Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Session II 10/15/21

Good afternoon, everyone.

Welcome back to the Select Budget Committee meeting.

The time is 2.07 p.m.

The date is October 15th, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Juarez?

Here.

Councilmember Lewis?

Present.

Councilmember Morales?

Here.

Councilmember Peterson?

Here.

Council Member Sawant.

Present.

Council Member Strauss.

Present.

Council Member Gonzalez.

Here.

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Excellent.

We have everyone in attendance here today just to orient us to where we are at in the presentation.

We are on agenda item number two still.

We are going to conclude our conversation on agenda item number two before moving to agenda item number three, which is related to the Seattle Police Department and the proposed budget.

We're on the alternatives to police response and the criminal legal system.

I want to thank all of the staff who've been part of this presentation here this morning leading into the afternoon.

Amy Gore, Ann Gorman, Lisa Kay, Jeff Sims, and Asha Venkantraman.

Asha, I think we're still on your slides.

And I see slide 14 pulled up here.

Thank you for walking us through this piece.

Are we ready to move on to the next slide?

Yes, I think we are at the stage of talking about issue number two, which is electronic home monitoring subsidies.

Perfect.

Okay, let's get started on slide 15.

Great.

So electronic home monitoring, just for the public's awareness, is generally an alternative to incarceration in which a person is monitored by a GPS device.

So there can be restrictions on where they go and times at which they have to be in a certain location, such as returning home by a particular time.

And so as it currently stands, the Seattle Municipal Court uses EHM instead of pretrial incarceration and as an alternative to incarceration when an individual has been sentenced to a mandatory minimum jail term.

There have been concerns raised about the use of EHM as an alternative to incarceration.

Some of those concerns are reflected in the community task force report on the criminal legal system.

And the recommendations are not to replace incarceration itself with EHM as an alternative form of surveillance.

And so these considerations primarily inform the decision that a judge makes when that decision is discretionary.

So if a judge has the option to assign EHM or incarceration versus releasing somebody pretrial, especially without conditions, there are cautions about using EHM as a form of surveillance.

However, there are some situations in which the judge does not have any discretion because of the way that state law is set up.

So particularly in cases of DUIs, there are state laws that require some level of supervision.

And so that can be either in the form of EHM or in the form of incarceration.

And so In those situations, even if a judge would prefer not to incarcerate or put somebody on EHM, they just don't have the discretion to make that decision.

They're required to do it.

And EHM can be, in those situations, the less restrictive alternative in comparison to incarcerating somebody.

In the 2022 proposed budget, there is an addition of $88,000, which would add to an existing $43,800 that is in the base budget to provide subsidies for electronic home monitoring.

So regardless of whether the decision of the judge to put somebody on EHM is mandatory or it's discretionary, it is the defendant that has to pay the costs of EHM.

And so particularly in cases where EHM or incarceration is mandatory, there can be an equity issue in terms of whether a defendant can actually pay the costs of EHM.

Because if they can't, then they may end up being incarcerated instead.

And so for the purposes of increasing funding for this purpose, the court has, and the budget includes, included $88,000 additionally to its budget so that people that cannot afford, cannot afford EHM, defendants that can't afford it, are able to access it by use of this subsidy.

So for your consideration, there are two sets of options on this slide and in the issue ID paper.

The first is about mandatory supervision.

So in this circumstance where a judge has the discretion to assign EHM to a defendant, because of the concerns reflected in the task force report, the ask there is to just release people without condition whatsoever.

And so if there is interest from the council side in limiting the use of these funds only to where supervision is mandatory, so in the case of DUIs, there are a couple options laid out for you.

Option A would maintain the allocation in the budget, but proviso the funds to require that they only be used when EHM is mandated by state law.

B would be to not proviso funds, but request an evaluation.

And that evaluation could be about any number of things.

It could look at racial disproportionality in the assignment of EHM.

It could look at whether EHM as a form of surveillance is replacing incarceration and expanding the kind of supervision that the courts are using, whether EHM, because it is being used in place of incarceration, is actually increasing the conditions under which somebody is under.

And there are a variety of other considerations that an evaluation could shed light on.

And then option AC would be not to proviso funds, but again, depending on the council's views on the use of EHM as a mandatory form of supervision includes some priorities in the city's state legislative agenda that would go towards the state considering whether a mandatory supervision should be included as part of DUIs.

Or there's option B, which is to take no action, which would allow the allocation to move forward without any restrictions.

The second set of options here are regarding the funding source.

And so similarly to the discussion we had earlier in terms of pre-filing diversion, trying to fund this sort of allocation using existing funds from within the criminal legal system.

So either from the Seattle Police Department, the city attorney offices, criminal division, or from the Seattle Municipal Court itself, or B, to take no action.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold and then Councilmember Lewis.

And then, excuse me, Councilmember Morales as well.

Just to understand option A1, if the funds were provisos so that they could only be used when EHM is mandated, that means the funds would not be available when EHM is discretionary.

So the, the judge in those cases for folks who could not afford the costs associated with EHM in those discretionary cases, the only option would be jail for them, right?

Not necessarily.

I guess I shouldn't say the only option.

We don't have any influence, I guess, over which option is chosen.

Correct.

And that could be an outcome of that decision because we don't get to choose whether or not a judge, you know, the sentence that the judge chooses.

Yes, that's correct.

All right, thanks.

Okay, thank you for the clarifying question.

Council Member Lewis, then Council Member Herbold.

Excuse me.

It's getting late, guys, on a Friday afternoon.

Lewis and then Morales.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

It's sort of related to Councilmember Herbold's clarifying questions.

My preference would probably be for A2, mostly because I do get concerned about If we were to proviso only in cases where things are mandated by state law, I don't want us to be in a position where we have inadvertently created a scenario where more people are serving jail terms because he has been prevented.

And this is just sort of a.

like a pragmatism thing.

I'm not necessarily coming here and giving a big endorsement to EHM as something that I think is great, but I am making a very clear value judgment that EHM is superior to jail.

You know, better outcomes, like cheaper, people are not put through an experience of incarceration unnecessarily.

And I would want to make sure that we are not, I want to make sure that we're evaluating and assessing the efficacy of EHM and developing alternative systems that can be even less restrictive than EHM.

But I don't want us to be in a position where we would accidentally create incentives when judges are faced with a choice.

Because it's not just about when people are serving a sentence, this is also a critical tool for when people are pending their trial and as an alternative to setting bail or an alternative to holding people in jail prior to even having a trial to determine if they are going to be sentenced to anything.

So a lot of those decisions are made with a very small amount of information from a judge.

They always have to make a risk reward assessment or a risk assessment in terms of determining what level of restriction to put someone under while they're awaiting trial.

And I would want to make sure that in situations like that, which is like a pretrial release kind of scenario, we're not removing this as an option or stymieing this as an option.

and inadvertently creating a situation where judges are instead erring to set bail and hold people in the King County Jail.

So I think for that, I would favor the not provisioning the funds, but requesting ongoing evaluation.

Thank you for flagging that Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales.

Well, great minds think alike, because that was the first thing I thought of, too, was, you know, if we choose option A1, whether this would increase pretrial detention.

So I'm inclined to agree with Councilmember Lewis about which of these options to select.

But I do think it's worth pointing out, you know, the comments that Asha includes in her memo that a judge could use their discretion to release without conditions.

You know, given that we're talking about misdemeanors here, and I realize that there are There are different risk assessments as Councilmember Lewis was pointing out, but if we are trying to begin approaching our work to the criminal legal system with the goal toward harm reduction, I would like to see us I would be very interested to see in the end whether there were some options that could lead us closer to releasing without conditions at all when that is a possibility.

I just want to add that I am interested in the funding source option as well, option A, related to making sure that any funding for EHM subsidies is coming from the criminal legal system rather than expanding the size of the footprint of those budgets.

So that's, I guess, the funding source option A.

Okay, thank you.

Any additional comments on funding source items identified here?

Excellent.

Well, thank you for flagging these options, Asha, and council members for giving some early indications of the ways that you are leading.

Shall we continue on to community-led public safety investments?

Okay, you are on mute.

Sorry, Asha.

I'm so sorry.

That wraps up the last issue here.

And so if we could move to the next slide, I will pass it over to my colleague, Amy.

Thanks for all your work, Asha.

Hello, Amy.

Hi.

Thank you, Asha.

Good afternoon, Chair Mosqueda and council members.

I am Amy Gore from Council Central Staff.

The next portion of the presentation focuses on community-led public safety programs.

As we discussed yesterday, there's a continuum of programs which contribute to community safety, including affordable housing, job skills, training, mental and behavioral health treatment, and many others.

For this paper and presentation, we have tried to focus on those programs with the closest nexus to the criminal legal system.

First, I wanted to mention and briefly describe some of the programs that are discussed in the paper and provide an opportunity for questions.

And then we will present three issues that central staff identified for council's consideration.

The programs highlighted in the paper include the Community Safety Capacity Building Program, which provides funding to build the capacity of groups working toward community-led solutions to end violence and to increase safety in black, indigenous, and people of color communities.

I will discuss this issue further in issue ID.

I wanted to highlight the King County Regional Peacekeepers Collective, which is the pilot program designed to reduce gun violence through a collaborative public health model.

It is run through King County Public Health.

It includes organizations and activities throughout South Seattle and South King County.

The program was funded with $500,000 as part of the 2021 mid-year supplemental legislation.

At that time, the expectation was that there would be an additional 1.5 million for 2022, which is included in the budget.

LEAD, the LEAD program, which now stands for Let Everyone Advance with Dignity, provides care for people who commit law violations related to mental behavioral health issues or extreme poverty.

Jeff will cover this program in more detail in issue ID.

And let's see, reentry services, sometimes called rerouting services, support people as they transition out of incarceration or institutionalization.

The programs provide a variety of support services, including educational opportunities, job training, and workforce development, all with the goal of helping individuals heal, gain meaningful employment, reenter community, and reduce recidivism.

The 2022 proposed budget includes two new re-entry investments.

The first is $75,000 as part of the $1.2 million for the services for the American Indian and Alaska Native community.

The second is $1.5 million, which is part of the Equitable Communities Initiative, which as we discussed yesterday is in addition to the 1.5 million for that purpose in 2021, which has not been contracted out yet, although I saw that that RFP was released just today.

Let's see.

I'll pause here before we go into issue identification if there are any general questions about these or other programs in the budget.

Thank you, Amy.

I see Councilmember Juarez.

Thumbs up.

She likes it.

All right, great.

I am not as familiar with the SLI related to the LEEDs expansion and maybe positions or more service expansion that they were looking at.

Can you remind me, there was a recent SLI report that came back that was talking about how to expand LEED.

Is that part of what is funded in the baseline budget?

I will let Jeff Simms answer that question for you.

Thanks, Amy.

Jeff Sims Council central staff.

No, the base, the 2022 proposed budget does not provide a level of funding that would have met the level discussed in the recent slide response.

The slide response was passed in last year's budget requesting analysis and a budget estimate and estimated caseload if LEED was accepting all priority qualified referrals citywide.

And the 2022 proposed budget is essentially maintaining the funding that was in last year's adopted budget with a little bit of an inflationary increase.

And as I'll discuss in the show ID, that's actually below the amount of funding that LEED will be receiving in 2021.

Thank you.

I know that we don't have a specific set of hands up right now, but I know we're going to talk about LEED here in a second.

So thank you for the reminder about that slide.

Okay, let's keep going.

Great.

Next slide, please, Patty.

So the first issue identified for your consideration is the Community Safety Capacity Building Program.

As I mentioned, this was originally funded with $12 million.

in one-time funds in the 2020 adopted budget.

$1.6 million of the funding was for administration, community honorariums, and other costs, and the remaining $10.4 million was distributed to 33 organizations through an RFP process to fund community safety programs.

Because the funds for 2021 were contracted late in the year, The contracts are through December of 2022. In addition, as of a few weeks ago, the 3 million in additional funding had not been contracted.

Meaning 7 to 10 million of the 2021 funding will likely not be spent in 2021 and will be available to support the programs in 2022. And I'm double checking with CBO to try and quantify that number exactly for you as we move through this process.

In addition to the remaining 2021 funds, the proposed 2022 budget includes ongoing funding of $10 million per year for this program.

Similar to our discussion of participatory budgeting and equitable communities initiative, this will lead to a significant increase in funding in 2022 with a drop in 2023 without council action.

Council could consider reducing funding for the Community Safety Capacity Building in 2022 to make funding available for other Council priorities and minimize the funding cliff at the end of 22 when funding reduces to $10 million or the Council could choose to take no action.

Questions or comments on this?

Council Member Humboldt, please go ahead.

Thank you.

So this is now identified as an ongoing investment, is that correct?

Yes.

So that's good.

Let's just start there.

Because I think when we originally made it, it was considered one-time funding.

And so this proposed budget adds another 10 million and then there's the carryover for unspent dollars plus the other three that we put in just in September.

So you're saying there's 17 there.

Right.

I'm working to figure out what that exact number of carry forward is expected to be or what would be available.

But right now I think it would be in that range.

And so if we we reduce the funds to 10 million that would still carry us through the end of, for the contracts, through the end of 2022, it's considered an ongoing investment, so there'll be money, presumably, available in 2023.

Yes, there would be, as long as no changes are made, there would be 10 million available in 2023.

All right, that's helpful.

When I discussed this with Director Noble, he did kind of suggest that this was by design in an effort to try to assist us in turning what was a one-time investment into an ongoing investment.

I think I understand how that's working and appreciate the options here.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold and thank you, Amy, for laying this out.

I do know that this came up when we were considering the underspend from the SPD budget this summer and we were told, hey, maybe you don't need to cut that $3 million from the underspend from SPD's budget that was not being utilized because of officers not utilizing that funding, or excuse me, SPD not utilizing that funding because there wasn't officers.

But we said, hey, we think it's important to use $3 million.

The community was requesting that we add $3 million to the existing $10 million, so that either contracts could be expanded for a full two years instead of 18 months, or that HSD could identify additional to be grant recipients given that there was at least $40 million in requests that had come in.

I think that the important element in your options here is similar to the conversation we were having about the equitable communities initiative task force and the participatory budgeting recommendations coming forward.

We don't want any of these programs to sort of have an amount in 2020, that is not reflective of where sort of the funding will potentially be in future years if funding is there.

And we don't want there to be a cliff for those funds to be pulled away.

So I am interested in working with you all, with central staff, with chair of public safety.

Thank you for weighing in to make sure that we do see the carry forward as you referenced in 2022's budget so that we can maintain that commitment to 13 million as the council had authorized and making sure that that three million that we had recently freed up does carry over until next year.

Assuming Amy that your research that you're doing to figure out how much.

is potentially available for carryover in 2022. I'd love to see all of those dollars continue forward so that we have either maintained the promise that these contracts will get two years or that we're also adding additional contracts to it.

But I do think that that means we are then creating a reasonable sort of level expectation of how much people could receive versus having an inflated amount that then sort of drops off without the ability for funding in the future.

And I'll look forward to working with all of you right now.

I think I'm leaning towards option A here as well.

And I want to make sure though that we're looking at out years and sustainability.

So next, are there any additional questions or comments about that?

Next slide, please.

Thank you.

I also wanted to highlight the Seattle Community Safety Initiative, which was funded with $4 million in one time funding in 2020. The initiative funds for organizations to provide coordinated services, including crisis incident response, community safety hubs, and neighborhood-based safety teams to reduce violence and improve community safety.

The one-time funding ends at the end of 2021, and the 2022 proposed budget does not include funding for the program.

If council wants this program to continue, They could amend the 2022 proposed budget to include funding for the program.

That funding could either be one time or ongoing.

Council Member Herbold, thank you.

Please go ahead.

Very quickly say high priority for me.

Developed option one and thank you to those of you who have signed on in support of it.

This is a really important geographically based model that is doing really amazing work in our communities.

Thank you very much Councilmember Herbold.

Appreciate your leadership on this piece and glad that it continues to get flagged as an area that didn't get included that others Councilmember interested in.

Last slide, Amy.

Well, the last slide will be discussed by Jeff Sims.

So thank you very much.

Great to see you, Amy.

Thank you so much for being here.

Welcome back, Jeff.

Thank you.

The last identification is the LEAD program which we already started touching to.

Just as a refresher, the 2021 budget provided $6.1 million.

Over the course of 2021, the council added another $3 million in ordinance 126148 for a total of $9.2 million being spent on LEAD in 2021. I want to be transparent that the $3 million as of September, the additional $3 million had not yet been provided to LEED.

And so I don't know, it was supposed to imminently or soon be completed, but obviously those funds were not provided earlier in the year, so there's likely some impacts on caseload and when to scale up and things like that can occur.

The 2022 proposed budget maintains the adopted budget from last year with an inflationary increase, but does not add that $3 million that the council appropriated in this last summer.

As a result, there would be a funding decrease for LEED relative to what was provided.

And then also to make sure I highlight for your question, Chair Mosqueda, there's two other actions that are relevant that date back to 2020. In 2020, when the council first basically doubled funding for the LEAD program, it also passed a resolution seeking to, resolving to appropriate, to ensure that the appropriate funding would be available for all priority qualified referrals by 2023. That resolution didn't just talk about Seattle, City of Seattle general funds, it talked about a lot of other pathways as well.

And then last year in the budget, So the last year as we were going through this same process, a slide was put together.

It was slide HSD 6A3, for anyone looking that up.

And it asked the Human Services Department to estimate the cost of doing citywide, the LEAD program citywide, accepting all appropriate qualifying referrals.

That was just discussed at a committee meeting just before the budget process began.

The estimate for that amount would be $21 million.

So those are the various numbers to consider here.

The options are just to add more funding for the LEAD program or to go with what's in the proposed budget.

And the add funding for LEAD program is the total of the $3 million?

That would be up to the discretion of the council.

If you wanted to restore to the 3 million, restore the 3 million that wasn't, that was added over the summer and is not included, that could be one level.

If there was a desire to achieve some of the levels discussed, either in the slide response or the resolution, that would be another one.

Or also because of the- And just remind me of that total.

I'm sorry, I was getting lost in some of the numbers.

Is that the 21?

Yes, it is, yeah.

21 million for the full Sly implementation.

Yes.

And then another possibility, because of the late date that the $3 million would be provided, it's not clear to me how much of those funds would be expended this year.

If it got awarded on December 25th, I doubt that many of them would be used.

So I don't know what level might be necessary to maintain relative to what it expands to once it receives that $3 million.

We would have to find out when the contract is awarded and engage with HSD for further information.

I'm going to pass it back to you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Herbold, please go ahead.

I just want folks to know that because I feel really strongly that we passed this resolution a couple of years ago.

We did the slide report.

We asked for the study and the analytics around what it would around that number.

But with a full understanding that with so many competing needs, we may not be able to get there.

But I think it's important to start the conversation about funding for LEAD within a context of fidelity around the model and and what we expect it to accomplish, and what a priority referral is versus what it should be.

And I think from my participation on the League Coordinating Council, the thing they really struggle with is without full funding, it creates a challenge around making decisions around who gets referrals to their program.

And not everybody who is eligible is able to be referred.

And so if we are not funding the program at full scale, I think there's also an important policy conversation about how leads should be prioritizing their referrals.

Great, thank you very much Councilmember Herbold for your work on that.

Jeff, thank you for the reminder of all the details in the slide and appreciate some of the flexibility that you flagged, but the importance of really following through on what those that slide was initially asking for.

What is the full universe of how to take this to scale?

I just want to flag for you, your audio is a little bit distant.

I don't know if there's a way to change the setting to conference mode or individual and not the tech person, but at some point in the future, we might want to double check your audio.

Great.

Thank you.

So, Jeff, thanks for getting us through this last slide.

Colleagues, are there any other questions in this category?

I'm not hearing any.

This is a great primer for the upcoming conversation here that we have on SPD for the remainder of the afternoon.

I want to thank again, Amy Gore, Ann Gorman, Lisa Kay, Jeff Sims, Asha Venkatraman, and of course, Patty and Allie, who are constant presence here with us as well.

All great information leading into our conversation here with Greg Doss, who also made some cameos this morning.

Thanks, Greg, for being with us all day.

Madam Clerk, can you please read item number three into the record?

Agenda item three, Seattle Police Department for briefing and discussion.

Wonderful, thank you and welcome.

Greg, I appreciate your patience as we got to this last item for central staff review, excuse me, central staff issue identification for our review, and we will turn it right over to you, Council Member Herbold.

This is going to, I think, be another longish presentation this afternoon.

Did you have anything to say at the beginning?

Nothing, okay, wonderful.

We will go ahead and get right into it.

Greg, thanks for getting us going.

Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the committee.

Last but not least, the Seattle Police Department issue presentation.

I'm going to try to move through it as quickly as I can.

But as you pointed out, Madam Chair, it is longish.

Go ahead and dive right in, Patty, if you'd flip the next slide.

So this is not very easy to read, but I'll point out that there's not a lot of information that can be taken away here.

At a very high level, what you're seeing is a budget that has not changed a lot.

At the bottom line, a budget that has moved up in appropriation only $2.5 million, and that has grown by only, well, less than 1%.

And it is the case that the FTEs have gone from 2020 to 1,769 largely because of the FTEs that have moved out of the police department, the parking enforcement unit, and the communications group over the last year.

I know that there has been some question about the FTEs and the number that was in the printed budget, the proposed budget that the mayor sent down.

And I can let members know that the 1769 number that's really small there in the 2022 proposed column is a number that CBO has put forward to me.

And it is three FTE higher than the one in the printed budget.

So slightly off, but certainly not anything that is of concern.

Percentage change column in the BSLs are largely due to money moving around, having to do with salary savings that are being put in a place where SPD would like to spend them.

And that will pretty much be the entire topic of our conversation this afternoon.

And with that, if it's okay, I'll just move along.

And so I wouldn't normally start with staffing, I would normally go right into the mayor's proposed budget ads.

But in this particular case, starting with staffing is good context.

One very much one subject very much ties into the other so.

Hopefully that's okay.

I'm going to start with staffing.

And as you'll see here in this staffing chart, of course, there's the history of investing in SPD's funded FTEs, that column that is second from the left.

And the city has continually put more money into the department in the last decade and moved that funded FTE number up.

And that continued until last year, last summer specifically, when SPD reduced its internal allocation for funded FTE from 1497 to 1422. And as you all know, that happened.

And immediately following was a five-month hiring freeze.

And this happened because there was the COVID revenue crisis and also there was a need for SPD to capture savings.

because of expenditures made in the overtime category to address George Floyd and Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

And so for those reasons, SPD lowered its own funded FTE count to capture some savings.

Then in the 2021 adopted budget, that next line down, you can see that the council funded the FTE at 1343. That was largely to reflect what the trend was at the time of an unprecedented number of officer separations.

The council was starting to see in the fall and expecting to continue throughout the year.

And of course, that did happen.

You can see as the line is ending there in the net ads column, a negative 78 in 2021 and a negative 135 in 2020 means that by the end of 2021, there is a projected net loss of 215 officers from the force.

And the department has indicated that about a third of those officers had fewer than seven years of service.

and about 25% were people of color.

And so now jump into the mayor's proposed budget.

The mayor's proposed budget, oh, if you could still flip back one more, I wasn't quite done with that.

Thanks, Patty.

The mayor's proposed budget would increase sworn staffing to a level that would support 1,357 FTE.

So that's the 2022 row that is there on the very end of the table.

And obviously this is an increase from last year.

And the executive has said that the reason that they are increasing the sworn FTE is for a couple reasons.

First, because 1357 is the number of authorized positions that the department currently has.

The council last year cut a number of positions, 97, I believe.

cut the authorized positions down to 1357. And so that is one reason why the executive has picked that number.

They're refunding up to the authorized level.

And then the second reason being that the executive believes that the council took the action of going down to 1343 only to capture attrition savings that was expected in the fall.

And so since they believe that the attrition is going to stop this year, they've moved the funding level back up to 1357. And so going into the specifics, what that would mean is that their staffing plan would hire 125 new hires and that they would expect only 94 separations, which is obviously a drastic difference since the last couple of years.

And the mayor's plan has been publicized as hiring a net of 35 new hires.

a net of 35 sworn officers.

And I should point out that she gets there by not including academy separations.

When a recruit is, it's kind of a technical thing, but when a recruit is hired, they're a civilian and they go through the academy as a civilian.

And it's not until they graduate from the academy that they take the sworn oath.

And so if they drop out from the Academy, they're dropping out as a civilian.

And so she's not counting for Academy dropouts as sworn officer separations.

And by doing that, she's taking 125 less 90 instead of less 94 and calling it 35 sworn ads.

Um, and so that's how she has 35 sworn ads in her, um, promotional materials.

But actually if you just take, uh, the total ads, less the total separations, it's 31, which would be the case over two years.

So I'll make that distinction.

So there's, there's no confusion, but she would get to that through the 94 separations, 125 ads.

The 125 ads would consist of 105 recruits and 20 lateral hires.

I think it's evident from this table that that is not a level that SPD has seen a whole lot.

It is an aggressive staffing plan.

It isn't something that couldn't be achieved, but it is certainly aggressive.

It is something that the department believes that they can reach because of a number of changes that they have made.

One of the changes being that they have put their testing system online and it makes it easier for folks to take the test.

And probably a more significant change is that they have contracted out for their backgrounding services.

And so there used to be a bottleneck as folks passed the test and moved into backgrounding It would take several months for the backgrounding detectives to get them through the full investigation process.

Now that they've got some help doing that, hopefully they can get them through quicker.

So with those two assumptions, they're thinking that they're going to get through 125 hires with 105 recruits and 20 laterals.

Again, aggressive as they have acknowledged.

And so then the last thing I'll say about this slide before I take some questions, I know you'll have some questions, is that if they do achieve this aggressive hiring plan, they will need funding to support 1,223 FTE.

And so 1,223 FTE is obviously quite a bit less than what they're funded at.

They're funded at 1,357.

So it's a difference of 134. They'll have 134 FTE that are funded and vacant and creating salary savings.

And that salary savings will add up to $19 million.

And then what their budget is based on is taking the $19 million of salary savings and then spending it elsewhere.

And I'm about to, in a minute, when I answer your questions, go into how they plan to spend that salary savings.

and they have a specific plan to spend 17.9 million of it, which we'll go into a minute, but I've thrown a lot at you, so I'll stop and take a break for questions.

Well, Greg, thank you very much.

Colleagues, are there questions at this point?

Greg, I'd just ask if you are able to give us a sense of how this hiring plan and its aggressivity compares to last year.

We received a budget that had an aggressive hiring plan where then ultimately we understood that there was really not a way to hit that amount of hires.

And so we made some appropriate changes to reflect what was achievable.

Is there any way to compare this level of aggressive hiring to what we saw in last year's proposed budget?

Yeah, well, in last year's proposed budget, Madam Chair, they had proposed 114 hires.

And I don't remember the specific breakout of recruits versus laterals.

I think it was Well, I'm not gonna say, because I don't remember the specific breakouts, but it was a little less aggressive.

It was 114 versus 125. And so far this year, they've hired 53 recruits, and they have hired, it looks like they have hired, A few laterals so they're they're not they're not anywhere near their their projections.

And I may be off on on those I'm, I'm trying to read the staffing plan at the same time that I am.

I am giving the presentation.

So I apologize if I'm off slightly.

I will get you the numbers later.

But as I'm reading it now in 2021, I'm seeing 53 recruits through between January 21 through September of 2021. So not close to the level that they're trying to get to next year.

Thank you.

Council Member Herbold, let's test your audio.

Is that any better?

Sounds so good.

Thank you.

So what is that the numbers that you just shared with us Greg?

Don't align to the numbers on this chart.

They have 85 new hires in 2021. Is that that's a projected number?

That's not the actuals?

because I thought you had said the actuals were like 113. I mean, the projections was 113.

Holly, you're welcome to chime in.

I see you on your camera there.

I believe these are updated projections.

I believe these are updated projections, council member, the little in parens where it says projected to year end.

Yep.

And so the original hiring plan that the council approved was 114 hires and 114 separations.

Got it, thank you.

And so I actually add that information into this chart at some point in the future, Greg, that might be helpful.

The previous hiring plan, yeah.

I can say.

Yeah, and I don't mean to take our committee time on that.

I'm sorry, but I wonder if it might be helpful for folks to see of the years on this chart what the total amount of appropriated slots were versus how many hires, separations, et cetera occurred.

So it'd be like one more column.

OK.

And on that, it seems like new hires column might be to, as it is now, you might be conflating two different definitions of new hires.

If that 85 is projected and all the other numbers under white are the actuals?

That's correct.

Yeah, okay.

To Madam Chair's point, it might be just good to have another column to compare what the actuals to the projections all the way down for all the years.

The original hiring plan, say, for 2013, how many net hires they thought they were going to have, and then they wound up with 85?

Exactly.

or I'm sorry, net hires would have been 46 in, yeah, okay, I see what you're saying.

Okay.

Thank you, Greg.

We love data apparently, so thanks for constantly working with us to show these numbers, really appreciate it.

Then I think, you know, we have a little look back at how many officers were funded each year so that there's no question.

All right, if there's nothing else, I'll flip to the next one.

Okay, Patty, go ahead and flip this one.

Thank you, so this is a chart that you have seen before.

This is fully trained officers and officers in service.

And fully trained officers are officers that have been through the, well, they've obviously been through the academy, they're sworn officers, and they've also been through the first two phases of field training.

And so they are officers that can, you can put them in a squad car and they can respond to a 911 call.

Um, an officer in service is an officer that is available, that is showing up to work every day.

Um, the officer in service number, the gray number that is lower accounts for officers that are out on long-term disability leave or on other kinds of leave like family leave.

And so, uh, you have a higher number of officers than you take out the folks that are out on long-term leave and you have.

A lower number of officers and it's the lower number that you can actually put out in the field every day.

And you'll see that there's.

that as you've seen in the past, those two numbers track somewhat close to each other.

And then during the summer of 2020, they diverge quite a bit.

The executive expects that over the next couple of years, they will go back to historical patterns and folks will, there will be fewer folks out on extended leave.

But just to give you an idea about how the consecutive ads of back-to-back 31 net new hires will look over two years, it will start to change the curve a little bit back towards where the officers were, not regaining too much.

certainly not back up to the levels between 2017 and 2019, but starting to head in that direction.

And so go ahead and flip the slide, Patty.

So the last thing on staffing I'll show you is the patrol staffing changes.

And what I want to show you here, I know these these are this is not a very easy one to read.

What you see on the left is patrol staffing as it exists today.

And describing this this particular table, you see that the various kinds of patrol staffing, the very top row is the nine one one responders.

And then you have other kinds of specialty patrol staffing, the anti-crime teams, the bike and foot beats, the community police teams, and then some other specialty patrol staff positions.

The same thing in the table on the right.

The table on the right is from a year ago.

And so what you can see here is that there is a drastic change over the last year as the staffing has changed at SPD.

The specialty staffing that was primarily in the community police team or the anti-crime team or on the beats, Those officers, as officers have been leaving, have been pushed into patrol.

And that is what Chief Diaz has done over the last year to try to maintain response times and to avoid priority call response days.

When they moved into patrol, they didn't move back into the precincts, north, south, east, and west directly.

They moved into a section that was called citywide response.

And so if you look on the table on the left, you'll see a new column called citywide response.

And that is where all of those officers that had been doing the specialty work, that had not been answering 911 calls, Now they're answering 9-1-1 calls again, and they're part of this specialty unit citywide response that is assisting with 9-1-1 calls.

And so the city is handling 9-1-1 calls very differently.

But I think the thing to point out is that if you take the numbers of 9-1-1 responders, they haven't changed.

You're seeing 564 9-1-1 responders this year and 563 9-1-1 responders last year.

So the responders, the staffing hasn't changed.

What's different is the way that they're being managed and the way they're responding to calls.

And what, of course, we're seeing is increases in 911 response times and increases in priority call response days.

And so I asked the department I said, how, how do those things go together.

And what they told me was that since the reopening of the city, since folks started to go back to work and events started happening again there's been more traffic congestion and that has that has led to decrease in or an increase in call response times as well as more an uptick in call volume.

And then second, that there's an uptick in shots fired and in emergency incidents.

And that when there are emergency incidents, that citywide response team and patrol folks go to those emergency incidents.

And of course, when that happens, they become unavailable for calls.

And then lastly, the staffing shortage.

And that's the piece that's still a bit of a disconnect.

And so that's something that I'm still working on learning more about.

We appreciate you doing this digging.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I was going to underscore some of what Greg just covered, but he did such a great job.

I don't know what there is left for me to say, other than just, again, noting that we have virtually the same number of 911 responders in patrol.

response times going up.

And the narrative that we're hearing a lot is the reason why response times going up is because of a staffing shortage.

So, you know, there's something more going on here.

I understand that some of it is about how folks in patrol are being managed as far as in the CRU unit as opposed to being dispatched out of precincts.

There are still precinct-based officers, but the CRU unit is 100 officers.

So that means, as I understand, I think what SPD is saying as it relates to traffic and congestion and opening up the city is, the CRU unit is dispatched to a priority one call, they might be traveling a further distance.

And so traffic impacts are more likely to slow them down than if they're traveling within a precinct to another location in a precinct.

But it's, you know, it's, very interesting to see it laid out this way.

We had, about a year ago, had a similar conversation around the numbers of patrol staffing.

So it's really good to get this data here.

I think the one thing I'd ask Greg is about the, they've given a couple of different reasons for why it is that response times are up for priority one calls.

That's where my mind is focused, at least.

In addition to traffic and congestion, they reference increased calls and increase in shots fired.

Anecdotally and by the data, we know there is definitely an increase in shots fired.

I would be interested to know whether or not we're checking the increase in calls generally.

specifically for priority one calls, since we do have a metric that we try to meet for priority one calls.

I'll check on that and get back to you.

To your point, Council Member, I did learn today that the community response group is, they report to the precincts.

They do also do crossbeat dispatching.

So there is some of that going on.

So there's, yeah, there's potentially some traffic issues there as the department has suggested.

And we'll look into the call volume issue as well.

I think that is an important take away from this slide.

I think it's important to note that there are relatively same numbers of calls, obviously different ways in which people are being deployed, but not a stark difference once you do, once you take into consideration how many folks are on leave and available at the time.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

So when we look at last year having 28 and then this year having zero, I know that in our district, we really miss our community policing officers.

They were out there during the day trying to look at the data, trying to work with detectives to solve crime, to work with patrol.

They know the community very well.

So we look forward to the day where we can return the community police officers to their positions.

Where is the something like Harbor Patrol?

I know that there's been a concern that Harbor Patrol is not as well staffed because some of them have been pulled over to regular patrol.

Is Harbor Patrol on this list?

Harbor Patrol is not on this list, council member.

In the appendices in my issue paper, you will see a general breakout of department functions.

And you'll see that there is a specialty unit function outside of patrol.

And that would be the category that Harbor Patrol would fall in.

And you'll see that that is down quite a bit.

go grab my issue paper to see how that's okay that's okay i i just but harbor patrol i believe i believe it's down 40 percent um from where it was uh For the most part, the folks that went into 9-1-1 response were coming from patrol, those ACT, CPT, those folks.

They weren't coming from Harbor Patrol, per se.

Most of those specialty units, The reason most of them are down are because of attrition, because of officers leaving.

That's not entirely true.

Some of those folks did move into 911 response.

But for the most part, the CRG is made up of the numbers you can see there in the table to the right.

And so when we're looking at the change in the numbers from the grand total, 677, dropping down to 579, We're seeing the community policing officers being moved over to a reactive patrol position.

Did you talk about beats already and what their role is typically and they've been rolled into patrol now too?

I didn't talk about it too much, but that that represents the downtown bike and foot beats, and there were some in the in the North Precinct, and obviously they've gone.

Down quite a bit, I believe, and they're only in West at this point and and last question here.

There also detectives that I understand have left the department to investigate murders and other violent crimes.

What are the detectives in this chart?

Are they in a different?

The detectives would be in that appendices that I was mentioning and let me jump online and look at it here.

The criminal investigations section of the department is down by, Investigative units went from 16.2% of the non patrol personnel down to 14.4% in 2021. Specialty units were at about 9% of the department last year and they've gone down to 3% of the department this year.

So I think this is consistent with what we know of how the chief prioritizes patrol in 9-1-1 over specialty units.

Thank you.

Excellent.

Thank you, Council Member Peterson.

Council Member Lewis.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I want to go back to Harbor Patrol just for a second, Greg.

So You know, I think a lot of us on the council, I know Council Member Strauss has been a really big leader at looking into ways we can possibly do some of the Harbor Patrol functions differently.

I feel like we're gonna chronically be in a position as there are staffing crunches at the police department where Harbor Patrol will continue to be less of a deployment priority.

And to my understanding, as we've learned several times over the last several months and over the last year, these deployment decisions are at the discretion of the chief per the charter.

So we don't really have the ability to selectively staff some of these units.

Because there is a big need with Harbor Patrol and because Harbor Patrol has experienced so much attrition, and because my understanding is the functions of Harbor Patrol are very different from all of the other duties of the department, is there a potential way to pursue funding restoration and enhancement of the Harbor Patrol capacity through some alternative type of worker so that we don't have to be in a position where the chief has to make those decisions to staff up the Harbor Patrol at the expense of some of these other functions, or are we kind of stuck in this space where that is going to have to basically stay.

as a sworn function, and are there some critical components requiring it to be a sworn function that I'm not aware of?

Just wanted to throw those out there at this early stage.

Yeah, thank you, Council Member.

Well, I think there are obviously some enforcement components that the Harbor Patrol has that would have to remain under the purview of a sworn officer.

So you obviously need to have a sworn officer giving somebody a boating DUI or something that is involved with any sort of criminal aspect.

With regard to what Harbor Patrol does on the civil side or just on the safety side, The challenge there gets to be labor, and it has to do with a body of work that is currently being done by sworn officers as part of the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

And if the Seattle Police Officers Guild wanted to give up that body of work and allow for that body of work to be done by civilians, then that is something that could happen, but that is something that currently is done by Harbor Patrol, and that is something that they have a right to retain.

So it is something that the city would need to negotiate to have civilians do.

That's probably not something that can happen in the short term, but it is something that the city could pursue.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Greg.

I just wanted to restate something that you had mentioned about attrition with Harbor Patrol.

It's my understanding that Harbor Patrol has retained all of the FTEs pre-2020 as they do today.

The reason that there are fewer staff at Harbor Patrol today is because The officers on long-term leave, which you indicated on a few slides previous, are being placed in Harbor Patrol, meaning that there are fewer deployable officers, yet the number of total officers has still been retained within Harbor Patrol.

Is that, maybe to put it more simply, we still have the same number of officers at Harbor Patrol as we've had for the last number of years.

The difference today as compared to before is that those officers are on long-term leave.

Is that a correct understanding?

There were a number of officers, it's my understanding, that were in the Harbor Patrol that went out on long-term leave.

If you're saying that officers in other areas of the department went out on long-term leave, and then those slots got assigned or those vacancies got assigned to Harbor, I don't know that that is the case.

The latter is not what I was indicating.

The former is.

We have not changed the FTE funding for Harbor Patrol.

It is that those officers are on long-term leave.

And to Council Member Lewis's point, No way that we as city council members can mandate officers being in Harbor Patrol as compared to another beat.

That's the discretion of the chief.

Is that correct?

That is correct.

And I think those officers started out, a lot of them started out on long-term leave and have since separated.

So I don't know that currently today you would see that a lot of them are on long-term leave.

I think you'd see a lot of vacancy, actual vacancies, if I remember when I last looked at the data.

Thank you.

kind of frame Councilmember Lewis's question a little bit more in a more focused way.

I think the question was, is there a way for us to have non-sworn officers on boats?

And the answer that I heard, similar to a community service officer, a CSO on a boat, and what I heard you say is that cannot occur without SPOG agreeing to it.

Is that correct?

I believe that's the case.

Yes, you would.

You'd want to get the law department to tell you that definitively.

And that is a question that central staff is pursuing with the law department and will brief you on.

But that is certainly something that central staff has worked with the law department in the past.

And that is what we have heard.

Thank you, and just the uniqueness of Seattle with all of our waterways, both for pleasure and for economic uses.

What I've noticed in this investigation of what is proper staffing, we don't have a nationally certified organization telling us what the proper staffing of our waterways is at this time.

So colleagues, I'll flag for you, I will be requesting in this budget, A third party study, whether it's Nick junior or another nationally certified organization to tell us what the proper staffing level is for our waterways and that's both with police and non police responses.

So that'll inform our decisions moving forward.

Thank you.

Very much.

Council Member Strauss, appreciate your work on this.

Council Member Herbold, before we turn it over to you, a question on Harbor Patrol or another subject?

Okay, great.

I'm going to hold my question as well, and I'll let you go first.

Thanks.

In this question of body of work for Harbor Patrol, I just want to highlight perhaps an easier path, not not saying that it would not still need to be bargained, but perhaps an easier path might be the existing MOU with the fire department, because there is an existing MOU between fire and SPD for that shared body of work.

And so rather than the complexity of adding a different A need for a negotiation with a different worker.

I have been encouraging people who have been reaching out to me about this issue.

I've been sharing with folks the slide report that Council Member Strauss sponsored last year, and I've been urging folks to consider calling for a reopening of that MOU.

all parties have to agree but I feel like the fact that there is an existing MOU there's more potential there to get FIRE and SPOG to agree to revisit that because it is again an existing agreement rather than having a conversation with a whole other type of worker about that same body of work.

And then the other point I want to make about this staffing issue generally and our interest in having non-sworn officers do some of the functions that historically sworn officers have done, totally understand the law department's advice to us, and we've recognized it in our own legislation in the past.

When we've made changes to the police department's budget, we call out the fact that we recognize something needs to be bargained.

Many of the priorities in last year's budget recognize that the things that we wanted to do may need to be bargained.

have interest in exploring whether or not we're in a different place right now, though, because of the staffing reductions and whether or not there are extenuating circumstances that management, because of our obligation to make sure that we do have officers who are responding to 911 calls and doing their basic law enforcement mission, whether or not that might create a different legal framework as it relates to our obligation to bargain, having other people do things that police officers don't have to do.

I feel like we are, again, in a different place and that this isn't just an issue about body of work.

This is about our inability to get the work done without this conversation.

Thank you very much, Council Member Herbold.

Actually, that was very much in line with what I was going to ask about or mention as well.

So I look forward to working with you, Chair of Public Safety, and hearing more from you, Greg, about this.

I know we need to move on.

We have about eight more slides to go, and we have about an hour and a half bracketed for the rest of this conversation.

I will note for the community, the conversations that we've had, the conversations with labor and folks who are concerned about public safety, Um, making sure that the health and safety of those who are on our waterways is maintained and that we have emergency responses for folks who might be in trouble on our waterways, given the high number of people that are moving here that maybe aren't as familiar with the temperatures of our water and how quickly somebody can experience hypothermia, both in the sound and in the lakes.

I know that this health and safety element is something I'm very interested in.

And as Council Member Herbold noted, I think there's an interesting nexus with the existing MOU at Seattle Fire Department and the ability for us to maintain a health and safety presence on the waterways and look forward to talking with you more, Greg, about the requirements that we know also exist at the state level related to the ability to issue citations and how that might be able to be maintained for health and safety purposes.

just flagging an area of maybe more conversations to come.

Council Member Ramos.

I will just say quickly that our office has been working closely with central staff, with DNR, and with all of our departments around, particularly around Andrews Bay, but also with respect to what we can do to ensure water safety.

And I'd also been talking to council member Strauss.

So there will be more to come.

Excellent.

Okay.

Greg, shall we move on to slide number five?

Anything else on this?

I was just going to say, I will follow up with with the council on on this.

I I will get in touch with the department and ask for more information and that it may be as simple as something as there are with the staffing problems, people calling in sick and there's not enough people to cover.

Although that's that that's a situation that wouldn't have been any different last year.

So Because they generally use overtime to fill those slots.

So I will follow up.

It's information that I will get to you.

And then I guess I'm ready to move on.

Thank you very much, Greg.

OK.

How are they going to use all the salary savings?

I have prepared a table that is three slides long.

It is a table that you have seen before.

And it is a table that contains a number of items that you saw as you were reviewing the mid-year supplemental.

Many of the items that the department spent its salary savings on in the mid-year supplemental this year are items that are continuing in 2021 and are also drawing salary savings.

I've put those items into buckets so that they're more easily digested and we can go over them a little quicker.

What you see before you, the first table, shows one-time items at the top, and you see the Nick Jr. contract that you're familiar with that we've been talking about extensively today, and the CSCC dispatch protocol system that Councilmember Herbold has been talking about.

Both of those were distinct one-time studies that are funded, and so there's no need for them in the 2022 proposed study.

or proposed budget.

The same is true of the HSD Community Safety Capacity Building ad that you talked about, Council Member Mosqueda, actually just about an hour ago.

That was a one-time cut from SPD in the 2021 budget, and that is not a cut that's being made in the mayor's proposed budget.

And so that would move us to the next bucket, which is the technical adjustments.

I'm calling them technical adjustments.

You have seen before that there is a need to dedicate some salary savings to a separation pay as more officers have been leaving.

There is a need to fund vacation and other costs that are associated with officers leaving.

That is again funded with salary savings as is a deferred compensation shortfall that we saw in 2021. paid parental leave is an item that is in 2021 funded in two ways there's a 1.8 million dollar withholding in finance general that the city budget office will try will ask if SPD can accept in the year-end supplemental and then SPD is holding as part of its salary savings and other $200,000.

Those two items together add up to $2 million.

To make things simpler, next year, the budget office just took that $2 million and moved it into SPD's base budget.

And so they did that by making use of salary savings in the 2020-22 base budget.

One of the things that's important to note about this, as well as many of the items that you're going to see in this table, is that what's happening is you're seeing a use of salary savings for ongoing items.

as officers start to return to the department as if the department does increase in size and if the council does invest in officers back up to say the 1357 level, then it would be a situation where money would eventually need to be added because the money that is right now in salary savings is going towards ongoing items like paid parental leave.

The event overtime item that was funded in the 2021 mid-year supplemental budget in the proposed budget is actually fully restored to $6.4 million.

Patty, would you go ahead and flip to the next slide?

And then these, these next items are items that are, again, what I would call sort of ongoing items that are, are items that were in the mid year budget that are continuing the civilian personnel costs positions that were added in the in the 2021 budget and some positions that were in the 2021 budget that were not funded due to the COVID crisis, SPD is using their salary savings in this year to fund and in next year would as well.

Same with the mental health professional contract backgrounding services we talked a little bit about.

You've heard today about regional community safety plan and the peacekeepers collective.

And you've also heard about triage one.

These items are cuts to the SPD budget.

And then SPD is using salary savings to backfill those cuts so that they can continue services.

As long as the funding for these programs continues to come from SPD cuts, And as long as SPD continues to use its salary savings to backfill these cuts, there is an ongoing call on those funds.

And so here, again, it's a situation where, in the future, if SPD is to add officers, then there would need to be an add of money.

The work schedule timekeeping project is a $2 million project.

The first $500,000 came last year.

The $1.5 million for the rest of it is this year.

The post-basic law enforcement training position is actually a pre-basic law enforcement training position.

That was a typo and I apologize.

This is a program that is starting this year with a position that the council funded at the chief's request.

And this program is one where the chief is taking recruits and bringing them on board before he sends them to the academy.

and exposing them to a curricula of trauma-informed care and social emotional learning.

And this learning would occur outside of the classroom and it exposes them to community-based and peer-based learning.

And I'm focusing on this because the department has indicated that if they had more funding, that they would concentrate it on this program.

and that they would invest it in the development of a curriculum and in the implementation of basically an evaluation and outcome measure for the program.

as it is fully implemented.

So we'll come back to that later, but want to note that that is a priority for the department.

That position is included in the civilian personnel costs in the 2.1 million under line A.

And then lastly is the evidence storage capacity $500,000 item that the council added in the mid-year supplemental That is not something that is funded again in 2022. The department indicates that FAS, where the money moved to, FAS is not sure how they're going to use the funding and that it is more than likely that they will move that funding through the carry forward into 2022. So I'll stop and ask if there's any questions on what I've presented so far.

Thank you very much.

So just to clarify again for folks who are following at home.

So these are not necessarily additions to the SPD budget.

They would be continuation of using the officer's salary savings as noted in the title here on table five.

That is correct.

Thank you.

How do you feel the slide?

Well, stop.

No, yeah.

Greg, did you have additional clarification before Councilor Morales?

No.

Okay, great.

Council Member Morales.

I'm going to see if I can ask you to explain it again.

Okay, let's go to slide five, Patty, if that's okay.

I think I know what you're saying, but I do want to just ask a few questions.

So slide five, there's a request for 4.7 million of salary savings to pay for separation pay costs in 2022. Am I right on that so far?

So what I'm trying to understand is why costs come out of salary savings related to officers Um, separating in 2022 instead of salary savings from officers that separated in 2021, that would presumably stay empty in 2022.

These, these particular officers, uh, the $2 million, the shortfall estimated in 2022 is for the officers that are leaving in 2022, the 94 separations.

or so that are in the staffing plan for 2022. There is no separation pay reserved for any officers in the department's budget.

Separation pay has historically come out of salary savings.

And the department is concerned that if all of the salary savings is taken, they won't have any money to pay for separation for any of their officers.

And so this is a hold on some of the salary savings to be able to pay for those officers that are separating.

And then if we could go, thank you, if we could go to slide six, I'm having trouble with reallocating salary savings to things.

So if the 700,000 was transferred out of SPD to fund triage one, that came from the supplemental budget, right?

So that was not a true cut, right?

Oops, sorry about that.

Turn that off.

So was that from salary savings or was that a cut?

It seems like it can't be both.

It was a cut.

It was a cut of money that was not being used because officers were not needing to be paid because they'd left.

It was salary savings.

So I guess part of what I'm trying to figure out, there's several things in here where it's backfill.

And it seems to me that if funding is being removed to do the work somewhere else, why should we backfill if that work isn't happening?

That's one thing I'm trying to figure out.

with regards to triage one or community safety or any of the other ways in which we are trying to basically reduce the footprint of the department, then the funding that goes with that shouldn't be backfilled with salary savings.

That's how my brain is thinking about it anyway.

It may be that I am just using budget speak when I say that it's being backfilled.

Another way to say it is that the money, the salary savings are being cut and moved to HSD.

That's a more simple way to say it.

Just maybe try adding in here.

I think that part of the challenge in trying to explain this is, They, their staffing plan is assuming a certain amount of vacancies next year that they won't fill in their staffing model.

And so, but they are still technically sort of funded for those positions.

And so they're repurposing those dollars in 2022, but they're not eliminating the positions.

And so there's a one-time sort of movement of the money out for triage one.

But next year, if their staffing plans, if those, pockets are retained and the staffing plan suggests they can fill them, we're going to have an issue because we're going to need different funding for triage one because they'll need the money they use this year for triage one to pay those officers.

And so I think that's where it's getting a little confusion is that these are like one time cuts for ongoing needs from SPD's budget.

Well, they're ongoing so long as they keep the budget authority for those positions.

Correct.

That is correct.

So if we remove the authority for those budget positions, they will no longer be considered ongoing expenses.

That's right.

That is correct.

Thank you.

OK, let's keep going.

OK, so I think we're going to go to slide So this is the last bucket, and this bucket is new initiatives.

And this is using salary savings for three specific things, all three of which are in my issue identification.

Technology investments, $5 million, some of which are a continuation of items that were funded in the mid-year supplemental.

Hiring incentives, I think you're familiar with.

It was an idea that was brought forward in the mid-year supplemental.

And an additional CSO unit, also an idea that was brought forward mid-year.

The amount of investment last year in the mid-year supplemental, $15.4 million.

The amount of investment that they would make with the salary savings this year would be $17.8 million.

So that $17.8 million does not quite total the salary savings that I just spoke about a minute ago.

The salary savings I spoke about a minute ago that is available is 19 million.

And so with that as a transition, I'll just go ahead and move us into the first issue, salary savings.

Patty, if you'd flip the slide.

So there's much more narrative here than there needs to be, I apologize.

But basically option A is to take the difference with what is available in salary savings, which is the $19 million.

And what the department plans to spend with its salary savings, which is the 17.8 million that I just showed you.

and to cut the difference 1.1 million in salary savings that is currently unprogrammed.

And we've already talked about how that salary savings is accruing.

It is accruing from vacant positions that as Council Member Morales noted are vacant, but funded and the salary is being used for other things.

Number two, or option B, would be to potentially assume a different staffing plan.

And the council did that last year with CBA SPD 025B002.

The executive had submitted a staffing plan, if I recall, that had 90 separations and It was appearing at the time that there were going to be a lot more officers leaving.

And so the council said, well, I think.

they are going to see more like 114 leave and so the difference was captured in a CBA and that could be something that the council would do this year if there was in the fall any kind of a sign that officers may be leaving and three would be no action and of course there are other options that are available that's just that I picked out.

Thank you very much Councilmember Herbold and then Peterson.

Thank you and so just even just looking at the I think modest conservative approach of option A, that is a number that if there was a proposal to capture 1.1 million of unprogrammed salary savings.

And that proposal was made today, it would be 1.1 million.

If we use that same framework and revisited it in November, it might be a different number.

Is that right, Greg?

Because that number is based on a hiring plan that is based on the number of officers that they have now.

And if there is a loss of more numbers, more officers between now and November, the assumptions that go into option A will change.

Yes, fundamentally correct.

OK, thank you.

I don't mean to interrupt you, just a quick tag on to that.

Is it not just the number of officers who are leaving, but is it also the slower than expected hiring rate?

So if we're at 53 recruits right now and it's anticipated to be that 85 or so number that you put in the chart, is it also a matter of capturing those potential cost savings?

Yes, that the council could certainly assume the other way on hiring and assume that the department would not get to 125 hires.

And there would be a potential to take funding for that.

That gets a little bit a little bit trickier in the sense that I think the department would have questions about whether the council would be in that action restricting the hiring plan for the department.

So that would be something that the council might want to consider as they're taking that action.

Okay.

And I guess I was thinking about looking at the actual hires in 2021.

I think of option two as the option that is questioning their assumptions that make up the hiring plan, but option one is sort of accepting their assumptions, but adjusting it as the conditions change.

I think that's true, but Council Member Mosqueda makes a point.

In option B, I'm only talking about the exiting side or the separation side.

She's right.

You could challenge the hiring side.

It just, as I mentioned, then the department might have questions.

They might ask, if we hit 90, let's say the council picks 90, do you want us to stop?

And remind me, when we had a similar conversation last year, we didn't say, hey, if you exceed or meet your hiring goals, then we want you to stop.

We just said, let us know if you actually exceeded.

Is that correct?

The council did not change the hiring side of the equation.

The council only changed the assumptions on separations.

Okay.

Okay.

Thanks, Greg.

Sorry, it's been a long 12 months.

Thanks for the reminder.

Councilor Peterson, thanks for your patience.

Apologies for the interruption.

Chair Mosqueda, on this item about considering option A1.1, We recently had a discussion on this unprogrammed salary savings.

That was for 2021 it was a similar amount of money and.

There I had put forward a plan to try to retain existing officers.

I think when we were talking earlier about ambitious hiring goals from the department and how difficult it is to meet those goals, I think to me, at least it points to the need to do more to retain the officers that we currently have.

And so I would just want to encourage colleagues to consider if there are I think this could be an opportunity that we all could consider as a council to retain those, especially if we are concerned about SPD meeting their ambitious hiring

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Okay, great.

Let's continue to the next slide.

All right.

The next issue is restoration of reductions that were made in the 2021 budget.

In the 2021 budget, there were three different kinds of cuts that were made.

I'll address them in turn here.

The first one in the table is on overtime.

And this cut was a $6.4 million cut to SPD's overtime budget.

It consisted of two discrete actions.

The first one was a $2.7 million cut that was made in the proposed budget by the mayor.

It was based on a forecasted decrease in demand for special events because of COVID and also the discontinuation of emphasis patrols.

The second part of that cut was a $3.7 million cut that the council made in CBA SPD-010A-003, also with the assumption that special events and other overtime funded activities things that would be affected by COVID, such as traffic enforcement or many of the other department functions, there would be a decrease in demand for those as well.

So those two things together added to the $6.4 million reduction, and that left, of the events budget that SPD has, $3.7 million for them in 2021. There was a COVID-related travel and training budget.

And the travel and training budget, I think most folks are familiar.

That is one that is used to fund civilian training.

Make sure that that's not confused with the sworn training.

That's a different budget altogether.

This is mostly about civilians getting continuing education, attending conferences, et cetera.

And in certifications that received $175,000 cut in the 2021 budget.

And here again, that cut was around the assumption that there would be fewer opportunities for training as.

as national training events were shut down due to COVID.

And then lastly, the discretionary purchases budget.

I think most folks are familiar with that.

That is operating supplies, equipment.

That one has everything in it from ammunition to water.

that is circulated during events.

That one had a $300,000 cut.

That one was not based on the idea that COVID would affect demand.

That was one that was not necessarily related to COVID and didn't specify COVID or suggest that there would be any sort of COVID demand issues at all.

I'll note that the department has, the mayor has restored all of these reductions in the 2021, 2022 proposed budget.

All of them have been fully restored.

The department has said that the COVID-related overtime reduction, the $6.4 million, is going to need to be used because there are a number of events that are going to be coming back this year.

that uh or next year i'm sorry that this year we're going to see probably 100 well this year to date uh the department has seen 144 events and if you look back to 2019 there's been 603 events so even though we're comparing in those numbers an entire year of 2019 to just a partial year of uh of 2021 there's an order of magnitude difference there.

And then they also note that there's some new events like the Kraken Games and Climate Pledge Arena.

They've talked about travel and training restoring to prior levels and a backlog of certifications that need to be addressed.

And then finally, they've talked about the need to restore the discretionary purchases budget because discretionary purchases budget last year when it received the cut was supplemented with some COVID funding that was one time and was available to the department.

So they are indicating that they are making it through this year by using some COVID funds that will not be available next year.

And so that would bring me to provide some information about how they're doing this year on these budgets.

On the overtime budget, they are about 71% expended through September.

That does not include the $2.6 million that was provided by the council.

The $2.6 million that was provided as part of the mid-year supplemental budget was provided to help them, SPD, make it through the end of the year and handle the events at the stadiums.

They're 71% expended through September, and they have not received that money yet.

So that's some good news for SPD's budget management.

In terms of travel and training, it's much lower.

They're only, I believe, 30% or so expended on that particular measure.

And then on discretionary purchases, they are 81% expended.

So that one is higher than probably it should be for being three quarters of the way through the year.

it includes some encumbrances that they have committed to for the last part of the year.

So I'll stop and well I'll say that the options here are to restore some or all of the reductions or no action and then I'll ask if there are any questions.

Wonderful thank you very much Greg.

Any questions or comments?

Greg I'm going to ask you one more time because I I have forgotten the answer, but I know we did a lot of work early last year's spring and fall to try to move towards non sworn officers for things like traffic mitigation around special events.

I know there's there's a state law that is also dovetailing with the desire to move away from armed officers at these events.

Can you remind me why do we continue to see overtime costs related to sworn officers at these events when there is a large interest in moving to civilian traffic mitigation personnel.

There is currently a split of the special events traffic control work between PEOs and sworn officers.

There primarily is a sworn officer at lighted intersections where they are overridden, but PEOs also do some traffic direction and both kinds of personnel will do various kinds of traffic work.

It is a body of work split that would, if drastically changed, say all of it is given to PEOs or civilian responders or any kind of a civilian flagger, could potentially be a union issue that would need to be negotiated.

It is split right now in a way that the PEO Union and the Officers Guild are, for lack of a better way to say, happy with.

If it is the case that the Officers Guild lost that body of work in its entirety to a civilian flagger group or to the PEOs, they might not be happy and they might file a ULP.

Okay, welcome on that.

Thank you so much.

Any additional questions on this slide?

Please, Council President Gonzalez.

Just really quickly, Greg, can you talk about the The any information you might have about the pressures that continuing to staff these special events is creating on officer time to respond to service calls.

Do you have any information related to that?

No, I don't, Council President.

I'm going to want to get back to you on that.

That would be great.

My understanding is that there's some scuttlebutt around requiring officers to have longer shifts in order to provide the hours necessary for doing this body of work that we're discussing right now.

And so, you know, I think that Causes some concerns in my mind.

And, and, and really, I think the policy question is that I'd like your help figuring out if there's an answer to the policy question for me is, you know, is.

In the context of the staffing levels at the department, is it appropriate for us to continue to provide this?

Is it appropriate for us to continue to utilize limited officer hours on for-profit private special events?

I mean, we need the time that these officers have to actually do patrol and the work that we expect from them while we scale up these alternatives to law enforcement.

So why are we creating additional pressure on patrol officers to both do the overtime related to special events and their ordinary patrol duties?

I will check into it.

Sorry, I don't have an answer for you.

Great questions.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

And I know that is part of the solution, as you articulated, to making sure that officers are freed up to actually respond to high-acute calls.

So look forward to hearing more about that.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Yeah, I just want to reiterate that this is same line of questioning Council President Gonzalez that I was making as it related to the shared work of SPD and fire around Harbor Patrol and whether or not as management we can make shifts in that.

because of extenuating circumstances associated with staffing levels and the priority work of police officers and what they need to mostly be doing.

And I really think that we should be considering a different argument here when it comes to these functions and overtime is another one of them for sure.

So thank you.

Absolutely, and I think and I think that's sort of what I'm hoping central staff can analyze a little bit more thoroughly or, you know, I recognize that in some of these situations, we, we might have contractual obligations, or have already made commitments to provide these public safety services.

However.

We made those commitments to provide those services contractually or otherwise under very different circumstances than what exists today.

And so I do think it's appropriate for us to call the question whether we should, in light of the extenuating circumstances related to the shortage in staffing, whether we should still require the police department to move forward as though nothing has changed.

Thank you, Council President.

Council Member Morales.

Thank you.

That just raises a question for me that I don't need an answer to right now, but I would like to know more about these contracts and their terms and conditions and what else we could do about it.

Thank you very much.

Greg, I think we're at the end of this slide.

I have to ask if we, since we have overtime in front of us, looking at this year's budget, is there any indication at this point that the Seattle Police Department is going to stay within the overtime line item that council has authorized in terms of spending for overtime?

As we have now passed, I think, three times.

I think the good news is yes, I think so.

When I looked at the financials a week ago, they were $15.5 million in spending on a budget that was $21.8 million.

The budget that is $21.8 million is the budget that they started the year with.

You all added to that budget the $2.6 million in the mid-year supplemental.

So they've got the remaining budget and then some wiggle room, given the ad that you made.

So I think that it's looking good.

Does that also include the 1.5 from the underspend bill that took place in September?

Yeah, it does.

It's the 1.5 million that you directly moved into overtime, and then there was a 1.1 remaining.

I added those together for 2.6 because it does include that.

I mean, you would think we wouldn't even have to ask the question of whether they're going to stay within their budget.

given that that's been something that has come back to council when they've overspent the budget, I think it's important to have regular check-ins on that.

I know that that probably is an unforeseen question if you were working in the state legislature to have to ask a department if they were actually staying within their budget, but I'm glad to hear that that's on track at this point, and we may keep pinging you if you get any more updates on that.

Thanks, Greg.

Council President, anything else from you?

Okay, let's go ahead and move on to the next slide.

Okay, so next slide.

I had mentioned before that the council or that the department is interested in spending $5 million of their salary savings on technology investments.

The technology investments, two of them are continuations from investments that were started this year in the mid-year supplemental, and I'm going to go through each of these and try to put them into as plain of words and explanation as I possibly can.

They're not easy.

And I have had to have the department dumb it down for me.

So the data analytics platform, the very first item for a million dollars, that one's a little easier.

That one is one that you're familiar with.

That's essentially a data warehouse that is collecting and synthesizing data from a variety of different sources at SPD.

It puts all the data together.

and they use it for reporting to the public and for reporting to the Department of Justice, for the consent decree, for all of the analysis that they do.

Anytime council asks them a question on disparity or any kind of officer metrics, most of the things that I have shown you in this presentation are coming out of the DAP.

anything on officer training or performance, all that stuff is kept in the DAP.

So this $1 million is to pay for fees that would be associated with licensing and then also for consultants to keep the system up and running.

I'll fire through a bunch of these and then stop at the end for questions.

But if something doesn't make sense, please raise your hand and I'll stop.

The Officer Accountability and Trust Hub, which is called OATH, is something that was started in the mid-year supplemental.

It was funded at $350,000 this year.

And what this does, it's a software program that looks at a number of inputs that officers are around an officer's work.

So the number of calls that they've gone on, the type of calls that they've gone on, whether or not the calls are particularly tough, whether they're crisis calls, how long they've been on the calls.

And then the software will indicate whether or not that employee might need support.

And this is the next part of that system that is part of the department's wellness strategy to be able to identify officers that could use mental health counseling.

The next one is the Equity, Accountability and Quality Forum and Trulio Software.

This one has multiple parts to it.

The first part is a $260,000 investment for a contractor that will create what SPD refers to as a harm index.

And that harm index will be used to evaluate the Nick Jr. study on alternative police response.

And so we've talked a little today, the council has and central staff about the 29 different call types that SPD and Nick Jr. have identified, most of which are not, well, I don't think really are any criminal and some are violations, citation violations.

Those calls, as well as really all of the calls in Nick Jr., could be run against this harm index to see if there would be a risk to a civilian if you sent a alternative police response.

And so the $260,000 of that $1 million sum, a quarter of it would go to create the harm index.

The next piece of that one, $200,000, would go for taking body-worn video, the audio from it, and turning it into typewritten, I say typewritten because I'm old, but transcripted transcription.

And then that transcripted audio would be subject to a software program that they would spend the rest of the money on, $540,000, and that software program would analyze the words that officers are using to see if there was a pattern in or a change in pattern around civility, professionalism, or de-escalation.

And that study would be done in conjunction with the inspector general.

So you have three parts to that study, or three parts to that particular project.

The next one is fairly easy.

The next one is replacement of the IA Pro Blue Team system.

Since the consent decree was put in in 2012, the use of force incidents that the department has been tracking has been tracked through a standalone system.

The department has indicated that the data from that system does not marry up well with other systems, like the RMS system, and they have data validation issues.

So to solve those issues and potentially make it easier for federal reporting, they are suggesting that they just put all of that use of force data into the RMS system and this project would integrate that use of force module into the records management system.

The next one is the active wellness, active workforce wellness management system.

This one is kind of an interesting one.

So the department is considering a pilot of what they call Active 9-1-1, which is where officers would be listening in route to a 9-1-1 call.

They would be listening to audio of the call taker and dispatcher talking to the person making the 9-1-1 call.

And so the positive side of that is that they would have situational awareness of the of the scene before they got to it.

The potential negative side of that is that they could potentially be triggering flight or fight stress responses and potentially negative outcomes associated with stress when they arrive on scene.

So what SPD would like to do is to run a pilot where they fit officers with biometric shirts that would measure their heartbeat and their they're breathing so that as they're listening to the 911 calls, they can evaluate whether that is getting them amped up, so to speak, and whether that is creating any potential adverse outcomes when they arrive on scene.

And so that is what that funding is for.

It is partly for the biometric equipment and it is partly for the piloting of the active 911. I see some questions.

Sorry, Greg, I just want to make sure you get through the full list here.

One left, let me get through the last one.

The last one is Risk Management Demand.

Risk Management Demand is a software that goes hand-in-hand with the that goes hand in hand with the harm index that I was talking about.

The harm index would be created to evaluate whether or not a call would be safe for a civilian to go on.

The risk management demand is the actual software, and I'm trying to put this very simply, but it's the actual software and evaluation system that would take the harm index and put it against the Nick Jr. study.

So you would need both components, as I understand it, from the department to be able to run the evaluation on the Nick Jr. study and know across all of the call types, not just the 28 or 29, but all of them, which ones were okay to send a civilian to.

The council would need to invest the $260,000 in the EAQ project, and then also the $750,000 in the RMD project.

And now I'm done.

OK.

I have some questions.

So I'm going to put myself in the queue.

Council Member Herbold, Council Member Morales, and then I'll go.

Thanks.

Just real quickly, on the live 911 pilot, is that being done anywhere else?

I don't know.

I mean, it would be good to know what other jurisdictions might have learned about their officers fight or flight response, rather than having to fit officers with equipment to read their biometrics before looking at whether or not to do this.

And it seems like if there are other police departments who are doing a live active 9-1-1 situational awareness thing that we could learn from those departments rather than going with this way of measuring, again, measuring the fight or flight response of officers.

And then my other question, and I'm sure you said it exactly perfectly, but as it relates to the Nick Jr. report, there are two items in this list that relate to it.

There is funding in the equity, accountability, and quality forum item, and then there's funding in the risk managed demand.

Which is the one that is sort of the analysis for how we're going to change how we do things, and which is the piece which is, no, we're gonna run, do a risk analysis on like every call in real time to make that decision?

Okay, backing up to your first question, I remembered something that I would think I would have remembered right away.

It's not being done around the country, this active workforce wellness management pilot, because the department is working with the smart kids at Washington State University to come up with the biometrics study shirts.

And I think that it, I think we're on the cutting edge of that, but I will.

because i think i think the search doesn't mean we're nobody else is doing it nine-one-one right yeah i just i just had to promote that yes you there uh...

there you go uh...

i'll get back to you and then uh...

you are correct there there's two hundred and sixty thousand in eighty-eight you that is necessary for the Nick Jr. study, and there is the 750,000 in risk management demand.

I am told that the EAQ piece, the 260,000, is coming up with that harm index, and so that's where You look at all the calls and you figure out where there was an adverse outcome that could have created harm to a civilian.

I'm told that the risk management demand is the programming and the creating of the software that allows you to take that harm index and then run it against the Nick Jr. calls.

Once the risk management demand software is, once the code is created and the software is created, it in the future can be used to assist with live deployments.

So the next phase, not this one, would be where a call taker or dispatcher is hearing a case come in, And the facts of the case would somehow be measured against the software and ultimately dinged back against the harm index.

And they would be somehow told whether or not to send a civilian.

That's my understanding.

It's pretty rudimentary and hopefully it's right.

Thank you Council Member Herbold.

I just have to ask a question on this as a quick follow up here.

I mean, to the concept of having a harm index, look back at an encounter when it's possible that a person's own fight or flight response was triggered and they fought or engaged in maybe a defensive way or, you know, responded because of the fact that there was an officer and perhaps that was, caused them alarm versus having a case manager or a mental health counselor or a housing connector person showing up.

I think it would be challenging for me to understand how a harm index is not able, I mean, is taking into account the person's response in that moment could have been also triggered by the fact that they were calling out for help and instead of getting a case manager or a mental health counselor.

they were met with an armed officer.

I mean, I think about Charlene Lyles and I wasn't in the room and I don't know all of the statistics, but if a person is having a mental health crisis and they pull out a butter knife, if in that situation a harm index says it would have not been a good idea to send a mental health counselor, of concerns about how th technology is going to h from being in situations necessarily have to show That's a good example of have said we don't want managers are needed.

So I questions about the conce outlined or that we've r that we're going to be doing a third-party analysis on this.

We're going to be spending.

You know 260,000 plus 750,000 to do an analysis.

Report that we received from Nick junior that has already had a 3rd party analysis on this makes me question why we're doing yet another level of analysis when it's gone through 2 different versions.

Thank you.

Well, I think, you know, I have to say I share Council Member Mosqueda's concern about using technology to look back on something that should have probably been addressed in a different way in the first place.

But this to me just feels like a lot of money on technology to tell us that police are in high stress, high risk jobs.

We know that already.

And, you know, if this is about officer wellness, you know, I totally support that.

I know that they probably need their own counseling and support given the kinds of trauma that they experience and observe.

And if that's the point of this, then I think we could spend our money much more wisely by creating, you know, officer mental health counselors or hiring a couple of psychiatrists to work for the department.

I just think once we start going down this technology slippery slope, then we're talking about upgrades and staffing and data analysts.

And I don't really need to know if an officer gets amped up because of a call that he's getting or she.

I expect that that's what happens if they are called to something that is an emergency.

What we do about it afterward is what's important.

And I would totally support providing greater counseling and mental health services for the department.

But this feels like a really slippery slope to me.

And as Council Member Mosqueda said, I'm not sure that it actually serves our community very well.

Thank you.

Council President Gonzalez.

Thank you.

I just wanted to, um, let folks know that my, uh, office is interested in, um, advancing, uh, uh, proviso in this area, um, to allow for there to be greater transparency and understanding of what these various technology investments are and what they are not.

Um, I think as we can tell from the conversation and the, in the debate occurring right now, It's still very opaque as to exactly what we are approving or being asked to approve by virtue of this additional $5 million investment.

And I think it's appropriate for us to.

encumber these dollars and prevent the expenditure and acquisition of the expenditure for the acquisition of these technology investments until we know what until we know a little bit more about what what the city is getting in return for these these technology investments and and again particularly as it relates to to officer wellness it's it's It is still very unclear to me what the operational impact is of this kind of a program.

And I also don't have a clear understanding of how that information will be stored or retained.

Um, for, for, um, you know, instances in, for example, if there was a use of excessive force or deadly force, sort of, how is this information going to be utilized moving forward?

So, I think there's a, there's a lot of questions here, and I think there's enough questions to again, require that the police department, at least on some of these technologies.

Um, to require that that they provide the council with some additional granular detail about what.

Um, these technologies are and what the benefits.

Can be, or, um, or what the risks are of having, um.

Having these technologies available at the city to officers.

Great, thank you for flagging that, Council President.

And I do want to also underscore the importance of making sure that our first responders have access to mental health counseling.

We've made sure that there's two mental health counselors, for example, at our Seattle Fire Department, I believe.

And Greg, maybe you can confirm if I have this wrong.

It might be in a different...

I believe that the two mental health providers have been included in this year's budget as well as transmitted from the mayor's office for those Seattle Fire Department.

I thought we added additional mental health providers for our frontline officers who are from Seattle Police Department.

And yes, I see you nodding.

If you could confirm for me what we added and then if it is in this budget as well, that would be great.

access to mental health counseling is something that I have prioritized and will continue to do for our first responders and look forward to hearing other ways in which we can support mental health and trauma informed care for those on the front line.

But just wanted to remind the council that we did add mental health counselors before and if you could confirm for me where that's at in this budget.

I think probably my colleague Anne Gorman is ready to speak about FHIR, but I can confirm for you that there's 150,000 in that table one that we looked at for mental health providers for SPD.

And then there's also a grant that SPD is going to put forward that will have additional mental health services in it.

So it is here and Anne can tell you about FHIR.

I see her hand is up.

There is $150,000 on an ongoing basis in the SFD budget, the 2022 proposed budget.

Thank you both very much.

Council President, please go ahead.

Sorry, that was the leftover.

Thank you.

Greg, I do have one last question on this item related to technology investments.

We had a pretty lengthy conversation late this summer as it related to the Seattle Police Department's underspend and the allocation of funding for IT.

At that time, we learned there was a technology request that was being put before council, but the contract had already been signed.

On any of these items here, do you have any indication that the department has already moved forward with signing or working on appropriating any of these, or is it that council gets to make the appropriation and then a contract would be signed?

The former is true.

They have committed to $50,000 in the risk management demand bucket down on the last row, and they have committed to the $260,000 for the EAQ study that Councilmember Herbold has referenced for the harm index.

That's what I'm remembering right now.

With Council, given all of the priorities, we do have to wait for this budget.

If Council somehow did not include the full amount on this slide, what would be the response if you know from the department, given the commitments already made and the payments already sent?

Well, I don't think the payment is sent per se on either of those two that I just mentioned, but it will have to be spent if there's a contract.

It's my understanding that there's a commitment.

So I would assume it would mean that there would be a hole in the budget.

They would have to pay for it.

And if you remove the salary savings that they intend to use to pay for it, they would have to pay for it in some other way.

And it would be like a cut.

I see you on the screen.

Did you have anything else you'd like to add at this point?

I was just going to sort of maybe state the obvious here, but this is one of the, I think, challenges and frustrations I've heard from this committee over the course of the last year, where there are commitments being made before the authority has been provided from the council to spend the dollars in general.

You know, they don't have they this is a proposal so for anything for next year there's no guarantee of the funding so ideally they would not have signed contracts that commit them to following through with that.

However, I'm not sure, Greg, if you were speaking to the 2021 dollars versus the 2022, but typically it would be subject to appropriation authority.

And we can double check those contracts, but ultimately they have not been authorized for any of the dollars in their budget for 2022 yet.

Yeah.

And when I, uh, when I say that, I mean that the department has told me that they have made a commitment.

I don't know how that has been actualized if they have signed a contract.

Typically, if they sign a contract, there is a a subject to appropriation clause in it.

So they might be able to default on that contract.

But if they didn't default on that contract, then it would be a commitment that they have made on future budget authority that they've not been provided yet.

So it would be not getting the authority would mean that they would be getting a cut.

Thank you.

For our IT folks, if you could just look to see if there's any of our council members in the waiting room, I think that one or two got some, they just got bumped.

Council member Morales, please go ahead.

Is that void the contract then if they don't actually have the money to pay for it because they have not been given that authority?

I mean.

Boy, that gets legally complicated.

That's something I'd have to have the law department because they've got other appropriation authority and I don't know what the contractor might argue.

I'd have to get back to you on that.

I don't know what kind of commitment they've made.

I've just been told that they've committed to those funds to pay those monies in 2022. And it would have to be paid out of 2022 appropriation authority that they are requesting here, or I guess not really requesting, they're saying they're going to.

So if you cut it, they would have to take it from somewhere else.

Thank you.

Great.

I appreciate your answer and that you will be following up to see if we can get additional context on the contracts.

I think at the macro level, and Allie, thanks for popping in because this has been an issue that I know Central Staff has been working with the council as a whole on, on a number of different areas, but specifically with Seattle Police Department and spending money before authorization has occurred.

We have two separate branches of government intentionally.

I think that this is an important reminder for the way in which we expect to be able to adhere to the state's RCW, which requires departments to stay within their spending authority.

If we have now received a number of incidences within just the last two years that I've been budget chair, where commitments have been made prior to authorization being given, it continues to raise for me questions about what role the executive needs to have and what role the council actually has to maintain our commitments to two separate branches of government, us being the one who authorizes spending.

So I do want to make sure that we continue to respect those roles.

And obviously there's a lot we'd like to do on the implementation side that we don't get to do because we've passed legislation related to budget and long term policy and the mayor's and executive role is on implementation.

It gets frustrating to be in the position where commitments have been made on future funding before authorization has been given.

So I do look forward to hearing more about these specific contracts on the macro level.

I look forward to working with you all to continue to address this issue that's come before us now at least three times.

And with that, I think we probably have exhausted our comments on this slide and we can go to the next one.

Okay, go to the next one.

As we're transitioning I, I, I will add a little bit to what you're saying Councilman Mosqueda and just saying that this, this SPD budget is different than any I've seen in the sense that it is. not cutting out salary savings that the department can't use, putting it back in the general fund, and then requesting from the council specific new ads.

It instead leaves salary savings in the department, says, These are funds that SPD is going to repurpose for other things and doesn't make specific requests of the council.

So it is a different way of budgeting.

And that is something you're pointing out that I think is not insignificant.

but I'll move along.

Issue number four, community service officers.

The department would use 1.3 million of its salary savings and would add 6.0 FTE for community service officers.

The last time that this program was expanded was in 2020 when the program was expanded to 18 community service officers that consisted of 15 CSOs and three CSOs supervisors.

Just by way of background, I think the council is familiar.

The CSOs are civilian personnel that are liaisons between SPD and the community.

They don't carry weapons and they're not sworn officers.

They're there to bridge the service gap on non-criminal calls and perform public safety related services.

Due to the COVID-related revenue crisis in 2020, there was a hiring freeze put on all civilian positions in SPD.

That freeze came just about the time that SPD had that program pretty well staffed up.

And as CSOs started leaving the department, they were not able to fill those positions.

and consequently they now have 10 vacancies.

The good news is that the department has in backgrounding enough candidates to fill all 10 of those vacancies.

They also have left open the job advertisement that they used to recruit folks to get into those backgrounding slots.

And so that would potentially help expedite the hiring process for this new squad.

Although I should note that the hiring of this new squad would still take anywhere between four and five months, given the current backgrounding and hiring process that the department indicates it would need to put into place to get new CSOs on board.

There were a number of questions about CSOs and the duties that they have with the department when the department was giving its presentation.

Should I stop and take a question or keep going?

Let's finish the slide and then Council Member Herbold will be first in the queue.

Okay, thank you.

I apologize.

So, in Appendix F of my issue paper, you will find a breakout of CSO duties.

I asked for a description of what they have done, and I just, I think I said in the last 90 days, but I'm just really a snapshot of what their duties are.

And I got back a breakout, 100% breakout.

And what I was told was that 40% of their time was spent on community outreach and engagement.

And that was things like attending community meetings, advisory council meetings, public safety forums, and things like community events or fairs, things like National Night Out or the Duwamish River Festival.

Then 10% of their time was spent on youth outreach and engagement, things like making introduction at community centers, day shelters, attending late night community basketball center, or the Duwamish Youth Coalition cleanup.

Then a quarter of their time, 25%, was officer requested 911, officer requested calls.

And there they were doing a variety of different activities.

They were providing DV support, mediation assistance.

They were providing outreach supplies, food, snacks, blankets, clothing.

In the summer they were providing hot weather cooling shelter.

They were providing parking enforcement officers when they were approaching RV owners they were providing them with housing off.

Assisting SPD parking enforcement with offering housing and other resources to individuals living in vehicles.

They were giving pet supplies to pet owners and experiencing homelessness.

And then the last category.

resource guidance.

They indicate this is through email or phone requests.

So I think this is answering email and phone requests is about a quarter of their time.

And there they are providing referrals to crime prevention coordinators, bias detectives, or mediation assistance.

So that is how they are spending their time.

I asked if they had any data from their CAD system about the specific activities and was told that of the various calls that had been logged, 700 and some, that they were not down to the granular level.

So they didn't have the kind of detail that I believe Council Member Gonzalez was looking for on the specific activities.

And you can find those activities in appendix F of my issue paper.

And so I think you've heard today that through the presentation on alternatives to police response, that there is certainly a potential need for administrative response, a lot of which may overlap with CSOs and their duties.

and that there are potentially outreach functions that CSOs do that could also fall into that bucket.

And so the issue paper touches a bit on that.

And with that as an overview to CSOs, I would just show, would just say that my options not mutually exclusive for the council's consideration are adding the new squad, and then potentially considering moving that squad to the CSCC or identifying potentially that that squad or that the CSOs themselves would be potentially administrative responders at some level, at some form in the future.

Okay, and I'm done.

Okay.

No, that's great.

Thanks, Greg.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

I'm off camera.

I'm using my phone now.

I'm having some technical difficulties.

It would be really interesting to compare the assessment of their current actual duties or day-to-day actions with what was conceived of at the beginning of the program implementation.

I know there was an SPD report on the CSO program implementation back in 2020. I think even prior to that, that was more on implementation.

I think even prior to that, there was a really meaty report on on the engagement that SPD did around the vision for the position itself.

So like I said, it would be interesting to look at what we imagined we were creating when we did so and what it has evolved into now as it relates specifically to the question of you know, where the CSOs are located and really what the vision is for the CSO unit moving forward.

I feel really strongly that I would like to find a way to support a worker-driven vision for both of those issues, both of the issue of which department they are a part of as well as with the long-term scope of their work looks like.

So just flagging that, and then one just super quick and easy question, Greg, for the, not the question of hiring for the vacant positions, but for the new squad that's in this year's budget, you mentioned that it would take a few months to hire them.

Can you let us know, is this proposed in the budget as a full year's position for the squad of six?

Yes, it is.

Okay, so there are some savings there.

Yeah, if you assumed the timeline for hire that SPD responded to the council question.

The council asked, how long does it take to hire CSOs?

And SPD responded to that by saying four to five months.

And if you assume that timeline, and you assume that they wouldn't start hiring the CSOs until they got authorization from the council, then yes, there is savings there.

Thank you, Greg.

Okay, thank you, Councilmember Herbold.

You are coming in loud and clear, so thank you for joining us with your phone.

Appreciate that.

We have two more slides, right, Greg?

I think just one.

All right.

All right, so hiring incentives.

The 2022 proposed budget would use $1 million of salary savings for hiring incentives.

This is something that you saw in the mid-year supplemental proposal, $7,500 for recruits and $15,000 1,000 for laterals.

And I'm sorry, budget chair, you're right.

The next slide is on the budget legislation, but it's one issue.

So talking a little bit about this, you saw this proposal earlier.

By way of background, I think the council is familiar that ordinance 125784 authorized a similar one-time hiring bonus, which existed for one year before sunsetting on June 30th, 2020. On September 16, 2019, SPD issued a preliminary report on that bonus program.

The evaluation only looked at one testing class, and so it was very preliminary.

What it found was that 18% of SPD applicants cited the incentive as an important factor in their decision to apply for the job.

Unfortunately, the more thorough analysis of that program that was scheduled for April 2020 didn't happen because the COVID emergency got declared.

In terms of looking at the data, the hiring downturn that had started in 2017 and occurred through 2018 had already started to turn around a bit in 2019 before the hiring bonus took effect.

In the first six months of 2019, SPD had already started hiring more recruits and had hired 32 in total recruit and four lateral hires.

However, in the next year when the bonus was in effect, they hired 107 recruits and 12 laterals.

So that was more in line with some of their better hiring years.

Central staff asked for data on local agencies that are currently offering hiring bonuses And you can see there in table eight the data from some of the competitor agencies that are offering bonuses.

That's important because there was in 2019 a recruitment and retention report that said that that it's important to consider these kinds of bonuses because appeals to prospective candidates by offering competitive wages, incentives and hiring bonuses are important.

And so that is some context that is probably good as the council is thinking of whether or not to pursue these incentives.

With that, I would stop and ask for questions.

Thank you, Greg.

We'll go Council Member Herbold and then Morales.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to have my hand up.

But since you recognize me, I just want to very quickly mention, as I have before, we have vacancies in departments all across the city, in all of the city's departments, many of the city's departments, many that are focused on frontline services that people in the city depend on, and I believe we need to look at recruitment across all departments to, as we know, that in the last year, many people have left their jobs, so many people have, whether or not you work for the city or you work in private industry or non-profits there's a lot of employment shifts that people are making and it is creating issues for us at the city as it relates to the delivery of city services and so I am actually going to propose that we park these funds in finance general and ask for a citywide review of vacancies and a recommendation for a citywide policy focusing in any recruitment incentives on the areas where service delivery is suffering and using a racial equity toolkit analysis.

Thanks.

I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Council Member Morales.

Well, I have sort of a related question, which is, Greg, if you have any information about the city, whether we have hiring bonuses in any other departments or for any other frontline workers right now.

I'm aware of none, Council Member.

I have polled my central staff colleagues and have not heard of any, but I'll do a more thorough search.

Thank you, council member Morales and council member Herbold.

Did I also see council member Lewis?

I didn't want to miss you.

Okay, council member Herbold, please go ahead.

I'm good, thanks.

All right, great.

Thank you.

I am not seeing any additional hands on this piece, Greg, and we have 10 more minutes and one more slide, so I think we can get through this.

Appreciate the early flags that many of you have just noted and look forward to talking with you more about this policy concept.

Greg, let's get into policy and the legislation that you have flagged for us here in your memo and the slides.

All right.

Well, this should be fairly easy.

This is the budget legislation that would make the hiring bonuses possible.

Again, $7,500 for recruits and $15,000 for laterals.

One thing to note with this legislation as it was transmitted by the executive is that it would make the program ongoing as opposed to the legislation that the council passed a couple years ago that had a sunset date.

So that is different about this one.

And then the other thing that is different about this one is that it does not recognize the necessity to negotiate with this with the unions.

And so that might be something that that the council may want to add.

And I shouldn't say necessity, but the courtesy of negotiating it with the unions, that is something that the council may want to add in there.

But certainly the ongoing part is different.

And that is it.

Comments or questions on this legislation?

Council Member Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

I like the idea of finding out what other departments may be experiencing substantial attrition.

I'd be surprised if other departments were experiencing it at the same rate as SSPD.

And I was wondering if that's something we could actually find out just during this budget process, rather than having to park the money and wait.

If the Human Resources Department could I would think they'd be able to run a report on that relatively quickly in terms of separations and comparing it to the percentage of employees in those departments.

And Greg, if we need to submit that question officially to you to ask human resources, or is it something you could just ask based on this discussion today?

Council Member Peterson if I could try to answer that in part.

So one we can questions that are asked and not answered during committee we we post to get responses so you no need to submit them.

submit them again and our colleagues are helping us track those as we move along.

I will just note that the city's information or data available on vacancies is woefully unsatisfying and it's something central staff has been trying to work on for several years with the city budget office, but I think that In general, what I would say is the vacancy information that we can get is not very informative and it doesn't really tell the story it's a snapshot in time, and also doesn't tell us if those positions are vacant and unfunded or vacant and funded and they're having a difficult.

a challenge filling them.

So we can certainly ask the question of SDHR but I would also say that I would love to work with Council Member Herbold I think is who talked about submitting a slide to make a more a larger request to enhance the city's ability to track our positions whether or not they are funded or not and providing vacancy data as it's an ongoing question that council members are raising and information that we have been unsuccessful in getting a real handle on.

It does also remind me that prior to COVID, members of the Labor Management Leadership Committee, if you remember that body when it existed once, which includes, it still exists in statute, which includes members of the coalition of city unions, the executive, and the legislative branch.

We had been meeting on about a quarterly basis to address issues of retention and recruitment, something that many of the city union members have been calling for for a long time.

I know that there was a lot of interest when I first came on board to the city council to restart that body, which we did, and then COVID hit.

But much of what they've been talking about as well is like, what are the long-term strategies for retaining employees across Seattle, especially given our somewhat aging workforce and the desire to make sure that we are bringing in new workers to our city?

So it may dovetail nicely with some of the things that had come from the initial reports from the LMLC, Labor Management Leadership Committee.

And I think it might help if we dig some of that up as well to look at strategies for retention across the board.

Again, perhaps too big of a policy issue to address specifically during budget, but wanted to flag the ongoing conversations within other departments about the need for retention and recruitment also.

Okay, thanks for your overview, Greg.

We have exhausted our time, but you have kept us very well informed and I know that there will probably be additional questions that folks have for central staff specific to this issue item.

Colleagues, we also know that the last three days have been an opportunity to scratch the surface on some of the questions you may have.

So again, if you do have questions that you'd like to field for central staff prior to our noon deadline on Monday, of course, let them know.

But wanted to make sure that folks have an understanding of what some of the opportunities are with deadline for Monday at noon for amendments.

This has been our opportunity to walk through some of the high level issues that central staff has identified on a handful of departments.

But as you think about possible amendments to be submitted, remember it's concepts only.

It doesn't have to be detailed or a fully fleshed out plan.

Central staff will work with you throughout the next week to finalize those ideas.

We would love, though, to have any of the ideas that are absolutely priorities for you to be submitted by noon next Monday.

Central staff will then make sure that we refine those ideas.

I said we, but they will refine those ideas if you'd like to keep them in confidence.

Absolutely.

They will do that.

If you'd like to make sure that you're able to share those ideas with other offices, if they're similar ideas that we can compare.

and potentially merge ideas that may be in a similar vein would love to be able to do that as well.

We will then have a conversation about amendments October 26, 27th and 28th.

As a reminder, the lead staff from central staff on that policy.

item will share a draft of your amendment with the sponsor to confirm that the amendment is consistent with your intent prior to its publication.

That's why we have a deadline of Monday so that all of those ideas can be submitted and they can work with you back and forth to finalize the language.

Please note that the amendment document is a central staff work document though.

This is not a messaging document necessarily.

I know that there will be talking points that correspond with each of these amendments so their central staff work product will be the final language that is really honing in on the policy change or the dollar amount change and the technical aspects of why that is being made and the impact of it, the effect of it.

I want to thank central staff for all of the work that they have done so far and the work coming up with all of the amendments that you all are considering right now.

And we look forward to working with you over the next week to finalize those amendments.

Again, this is a critical component of how we do budget deliberations during that last week of October so that it will inform our chair's draft budget that the council will consider as our base budget for your possible amendments and consideration as we get towards the end of November.

Thank you very much for your grace, your time, your patience over the last three days.

We did pack Friday and appreciate you ending your week with us.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

I see you so happy and celebrating the end of this meeting and I appreciate all of the council members for being with us.

We're going to go ahead and adjourn today's meeting, with a reminder that we have public comment again Tuesday, October 26th.

We will be meeting Tuesday, October 26th at 9.30 AM for our committee meeting.

And the next public comment opportunity for the large public hearing is November 10th at 5.30 PM.

Have no fear.

We will have public comment at the top of every meeting again.

See you on October 26th, and with that, thank you all for your incredible work.

I want to say thank you to everybody again.

I really want to thank everybody, so.

We have two minutes, Council Member Juarez.

All right, everyone, have a great weekend.

Bye.

Bye.