Select Budget Committee Session II 8/5/20

Good afternoon, everyone.

The Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee will come back to order.

We were previously in recess.

It is 2.02 p.m.

and the date is August 5th, 2020. Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Councilmember Sawant?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Gonzalez?

Here.

Councilmember Herbold?

Here.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Lewis.

Present.

Council Member Morales.

Chair Mosqueda.

Here.

Seven present.

we're going to have a full afternoon as well.

For the record, we still have a handful of amendments that we are considering, starting off with, I believe, amendment 54A, which is And I would like to go ahead and get into the rest of these amendments.

I did have some clarification that I'd like to add.

I believe I can do it at the end of this package regarding Amendment A that was discussed last Friday.

want to give some folks accurate information about what the mayor had proposed doing with the Revenue Stabilization Fund and the Emergency Fund because there was use of those dollars that is inconsistent with the purpose of that fund.

And Amendment A was our attempt to make sure that we rectified that and clarified in a transparent way for the public where dollars were actually coming from and what they should be used for.

I'll make some comments about that at the end.

But let's go ahead and move into the remaining amendments for individual consideration.

And Allie, I see you are back with us.

Hope you enjoyed your lunch.

And thanks, colleagues, for the break.

Council Member Swat, this is your amendment.

We'll have Allie describe it for us, and then I'll turn to you to move it.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Good afternoon, council members.

for the record I'm still Ali Panucci with your council central staff.

I will just briefly describe both amendments 54a and 54b and then turn it to council member Sawant who is the sponsor of both amendments.

I'll just note before I describe each that they are mutually exclusive options and as council member Sawant noted in her comments previously.

If either option is amended there may be technical changes that need to be made on Monday morning because some of the spending proposed in I believe amendment 54a is the same spending that's been proposed in other amendments so we would correct that through a technical correction if either option is adopted today.

Amendment 54A would cut $54 million from the Seattle Police Department budget and adds $34.7 million to the Office of Housing, $3 million to the Legislative Department, $15.5 million to the Human Services Department, and $700,000 to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections.

I would like to move the amendment.

I move to adopt amendment number 54A as presented on the agenda.

This is the amendment to defund the police by 50% now or by $85 million.

And as Ali said, this would fund $3 million for the community research into alternatives to repressive policing, $15.5 million for investments in restorative justice and other youth programming, $700,000 for renters rights legal support and organizing, and $34 million for affordable councilmember Sawant.

Councilmember Sawant, is there a second?

Councilmember Sawant, I will offer you a second for the purposes of discussion.

Please go ahead if you'd like to describe this in detail.

Thank you.

As I have said just now, and as I have mentioned before, this is the amendment to defund the police by 50% starting right now, which means defunding the remaining five months of the budget that SPD has available to us, which is $170 million, so defunding it by 50%.

meaning defunding it by $85 million, and using those $85 million to fund various community needs, as I just read out, including all the programs that are being suggested in detail by community organizations, and also to provide a small amount of those funds for much-needed renter organizing and legal defense, especially eviction defense.

And because we know there will be a tsunami of evictions, and a big chunk of that, which is $34.7 million for affordable housing, which we know is extremely important to fight racist gentrification.

And as I said, when taken alongside the $16.3 million that the mayor has promised to remove from the police department and the transfer of the 911 call center, all of this, including this, with this budget amendment would defund the police.

I would say just to clarify the math that was presented before the break, by comparison, the democratic establishment has proposed a $2 million reduction to the police budget, which I'm sorry, simply cannot equal to 41% of the 409 $2.9 million of the full 2020 the police force based on the number of officers rather than based on the dollars in the budget.

would reduce the 1,400 officers in the police force by 100 officers, which I should add, among these 100 officers that are proposed to be cut, actually, the 30 officers among those 100 that are proposed to be cut are really a hope and prayer kind of thing, because it has been said by council members that they're hoping that the 30 officers would quit, and then that would come up to 100 officers.

But even assuming that all 30 of them quit, which I don't believe because one of the problems has been that these police positions are extremely lucrative, especially even for those repeat offender police officers, they continue making enormous amounts of overtime.

And so I don't see what the incentive is for them to quit.

But even assuming all of that, all of the prayers come true and 100 officers, are removed from the 1,400 strong police force.

At best, that comes to 7% of the police force, which is again, neither 50% nor 41%.

So no matter what measure you use to look at the budget amendments, council members cannot honestly expect the movement to believe that that is defunding by 50%.

Real defunding is important because of the harm done in our communities by repressive policing.

We need to end the police violence towards our communities of color.

We need to end police killings.

There have been 28 police killings of people like Charlita Lyles since the city signed the consent decree and began the so-called process of reform.

28 people killed by the police and not one police officer has been held accountable.

not a single one.

We need to end the police violence and repression of protests and progressive movement and we need to end mass incarceration.

With 2.3 million people behind bars, the United States imprisons more people than any other country.

And Black Americans make up an unconscionable 40% of the incarcerated population, despite representing only 13% of American residents.

Under this mass incarceration system, a stunning 77 million people, almost one out of four Americans, end up having a criminal record.

This amendment is also important because it supports community programs and building affordable housing.

And study after study shows that reducing poverty and inequality are statistically the things that have the greatest impact on reducing crime and improving public safety.

Increased policing or the status quo of policing, on the other hand, has been shown to have little to no impact on reducing crime and in fact causes a lot of harm.

I want to be clear that defunding the SPD should be focused on ending police repression and violence, ending the over-policing of protest, ending harassment of young people of color, ending the harassment of homeless people, poor people, and working-class people, ending the violence.

The council will not be able to achieve that through inter-fund loans and taking money from urgently needed COVID relief.

And it doesn't matter whether you call it It is coming out of other things that could be funded out of the community without defunding the police.

This can only be achieved in actual.

justice can only be achieved by defunding the SPD by 50% now, and not at some indistinct point in the future.

That's what the community has been clearly and unequivocally calling for, and that is precisely what this amendment does.

If our movement succeeds in winning the council, the demand to defund the police, that would not be the end of the struggle, of course, but it would be a huge step.

In answer to some of the reasons Councilmembers have given for why they claim that defunding by 50% or this amendment is not possible right now, Councilmembers have said that there isn't enough money left in the budget for the police, but in reality, there's $170 million left in the budget.

Councilmembers have said that the city charter would need to be changed.

All that the city charter says about this matter is, quote, there shall be maintained adequate police protection in each district of the city, end quote.

So let's be clear that there is no charter amendment required to defund the police.

It is just a political excuse.

Councilmembers have said that defunding the police will take time and that changes must be negotiated with the police officers guild.

As I have said before, my office has discussed with the city attorney's office and other experts, and this is simply a wild exaggeration by a political establishment that is totally entrenched in the idea that the police are sacrosanct, and words don't mean actions.

Actions mean actions.

I spoke to a unionized bus driver, as I said, over the weekend who was laid off due to budget cuts and was given a 25 days notice.

Why do the police require three months notice?

As you yourselves have said on Monday, we are all governed by the same state laws.

In reality, it should be the reverse because bus drivers are essential workers who support our community and have put their lives on the line, literally, during the pandemic.

It is absolutely true that the city must negotiate the effects of these budget changes, but the city council has every authority to change the budget now and there is no legal requirement that those negotiations be protracted.

And as I've said before, when the establishment, when the political establishment wants to get something done, it moves at lightning speed.

In 2013, the Democratic establishment of the state government passed an $8.7 billion tax handout to Boeing.

They called a special legislative session, introduced the legislation, debated, voted, and signed the bill into law in just seven days.

I want to be very clear.

The mayor and the council at the time repealed the Amazon tax and did it all including informing the public in the space of 48 hours.

As I said, just last month, July 13th to be precise, King County Metro handed out 200 layoff notices to bus drivers.

We have to be clear that it is entirely possible to do this right now, and it's a matter of political will whether the council will decide to follow through on the promises or decide to follow through or not on the promises that they have made.

This amendment is in line with the demands of the community, and the amendment does exactly what the community has I would urge that the council vote for this amendment.

that when we say defund, we mean action.

Well, let's show the action.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Any additional comments or questions?

Seeing none, thank you very much.

Seeing no additional comments or questions, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Amendment 54A?

Peterson?

No.

Salant?

Yes.

Strauss?

No.

Gonzales?

Same.

Herbold?

No.

Juarez?

Council Member Juarez?

Sorry, no.

Lewis?

No.

Morales?

No.

Chair Mosqueda?

No.

One in favor, seven opposed, one abstained.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion does not carry and the amendment is not adopted.

Council Member Swanton, you do have another amendment in the similar vein.

Do you want to move amendment 54B?

Thank you.

I move to adopt amendment number 54B as presented on the agenda.

This is the budget amendment that would defund the police by 50% starting on November 1st.

And moved.

Is there a second?

Going once.

Going twice.

There is no second on that motion.

Council Member Swann, let's move to your next amendment.

Amendment 45.

Amendment 45 sponsored by Council Member Swann would add $80,000 to the Office of Sustainability and the Environment for the Green New Deal Oversight Board and would reduce the police department's budget by $80,000 and opposes a proviso.

Member Swann, did you want to move this amendment?

I move to adopt amendment number 45 as presented on the agenda, which would restore the funding that the mayor cut from the green new deal oversight board, and it would fund the board by reducing the SPD's patrol operations budget by a mere $80,000, which accounts for two hundreds of 1% of the police budget.

So funding it would have no practical impact on the police budget, but it would allow the GND oversight board to actually be established, which would make a big impact on the momentum for that important work.

Thank you very much.

Is there a, it's been moved.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Sawant, would you like to speak to this amendment?

Thank you.

As I said, this amendment would fund the Green New Deal Oversight Board because, unfortunately, the mayor has completely held up the process.

And as I said earlier also, this is a mere $80,000 from the Seattle Police Department's patrol operations budget, which, as I said, accounts for 200 to 1% of the police budget.

And so mathematically speaking, it would have no practical impact on the police budget, but those $80,000 would have a positive effect that is important for the Green New Deal Oversight Board to be established.

The council passed the ordinance creating the Green New Deal Oversight Board last fall after grassroots organizing from God Green, the Sunrise Movement, Sierra Club, indigenous organizers, and many other climate activists.

And as I said, since then, Mayor Durkin has done everything in our power to prevent it from being created.

The intention of the Green New Deal Oversight Board is to be a body to fight for the city to do real investments into the Green New Deal.

It will include representatives from the environmental activist community, from the labor movement, from communities directly impacted by climate change, local tribes, and subject matter experts, and will have a mandate to make recommendations on the city's budget.

The mayor has refused to advertise for open positions on the green new deal oversight board, refused to appoint people until a staff person to focus on it can be hired, and then refused to hire that person on top of that, including in our budget cuts.

So this is just unacceptable stalling of necessary work that needs to be done by the city council.

And to restore the funding is a very small amount of money and would remove any excuse on the mayor for appointing people and allowing the board to begin its work.

I would urge councilmembers to vote yes.

I have a question for councilmember Sawant.

My question was whether or not we had included this in the jumpstart investments for the spend plan and I believe councilmember Sawant's answer was yes, we did beginning in 2022, this would apply funding sooner.

Can I get clarification on that if that is a summary that is

2022, which is correct.

The jumpstart spending plan includes investments in the green new deal strategies beginning in 2022. And the jumpstart plan in general, um, provides funding to support admin cost to implement and administer that spending.

I will just add to what I commented last week that in 2021, the council will be able to appropriate funds to administer and implement the programs funded by the jumpstart tax.

And the council could choose to include, to use some of the administrative monies in 2021 to continue support of this position.

And also just note that this position was added and funded through a council ad during last year's budget process.

And this amendment would restore that funding for the remainder of the year.

Thank you very much.

Are there additional questions or comments on amendment number 45?

Hearing none, and Council Member Swann, I'm not sure if you had anything else to add.

Okay, thank you.

I'm hearing no additional comments.

Will the clerk please call the roll on amendment number 45?

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Abstain.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Thank you.

Moraes?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Eight in favor, one abstention.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

One more here.

Amendment number 48. Allie, we'll have you tell us what this is about.

Sorry, I forgot to unmute.

Amendment 48 is sponsored by Councilmember Sawant, who is joined by Councilmembers Juarez and Mosqueda.

This amendment, as presented on the budget, is just the description of what the intent of the amendment is.

And I believe two amendments were distributed to Councilmembers this morning to fully I'm going to move to amend the proposed change amendments 48A and amendment 55. Would you like me to describe those amendments now?

Okay, I couldn't hear all of what you had to say, but yes, let's go ahead and have you move it so it's official and then we'll have Allie describe it so folks can orient themselves as to which amendment we should be looking at.

Okay, so I am withdrawing Amendment 48 and moving to adopt Amendment 48A, which my staff circulated to you all prior to this meeting.

Just quickly by way of explanation, my office has bifurcated Amendment 48 into two parts, Amendment 48A, which relates to limiting the exorbitant SPD executive pay, and Amendment 55, which imposes a requirement that SPD report to the council monthly $150,000 a year for SPD employees besides the executives.

After the City Council discusses and votes on amendment 48A, I will ask the chair to allow us to walk on amendment 55 which is co-sponsored by Councilmember Peterson.

The reason I'm asking that we do it consecutively is that the two amendments are both related to SPD pay issues and I would request that to be taken up immediately after 48A.

Thank you.

So Amendment 48A, sponsored by Council Member Sawant, would impose a proviso on a portion of the existing budget for the Seattle Police Department.

This proviso would prohibit spending on personnel costs for command staff positions beginning from September 2nd, 2020 through December 31st, 2020, unless payment for employees in command staff positions is reduced.

as part of the pay period beginning September 2nd, which would be effectuated, I think, believe through an amendment to the pay band ordinance.

I will just note that the last piece of the effect box for this amendment describes those staff positions as non-exempt and they are in fact exempt positions.

So I'll just correct that for the record and I'll turn it over to the sponsor.

Okay, before you do that, Council Member Sawant, you have moved it, and I will second it so it's officially in front of us.

It has been described.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'll turn it back over to you, Council Member Sawant, to help us understand a little bit more about 48A.

Thank you.

There are 13 executives in the police department's command structure, making between around $200,000 and $300,000.

Sorry, Council Member Sawant, could you speak a little louder or turn up your volume if you can?

Sorry.

Is this better?

That's better, yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

There are 13 executives in the police department's command structure making between around $200,000 and $300,000 a year.

This is a classic example of the bloated Seattle police budget.

While we will have to wait for the 2021 budget discussions in the fall to deal with this job heaviness, in a long term basis, we can take steps right now to save a few hundred thousand dollars to invest in black and brown community needs as has been called for by the movement.

I wanted to thank the excellent work that Carina Bull and others on central staff have done in the last two days, and also staff members from my office.

We learned that we can't, as a matter of law, reduce the executive paychecks to $150,000 a year.

Our office and our people's budget movement would certainly like to do that.

There is no excuse with tens of thousands of Seattleites out of work at risk of eviction and destitution for these executives in the police department.

and in general executives do not be asked to sacrifice a little, but we learned that we can't simply reduce their pay to $150,000 a year.

What we can do, however, is reduce their pay for the remainder of the year to the lowest rung in their respective pay bands, and that's what this amendment would do.

What this means is for an SPD executive making around $220,000 a year, that is their gross pay for 2020 would be reduced slightly to around $180,000.

While central staff is still crunching the numbers on how many dollars this amendment would free up exactly for urgent social and community needs, our office believes the figure would be something around a half a million dollars.

Again, this is a modest sacrifice, I believe, to ask of the most highly paid police executives to make right now.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Are there additional comments or questions?

We do have Karina Bull with us.

Hi, Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Yes, I just wanted to thank Council Member Sawant for working with our office.

And then as we discussed this and did our research for breaking the amendment into two amendments, I will be supporting 55, which is the other amendment that we'll be discussing later.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Peterson.

Um, just it would be very helpful.

I think if there's anything else that you have to add, Karina, um, to the summary that Allie provided, and maybe a quick reminder of the difference between.

48A and 55. So.

Hi, everyone.

This is Karina Bull on Council Central staff.

The 48A amendment is solely related to reducing the pay of the 13 command staff positions.

And as Councilmember Sawant noted, the numbers would still need to be calculated to know exactly how much those savings would be.

But this proviso would require reducing the salary of each of those command staff employees for September through the end of December to the lowest amount on the pay zone band.

And to give an example of that, the police chief, the band for that position is approximately $171,000.

$172,000 a year to $275,000 a year.

And actually, I'm looking at my notes, I think she actually makes more than the top band.

So there would be probably a substantial amount of reductions in the budget should that happen.

And then 55 is different in that it requires monthly reporting on SPD's payments to employees who earn over $150,000 over the course of the year and year to date.

So Allie will present a summary of that amendment next.

Okay, are there any additional comments?

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Pedersen, did you have anything else in closing?

Councilmember Swamp, please go ahead.

for the rest of the year to the lowest possible rung in their pay band, which is, as I said, legal, then because they're being paid so much, even though they, each of them, will still have very handsome salaries overall, it will result in substantial gains to the community.

And as I said, my staff members, Jonathan Rosenblum and Ted Verdone, who have spent a little bit of time We are looking at some estimates.

We believe the gains for the community will be somewhere in the range of half a million dollars.

It is not something to be sneezed at.

As far as the community that is so starved of resources is concerned, it will be I think it is very substantial.

My staff are informing me that chief best is paid $294,000 this year alone.

Even after this amendment passes, the executives will still be making more than 99% of working in this city.

And I will also note another fact we found was that these executives are being paid more than 49 governors in the US this year.

Seriously, this is a fact.

Only the governor of California makes more than what these executives are making.

So we're talking about exorbitant salaries, and we're talking about very modest, sorry, it's Cuomo who makes the more.

I thought it was, the California governor.

But my point is that these people are being paid more than 49 governors in the U.S.

And so we're talking about really exorbitant salaries in a department that has caused a lot of harm and violence in the community.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Sawant.

Just a quick question, I believe, for Karina.

With the September 2nd start date, Can you please describe how this affects the need for bargaining?

Well, so all of the employees in the command staff positions are exempt.

So they are not represented, to my knowledge.

My understanding is that captains and lieutenants and officers are represented, but none of these command staff positions are represented.

Right, they're all non-union, yes.

councilmember morales, please go ahead.

I have a question for councilmember Morales.

Sure.

There we go.

We can hear you.

I'll let you know if I can.

OK.

So what I was saying is it seems appropriate during this financial crisis, if laying off positions presents its own set of challenges, I know that reducing salaries is a reasonable alternative.

And I apologize if you already said this, Karina, but could you tell us again how much could be saved if we are able to make a reduction like this for the remainder of this year?

If these command staff positions were reduced to the lowest level on the pay zone ordinance, I have not personally calculated how much that would amount to, but it sounds like Council Member Sawant's office is estimating around a half million dollars would be saved.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, we could hear you well.

Did you have an additional question or follow up on that?

No, I'm fine.

Thank you.

Okay, thank you.

I'm looking for any additional questions.

Council Member Swan, I know you circulated this this morning, so I apologize that I didn't get a chance to ask you questions about this before.

I'm just wondering, even though bargaining's not involved, are we able, do we have the ability to take this unilateral savings cut from Council?

Is that something, Karina, you can comment on as a tool?

Council Member Mosqueda, are you asking whether those kinds of reductions can be made to represented positions in Seattle Police Department or in other non-represented positions in other departments?

Just here in this amendment.

And Council President may have an addition to that.

I saw her hand.

Yeah, I just, I think what the question really is, is Certainly, I think moving forward, when you have sort of a clean slate in terms of new employees, there wouldn't be necessarily an issue.

I guess the question really is, are there any legal concerns with implementing the intent of this proviso when the employee has already agreed, already has a pre-existing agreement on compensation.

So these searching command staff folks, they work there now.

They agreed to take the job based on X.

of dollars, can we, through this proviso, is it, are there any legal issues with unilaterally modifying that agreement between members of the command staff and their appointing authority?

Setting aside, I recognize there's no representation issues, but that's, I think, an implementation question that I have.

understanding that it is likely going to be permissible to reduce these salaries, but for each of these positions, there also could be case-by-case analysis of any legal barriers or legal risk.

Thank you very much.

Council Member Sawant, I saw your hand.

I just wanted to say that yes, it is the answer to the questions that have come up is yes, we can't cut their wages to $150,000 because that would legally be not allowable in the, you know, as we have been informed by the city attorney's office, nor can we reduce them to the city minimum wage because they have to be paid within the pay band per the Seattle Municipal Code.

And we have checked with the law department and we are told that this is totally fine because we are keeping, this amendment would keep all the executives within their pay band.

They're just being lowered within their pay band.

And the appointment is to a position which goes hand in hand with a pay band.

So our understanding is that it would mean it's completely legal.

I mean, I don't expect them to be happy about it, but is it legal?

Yes.

Yeah, and I think that was really that was.

Thank you.

I appreciate that additional information and clarity.

I just want to make sure that that.

That that applies retrospectively, not just prospective.

So in other words, it doesn't have to be like a new employee comes in and now it's the new 150, like can it be shifted in sort of midstream for lack of a better term?

And maybe Council Member Sawant, you can give us a little bit more information about that and if you had an opportunity to get clarity on that issue.

If I can just quickly respond to that.

Yeah, I think I meant to say, but I forgot.

And I think this question that you have raised Council Member Gonzalez does have a clarification, which I meant to bring forward, but I forgot that.

So this is for September through December of 2020. And the wages that are technically have been assigned to each of these executives snap back in 2021. absent any other council action.

If council members want to do this for 2021, we would have to revisit this in the fall budget discussion.

And just to clarify, the reason we can't cut the wages of these executives to $150,000 is because it's now August, and it would mean several of them would have to work for free for the rest of the year.

And that technically would be wage theft, and that would be illegal.

So what we are talking about is trying to do something that is completely legal within the scope of the law, and yet that would result in substantial savings that could be directed towards the community.

Thank you.

Thank you for that clarification.

Are there any additional council members who have questions or comments?

Okay.

Council Member Herbold, I thought I saw your name a minute ago, hand a minute ago.

Please go ahead.

I thought I heard Karina say that, in her description, that the chief does not fall into a pay band.

And if I heard correctly, can you help me understand what the impact of this amendment would have on the chief's salary?

So there is a pay band for the police chief position, and that is $172,000 to $275,000.

So if this proviso were passed, then the Chile police chief's salary would drop to $171,000.

What I said is that the police chief is actually paid outside of the band at this moment.

Got it.

All right.

That's very helpful.

Thank you.

I think with that, that was our timer on this amendment here.

Thank you for the clarification on this.

I appreciate it.

Seeing no additional questions or comments, will the clerk please call the roll on amendment 48A.

Warrez?

No.

Excuse me, Warrez?

No.

Thank you.

Lewis?

No.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Six in favor, three opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Moving on to, I believe, Amendment 55. It was not in my notes, but I know that this was sent around this morning with Amendment 48A that was just described.

So thank you, Councilmember Peterson, for your earlier comments on this.

I see that this is co-sponsored by Councilmember Peterson and Sawant.

Thank you both for working on this.

I'll first turn it to Ali to walk us through it, and then to the co-sponsors for moving it.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Amendment 55, sponsored by Council Members Sawant and Peterson, would prohibit spending on prospective personnel costs for employees who have been paid more than $150,000 as of the effective date of this ordinance and for the remaining paid periods for work performed in 2020, unless the police department submits monthly reports with payment information for the employees to the council and files that report with the city clerk.

The proviso also restricts spending of prospective personnel costs for employees and would not restrict personnel costs that provide payment for hours already worked, which means it is only looking forward and not backwards in terms of impacting people's salaries.

Thank you very much.

I'll turn to the co-sponsors.

Would you like to move this amendment?

Councilmember Sawant, I see you talking, but you're on mute.

Sorry.

I move adoption of Amendment 55, which is the second part of the bifurcated previous Amendment 48. This relates to the pay of non-executive employees in SPD who make more than $150,000 a year.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

It's been moved.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson for seconding it.

I'll turn it over to co-sponsors for additional information.

Councilmember Sawant, would you like to go first?

Thank you.

I wanted to start by thanking Councilmember Peterson and his office for working with us to bring this forward.

Last year, out of about 1,400 SPD sworn officers, a staggering 328 officers, sergeants, lieutenants, and captains, more than one out of every five made over $202,000 a year.

So last year, last year alone.

That is more than, as I said, the governor of every one of the 50 states made last year, because this is, you know, we're talking about $202,000 a year, which is lower than what the executives are, we were talking about earlier.

This is absolutely mind boggling.

I recognize that some of these 2019 SPD paychecks were inflated a bit because of the back pay awards in the collective bargaining agreements.

But even taking that into account, these are still astounding figures.

City attorneys have advised us, as I said, that we cannot cap pay for officers and other employees at 2020, as this is a matter of collective bargaining.

As a rank-and-file union member myself, I recognize that right, and we have no interest in undermining it.

But we can and must as a council at least take steps in this budget discussion to get more transparency over the SPD pay practices so we can fully engage this issue in the 2021 budget deliberations this fall.

So this amendment would require the police department to report monthly to the council beginning in September on all employees who are paid more than $150,000.

Let's keep in mind that this will include the base wage plus overtime, everything.

Through these reports, the council will have an opportunity to learn a lot more about overtime and other paid practices within the department.

It should be accountability 101. With these reports, the council and more importantly, the public can better understand how SPD is paying its employees and what can be done to rein in the bloated SPD budget.

And because it is basic, sensible reporting requirements that will greatly inform our 2021 budget deliberations, I would urge all council members to join Council Member Peterson and me in supporting this summit.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Swant.

Council Member Peterson, would you like to add to that?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I concur with Council Member Sawant on this.

This is about fiscal responsibility.

It's about getting information.

This has been reported numerous times about excessive compensation paid, and there's still some mystery around it.

And so we want to get to the bottom of it so that we can have a department that is functioning in a sustainable fiscal way for the taxpayers.

Thank you.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Additional questions or comments?

I am seeing none and hearing none.

Thank you very much, Council Colleagues.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Amendment 55?

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and Amendment 55 is adopted.

Thank you very much Councilmember Sawant and Peterson for working together on that.

Appreciate the collaboration given last meeting's conversation.

And we have a few more amendments in front of us.

The next two amendments relate to the navigation team.

Allie, would you like to walk us through that?

I have 31 on my list, but are we going to start with 40?

Let's start with 31.

Okay I think yeah I think we're starting with amendment 31. I just want to confirm that council members are seeing the the screen clearly?

Okay I was getting some messages.

Amendment 31 sponsored by council members Herbold, Gonzalez, Morales, Muscater who are joined by council members Lewis, Peterson, So want and Strauss would impose a proviso on $216,000 in the police department budget, restricting expenditures for the navigation team in the police department.

Thank you very much.

Uh, council callings, uh, was there anybody who would like to speak to amendment 31?

Council member Morales, I think you spoke to this last time.

Would you like to speak to it again?

I think we are all pretty well decided this is something that should happen.

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Lewis.

≫ Thank you.

As we were putting the agenda together, we were trying to group things thematically and because there were two amendments related to the nav team, these were grouped together.

It's not a perfect science.

There wasn't a reason why it could not be.

I would like to say a few things about the navigation team.

My office and our people's budget movement have for years been demanding that we stop the sweeps because we know they're inhumane and ineffective.

They just move people from one corner to the next, and they do nothing to increase available shelter space or affordable housing, and instead actually make homeless neighbors feel more desperate, lose their belongings, and less likely to trust social workers.

Mayor Durkin has conducted over 1,000 sweeps and they have not helped.

As I've said before many times, I've never met a homeless neighbor who said I was swept and that helped me find housing or it improved my life in this or that way.

We've spoken to hundreds of people who've been swept and some over 10 times.

Especially in the COVID pandemic, as we know the Centers for Disease Control has advised that cities like Seattle could allow people who are living unsheltered or in encampments to remain where they are, unquote, because as the CDC says, quote, clearing encampments can cause people to disperse throughout the community and break connections with service providers.

This increases the potential for infectious disease spread, unquote.

And it is appalling that despite that guidance from the CDC, the Durkin administration would ignore the science and insist on continuing the inhumane and dangerous sweeps.

And the reality is that when REACH and other homeless outreach workers come to people with real options for housing like tiny house village, I mean, not housing, but shelter like tiny house villages or actual housing, those offers are accepted, which is a totally different conception from the sweeps and the navigation team.

So I will support this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Swan.

Any additional comments or questions?

Okay.

Oh, Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Oh, okay.

I'm sorry.

just that I voted for it.

Proactive, taking yourself off mute.

I appreciate it.

Seeing no additional comments or questions, Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on Amendment 31?

Peterson?

Aye.

DeWatt?

Yes.

Strauss?

Yes.

Gonzales?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much.

Madam Clerk, the motion carries and Amendment 31 is adopted.

Moving on, I believe it's Amendment Number 40.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm going to ask my colleague, Jeff Sims, to walk you through this amendment.

Thank you very much.

Welcome, Jeff.

Thank you.

Jeff Sims, Council of Central Staff.

Amendment 40 cuts a total of $739,000 from the Department of Finance and Administrative Services and redirects $1.4 million in the Human Services Department to defund the navigation team and expand and maintain homeless and outreach engagement services.

Before going into the details on how things have changed, I want to flag for council members that the effect statement was incorrectly updated to say 1.4 million.

It should be 2.9 million.

because it's the effect statements and everything in the amendment language is actually correct.

It is still okay to vote on this today if you so choose, but that is an error.

We'll correct in the record later.

Running through the numbers that are included in this.

I'm sorry, I just I'm going to ask real quick.

Could you scroll to the effect statement just very briefly so we can see that reference?

Thank you, Patty.

Please go ahead, Jeff.

Overall, what is going on?

The changes that have occurred in this amendment primarily were first updating the numbers to reflect current expenditures in the Human Services Department on the navigation team and in the Department of Finance and Administrative Services and determining how much is available then for redirection by discontinuing the funding for the navigation team.

So $739,000 is unspent in FAS at this time.

And then in the Department of Human Services there's $1.4 million that relates to staff salaries.

and that is unexpended to this point.

And then the total appropriation for the year is $762,000 for the contract with Reach to provide outreach services.

If you add all those numbers together, it's $2.9 million, which is why the Proviso imposes a restriction on $2.9 million in funding to be used for outreach and engagement services.

So that's the primary number change.

And then the other major change is the change to the Proviso language.

services.

In addition to that, adding that outreach and engagement services can also include flexible financial assistance and case management.

So think of that as like the diversion services that are offered at our homelessness shelters.

And also housing navigation services.

Otherwise, this amendment is unchanged from its earlier form, such as excluding the Department of Parks and Recreation funding, and also the likelihood that this would result in layoffs in the Human

Let's get this amendment in front of us.

Council, I'm sorry, if you could scroll back up, I don't have the prime sponsor listed on this one.

It's Council Member Morales.

Hi, Council Member Morales.

Please go ahead if you'd like to move this amendment, and then we'll turn it over to you.

Thank you.

I move amendment 40 to Council Bill 119825.

It's been moved, and it's been seconded.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales, would you like to speak to this amendment?

Sure, thank you.

I'm going to try to speak slowly so I don't freeze again.

I do want to thank the co-sponsors, first of all, council members, Herbold, Sawant, Mosqueda.

I think this is really important and complements everything we've been saying about how important it is to move the NAB team out, to just disband it.

This would allow us to give hope to so many of our neighbors who really lost faith in a city that has used public dollars to repeatedly mistreat and push people out of sight.

our unhoused neighbors are frankly out of patience and have lost trust in our city.

And even during discussions with people who are unhoused as recently as yesterday, my staff has heard, you know, we'll believe it when we see it, when we're talking about passing this particular amendment.

So I do want to acknowledge, as Jeff mentioned, that while most of the non-SPOG staff on this team could be moved into other positions at HSD, this amendment could result in the layoff of one person represented by Protech who serves in an admin position.

And we clearly support the need to bargain and support every effort to move this person to another position in the city, if that's at all possible.

That said, this effort comes after years of trying to protect the basic human dignity of our homeless neighbors.

Time and again, our city has demonstrated a willingness to destroy shelter, destroy people's last remaining possessions, and uproot people over and over again.

That we've demonstrated a willingness to break the continuity of services between caseworkers and the people who need them.

And we've demonstrated a willingness to intimidate people into moving with police and backhoes.

But we've demonstrated no willingness to listen to our unhoused neighbors who are calling for change.

Here at the City Council, we've been gaslit, frankly, when questioning questionable behavior and data from the navigation team.

We've been told that we're irrational for trying to examine or fix or even understand the broken approach that our city has taken to engage and shelter unhoused people.

And this just isn't right.

So my goal here and the goal of the community is to replace the navigation team with something that works better for everyone.

That's what we've heard from organizers and advocates.

I want to thank Chloe Gale, who called in earlier, Allison Isinger, all of the folks at DESC, all the folks who are doing the frontline work.

This is really an opportunity to move past what hasn't worked and scale up the things that have by funding community-based, trusted service providers who have done good work and who want to do more of that.

I want to thank my colleagues again who have already signed on to this.

And I'm looking forward to my other colleagues joining us so that we can listen to homeless service providers, organizers, advocates, and our unhoused neighbors and replace the navigation team with something that works better.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I'm reflecting a little on my efforts as a council member over the last four plus years in trying to impact through collaboration the activities of the navigation team.

I received a call this morning from the executive referencing those efforts as if those efforts were a reason to continue in the vein.

that I've been trying in vain.

I don't feel like those efforts have produced results.

We have tried to create a theory of change that we could measure the results of the navigation team by.

And what we've seen is we've seen the use of exemptions and the MDARs to reduce the amount of outreach that people get and whether people get outreach at all.

And I'm just really I have been, I feel, acting in good faith.

One of the things that myself and Councilmember I think it was the end of January was a collaborative effort around the policy for when it is appropriate to do encampment removals.

One of the things that we suggested was a navigation team that helped With residents of encampments identify other places where they can be and not be And not be forced to move whether or not that is moving You know a few feet out of the right-of-way or moving to another location that may be outside not not not not desirable, but perhaps preferable to a location that the city has identified as an obstruction.

Other cities have been using that approach, again, helping residents of outdoor encampments locate less locations that have less interference with the public use of public space.

And we were trying to move the executive towards that approach.

I read in the CS4Crank last week that HSD, to their credit, had developed a policy like that.

I learned through that article that policy was not approved by the as it relates to our unsheltered neighbors for years now.

The other point I want to make is that in the call that I received from the executive this morning, it was suggested that by removing funding for the navigation team, the council would be stopping the executive from doing things like garbage removal.

I'm sorry.

I think that is, again, another use of a fear tactic.

The funding that we are proposing is funding to expand and maintain homeless outreach and engagement, and we know that our outreach partners like REACH have been very active and helpful in promoting SPU's purple bag pilot project, distributing garbage bags to to residents of folks who are living outside, encouraging them to understand that by maintaining the premises, they will then be less likely to be identified as a location for removal.

And it is the Seattle Public Utilities Department that picks those bags up.

It is not the navigation team.

And so I reject that as a fear tactic for just sort of like, oh, if we don't fund the navigation team, then the city is just going to have a do-nothing approach to our homeless neighbors who are living outdoors.

And that is just unacceptable.

And I reject that.

And I know that this council will make sure that we will continue to serve people who are living outdoors in a way that seeks to minimize the harm to themselves as well as to the harm of businesses and people who are housed in the area.

Thank you.

Well said.

Thank you Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Lewis.

Thank you.

I just wanted to add to the point that I made earlier that it's very important to commend the activists who have been on the ground for years, I think going back to 2007, if not earlier.

to fight for the rights of homeless people.

And for years, our movements have demanded that the sweeps be stopped.

And I also appreciate the comments from council members Morales and Herbold that yes, there is indeed a lot of political gaslighting that has gone on on this issue and a lot of threats, threats related to garbage removal and so on and so forth, even though the statistics are really documented that that the sweeps are causing harm.

And I hope council will pass this amendment.

And at the same time, I wanted to say that this will be the first step.

We will have to go even farther because I expect the police to flout and Mayor Durkin to not accept this amendment and we will need to keep fighting.

But I hope that the council will show that we are different than the positions that have been brought forward by the Durkin administration, support this amendment.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Madam Chair, and, you know, I am a little conflicted on this amendment.

You know, I want to echo some of the concerns Councilmember Herbold raised of our efforts last winter to pursue a series of changes that we put forward in a letter, actually with you, Madam Chair, Councilmember Mosqueda.

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I centered a lot of the feedback that has not been manifested into the NAV team from a series of great audits that are all publicly available that the auditor has been doing on the NAV team for years.

One of which we just, in a vote a few minutes ago, accomplished, which is the rightsizing of the personnel on the NAV team by reducing or even eliminating the role of sworn police officers.

And to be clear, I don't know that those audits called for the entire removal of police, but certainly a rightsizing of the staffing of the NAV team relative to what other cities have been doing.

I think that was absolutely essential.

I was happy to co-sponsor that amendment.

It's clear that the presence of sworn officers has considerably undermined the effectiveness of the NAV team, not necessarily blaming those officers and their and their desire to do outreach work, but merely saying that when someone experiencing homelessness who has had terrible past contacts with uniformed officers, even if the uniform is slightly different for the navigation team, sees a sworn officer coming at them, that is going to have an impact on how they're going to engage.

And as we've seen, the navigation team that has not had the kind of impacts in actually getting folks out of the encampments that we would like to see in securing placements.

And, you know, that was on display during a committee meeting we had back in February when we were still meeting in person.

And later in the spring when we had additional conversations about exactly how some of these removals are being conducted.

You know, definitely been engaging very intently on the navigation team.

I'm glad we've removed the sworn officers.

I'm just not there yet in completely getting rid of the human services component of the navigation team.

I don't think that we have made the bold step until we have scaled up the alternative arrangements that I know we could make by formalizing and scaling our partnerships with reach, but I am interested in seeing what a policeless NAV team could be like, and I think that is a material change, and that is something that is different that we have made the bold step I think we do need to gradually that will be more decentralized and that will be more focused on the harm reduction and community-based interventions that indeed used to form a bigger part of our outreach strategy.

But I'm just signaling that I'm conflicted, given that I do want to see if it can make a difference having removed the police from the NAV team, if that will help as a next step.

I'm going to pass it over to councilmember Herbold.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

police officers.

We have all had that anecdotal information confirmed by labor relations.

We were told by labor relations that it is true, that the human services department members will not do this work without police officers on this team.

And so I feel like sort of in a way, just voting to cut the police officers off the team.

And we can't very well say, well, I didn't vote to eliminate the team, the whole navigation team.

I only voted to cut the police officers when we've been told that the other folks who are not police officers will not do this work without without police officers and really to me what that brings home is a question of whether or not HSD are the appropriate individuals to do this work if they're unwilling to do it without police officers with them.

We know.

that REACH will do this work without being accompanied by police officers.

They did this work, they were the outreach component of the NAB team for years until they decided to take themselves off voluntarily because they felt it was both unethical for them to be doing this work accompanied by police, and that approach of doing the work made them less effective as outreach workers.

And I understand, I mean, I appreciate that staff might not want to do this work without police officers.

I'm not trying to make a value judgment on that.

It just makes me think that, you know, I think it is important for us to make sure that we are doing the right thing.

It makes me wonder whether or not they are the right people for this work when we understand that the same body of work can be done by other people who will do it without police officers.

I think it is on us as the city to remove this framework that people are in camp and taking their last belongings.

I understand why people would be maybe scared or defensive of their last belongings.

So I think it is very similar to what you were saying, Councilmember Herbold, and what I've heard from folks is they want to do the case management at the city.

They want to do the mental health counseling.

They want to help get people into housing.

Why are they being put into a situation where they have to be accompanied by an officer because what they're being asked to do creates tension in communities?

So I think that they're, there are a number of reasons why we would want these great employees who are non-sworn officers to be able to provide mental health counseling and case management and housing assistance in other areas of the city.

And I believe what I heard from the summary, and Jeff, do correct me if I'm wrong, is that the proviso in front of us does allow or it's permissive in terms of identifying other spots for some of these employees.

And there is currently only one that we can work together to I think it is on us as a city that we put the wrong framework I think it's important for us to recognize that those who are living on sheltered in our community is part of what I think this discussion is about.

I think it's complimentary to what you're saying.

I hope it's seen as complimentary and identifying other ways in which we should be engaging.

Jeff, did you have anything to add to that?

between 15 and 20 positions.

And there is currently a hiring freeze.

So even though there are other vacancies that may or may not be compatible to their current positions, I can't speak to that because I don't have that level of detail on the Human Services Department vacancies.

But there is a hiring freeze across the entire city.

And so the likelihood is that even if there was an appropriate a vacancy right now that you would not be possible to move that person into it, given our broader budget constraints.

That could be a decision that the executive gave a waiver to or took a different course of action, but I don't have a reason to believe that there could be some implication of layoffs.

Again, there's 15 people to 20 people that are on this team, so that it would be affecting all of those individuals.

Thank you so much.

I saw Council Member Sawant, you had a hand up and I just wanted to double check.

Council Member Morales, did I miss your hand?

Okay.

Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

Just to add to what Council Member Herbold was saying, and I wanted to say that that is exactly what we have heard in our office as well, that the other workers who compose, who comprise of the navigation team do not want to do that work without the police officers present, precisely because the navigation team is doing sweeps, they need repression to force people out of their tents when they have nowhere actually, no real option alternative, which is why repression is needed.

If you offer actual solutions to people, for example, we've heard over and over again, I think it is important for us to understand from homeless neighbors that if they were offered a spot in a tiny house village or if they were offered some viable solution, they want to move.

It is not like we shouldn't buy into this idea that they just want to be on the street.

No, it is one of the most devastating and destructive I think the reason why the city is not moving is because people don't want to move.

They want to maintain their rights because they have nothing better waiting for them.

They also end up losing their meager belongings.

If the employees of the city are not doing sweeps and instead offering people good options of where to go, then the whole situation of conflict is eliminated.

We want to eliminate the sweeping of homeless people and do actual outreach.

That is why we are talking about disbanding the navigation team.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, I, I just want to thank the, um, co-sponsors again and, and reiterate the couple of points that have already been made.

Um, one is that, um, this is, uh, you know, nothing precluding, uh, folks from, from calling 911. If there is some reason to do it, what we're trying to do is remove this entire function.

from the police department from having any involvement because there is no reason for them to be part of a team of outreach workers.

So that's one thing.

And then the second thing related to that is that we already have, you know, in the Chinatown International District, in Pioneer Square.

There are community organizations already doing this work that are building their own ecosystem of support, of case management, of referrals.

And the whole point of this amendment is to ensure that they get the resources they need to do what they do best and serve our homeless neighbors.

And so we are trying very deliberately to address the shortfalls that this system that we've tried and has failed, and we wanna take those resources instead into the community organizations that are doing the work and make sure that we're keeping people safe.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'm having trouble with this amendment and really I understand that we need to have a place to navigate people to.

When we don't have the appropriate shelter, whether it's tiny home villages, a place that has four walls and a door that that individual can lock so that they can be safe in their home and space, we need to have a place for people to be navigated to.

And in addition to that, we need to have a place, housing for people to graduate out of that interim shelter to be fully housed, which then opens up additional shelter spaces.

I have seen the navigation team be successful in my neighborhood without the use of sweeps.

They were able to navigate people to shelter when that shelter was available.

And I don't support moving people from one place to another just around the corner without giving them a place to live in a holistic and safe way.

We have a homelessness problem here in my neighborhood.

And we've seen that when we aren't able to bring people inside to be in a safe place, that devastating situations can happen to both housed and unhoused people.

We had an incident just this week in Ballard that left a man hospitalized.

I hear you, Council Member Herbold, you've had a longer history of working on this issue than I have, and I would be open to working with you to create a plan if this amendment doesn't pass to the future.

But really what I understand is that we need to have safe places for people to go because no matter who's the referring agency right now, we're not addressing the problem at the scale of the crisis that we're experiencing.

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to move the amendment.

Thank you.

Point well taken.

Councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Pedersen.

I want to better understand this amendment in the context of the other amendments regarding the navigation team.

As I understand it, we found unity as a council moments ago by removing the police department from the I think it is important to understand that the city of Santa Barbara does not take additional funding from the NAV team.

I want to better understand from central staff, the functions, these city employees who have been working very hard in this configuration for many years.

They have been put in difficult situations.

services.

So this is for the outreach services.

They help to clean up bio waste, remove sharps, litter and debris.

In addition to the outreach services.

So is this amendment defunding just the outreach services?

And this is for central staff?

So anything that would currently be considered an outreach service with the navigation team, such as funding that has been provided to reach, could be maintained.

To your first question, then, in terms of what is the actual role of or maybe daily duties of the individuals that are being examined here that would be defunded, the largest group is a group that are called field coordinators.

Those are the individuals that go to encampments and assess the conditions of the encampment and prioritize the encampment for removal, and then conduct the logistics of a cleanup operation between the Parks and Recreation staff that actually do the litter and trash pickup.

There's a contract through FAS, which is also the funding for which is removed by this amendment, to have like a bobcat or something like that if surface skimming is necessary.

Then there's three...

Sorry to interrupt.

So if we pass this amendment, then there will be no supervision of helping to remove debris and trash?

even while the campers stay there?

I don't know what we'd be missing by passing this.

The field coordinators I wouldn't describe as the supervisors for the individuals that are actually doing the litter pickup and trash removal.

My understanding is that they are a position that's running through a checklist for what is at the encampment.

and then entering that into a system.

And then they do the logistical work to arrange for various parties to be present for removal.

As I noted in the earlier comments, the funding for the Department of Parks and Recreation, that is part of the navigation team, is not affected by this amendment.

That's about $1.4 million, the majority of which is actually commercial parking tax money that allows for trash and litter pickup in the right of way.

But also another amount of money, about $400,000, that is used for picking up either in parks or other locations.

A lot of the activities, especially over the last few months when there's been a reduction in the number of removals, have actually been what HSD refers to as litter picks.

And those are the staff that are carrying that out.

They're the ones that actually arrive and are doing the removal of litter and debris, things like that.

Is that helpful?

Thank you.

This is amendment 40, right?

Yes.

Okay.

Council Member Peterson, any follow-up questions on that?

Not right now, thanks.

Oh, okay.

Thank you.

I just want to double check.

Madam Chair?

Yes, please, Council Member Juarez.

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I meant to text in, but I am a bit confused, too, after we just passed the former amendment.

as to, I understand that the park money isn't gonna be hurt.

I guess what I'm not getting at, or quite getting, and please help me, are we, as Council Morales said, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I believe you said we're cutting the cord.

So what does that mean?

Does that mean that, so there'll be no police officers with the navigation team or the team that goes out there to work with our unsheltered, and those that don't want to go out there because they don't feel safe not having an officer there, if needed, will get jobs somewhere else.

Can I get some clarification on that?

I'll take a stab, Jeff, and then maybe you can...

back me up, fill it out, whatever.

Um, so yeah, so what we are doing, so we've, we've removed the police from the navigation team.

We, with this amendment, seek to redirect funds so that we can contract with existing providers.

We've talked about reach, we've talked about lead.

There are providers who are already doing this work who we could support in doing this work better, and they are not interested in doing this work with police involved.

So that's part of why we did the previous amendment.

What this also does is it keeps the money, as you said, for trash pickup with the parks department, because that is something that the city can and should continue to do.

It increases funding to contract with service providers, and it imposes a proviso that limits the use of these funds to homeless outreach and engagement so that we can make sure that the work that's happening isn't moving people from one side of the street to the other.

It is actually referring them to non-congregate shelter, to tiny house villages, to all of the things that we're trying to fund in this process so that they are getting service from folks whose main job is to do this work in the community.

May I have a follow-up, Madam Chair?

Councilmember Juarez.

This may be a little out of order, but can I ask a question of Councilmember Herboldt?

I've watched Councilmember Herboldt work on these issues for well over a decade and certainly within the last four years when we started off with what this navigation team would look like and why we were supportive in the beginning and as we know times have changed.

So is it fair to say Councilmember Herboldt based on your expertise and Certainly, you chairing the committee, working on these issues tirelessly, I think probably had the most experience on this council.

Are you saying that the navigation team and our efforts with the executive, just at the end of the day, that the experience just didn't work, the experiment just didn't work, and now we should shift models?

Which I don't have a, I mean, I'm just trying to understand.

So I'm kind of looking to your leadership, Council Member Herbold, to contextualize that for me.

Because if this is the navigation team with police officers there and redirecting is a failed experiment, then I'd rather someone just say that.

Like, you know what, we tried this, we found that it had unintended consequences, it didn't build trust with our unsheltered community, and so we did the best we could, it didn't work, so now we're gonna try this.

Is that your position as well, Council Member Herbold?

Yeah, I really, I mean, you said it very succinctly in a way that maybe I'm not always so succinct.

But I really believe that I had a commitment from the executive to a culture of continuous improvement and the principles of harm reduction.

And when we identified ways that we could continue to reduce the harm being done to people, and the negative impacts on successful outreach outcomes.

I really feel that we are not hearing from the executive any longer, that they are interested in that continued conversation about how to improve their practices.

So it's fair to say that the harm outweighed the presence of officers?

I feel that the harm that has been done as it relates specifically to an approach that is more focused on removing people from their locations than addressing the needs of those people, I think that that is the equation that I feel like has been demonstrated to me over the last four years on this.

councilmember Juarez.

Thank you.

I'm going to turn it over to you.

Would you like to chime in on this question as well?

Yeah, just really quickly, I think the back-and-forth with Councilmember Juarez and Morales and Herbold was where I was headed, which is just to really frame this up in terms of policy questions.

So the first amendment we considered, the policy question Should SPD be part of the navigation team?

We just took a vote to say that we don't think SPD, as a matter of policy, should be part of the navigation team.

Amendment 40, to me, the policy question is, do we believe that the city of Seattle, via our human services department, should be in the business of doing direct outreach and engagement to homelessness based on the navigation team experiment that has been unfolding over the last four years?

And I think the answer to that question is no, we shouldn't be in this business of providing the direct service because we have nonprofit organizations like REACH and others who have better outcomes and who are ready and willing and able to scale up if they see additional investments in order to do homelessness outreach and engagement.

Now, over the last couple of years, I have been advocating for these more creative homelessness outreach and engagement programs that don't include employees at the human services department.

Those examples include creative, innovative partnerships between our business improvement area organizations and outreach organizations like Reach.

Those have been wildly successful in terms of addressing both impacts, neighborhood impacts as a result of folks experiencing homelessness in those neighborhoods and also producing positive results in terms of connecting people to meaningful services and housing opportunities.

And so I think that the way I see this is, look, the Human Services Department, they primarily in the area of homelessness investments, they primarily are contract managers.

They primarily manage and oversee grants that we make to nonprofit organizations to provide direct services.

This is one of those unique areas in which, for whatever reason, the Human Services Department now, since we've done some shuffling from FAS to HSD, is now engaging in direct services to people experiencing homelessness.

With the exception of their Aging and Senior Services Department, this is the only other area in which HSD has employees in-house that engage in direct services.

And so for me, the policy question is, Should we be doing that when all of our other homeless outreach services and engagement services are outsourced to nonprofit organizations through our grant making processes that have performance outcome requirements that have bidding processes associated with them.

And so for me, I think this is the right choice is to effectively eliminate the navigation team in order to free up those dollars to fund and support nonprofit organizations that are more adept and more effective at homelessness outreach and engagement through through the HSD contracting process.

So I just wanted to signal my intent to support Amendment 40 and the rationale for why I plan to do so.

Thank you very much, Council President.

I see Council Member Sawant and then Council Member Peterson.

Thank you.

I again, I just wanted to reiterate the point.

I mean, in response to some of the questions or concerns, which I I'm having a hard time taking them at face value because these are either council members who've been around being on the council for a few years or have We have a lot of people who have served in other positions in relation to the city Council and other offices and they know very well what these issues are.

What is fundamentally problematic is that homeless people are being swept.

That needs to end.

We don't demand of them that they go there without their pets, without their belongings, without their family members.

That's inhumane.

If we are not willing to do that as housed people, we should not expect that that would be acceptable to homeless neighbors either.

And so the reason the police are required is because the whole model of the work is something that is against the interests of homeless people.

And so they understandably oppose it.

Homeless people oppose sweeps because sweeps don't work for them.

There is nothing more complicated than that.

There is no good way of sweeping people because sweeps are not good.

It would be disingenuous of us, any of us on the Council, and we should all know this by now, there is no good way of sweeping.

Sweeps are the problem and that is why the sweeps need to end.

The King County coalition on homelessness is also calling for the disbanding of the navigation team, or in other words, defunding the navigation team, because we need a completely different kind of approach, which is the approach from Lehigh, Nicholsville, other advocates that we actually offer them shelter, housing, or services that works for them.

I wanted to read an important quote that has come from the Coalition on Homelessness.

This is from Derek Belgard, who is a coalition board member and deputy director of the Chief Seattle Club.

I am asking that you defund the navigation team and reallocate that to nonprofit organizations that are better suited.

I often speak about the mistrust my native community has with all government systems.

It is government systems and structures that led to the horrible racial disparities we see today.

I think this quote captures the the essence of what our advocates and our activists and our community have been fighting for for years and why they have been doing so because this is simply not working.

And in closing, I wanted to thank again all the activists who have fought for this from the very beginning for many years, including those who, the ones at Nicholsville North Lake who just won their I want to thank the black lives matter movement activists because of their activism, because of this uprising that it is even forcing the council to have a real conversation about this like never

I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Sawant.

Councilmember Sawant, I do think it's valid to say there are questions coming from a genuine place because every time we talk about the navigation team, there is misinformation that's been put out.

I still have the scars from the conversations we tried to have two years ago about simply increasing the amount of funding that goes to our human And by reducing the NAV team by just two FTEs at the time, two, I'm sorry, not even reducing the FTEs, but instead of adding nine FTEs, we were going to add seven at the time.

And the amount of pushback that we received on that was tremendous.

So I think that it's important for us to continue to help answer these questions because tremendous amount of misinformation is put out.

And I'll talk about that in just a moment.

this has been a long effort.

I also want to thank the folks who've continued to try to educate the council and the community at large, including members of the media about what could be the system that stands in place if there was no navigation team.

And it is the dozens of organizations out there, but specifically the top two or three that we've talked about that have trusted partners that are more successful at getting people into housing and more successful about making sure that folks stay stably housed.

I see Council Member Peterson and then Council Member Herbold.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, and I appreciate this discussion.

I feel that we are here to rebalance the 2020 budget.

We're also here to reallocate substantial dollars from Seattle Police Department to other initiatives.

I feel that this policy is out of the scope of those two things.

I would much rather be discussing this in the Select Committee on Homelessness.

I appreciate the flexibility in letting us talk a little bit longer about this key policy choice.

And then I heard Jeff Simms say it impacts 15 to 20 employees.

So I want to know from central staff, if this passes, how many city government employees from HSD would be negatively impacted?

I actually am not able to give that precise answer, Council Member.

We previously, to receiving the supplemental budget package, requested information on the vacancies in all city departments, and that information has not been provided.

So I don't know the level of comparable vacancies.

I also don't know out of the, I believe it's 17 positions that are on the navigation team.

However, some of them I believe are vacant.

I don't know which ones or how many.

I have not been provided that information either.

So I can't, that's why I've been speaking in ranges of 15 to 20, because I don't know that exact answer.

I have a question.

I think Councilmember Peterson may have an answer to that question.

Councilmember Peterson, did you have an answer?

on that communication is that the employees who are currently assigned to HSD are working out of class.

So consistent with the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, those out of class workers will slide back into their original pockets or positions that they originated from.

So it's sort of a, The way I understand it, the wonkiness here is that, yes, it goes away from the Human Services Department, and it may look like layoffs, but really it's an elimination of those out-of-class positions.

And I think that's true, with the exception of one position, which Kilsmyr Morales referred to in her opening remarks, that one position is original to the navigation team and is at risk of being eliminated as a result of this amendment should it pass.

And there would be bargaining potentially related to that.

So there's an ongoing possibility of I'm going to turn it over to councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Peterson, I did not want to cut you off.

what I was hearing from Jeff is that the, in terms of the, not the sweeping, but the cleaning up of trash and debris, needles, any obstructions that, you know, in the rare cases that there are obstructions on sidewalks or rights away, who would be handling that, Jeff, if we were to pass this amendment?

I think to answer your question in a high level this amendment would discontinue the removal of encampments while continuing services like outreach and engagement and to some degree litter and trash pickups.

When you give the example of something like a obstruction I can't speak to exactly what that might be.

If there was some very large item that couldn't be removed I'm not clear on how that answer would be or what would even constitute

Just to follow up.

So I'm not talking about sweeping.

I'm talking about debris that accumulates and I've understood that when the nav team does go out and engage with with folks out living outside If nothing happens, there's no sweep.

There's no there's no getting folks into shelter if it's not available, but then there is a trash cleanup that takes place, the NAB team does that.

So I guess what I'm wondering is, it sounds like that function would then go away, but I just wanna get the facts.

I'm not sure that's true, so.

No, my understanding is that that would not go away.

That is a function primarily carried out by the individuals hired by the Department of Parks and Recreation.

I can't recall the size of the team.

I want to say that it's around 12 individuals that do that.

And they are the ones that are actually doing the litter and trash collection.

And those funds are not touched by this money.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

And I think that it goes full circle to the initial comments that I think Councilmember Herbold was trying to lift up as well.

So I will just make some final comments here.

I think it is important for us just to get ahead of any misinformation out there.

This is not about just leaving folks outside.

This is about reinvesting in community strategies that have trusted partners and a proven track record of helping to move folks into places such as tiny homes, hotels, motels, and non-congregate shelter options in this time of COVID.

We have seen reports from those partners with our city that have a successful rate at getting folks inside because they've built trust, they've built relationships, and they're coming at it with a completely different framework.

As we scale up some of these community partners, I believe the outcome will be that we will be more successful with moving folks into housing.

And to Council Member Straus' point as well, we must also continue to invest in housing, which we are doing in this budget, in our COVID relief efforts as well.

We are investing more funding into non-congregate shelters I think we need to do more of that.

We need to do more of that in the very 2020 rebalancing package we have in front of us.

I see these two efforts going together as we create more additional opportunities for folks to get off the street and provide a more trusted voice to engage with folks while maintaining garbage cleanup and doing outreach through these trusted partners.

I believe we will see a more successful model.

the data proved that the data-driven solutions are truly in the community solutions and the community-oriented framework, which has a proven track record of being successful.

I think we're going to see a more positive outcome for those who are living unsheltered outside and for all of our community neighbors who are asking us to do more to address the number of people living outside and help people get stably housed.

So I will be supporting this amendment today and look forward to having those ongoing conversations with the Coalition of City Unions as we continue to think about how we can to move folks out of a place like SPD and into other departments to recognize the good work that the non-sworn officers are continuing to do or non-sworn personnel are continuing to do in various departments.

With that, seeing no additional comments or questions, I'm going to ask the clerk to call the roll on amendment number 40.

Peterson?

No.

Sawant?

Yes.

Strauss?

No.

Gonzalez?

Sorry, yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

No.

Lewis?

No.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Thank you for the robust discussion.

we are going to have a robust discussion on the amendment for us.

This is amendment 16 which has been pulled out of the consent package for consideration.

I'm going to have Ali walk us through it and then we will have the sponsor speak to the amendment and then we will have a discussion for the purposes of viewing public given that this was pulled out.

Thank you, chair Mosqueda.

Amendment 16 sponsored by council members Gonzalez, Herbold, Morales, and Mosqueda, who are joined by council members Sawant and council member Straus, would impose a proviso on $533,000 in the patrol operations BSL in the Seattle Police Department to require a general reduction in sworn personnel.

Thank you very much.

I believe council member Herbold, are you going to speak to this?

Yes.

Should I make the motion?

Let's do that.

Could you please move Amendment 16 for us?

Absolutely.

I move passage of Amendment 16 related to the general reduction of swarm patrol.

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Council Member Herbold, would you like to initiate the conversation on Amendment Number 16?

I would like to first perhaps if it's appropriate, and I trust chair Mosqueda you will tell me if it is not, considering that Councilmember Lewis requested that this amendment be pulled, perhaps it would be useful to hear from him the basis of his request that this be pulled from the consent package first.

Give me a little something to respond to.

I know that you are holding back some comments from earlier.

Is this something you would like to speak to first?

I wanted to just pull this in light of the letter we got this morning, a letter that I take some issue with from the human resources department from the labor relations unit regarding order of layoffs and this council's proposed preferences on order of layoffs.

I did just want to to remove this particular amendment so that we can have a bit of a discussion as a council around strategy to try to structure the provisos that we are passing to maximize our chances at getting the kind of proposed layoff to make sure that we can have a strategy that focuses on maintaining the diversity of the department and prioritizing layoffs based on complaint history, for example.

I mean, I would cite that in 2019, from looking at the annual report from the office of at the accountability office on sustained complaints.

There were 125 sustained complaints last year against 56 individuals in the department.

There are certainly an ample number of officers with sustained complaints that I think that all of us agree, and a lot of the protesters in the streets, and people demanding reform who've been sending us emails have agreed that officers with complaints should be the folks who should go first if we are going to be completely reconfiguring our police department.

I did just wanna raise this because while some of the issues in this letter and some of the comments from the executive yesterday, and I don't wanna go to the rhetoric of it, some of which I think Many of my colleagues responded to ably this morning as being offensive to the practices of this council and what we are trying to do.

Avoiding the rhetoric, I mean, one thing that we can't get around, unfortunately, are some of the rules.

And there is a specifically delineated four steps of the order in which people are laid off.

And the only reason they bring it up is if we are not able to successfully set up a strategy to do layoffs out of order, or if we are not successful in our effort to be able to have some consideration for the diversity of the department, we would functionally be losing officers, I think, on the wrong end of where we want to see the officers leave the department.

We just had one of the most diverse hiring classes of sworn officers.

A lot of those officers are now in field training status or some other type of status that would make them more susceptible to being the first targeted in a layoff unless a new strategy is put in place.

And I do think that in setting up our provisos to set up a bargaining strategy, we do need to be cognizant of making sure that we are trying to get the officers that are on the other end, officers that have been in the department a lot longer with long histories of sustained complaints, rather than officers on the front end who are coming in with lived experience and backgrounds that I think we want to see more of in the department.

So I just wanted to flag this for discussion just because this is one of the provisos that would cue this issue up more in terms of this dispute that we're having as a council with the executive over the out-of-order layoffs.

And just knowing that I think we have to be mindful of that.

Part of the overall issue is we don't really have a lot of leeway to be too prescriptive with how the executive will implement these cuts and we need to be mindful that some of these provisos might be implemented in ways we don't want to see and might have an adverse impact on the diversity of the department.

Thank you.

That's fair.

Thank you, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Herbold, turning it over to you for response and for an outline of what is in Amendment 16.

Thank you so much.

So as it relates, I want to perhaps touch a little bit on a different element of the labor relations memo.

And that's the part of the memo where they make abundantly clear that there are no guarantees that we are going to realize savings in 2020. And to that, my response is we know.

That's why we are proposing not a cut.

but a proviso.

We understand that the negotiations might take longer than we would like them to take.

We are uniquely aware of that because the legislative department nor the five council members that sit on LRPC are in a position of being able to drive the scheduling of those discussions.

So that is the reason why, one, You do not have before you proposed cuts.

You have provisos.

NY2, our spending proposal for 2020 does not depend on resolution of bargaining these layoffs in 2020. So, again, we have developed this proposal in a way that is very, I think, cognizant of the risks, the risks as described in the Labor Relations Department memo.

I think, again, we are not unfamiliar with them, but I think the sort of the comfort around the risk level might be a little different than the executive has because of, I think, our commitment to what it is that we're trying to accomplish, hopefully, in collaboration with the executive, and also because, you know, we also have been asking these same questions of our law department, the questions that the labor relations memo addresses.

You know, I went in the break, I went back and I watched part of the press conference from yesterday.

And I think this is relevant to this question of these proposed reductions of the sworn personnel.

And I'm really saddened that in the press conference, the chief said that she believes that we're trying to run her department.

And every single one of the provisos that reduce spending for whether or not it's specialized units, or this one in particular, there is language that specifies that the council acknowledges that the chief may realize the reduction that we are going to be able to negotiate with the city council to make sure that we are being proposed differently from what the council is proposing.

These provisos are our recommendation for how to realize reductions in a way from the advice that we have received that make it more likely that we will be successful in bargaining.

As it relates specifically to to propose to the Public Safety Civil Service Commission an order that is not according to the newest hired first.

our request of the chief to submit that request to that body, who is the decision-making body, is based on my understanding that we're aligned.

We don't want to make reductions from the newest hired first.

So I'm really confused why when the chief is asked directly, will she try?

Will she try to submit this request to the Public Safety Civil Service Commission?

Her response seems to be, it's out of my hands.

Because I believe that we need to make an effort to accomplish through these discussions, what are our aligned interests?

And our aligned interests are maintaining the diversity that the department has gained over the last couple of new recruit classes.

So I'm still optimistic.

We've begun sort of scoping out what this request would look like, how to make it, what it would contain, what would make it more likely to be successful.

And if we're in a situation where the executive isn't doing that legal analysis, I know that the council will work to do the legal analysis and share that with the executive as well.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold.

I see Councilmember Strauss' hand and then I'm wondering as well, Council President, as the chair of our labor relations city effort, if you might have some comments.

I didn't want to skip over you.

Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'll keep this brief as my colleagues have already made some very important points.

And I'll just restate that we don't want to make reductions from the most recently hired class.

What we know is that the officers that have been hired in the last three to five years have been the officers that have been hired into the reformed culture of our Seattle Police Department.

What I heard yesterday is that it is too hard to I think we need to make out of order layoffs because it has to be done on an individual basis.

And what I'm hearing loud and clear from my colleagues here and from Seattleites across the city is that we want this hard work to be done.

That it is important to do this hard work so that we can change the way that we are doing policing now to doing policing the way that reflects the communities that we serve.

Council President didn't want to catch off guard, but if you did have a comment, just want to make sure that we had a chance to hear from you as well.

I'm just really quickly, I think Council Member Herbold covered it well, and thank you Council Member Strauss for those comments.

I couldn't agree with you more.

I think, you know, just to sort of summarize here, the reality is that we were very deliberate about making sure that Amendment 16 was reflective of and inclusive of the processes in our labor relations context that will need to unfold over the next two months.

Those issues and those assumptions are baked into Amendment 16. And just because it is a process that has to be undertaken, and just because that process may be cumbersome, is not a reason to forego it.

You know, honestly, the fact that the issue of this out-of-order petition being cumbersome really raises the question for me about whether there's an intent to ever pursue layoffs of the Seattle Police Department, regardless of whether it's 2020 or 2021. I mean, what's the difference between now and then?

Is it less cumbersome suddenly because it's 2021 or not?

And so I think the reality is that this is our first opportunity to demonstrate a meaningful commitment to those who are asking us to reduce the size of the police department.

This is a opportunity for us to demonstrate that we are willing to begin that process through this rebalancing package, understanding that the bigger questions will be in front of us for 2021. And that process begins in seven weeks.

Those of us who are members of the Labor Relations Policy Committee also understand our obligations to I know that we are committed to doing that.

I want to make sure that folks issues, but they are not insurmountable issues.

Now, whether or not there is a desire to overcome those issues is a fundamentally different question.

And I think what we heard yesterday, unfortunately, is that There is not a strong interest in pursuing a phase one approach of potential layoffs for 2020, which leads me to worry about whether that position is going to change or remain the same in the conversations related to 2021. So I'll just end my comments there and appreciate an opportunity to add a little bit more context.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you very much.

Are there additional comments or questions?

Councilmember Sawant, please.

And then Councilmember Peterson.

Okay, thank you.

And then Councilmember Lewis.

Councilmember Sawant, please go ahead.

I would just say that, you know, what has been shared here is it should not come as a surprise to anyone that this is what I expect from Mayor Durkin's administration.

This is what I expect from the police department.

This is what I expect from the police officers guild.

And, So if as a council we, and I'm not saying that anybody is saying that, but we need to put it this way.

If we just accepted that there is no guarantee that the cuts that we are defunding or to the extent that the council has been willing to go today to take the funds from the police department that we have voted on today and approved, they will have any effect.

Literally, they will have no effect.

Which again is why my office and the people's budget movement believes that the council should cut the funds to do the defunding now so that labor relations needs to deal with it after the fact.

Because clearly, if they're given the opportunity to discuss it, then they'd have no desire to do this in any way.

So I mean, I'm talking about the mayor's labor relations department.

And so I think that this argument also really enforces the points we've been making from my office, which is that We cannot wait for them to agree because they're never going to agree.

We have to bring the full force of the movement on the streets against the police officers guild and against the mayor's labor relations department and say, this is what the community is demanding.

This is what we need in order to even begin to make a dent against the police violence.

And if you're going to be in our way, then we are going to be fighting against you and you are on the wrong side of history.

the city Council should be voting to fully defund because even if you do something smaller than that, which you have done today, which I have supported, but I don't agree that it should be that small, you are still going to come up with the same obstacles that you would come up if you did the full defund of 50%.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So I will be supporting this amendment, and I want to take this as an opportunity to explain to my constituents why I'm supporting it, because this is the largest item in terms of positions in SPD.

bear with me while I explain this.

So I've received over 35,000 emails, including 2,000 from my constituents in Seattle's District 4 about a police accountability following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, the police response to protests here in Seattle, and the long history of institutional racism here and throughout our nation.

I'm grateful that so many engaged constituents have taken the time to contact my office with their grief and their outrage and their tough questions about police accountability and budgets.

While the communications I received from constituents offer a variety of views, I see common ground for rethinking and revamping what effective and equitable public safety means as we strive to achieve healthy communities.

I believe we all feel the urgency of this moment.

This is an historic opportunity and we cannot go back.

As we reimagine public safety, we must simultaneously build up community organizations to prevent crime and achieve healthy communities.

I support the Mayor and City Council establishing a participatory budgeting process.

Let's bring more groups to the table, from the leaders of the Every Day March to the leaders of the Urban League and Community Police Commission.

Together we can make even more progress.

There's also another perspective on how to view these changes today, the necessity of fiscal responsibility.

Our city government departments, including our police department, are spending more money than they are receiving.

That's why we're here in the Budget Committee to rebalance our 2020 budget.

We also have a large budget deficit next year.

SPD has a budget deficit.

SPD has already spent their entire overtime budget.

Some reductions from SPD are simply necessary, both this year and next year.

regarding the new recruits to the police department, Amendment 16, I would rather reduce positions through attrition instead of letting go of new progressive talent.

But as my colleague said, this is really in the purview of the police chief to decide how to handle these reductions.

and the city council has limited tools on how to impact any department.

We can reduce or increase the budget at certain high-level line items, but the city charter and labor contracts do not allow the council to unilaterally make targeted personnel decisions.

Instead, we can only make very pointed suggestions on where to cut.

I have confidence that our Chief Carmen Best can manage these budget reductions that we are making today.

After we make these reductions, I also believe it's vital for Chief Best to provide a report to City Council so we can hear exactly how she will redeploy officers and what the impact will be on response times.

Ideally, response times do not get worse.

Instead, ideally, police would respond to fewer types of calls, to non-criminal calls.

We can send other professionals who are not armed.

But we need to see that operations plan from the chief.

As policymakers, we need to see those details.

And the general public deserves to see those details.

So I'll be bringing forward an amendment Monday to make sure we do get a report on redeployment and response times.

To the residents of my district, to many of them, these rebalancing amendments are going to seem too big, and to many others, they'll seem too small, not enough.

After much consideration and listening to many angles, I believe these are significant down payments toward bigger changes as we will use our fall budget process to craft a more thoughtful plan for community safety that's sustainable.

There are constraints of labor law and the staffing requirements of the consent decree.

And regarding the labor issues, I look forward to a complete reworking of the collective bargaining agreement with police officers so that we can reduce excessive costs to taxpayers and fix the disciplinary system.

Even as the City Council reallocates substantial dollars, there will still be many police officers, and we need to make sure their labor contract is fair and effective for the people of Seattle.

I want the police officers who are listening today to know that I appreciate the good work that so many of you do.

At the same time, you're asked to do too much.

You're sent into complex situations that other professionals from our community may be better equipped to handle.

You're also part of a system born out of racism.

And despite progress on reforms, that institutional racism of police departments here and across the nation continues to have a disproportionate negative impact on people of color.

By rethinking what public safety really means, by centering Black, Indigenous, and people of color, by taking a thoughtful approach, we can seize this historic opportunity to disrupt institutional racism and achieve real community safety.

In addition to the important budget actions today, I'm introducing a resolution this Monday to support the national effort to pass the George Floyd Justice and Policing Act, that's HR 7120, introduced by Congresswoman Karen Bass, Democrat from California, and supported by her own Congresswoman, Pramila Jayapal.

This federal bill addresses many concerns raised by protesters that are authorized by federal law, such as the need to restrict qualified immunity for police officers across the nation.

Today, however, we are appropriately focused on improving things here in Seattle.

I'm hopeful that both the mayor and the city council have been acting in good faith and with good intentions on these complex issues.

I believe we're both appropriately exercising our authority granted by the people under our city charter.

This is a classic and appropriate policy debate.

Our two branches of government for the good of our city are simply considering and weighing different factors with limited information on the dramatic changes we're going to make.

Let us see the common ground.

We both want to reimagine public safety and we're both dedicated to public service, striving to respond to this historic unprecedented moment.

Will the council go further than the mayor?

Certainly.

But precisely because we care about the people, we want them to have confidence in their local government.

People expect us to deliberate, to debate, and sometimes to disagree.

But the people do not want us to divide or demonize.

I did not return to City Hall to watch us dismantle the functional fabric of our local government.

The real enemy is the person who has only five months left in the White House.

So let's stop sniping at each other here at City Hall.

Let's disagree respectfully, seek common ground, and solve problems for Seattle.

I think that is what we need to do.

Thank you.

Councilmember Pedersen, thank you for those incredible words and for your perspective on where you are coming from regarding this amendment but the entire package.

I want to thank you for your heartfelt analysis and if we were in person, a standing ovation.

I appreciate you speaking up on to hear from you.

It is very illuminating to hear where you are coming from on this amendment and the overall proposals in front of us.

Thank you for sharing that.

I really do appreciate your

councilmember Strauss.

Councilmember Strauss.

Some of it certainly is a matter of digging in to do the hard work.

And I know there's been an acknowledgment on the part of the executive side that pursuing the out-of-order layoffs is going to be hard.

And all of us signed up to do what's right, not to do what's easy.

And usually, that involves doing things that are hard.

Totally acknowledge that.

I think some of it, too, though, does go to you know, whether the, whether the rules are going to be in such a place that they'll be able to accommodate it.

I mean, my hope is that they will.

Um, I really appreciate how the sponsors have queued this up, um, to have this conversation and, and I will be voting, um, for amendment 16, um, just, just to, to clarify.

Um, but, uh, you know, I do want to make sure that we are, we are centering that we have a lot of hard work ahead of us, um, and that we really do need to make sure that we, um, center, I think we need to re-evaluate those common goals that we have as a Council and an executive and having a diverse police department in the city.

And we all need to be kind of moving in that same direction.

And I think that we as a Council are making a big statement right now that that is a priority of ours.

That we need to completely

Thank you very much.

Councilmember Lewis, very well said as well.

I really appreciate you continuing to focus us on what centers us and what motivates us in the collective shared commonality among the various council members as we look towards taking these important steps.

Council colleagues, I don't see anybody else raising their hands.

Seeing, and Councilmember Juarez, I don't want to skip over you seeing or hearing no additional comments.

Council Clerk, will you please call the roll on amendment number 16?

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales.

Aye.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda.

I have a motion and a second.

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Thank you for shepherding us through this conversation, central staff, especially Allie for maintaining the reins on this discussion and for all of my council colleagues and the viewing public, thank you for the detailed, robust and heartfelt conversation analysis and for your votes today.

we will continue to have conversation as I understand it on Monday, August 10th.

And Ali, just looking at you to affirm that that is correct.

So we will not be moving this amended bill out today, but it will instead be in front of us for consideration if there's no objection.

Is that correct, Ali?

Yes, thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

This bill will be before the committee again on Monday morning in committee for final action for consideration at the full council meeting that afternoon.

So on behalf of all of central staff, what we hope to achieve on Monday morning is to reconcile all of the amendments that have been considered today and over the last week or two.

I think it was amendment 52 that was held for Monday and it sounds like one or two others, but we will have a very short window to turn the bill around between committee and the full council.

So if there are ideas floating out there, we really need to know as soon as possible and ideally not new ideas.

we have had a robust conversation on behalf of everybody on Council and our teams, we want to thank you for all of your work and for that quick turnaround.

So, colleagues, if there's no objection, this bill will be held until August 10th in the Select Budget Committee meeting that begins right after Council briefing on August 10th.

Hearing no objection, the bill will be held until the August 10th meeting.

And again, just to reiterate what Ali has said, we will we are going to vote on this on the 10th in the morning.

It needs to be turned around for full counsel.

Ideally, you have already gotten your amendments and suggestions in minus that one amendment we held over.

Colleagues, I know it is 422 and I do anticipate the next conversation will be relatively quick.

I think we can assume at least an hour.

Housemates, your family, partners, make sure that they are aware as well.

I will endeavor to get us done before six as we did last Friday.

But before that, if at all possible, I don't expect this to be a very contentious conversation because there's been very few amendments to the bills in front of us.

But we do have item three.

And so, Madam Clerk, I'm going to ask us to go ahead.

Will you please read item three into the record?

Agenda Item 3. and from various funds in the budget, adding new CIP projects and revising project allocations for certain projects in the 2020 through 2025 CIP, abrogating positions, modifying positions, and ratifying conforming search and fire acts, all by 34th vote of the city council for discussion and possible amendments.

Thank you very much.

Again, this is our 2020 rebalancing package discussion.

Council Bill 119818. Aldi, would you like to walk through the amendment that is in front of us, amendment number 27?

Yes, thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

So just briefly, Council Bill 119818 is the second quarter supplemental bill.

And the reason this amendment is amending this bill is because the title allows for modifications to positions.

But both this Council Bill 119818 and the previous bill, Council Bill 119825, are effectively modifying the 2020 adopted budget.

So just for the public's understanding this amendment is included in as an amendment to this bill.

So Amendment 27, which is sponsored by Council Members Herbold, Mosqueda, Gonzalez, Morales, and we're joined by Council Member Suarez, excuse me, Council Member Juarez and Council Member Salon, would transfer victim advocates and the victim support team coordinator from the Seattle Police Department to the Human Services Department.

Thank you very much, Allie.

I'm going to just go ahead and move.

I move amendment number 27 be adopted.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

It's been moved and seconded.

Councilmember Herbold, would you like to speak to this?

Thank you.

Sure.

So this team is currently housed in SPD, and they're responsible for providing support to victims of sexual assault.

domestic violence and to vulnerable populations such as victims of elder or child abuse.

This amendment would move those workers out of SPD and into HSD, doesn't change who the people are or the work that they're doing, just moves their positions into the Department of Human Services.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

Are there any questions or comments on amendment number 27?

Oh, Councilmember Strauss, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Councilmember Herbold, for that brief introduction to this.

You may have answered my question, and I'd like to ask it a little bit more specifically.

Many of the people in the victim support team and victim advocates are really well-trained and know the business in which they are conducting.

What I heard from you just now is that these people will be retained.

It is simply a command structure change so that they will no longer be in SPD's command structure and they will still be doing the good work that they do.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

And also, I just want to clarify as well.

This won't limit their ability to work with SPD when appropriate as as advocates, just like there are victim support advocates in the law department who work.

that we have been working with SPD to assist victims.

So moving those employees out of one department into another doesn't change who those people are, doesn't change the work they are doing and does not limit their ability to continue to work when appropriate with SPD on behalf of their clients.

Thank you.

Great.

Excellent.

Any additional questions or comments?

Seeing none, thank you again Councilmember Herbold for walking us through this.

I am excited to support this.

Please call the roll on amendment 27.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the amendment is adopted.

Amendment 27 will be included and that is, I believe, it for that element.

Is that correct, Allie?

And then we'll move into the next set of amendments.

that is correct.

Okay.

Great.

And I am not moving any bill at this moment out of this committee, correct?

Correct.

All right.

So just catching up with my script here.

Um, are we just going to go ahead and go into the resolution?

Once you orient us where we're at alley, we're on agenda item number four.

So let's, uh, in order to do that, let's have the clerk read agenda item number four through seven into the record, please.

Items 4 through 7. Resolution 31952 adopting revised financial policies for the cumulative reserve sub fund of the general fund and superseding attachment B to resolution 31848. Council Bill 119823 relating to the 2018 families education preschool and promise levy amending the levy implementation and evaluation plan adopted by ordinance 25807 and ratifying confirming search and fire act.

Council Bill 119822 relating to the 2020 budget, spending the minimal annual general fund appropriations to the Seattle Department of Transportation budget as required in ordinance 124796, the levy to move Seattle and right-of-way in conforming to the City Council.

And finally, agenda item 7, resolution 31951, authorizing an exception to the level of general fund support to Seattle Parks and Recreation due to existing we will move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the economic circumstances by three-fourth vote of the City Council, all for discussion and possible vote.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Okay, Allie, why don't you go ahead and orient us to this.

I believe this is a compilation of technical pieces and help provide the backbone to the 2020 rebalancing package as a whole, recognizing there was a number of bills that were sent down from the

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, the next four items, as you just described, are a part of the rebalancing package that are necessary to move forward with other changes and proposals in Council Bill 1192.5 and other pieces of legislation included in the package.

We included some, but not all of the legislation on the agenda for today's committee discussion.

The remaining pieces will be on the agenda for the committee's consideration on Monday morning along with council bills 119, 825, 824, and 818 that have been discussed previously.

So these next four pieces will be briefly described and then I think the plan is to vote these out of committee today so they can go directly to full council on Monday afternoon.

For the first two items, agenda item four and five, I'm going to ask my colleague, Brian Goodnight, to walk you through those to briefly describe the item.

And then for the first item, there is one technical amendment that is necessary before taking action on the bill as amended.

Thank you, Allie.

Brian, good to see you.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, councilmembers.

Brian Goodnight, council central staff.

So the first item is resolution 31952, and that would revise the city's financial policies for the cumulative reserve sub fund of the general fund, and specifically those policies that are related to the permissible uses for real estate excise tax or REIT revenues.

The intent of the revisions is to relieve some pressure on the general fund by allowing REIT revenues to fund a broader segment of the city's debt service.

Currently, the financial policies allow for REIT revenues to pay debt service for public safety facilities, as well as some other previously issued debt as specified in state law.

The revised policies that would be adopted by this resolution would expand the permitted uses to cover debt service for the repair or replacement of the West Seattle Bridge, payment of remaining debt service on bonds issued prior to 2020 for eligible capital projects, and also new debt service on any bonds for eligible capital projects that are issued during the next two years, in 2021 and 2022. The revised policies also create a new limitation on the percentage of revenues that may be used for the payment of debt service.

And then lastly, as Ali indicated, there is one technical amendment in your packets for consideration.

Policy 12 of the financial policies state that the city intends to maintain at least $5 million in the ending fund balance of the REIT subaccounts to guard against revenue fluctuations.

Due to the revenue decreases being experienced this year, the executive's proposed rebalancing would leave each REIT subaccount with an ending fund balance of slightly more than $3 million.

The amended policies as proposed, however, failed to modify policy 12 with respect to the ending fund balances.

So therefore, amendment number one in your packets would allow the city council to authorize appropriations that result in the ending fund balances sinking below the $5 million target if the city experiences significant revenue fluctuations that are caused by proclaimed civil emergencies, natural disasters, or public health emergencies.

And the amendment also states that when the ending fund balances do sink below the target, the city will seek to restore them as soon as is practically possible.

And that concludes my remarks.

Thank you very much, Brian.

To get this resolution in front of us, I move the committee recommends adoption of resolution 31952. Is there a second?

Second.

I'm going to go ahead and move to adopt amendment one as presented on the agenda and described by central staff.

As sponsor of this, just by sure fact of being the chair of budget, I'll give you a quick overview as well.

The resolution expands the policies to allow for those funds to be used to pay debt services on West Seattle Bridge as you just heard.

And the amendment is technical in that it allows for us to use the end fund balance of the REIT subaccounts to decrease the balance to decrease below 5 million due to revenue fluctuations caused by the public health emergency.

Thank you again to central staff for really catching this correction that needed to be included.

This is technical and it is our effort to align our financial policies with emergency situations such as this when the balance may and existing financial policies state that the re-ending balance must be maintained at at least $5 million.

So thank you for this correction.

Are there any questions?

Okay, I'm not seeing any questions or comments.

Thank you very much again to central staff for catching this needed correction.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll on adoption of Amendment 1.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herboldt?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

9 in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

Now Amendment 1 has been adopted.

The motion has carried and Amendment 1 is included.

Are there any further comments as the resolution is now amended?

Any comments on the resolution as amended?

Hearing none, Madam Clerk, let's go ahead and do this again.

Could you please call the roll on the resolution as amended?

Peterson.

Aye.

DeWan.

Yes.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbal?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Yes.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the resolution as amended be adopted.

We will send this to the August 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

All right, we've already read item number five into the record.

Ali, would you like to summarize this item, or is that going to be Brian again?

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I'll ask Brian to walk you through this one.

Thank you very much, Brian.

Thank you very much.

Again, for the record, Brian Goodnight, Council Central Staff.

Council Bill 119823 would amend the Families, Education, Preschool, and Promise, or FEPP, Levy Implementation and Evaluation Plan by attaching Addendum Number 2. Addendum Number 2 would temporarily authorize up to $1.3 million in personnel expenses from the department's birth to age 12 programs as an eligible levy expense.

As you've heard in prior budget committee meetings, as part of the rebalancing package, the executive has proposed shifting approximately $2 million from the general fund over to the FEPP levy.

Of that $2 million, $1.3 million is related to the staff that provide support to the department's birth to 12 programs, which covers 17 FTE that provide coaching, training, and professional development services to early education program providers.

The addendum to the implementation plan is necessary because two of the programs served by those personnel are not currently included in the implementation plan, and because one of them begins serving children at birth, whereas the plan currently addresses serving children beginning at age three.

In compliance with the original FEPP levy ordinance, DO did seek the recommendation of the levy's oversight committee regarding this temporary change, and the committee voted in support of using the levy's funds in 2020 to fund these personnel costs.

And lastly, if approved, the addendum does expire at the end of the year.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Brian.

Council colleagues, I move that the committee recommend passage of Council Bill 119823. Is there a second?

Second.

I do not have anything else to add to what Brian has just summarized.

Are there any additional comments or questions?

Councilmembers, not seeing any.

Thank you so much, Brian.

Succinct summary.

Let's go ahead and call the roll, Madam Clerk, on Council Bill 119823.

Gonzalez?

Aye.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chair Mosqueda?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries.

And the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the August 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

We are on item number six.

It has been read into the record.

I see Allie up there.

Allie, do you want to walk us through item number six?

from the general fund for SDOT spending in order to continue collection of the levy, but allows for the city to suspend this requirement by a three-fourth council vote when there's a determination that economic or financial conditions prevent the council from appropriating the minimum allocation.

This bill declares the council's finding that the COVID-19 emergency prevents the city from making the minimum general fund allocation.

This is necessary in order to support the proposal in Council Bill 119825 that would reduce SDOT's 2020 general fund appropriation by $10 million, which is below the minimum required by the levy.

Thank you very much, Allie.

Colleagues, I move the committee recommends passage of Council Bill 119822. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Madam President.

It's been moved and seconded that the committee recommends passage of the bill.

It's already been described by central staff, and I don't have any additional comments on this.

Are there questions or comments from our colleagues?

Council Member Solano, please go ahead.

My comments apply to this item and the next one, item number seven.

These two resolutions lift the legally required minimum investment in the department of transportation and the parks department.

If this was being done purely as an accounting exercise to swap different types of funds to allow the city to fund the best priorities, of course, I would be entirely supportive.

However, that is not the reality, unfortunately, of this austerity budget.

The reality is this year the mayor has chosen to cut parks and roads rather than supporting the Amazon tax, which would have increased revenues in order to make sure that there were no cuts.

When the council was voting on the Amazon tax in July, My office proposed an amendment to increase those big business taxes to cover all the budget shortfalls so that no austerity would be needed.

Unfortunately at that time no other council member supported that amendment and as a result we are faced with an austerity budget including, I mean these resolutions are legally required in order to make all of that happen, but it's really representing an austerity budget that is going to invest little into roads and parks.

So I will be voting no on these resolutions, and if the majority of the council members agree with me and vote no, not that I expect that, but I just want to say this for the record, then it will mean that the majority of the council supports returning to the Amazon tax to increase the big business tax rate to eliminate the need for budget cuts.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Sawant.

Are there additional comments or questions?

Okay.

I was not aware that there was any concern over this.

Allie, is there any additional comments that you have or information on this piece?

Councilmember Mosqueda, I don't have anything to add.

I believe I have my colleagues on the line who have perhaps more background on these specific bills related to the levy, but I will just, to these levies, I will just note that if these items don't pass, it may mean more significant changes may be necessary to Council Bill 119825 that may delay action on that vote.

I don't, I would have to follow up with you after that, but I just want to note that.

Thank you very much.

Calvin, did you have anything you wanted to add?

I saw you pop in.

Council members, Calvin Chow with council central staff.

I just wanted to clarify that the move Seattle levy did include that requirement.

So regardless of the messaging around it, if the council does not take this action to find to make this declaration, and we were to make the changes to reduce the general fund allocation to SDOT, we would not be able to collect about $100 million of Seattle property tax levy in 2021. Okay.

Thank you for that clarification.

All right.

Council colleagues, seeing no additional comments or questions, please go ahead.

Oh, excuse me.

Council Member Juarez, please go ahead.

Chair Parks, I'd love to hear from you.

Okay, this will just be, I wasn't gonna share, but since Council Member Sawant brought up the questions and there were some other issues, we did have a response, but I would just add that this is one of the technical supporting resolutions, modifying financial policies to align with the rebalanced budget.

As you know, our discussions with the executive in parks, it provides an exception to the level of general fund support required to go to Seattle Parks and Rec due to the exigent economic circumstances, as you all know, by a three-quarter vote of the city council.

Seattle Park and Rec's general fund supports totals, oh man, 101 million in 2020, well over that.

So my understanding is that this is a one-time exception based on the COVID emergency.

Please go ahead, Council Member Juarez, I'm sorry.

So anyway, I just, did I speak?

Oh, so anyway, what I'm saying is I support this because it's a one-time exception based on the COVID emergency.

And I wanna thank Superintendent Aguirre, and the executive, and all the other folks, and especially central staff that got us the information, and Tracy, so we could make an intelligent decision on this particular amendment, I mean, resolution, I'm sorry, thank you.

Thank you very much for that clarification.

I also see Tracy.

Tracy, welcome.

It's good to see you.

Would you like to add anything else?

I just want to confirm what Council Member Juarez just said, which is it is a one-time 2020 only action.

And frankly, the only option is to reduce reductions in parks.

And unless you all want to go through that exercise, that is your only alternative to approving this resolution, Council Members.

Okay, excellent.

Thank you for the clarification from central staff and from our chair of Parks.

Appreciate it.

Okay.

I'm not seeing any other questions.

I feel comfortable with that clarification that has been shared by the chair and the central staff.

Madam Clerk, please call the roll on Council Bill 119822. Peterson.

Aye.

DeWatt.

No.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzales?

Aye.

Herbold?

Aye.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Chairman Skidda?

Yes.

Eight in favor, one opposed.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

The motion carries and the committee recommendation that the bill pass will be sent to the August 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

We are on our last agenda item.

It has already been read into the record, so I will turn it over to central staff to walk us through Resolution 31951. Thank you.

Resolution 31951 would authorize the city to provide a reduced level of general fund support to the Metropolitan Park District in 2020 due to the economic circumstances caused by COVID-19, as Council Member Juarez just described.

The mayor's proposed reductions in general fund support to the parks and to Seattle Parks and Recreation would result in being able to meet this baseline allocation required by the interlocal agreement, and this bill would allow for the one-time suspension of that bill.

The ILA requires that the general fund to support the Seattle Parks and Rec with a baseline amount of support adjusted annually for inflation.

In 2020, that was $105 million.

The mayor's 2020 proposed rebalancing package would provide approximately $82 million instead.

Thank you, Allie.

I'm going to put this bill in front of us, Resolution 31951. I move that Resolution 31951 be considered for adoption.

I'm sorry.

I move that the committee recommends adoption of Resolution 31951. Is there a second?

Thank you very much.

It's been moved and seconded to recommend adoption of resolution 31951. And it has already been described by central staff.

I do not have any additional comments.

Are there additional comments from our chair of parks or anybody else?

Okay.

Hearing none, thank you very much, council colleagues.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

No.

Strauss.

Yes.

Gonzalez.

Aye.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Aye.

Morales.

Aye.

Chair Mosqueda.

Aye.

Eight in favor, one opposed.

Thank you very much.

The motion carries, and the committee recommendation that the resolution be adopted will be sent to the August 10th Seattle City Council meeting for final consideration.

Colleagues, that brings us to the end of the long day today, and it's not even five o'clock.

I want to thank you for all of your time and all of the work that you put into this.

It's been a robust conversation that will continue on Monday.

We do have another council meeting, I'm sorry, another committee meeting at 10 a.m.

on Monday.

we will be taking public comment at the beginning of the meeting at 8 a.m.

I appreciate that.

I just wanted to thank the members of the city Council central staff for their help in preparing the amendments from my office today and all of this month.

The truth is that city Council central staff have been working last night until midnight at least and this is far from the first time this has happened.

This was also the case Thursday night in preparation for Friday's Particularly thank Kirsten Aristead, Director of Central Staff, Patty Weigrin.

Ali Panucci, Dan Eder, Lisa Kay, Asha Venkatraman, Greg Dawes, Karina Bull, Yolanda Ho, Jeff Sims, Ketel Freeman, and Calvin Chow, who are the people that I know have worked directly on the budget amendments proposed by my office.

But of course, thanks go to all of central staff.

They worked incredibly long hours on the budget, and we could not have won any of the progressive amendments that we have without their help.

So I really appreciate their work.

Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Sawant.

I want to echo your appreciation for all of our central staff, all the IT folks, clerk staff, communications staff, and everybody in the individual offices.

We have had a lot of conversation about the amendments that will continue on Monday.

I'll be repeating some of those thank yous on Monday as well as we get close to wrapping up this Selected Budget Committee process as we look at the 2020 rebalancing package.

and the continuation of our Seattle Police Department budget inquest that started in early June.

There's been a lot of really important conversations today that we will wrap up on Monday, August 10th, and with the Council President's leadership in the afternoon, House and Final Votes.

I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Any additional comments?

Okay, great.

So we will have more chance for conversation and thank yous on Monday as we wrap up the final votes in front of you.

Again, colleagues, I sent a calendar to you on the bills and resolutions that will be in front of us.

meeting at 10 a.m.

So please do take a look at that in anticipation of the agenda as well.

Thanks again to Patty and Amelia and everybody actually on the clerk side who have been helping to make sure that we have all the information in front of us.

We do appreciate all of your work and you've made it possible for us to really follow along and have robust discussion remotely here.

We will have public comment again, so I want to thank folks who have continued to call in.

10 a.m.

Sign up starts at 8 a.m.

We've reached the end of our agenda.

Colleagues, we will see you on Monday, August 10th at 10 a.m.

With that, this meeting is adjourned.