of also being a recruitment tool, a more effective recruitment tool for both women and people of color.

So I think that's a promising thing, but I still think that Council President Harrell's point around approaching this with greater intentionality as opposed to seeing a great consequence as a result of a program are well made and well taken.

Absolutely agree, ma'am.

I will also just add, Council President Harrell, that in our strategic plan, we do call out increased commitment around our SJI.

We also note that in 2014, our new hire number was 22%, and in 2018, it was 36%.

So we are trying to do some work there about sending folks into communities that they're from, that they reflect to do their recruitment.

And obviously, there's more we can do, but that is something totally under our radar.

Thank you very much.

Good.

Appreciate that.

All right, Chief.

And then moving on with business sufficiency, obviously enhancing our 911 dispatch system and processes as we look forward to researching and implementing a new computer-aided dispatch system.

Our one is quite old and antiquated and looking forward to be able to harness new technology as we go through that to give us greater flexibility in how we deploy our officers and how we respond to 911 calls.

We also look for a greater budget and expenditure transparency, which is where we talk a lot about restructuring our budget, as we referenced earlier, like the force investigations team, to make that whole, so we can accurately account and show for where the money's going, and it's accurately reflected within the budget.

So, obviously, our outcomes are moving towards a new camp system, and then, obviously, better resource management and being more fiscally responsible.

I'm going to turn it over to Angela Sochi for a moment to just go over some of the budget numbers.

Yeah, so you see here our four-year budget summary taking us from $330 million, most of which, or all of which, until just this upcoming year, was general fund appropriations.

Going from $330 million to $407 million in the 2020 proposed budget, I'd like to remind all of you that in 2018, we changed the way the Seattle IT rates were budgeted and so the bulk of that increase, well some of it is attributable to increases in our budget, excuse me, tied to the addition of sworn officers.

The bulk of it, the large majority, is attributable to the way that we changed that IT allocation.

So in my understanding it was a 70 million dollar in the IT allocation?

It was in 2018. You can see there was a significant bump from $330 million to $394 million.

I just wanted to call out, and Ben might be able to speak to this as well, but there was a way, or at that point in time, we changed the IT allocation and how that was calculated and as a result, how that was budgeted.

And as a result, it, in a way, increased our budget where there wasn't actually a tangible budget change or budget action.

came to contract terms with SPOG and then had a significant increase in the salary base as well.

So we'd been carrying that as a reserve until that point, and then it hit the books.

So four years of salary increases hit the books all at once, if you will.

I mean, there was the retro payment, but then there was also that that did really increase the salary base with four years' worth of annual wage increases.

Okay, so it's really a way we're accounting for it as contrasted to a massive influx in capital?

That's true on the IT side, and then on the wage side, there really is an increased cost.

Right, but you've been reserving that.

You've been holding it.

Exactly.

No, but just in terms of, you know, what's driving the budget change year to year, but that's another of the drivers.

Great.

Okay, thanks.

Yes, so going from 2019 to 2020, you'll see a net change of $8.8 million.

Council Member Gonzalez, as you pointed out earlier, there is also a $6.2 million reduction.

I'm happy to address that now, or I can hold it for the next slide.

Wherever you think it fits the best with your comments, I mean, we're going to get to it before we conclude.

However it fits best, yeah.

Actually, I'll jump back to and just the overview.

I want to call out one other thing on this slide.

The 2.1 million that is showing up in the other appropriation, we are, as I've mentioned before, we're 100% general fund in most cases.

We have this year decided to create With our school zone camera fund, we've done in the past a double appropriation for that program, the portion of which is housed in SPD.

We're linking that to SDOT's camera fund directly this year, which is where you get that appropriation increase of $2.1 million, which is the program cost.

The FTEs, the bulk of those, are going to represent the addition of sworn police officers and the recurring investment year over year into our sworn police service.

The 15 FTE being added this year accounts for the additional CSO squad.

We have three additional sworn police officers that are being added to increase that number to 40 total over the 2019 and 2020 biennium.

If you want to go to the next slide, yeah.

All right.

So this budget realignment with the actuals, as you all know, 2018 was a challenging year for us in terms of hiring.

We base the 2019 and 2020 budget off of projections that were staffing projections that took into account actuals through the summer of last year.

Unfortunately, we separated more than we were anticipating, 12 total from when we budgeted.

Our projections around staffing were also optimistic, and we recognized that through the process.

As a result, there was a council reduction of 1.4 million anticipating there was going to be vacancy savings available.

What we've done in both the Q3 supplemental and also in next year's budget was recognize that there is a gap and there is money to be had from the vacancy savings generated from our sworn staffing situation.

These numbers also account for what we deem attrition savings, which is the cost differential between a young police officer and a more senior police officer, which is likely why that number seems a little bit higher than one might expect.

So this, maybe this is where I.

This is where you dive in.

This is where I dive in.

So I think, you know, last year when we went through our budget deliberation process, there was an agreement that was made between us as council and the executive around where the dial was set for salary projections.

And I thought back then that shaving off $1.4 million seemed like a deep cut, but it turns out it was not a deep cut at all compared to what the numbers ultimately turned out to be.

So I want to make sure that I have a clear understanding of what the underspend is.

I think it's an important fact for for us as council members to understand as we evaluate whether the forecasting as projected by the police department in this proposed budget are accurate or still a little overly optimistic.

I'm gonna give you guys a lot of credit for being super, super optimistic in this space.

But I think, you know, so the way that I understand it, in 2019, we had a $5 million vacancy underspend, basically.

Yeah, the third course supplemental, which we have sent in conjunction with the budget, unappropriates, if you will, abandons, is the technical term, $5 million of the 2019 appropriation for SPD's budget.

And the explanation is that we did not meet the hiring goals that had been the basis of the 2019 budget.

So the SPD is sitting on, otherwise be sitting on additional appropriation authority that it will not need by year end.

Okay, so that's just for 2019 and that those changes are reflected in the 2019 quarter 3 supplemental ordinance, correct?

Okay, and then for 2020 there's a six million dollar underspend projected for for staffing

Correct, and we had built the 2020 budget on a staffing level assumption that it assumed both that we would achieve a higher level for 2019 and then obviously build on that into 20. So we have new forecasts of what the projected staffing levels for 2020 and have built, if you will, a base budget for 2020 around those new figures that are reflective of the reality that we've had this year, but then also of the working group recommendations and we are We are both being conservative and, if you will, ambitious in our hiring goals.

I mean, I don't want to, there is a balance there to be struck, but that's what led us to build a budget that would produce, again, relative to the 2020 endorsed, savings of just over six million.

Okay, so then is the total amount that was underspent, so that's just $11 million just on the vacancy staffing issues.

And then there's an additional $6 million on, actually it might be $7.4 million on the SPOG retro reduction.

Correct.

I have to remind myself of the exact figure.

You may have it right now.

Yeah, it's about $7.4 million.

That was the year-over-year calculation for what was anticipated for the cost of the SPOG retro pay specifically that was loaded into the budget.

I think we've determined it's likely based on, you know, the model factored in the budgeted positions versus actual staffing levels.

And so I think there was, it's the delta over the extended period compounded and resulted in the $7.4 million.

And the way I, the way to think about this and the way I characterized it previously is that if you add that roughly $7 million, and the $5 million that's in the third quarter, you essentially have $12 million of a one-time resource underspend, because that's past dollars, the retro pay, and then the underspend for 2019. The $6 million is the projected ongoing savings for 2020, Obviously, if we continue and succeed in hiring goals, we will need some additional money for 21, so we can't necessarily assume that that same 6 million will be saved again in 21.

Okay, so because my math is leading me to somewhere like 18 million dollars that was Effectively appropriated to SPD but wasn't spent and is not likely to be spent.

And I'm only making the distinction that $12 million of that is one time and $6 million is the piece here which you can sort of think is ongoing except that it won't be because as we increase staffing levels that $6 million will be translated into actual spending.

That $12 million one time has been fully reprogrammed into the 2019 and 2020 through the third quarter supplemental and the budget we've presented to you.

We haven't talked about all, just as an example of some of the one-time spending there, there is, and your staff will bring this to your attention, and I hadn't yet because we just haven't had forums.

There is a total of $10 million additional dollars over 19 and 20 going to the Judgment and Claims Fund.

We, again, had a number of claims and payouts.

So the monies have been redirected to a number of other places and meeting other demands.

So it has been allocated in the proposed and or in the third quarter supplemental.

But we haven't approved the third quarter supplemental.

No, no, I mean, this is all for you to, but the point is we, we send you a package of legislation.

You're proposing it be spent in that manner, but the money hasn't been spent.

No, all I'm saying is it's been allocated in the proposed budget.

That's what I'm suggesting.

That's what I'm explaining.

Okay.

Because the way you were characterizing it, you made it sound like.

No, no, no. like that ship has sailed, kiss it goodbye, you're never going to catch it.

I saw the twinkle in all of our eyes.

Oh, I think the twinkle's still there.

I just want to make sure I still got a ticket to get on this boat.

The third quarter supplemental both abandons significant appropriations and requests significant appropriations.

And the resources, the net resources that are left out of the third quarter supplemental have become part of the resources that are allocated in the 2020 proposed budget.

All of this is subject to your appropriations.

I mean, none of that is law, if you will.

Thanks.

So Greg, obviously, I'm going to want to see details on where these dollars are proposed to be allocated in this budget process.

I think that's an important subject of conversation and deliberation by the city council in terms of whether we think that's an appropriate use or whether there are other more appropriate uses for almost $18 million worth of general fund dollars that are unrestricted.

So I'd like to get a really clear sense of where those lines are being drawn to or where those dollars are going.

That's one thing.

And then second, setting aside the underspend questions, There are dollars allocated in this proposed budget for addressing the hiring and staffing, ongoing hiring and staffing recruitment retention needs of the department.

What is the total dollar amount for that particular budget need?

Recruitment, there's 1.6 million for recruitment retention.

specifically the initiatives that we presented to you last week.

There's also, in addition to that, an $814,000 appropriation that will allow us to continue the hiring incentive program, so.

And then.

Right, but then there's a base budget, because we're still hiring bodies.

And what's the base budget for hiring sworn officers?

So I understand the question.

The question is the So there's an HR function at SPD that Mike Fields is director of, so the question of what their personnel function is, we could give you that budget, but then I think the question is maybe also what's the additional, what's the increment in salaries for new officers that we expect for 2020?

Correct.

Is it the latter or the former or both, just so we know what to get you?

Greg I think it's the the amount that was originally put in the 19 and 20 budget for the officers that were programmed in I think it was 700 and some thousand this year I don't have the exact number

Yes, we added, I believe it was around $700,000 for 2019 tied to the 10 new officers that were being added, and then I believe it was $3 million roughly in 2020 for the additional 30 that were going to be added in 2020.

And so one way I might suggest to think about this is there were ads that Angela just described that would allow the department to reach its hiring goals for 2019 and 2020. And right now it would seem that they are on track to reach their hiring goals, or at least we hope they are.

They're one down.

So if nothing changed, then the hiring plan is funded at the levels that were increased.

This money that you've been discussing is, it's really the vacancy savings from the 41 negative that the department went in the hole in 2018. They were down 41 officers.

That's a lot of money.

And then over the next two years, they've been trying to recapture that money.

and get an accurate sense of how much it was, I would say that the 6.1 million is the last bit of vacancy savings that they found.

And I think what I heard Angela say is it's because at the end of 2018, after the council had concluded its budget process, there were 12 additional reductions that they hadn't planned.

I'll ask Ben to correct me if I've.

No, that's, I don't have to, I can't quote you 12, but that's essentially we, so as you, this is, you know, there's, the number of officers is a constantly, it's not a moving target, it's a moving reality, if you will.

So, you know, you were taking actions beginning of November, we had projections of officer count by year end, we did not achieve those officer counts, and then, So that immediately created potential savings in 2019. And then we also, because the base was going to be a little bit lower as we went into 2019, because we finished 2018 with fewer officers than had been anticipated by the budget.

And then further, the recruitment efforts this year did not meet the hiring goals that had been set.

So the base had started out a little bit lower, and then as we stand here now, or sit here now, there are fewer officers than had been projected for 2020 as well.

Yeah, I think what I'm trying to get at is that whatever ends up in the budget for 2020, we need to do some analysis on our end to make sure, once again, that it's right-sized to what is being projected, and that the projections themselves are also realistic and not overly optimistic in terms of of, you know, what the data actually supports in terms of that trend.

Same conversation we had last year.

I just want to revisit that conversation in the spirit of collaboration with the executive.

We certainly don't want to do anything to hamper the department's ability and access to resources to be able to hire officers.

But I think, you know, last year again, we shaved off the proposed budget about $1.4 million and ended up with a significant underspend and I don't think any of us could have accurately predicted that but certainly I think it's just worth having a conversation about whether we've got the right sized projections and associated budget or whether we have a little bit more room to play there.

be a very constructive area of engagement.

I can't tell you where we stand right now, but we developed these estimates in August, and as we sit here about to flip the calendar October, we have some additional data on the hiring that's happened in between, because as I said, it's a constantly moving target.

So I think it's a good idea.

I like your constantly moving reality, too.

Thank you.

And to be fair, it has been moving in the right direction.

So in October, we could see data that actually shows us more promise in terms of hitting some of these ambitious goals that lead us to the conclusion that perhaps they're not as ambitious as we think they might be.

The last couple of months have been pretty good, but we should dive in and take a look.

Thank you.

Good.

I think we're on our last slide here.

And anything else that you would like to bring forward?

Yeah, if you'd like, if there's any questions, we have a number of other budget changes.

I believe a lot of them have been addressed already.

We're adding $848,000 to help finance emphasis patrols and force augmentation next year.

The expansion of the CSO program will increase our budget by $1.2 million.

The implicit bias training and 100,000 mental health professionals equates to a $310,000 increase.

And then the CAD replacement project is $2.7 million in 2020. Great.

Total cost of that project is closer to $3.4 million, but there's some resources available in 2019 that we carry forward, and then a small increment, I believe, in 2021.

Great.

Colleagues, any further questions?

All right, hearing none, I'm going to like to say thank you very much, Chief.

You were here for a long time.

Ben, you're a stalwart.

Angie, good to see you.

And our fire department is next.

Let me just check with my colleagues quickly.

Can we carry on, or do you need a break?

I'm good.

OK, good.

Very good.

Please, Chief.

Just one more for SPD.

Okay.

Okay.

And I hesitate to ask this because I did ask this of Deputy Mayor Fong the last time we had a chance to both meet with him in person and again at Councilmember Gonzalez's Public Safety Committee and in a follow-up conversation that I had directly with the Chief, I think that it does bear noting that the total sum of the investments we've made in 2018, 2019, the policy changes that were put forward from this council the amount of funding as the council president has indicated in the budget is a large portion of our budget so the conversation that the chief has had with the media about somehow the City Council not being supportive of police officers doesn't seem to be Something that I think bears fruit when you look at the amount of policy that we've put forward the amount of funding we've put forward and when I ask specifically what is it that we need to address the concerns that were being raised in front of the cameras, the answer that I got was more investment in mental health.

So I'm very excited that we have more investment in mental health, something that we've been talking about for the last year and a half.

But I do hope that this conversation today illuminates the fact that we have been absolutely trying to address the retention and recruitment issues and That when asked specifically what is it that you need from City Council to make that clearer because apparently it wasn't clear enough The answer was mental health not Somehow, you know getting on a soapbox and proclaiming allegiance to what has been already done on the streets I think people are very supportive of wanting to make sure that the folks who are signing up to do their job have the tools that they need and And furthermore, that they're signing up to do the job that they signed up for and not becoming hazmat cleaners for the NAV team, for example, something we don't want to expose people to more disease and...

Let's say toxic sites that are not the creation of anybody that's homeless, but because people are having to live in places that are not inhabitable.

Currently, we're exposing a lot of folks, including those who are living outside and our police officers to this situation.

So I'm glad that there's a health element.

I'm really glad that there's a mental health element to our budget that we have in front of us, but I do want to continue to dispel that myth that there is somehow not support out there.

And I think that the conversation that we've had today has been helpful in showing the type of investments and policies that have come from this council and appreciate the ongoing conversation.

I know I'm looking at you, but we'll follow up as well with the chief to make sure that that type of narrative has been clarified in the future, I hope.

Thank you for your comments, and thank you all.

I appreciate that.

Now, Chief Scoggins and crew, please come on up.

Okay.

Thank you, Chief Scoggins.

Please introduce yourself.

Tom, Greg, are you going to do the intro here?

I was just going to do the usual introduction.

Quick introductions down here.

Chief Scoggins.

Fire Chief.

Good afternoon.

Chris Santos, Director of Finance, Seattle Fire.

Good to see you, Chris.

Thank you, Greg.

Keep going.

Greg Doss, Central Staff, again.

And just the highlights that the fire department is a $224 million agency.

There's about 1,000 firefighters.

And their biggest issue last year was Health One.

Council Member Bagshaw, as you know, adding it to the budget.

And they have expanded that, as you heard about in the first presentation.

They're going to tell you a little bit more.

Great.

Welcome, and thank you.

Well, good afternoon, and we know we're the last presentation of the day, but we're going to try to be very thorough and answer all those questions.

I talked about HealthONE, which is a bigger part of the mobile integrated health program, and I can answer any additional questions, but just to give you the The brief recap, our goal is to address those who need to go someplace other than an emergency room.

What we know is we go on between 16 and 20 heroin overdoses every week.

What we know is we respond to approximately 200 homeless responses each week, and that could be a tent fire, that could be a medical call, that could be someone on the street.

We know this because this is what the information tells us.

We also know that many These responses do not need to be in an emergency room.

So I'm really excited about the work John Ehrenfeld, our low acuity manager, has been doing in working with our partners around the county and visiting different departments around the nation to try to figure out best practices.

And over the course of the next year as we roll out this HealthONE pilot, we're going to be tracking each and every response, the outcomes of these responses, building the relationships and partnerships with the other service delivery partners in the community so we can come back to you hopefully quarterly and give you an update on how the program is going.

Are there any additional questions on HealthONE?

I think we're all so happy with this moving forward that applause only begin to express how pleased we are.

All right.

So our 2020 strategic priorities for us.

Wait, there is a question.

I should have looked to my left first.

Answer member Mosqueda.

That's okay.

We're really excited about this effort.

The question that I have is about data collection on HealthONE.

I know that when I did the ride-along, folks tried to collect as much data as they could, but with the all-home HMIS program, is this data going to be integrated, or how are we hoping to marry the data that you see on the street with the HealthONE efforts and our process to evaluate whether or not we're doing a good job at serving those folks who don't have a home?

Well, I'd like to be able to tell you that I know it's going to be integrated with all home, I think you mentioned.

Right now, we're trying to integrate all of our data internally.

John's been working hard on creating a data warehouse for us internally so we can have all of our data in one place.

And one of the other pieces before we integrate with outside partners is integrating with the hospitals in the community.

So we've been working hard to build a system where the minute our firefighters respond to a person on the street, deliver that patient to the hospital, and then get the outcome so we can actually do an informed QI process on how our service is being delivered, That is probably going to come before integrating with the external partners.

But it is something that's on our radar that we're trying to do.

But we're really trying to understand, are our assessments okay?

Are the 911 emergency medical dispatching protocols okay?

All those things that are determined by a patient's outcome, those are really the top of our list right now.

But, John, that is on his radar.

Great.

And I'd just like to dive into that and appreciate our crisis connections with Allie Franklin, and we have money in the budget for her for 2020 to continue in that one call, I think, is what their program is going to be.

It's going to be called, but between you and that entity, data is coming galore.

And my understanding is that that's part of what Allie will be doing for us is when you take, when you identify an individual, One call goes to her 211 essentially crisis line.

They identify a place where you can take the individual or the person has a case manager, get them connected.

So, that will happen and then within the next 24 hours, a follow up.

So, we have that warm and off for the person.

So, that we are solving the problem holistically and again system wide, not just having you have one set of data, the police having another.

all home having another, and then Allie's group having another.

But using that, again, a system solution, save you time, save your people frustration, but also save the system money.

So, and with better outcomes, of course.

All right, thank you.

So moving on to our 2020 strategic priorities.

For us, it all starts with service delivery and response.

Our mission is to protect property and save lives.

And we know a lot of this is based on time.

How quick we can get to an EMS call, how quick we can get to an ALS call, and how quick we can get to a fire call.

But it all starts with how quick we can get those calls processed and dispatched out.

The National Fire Protection Association provides the fire service standards in each of these areas.

NFPA 1221 is the focus on our call processing and dispatch times that we're tracking and monitoring, and NFPA 1221 is our response times.

There's multiple types of response times, the five minutes for an EMS call, eight minutes for an ALS call, in eight minutes to have approximately 17 firefighters on scene ready to attack a fire.

And all this comes from very important information.

A fire starts to grow rapidly after eight minutes, after eight minutes on an ALS call, you start to lose brain function, and all these different types of things starts to happen.

So that's always going to be top of mind, and that's our core mission in the organization.

protecting our workers and workplaces, employee health and wellness.

As some of you may know, we have been engaged with the Fred Hutch for over the last year in doing a cancer study in the Seattle Fire Department.

And the Fred Hutch has been a great partner, specifically Parveen, Dr. Parveen Bhati.

We are now in the final stages of researching cancer in the Seattle Fire Department for every member who's working in the organization dating back to 1973. And as you can imagine, many may have passed away along the way, and they have gotten all the releases, they're checking all the national cancer registries, the individual state cancer registries, and we hope to have a final report in June 2020. And once we get this information, we'll be able to look at this and hopefully make some more informed decisions on how we do business out there in the field, the treatment that our firefighters are getting, and answer a number of very important questions related to cancer and the fire service.

We know this hits the fire service really hard.

Just last weekend, many of us in the organization attended the National Fallen Firefighters Memorial in Colorado Springs that's put on by the International Association of Firefighters, and it was well represented by members of Local 27. We laid one member to rest there and put the name on the wall, Firefighter Marvin Larry, and he passed away of cancer.

We know how this hits the fire service, so we're still trying to learn more about it, and this is very important for us.

The next priority is continuing our commitment to- I'm sorry, Council Member Mesquita has a question.

Oh, I'm sorry.

Thank you.

I'm not sorry you have a question.

I'm sorry to interrupt you.

I'm sorry.

I do have a question.

Yeah, it's a question.

More so just to acknowledge how long you have been trying to raise the awareness of the disparate health impacts on firefighters due to the toxins and substances that your members are exposed to and Recognizing that this is also something that involves labor and industries and workers comp Trying to make sure that we are getting accurate payment to your members after they've been exposed to these toxins and not have to both Fight cancer and fight the system to get the payments that are due to them have is there anything else that the city can do specific to the advocacy that you are Many of your folks have been asking for at the state level as well.

Is that still an ongoing conversation about getting recognition for some of the ailments and diseases that your members acquire because of their exposure to the types of toxins?

If so, we'd also love to know that at this point too as we're creating our 2020 legislative agenda.

Thank you for that.

In the future we may be bringing something forward, but today there isn't.

And thank you for pointing out that the products of combustion are very toxic.

And if you think about the things that are in your homes, the synthetics and all of those things, when they burn and they off gas and they get on all of our turnout gear, and all of our gloves and all these things, we take these back to the station.

The city has been great in providing us extractors so we can wash them, but often that next call comes immediately.

Internally, we're working on improving our processes to try to improve our own health and safety, but after we get the cancer report back, we may be coming back with additional information.

Thank you.

The next strategic priority is continuing our commitment to race and social justice.

I'll talk about one area in this only because it's top of mind.

Today, we completed our final session of 2019. We brought in Dr. Caprice Hollins to train all of our sworn and non-sworn managers.

We committed each of our sworn and non-sworn managers to 12 hours of training by Dr. Hollins over four sessions throughout the course of 2019. And we just finished the fourth session just today.

The first section focused on implicit and explicit bias.

The next section focused on, if I can read my writing here.

Let's see here.

I apologize for that.

The next section focused on privilege, and today focused on microaggressions.

Our goal was simple.

We want to get our managers on board and the right mindset, and in 2020, we're going to build out a train-the-trainer model with our managers and other individuals in the organization so they can go out to the organization and have these conversations with the rank and file.

We believe that if our managers are on board and the right mindset, then we can really move the needle here.

And that's really important for us.

The next strategic priority is implement new infrastructure and technology.

We've been working hard to move technology in a number of areas.

And in 2020, we hope to implement an automated staffing system.

And as you can imagine today, when we have big events that happen, we still have a person in the office making many phone calls.

One of the big fires most recently was the four alarm lumberyard fire.

when we had to do a really massive recall, as we had two-thirds of the department on the fire, we still needed to staff the fire stations.

We had individuals in a station, and we made over 200 phone calls that night, and all that takes time to staff the department.

With an automated staffing system, we would be able to basically program it, and the system would launch, and be able to start the calls to get our stations backfilled.

And that's just one of the things.

Even on timesheets for overtime, right now it's a paper process that has to go through multiple signatures, and sometimes it takes an extremely long time, and sometimes it interrupts the payment for the employee of getting paid on time because of the process.

We have a contract.

We have rules in the contract.

When the member works, the member should get paid.

This is really going to help with that also.

The next one is our emergency radio system infrastructure.

I represent the city's vote on the PCERN project, Puget Sound Emergency Radio Network.

And if you can imagine around the county today, there are 27 radio towers that support the police officers and firefighters and other end users around the county.

This $281 million is going to be standing up 60 towers throughout the county, and it's going to bring us all into the same system and infrastructure and provide new dispatch radios, new mobile and portable radios for the end users.

So this is a really significant project that's moving forward.

This year, we were able to actually install the dispatch consoles in most, if not all, of the dispatch centers in King County.

The training has already taken place for the dispatch centers, so that's a big step in the project.

Most of the towers, probably about 85%, are under construction or completed.

There's still some hurdles along the way with some of the final leases and infrastructure along the way, but in 2020, is going to be very important for the project as we finalize the selection of the mobile and portable radios and develop the final rollout plan for 2021 and 2022. As you can imagine, the interlocal agreements, the service level agreements have all been very complicated along the way.

But it's an exciting project, and I really hope it improves our radio coverage throughout not just Seattle, but King County.

Before I look down again, are there any questions?

Go ahead, please.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

On the RSGI training, do you have a sense of how much of our folks have already gone through the training already?

How big is the scope of the need?

Of our managers, our sworn and non-sworn?

Well, we had four different sessions.

So our goal was to get each one of them 12 hours each.

And probably 95% of our managers went through all four sessions.

And I have to give the credit to my assistant chief of operations who really stayed on this project and made sure people showed up for the training.

And Dr. Caprice Hollins is an excellent educator.

She was able to, break down walls on some very difficult topics.

And I really appreciate her coming in, and we're going to continue to work with her because we learned a lot.

The next area of focus is our citations legislation, and thank you to the Council for passing that on this past Monday.

We think that's a big step for us.

One of the biggest issues why we moved this forward was because We're averaging about over 5,000 nuisance alarms.

And that's a really large number that we can address.

We think the citation legislation is going to give us the ability to address this issue through a citation to the property owner to encourage them a little bit more to get those systems back into alignment so they're very safe.

And that's very important.

We have about 27,000 systems.

in the city, and that's very important.

When we brought this forward to the committee, we showed Councilmember Gonzalez a video of a high-rise fire that happened just last month, and the interview was the important part of this whole conversation.

The resident said, well, our alarm goes off here about three times a week, so I didn't think it was a big deal.

except this, there was a fire on the 16th floor.

Luckily, it was broad daylight, late in the afternoon, as opposed to 2 o'clock in the morning on the 7th floor.

It creates a whole different scenario.

So that's one of the reasons why we thought that was important to move that forward.

And it's not a department-wide citation authority, only in our Fire Prevention Bureau, and only certain inspectors are gonna have the ability to write those citations.

our 2018 Seattle Fire Code.

In 2020, we're going to start the process of moving the 2018 Fire Code forward.

Generally, our Fire Code runs approximately three years behind.

In 2018, we adopted the 2015 Fire Code, and there's a lot of work that has to go in to get that international Fire Code in the place that it's in alignment with Seattle.

So our fire prevention team has been working very hard at that.

So in 2020, we think Q2 will have it before you, hopefully for approval.

And that's a really big undertaking for our Fire Prevention Bureau.

Our radio transcription project.

We're always trying to find ways to get better in the Seattle Fire Department on how we do business.

After major events or significant fires and other things, we have what's called a post-incident analysis process.

And that's a very time-consuming process in understanding all the steps that it actually takes to bring a successful outcome to an incident.

What happens after that process, it brings forward our standard operating guidelines on how we move and change practices in the Seattle Fire Department.

Over the last four years, we've developed 18 standard operating guidelines that gives all of our firefighters kind of a playbook on how they do business out in the field.

As we do our post-incident analysis, it may cause course corrections along the way.

What we're doing right now is we're trying to take all of the voice recordings of all of these incidents, put them into a data system so we can triage them more easily and our PIAs won't take as much time.

And just on one second alarm fire, there's hours and hours of radio traffic.

And for individuals going through it and trying to understand the verbiage and everything that was said is very time consuming.

So we think this is really going to help move us forward in the area of operations.

Emergency medical dispatching is another one of our strategic priorities in May of 2019 we updated our emergency medical dispatching protocols with the company called Cordy and they're out of Copenhagen and this is important because this is the first time this has been done in the last 20 years.

What we have also been working on behind the scenes is feeding them tens of thousands of hours of our dispatch recordings.

And what they're doing is they have programs that are running algorithms that are going to be running behind the scenes that's going to be able to help our dispatchers make hopefully a faster decision on those critical calls such as cardiac arrest.

And so this is almost an artificial intelligence computer.

running behind the 911 call.

It's listening to tone, to verbiage, to voice inflections, to background noise.

It's able to speak multiple languages.

It's able to do many, many things.

So when it hits all of these data points, even before our dispatchers, done with their protocol list that they're going through, the screen may pop up and say, dispatch now.

And we know how important time is. 5, 10, 20 seconds is very important to someone who's going through a cardiac arrest.

Right now, we're working with them.

We're still building it.

It's kind of in the pilot phase, behind the scenes.

And actually, the BBC just did a report on Copenhagen and Seattle Fire that are actually looking at deploying this technology.

And it's exciting to say that we would be the first fire department in the United States to actually deploy technology like this to help calls get dispatched in a faster manner to someone having a cardiac arrest.

And that's very important for us.

And then the last item is our low-acuity program.

We talked about HealthONE, but our low-acuity program has tackled many issues.

You know, we heard about the nurse triage line.

That came under our low-acuity program.

We brought on...

a social worker managing our high utilizers.

That's been very important for us.

We have one social worker, but what we know is when she starts addressing the high utilizers, it reduces their 911 calls by an average of three per quarter.

So we know how important that is.

We also have a vulnerable adult case manager.

For those individuals, when our firefighters go on scene and they see someone living alone, the home may be in disarray, and other things may be happening, they can actually refer that person to a vulnerable adult case manager and create the follow-up process.

So many things fall under our low acuity program, and we're going to continue to look for new and different ways to continue to serve the community.

Our goal is to meet them where they are and try to provide them with what they need.

Any questions there?

No, I'm just over here just smiling because I'm so grateful that we've moved so far this year.

So again, many thanks.

Great, well thanks.

I'll go over and provide a quick summary with regards to the four year budget.

2017, our actual expenditures were at $207 million and increased about $14 million in 2018 to $221 million.

What made up that increase was increases in wages.

Wage increased to 3% throughout our department.

Increased salaries about 3.2 million.

Increase in overtime about 4.4 million.

Part of that also had to do with the, we added a peak time aid unit in 2018 and also restored the battalion two chief position serving the downtown core.

In addition, healthcare costs grew by about $3 million, and then other associated benefits with wages like FICA and pension grew about $1 million.

Workers' comp also grew by $700,000.

And we had some increases in some internal service functions like Seattle IT by approximately $1 million.

It may appear as if in 2019, as if we're experiencing a reduction or a decrement, but we're sustaining services.

2019 and 2020 currently do not represent wage increases because Local 27 and Local 2898, the firefighters and fire chiefs unions are still negotiating their terms.

And then after that will take place, then we will true up the budget.

And then just to go over some of the position changes over the last couple of years, they've been administrative.

We've added some positions in the fire prevention division to help support inspection services.

In addition, we added a payroll staff to respond to the growing increases in payroll processing time, as well as a number of items that we're processing.

And so that covers kind of a quick overview, unless you had any questions on those.

I think Council Member Herbold has a question.

Thank you.

So in last year's budget, the mayor proposed and the council adopted $2.3 million for an additional firefighter recruit class for both 2019 and 2020. And we know that SFDs had a high number of vacancies due to an aging workforce.

And so I'm just wondering whether or not what we anticipated the need to be for 2020 for that class is still based on sort of real-time knowledge about separations that are planned for 2020, whether or not that's sufficient.

Absolutely.

Thank you for the question.

I think we asked for three classes, but we're happy with what we got.

But it's important to note, 25% of the Seattle Fire Department is 53 years of age and have enough service years to retire.

So that's 25%.

When we drop down to 50 years of age, that hits about 38% of the department.

So we're gonna continue to see the number of retirements that we're seeing right now.

We have approximately 55 vacancies right now.

We hired a class of 30 in February of this year.

We have a class going right now that'll wrap up just before Thanksgiving.

And in 2020, our goal is to have two additional recruit classes, one in February and one in August.

Again, it's very important to note.

And I should also say, October 1st, We're actually opening up our application process.

So that'll be open from October 1st to November 26, getting ready for the next round of testing.

So we have a lot of work going into that also, but we expect the need to be there.

So if you had the extra class.

you would have the vacancies to fill those folks.

Oh, absolutely.

I mean, it means one of two things.

If we don't have the extra class, the firefighters are just working around the clock because we have a constant seated position each day of 215 firefighters on duty.

and we still fill those 215 firefighters with overtime when we don't have the bodies.

The bodies slows the wheel down on the firefighters working so much.

The other stress on the system is the number of events that we have in the city each and every year.

I think last year, we were over 700 events, and we staffed many of those events with the operations personnel.

So there is definitely a need, yes.

Would you just talk a little bit about when you recruit, are you getting the recruits you want with the experience that you need?

When we recruited in 2018 was our last exam.

We received approximately 4,500 applications.

Maybe about 3,000 showed up.

About 2,000 or so made it to the interviews, and then we had a list from that.

So they come with a wide variety of experiences along the way, and the screening process continues after that.

But we seem to get what we need.

The fire department...

is a great place to be.

And many people out there know that and understand that.

And Seattle is one of those nationally recognized departments that we get people from all around the country applying for.

So it seems to be very competitive.

But along the way, over the next couple of months, we have approximately 20 workshops scheduled in all areas of the community.

We'll be holding, talking about the exam process.

We have a couple of expos that are gonna be happening at our joint training facility.

And the King County Fire Chiefs, we're partnering with them.

We set up a diversity and recruitment committee, and over the last two years, we have been holding Women in Fire and EMS Workshops, and October 26th and 27th, we're gonna be hosting it at our training center, Women in Fire and EMS, and this is where women from not just Seattle, but from all over King County who are already firefighters are coming to mentor young women and show them what it's like to pursue this career of becoming a firefighter.

Great, good to know.

I'd like to talk to you more about that later.

Because you're looking for work?

Yeah, absolutely.

I'm going on my third career.

Very competitive.

So, anything else from any of my colleagues?

Council Member Muscatia.

Council Member O'Brien, thank you for being with us today.

I've got an obstacle course set up up here.

So I'm wondering about the potential cost savings or efficiencies with having the provider one or I should say the medic one, health one, health one system.

I only bring that up because I do not want to indicate that there's any desire to reduce the budget for Seattle Fire Department.

We know that you've been doing more with less over the years, like many of our public servants who work in the health arena.

So just noting that that's not the intent here, but to try to figure out if there's cost savings with health one, are we able to assume in future budgets, or is it reflected here?

any ability to shift to where people had previously been spending a lot of time and resources bringing out their trucks and now we're able to use medic or health one.

Do we assume that there's any way to shift funds around to better fulfill other areas of the budget and is that reflected in this proposal that we see?

It's not reflected in this proposal, but hopefully I can paint this picture correctly.

The way our stations are laid out with our 33 fire stations and our 11 ladder trucks, geographically, a lot of that's based on the fire load of the community.

So it's not just EMS, which is what HealthONE is going to address.

As we continue to build out the community, we continue to build out the fire load.

And a lot of it is really based on that.

What HealthONE may do, it may stop us in the future from coming back and asking you for an additional resource.

As we have deployed our low acuity manager and our different lower acuity programs, what we're doing is we're seeing a plateauing of our responses because there's a lot of work going into plateauing them.

and not continuing the climb that we were on for the last several years.

So I think the work is actually paying off.

Even in our Fire Prevention Bureau, several years ago, you funded high-rise inspectors so we can get inside of those buildings.

They're having an impact on actually helping plateau our call load to stop us from coming back.

So in a sense, there's a cost savings.

And Ben may not agree with how I say that, but we think We're serving the community better.

Okay.

Excellent.

Thank you.

Any other questions for the Chief?

All right.

Well, thank you so much for holding in all afternoon with us.

Greg, thank you.

Allison, obviously.

Chris, thank you very much.

Tom, appreciate that.

And I do want to acknowledge that Council Member Juarez, Council Member Mosqueda, Council Member O'Brien, Council President Harreld, Council Member Gonzalez, Councilmember Herbold and Councilmember Pacheco, thanks to all of you.

Eight of us have been here all day long.

Long day.

Thank you.

And I'm about ready to go into public comment.

Absolutely.

Is there somebody that is still here that wants to talk to us?

Greg Doss, do you want to do a public comment?

He's like, no.

Hey, Cody.

Cody, we need a public comment here.

All right.

Thank you very much.

We are adjourned for today.

I will see you Monday at full council, but our next meeting of this committee will be Wednesday, and we have added OSC at the end of the day.

Thank you very much.

Meeting's adjourned.