Seattle City Council 6/1/2021

Good afternoon, everyone.

The June 1st, 2021 meeting of the Seattle City Council will now come to order.

It's 2.01 PM.

I'm Lorena Gonzalez, president of the council.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Strauss?

Present.

Herbold?

Juarez?

Here.

Lewis?

Morales?

Here.

Mosqueda?

Present.

Peterson.

Here.

Sawant.

Present.

Council President Gonzalez.

I am here.

And if you don't mind, would you call on Council Member Herbold one more time?

Council Member Herbold.

Here.

Eight present.

Thank you so much and colleagues I did receive a call from Councilmember Lewis before we got it got started this afternoon, he did indicate to me that he was running a little late from a commitment.

in the Greenwood neighborhood.

So he will join us as soon as he is able to get to his computer.

So let's go ahead and get started here.

First item up for business this afternoon are presentations.

Council Member Herbold has a proclamation recognizing June 4th, 2021 as National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

This proclamation is going to be presented and we will also allow comments from other council members After council member comments, we will suspend the rules to allow our guests to accept the proclamation and provide comments to us and the viewing public.

So I'm gonna hand it over to council member Wobold in order to present the proclamation.

Thank you so much and good afternoon.

So June 4th is the observance of the 7th National Gun Violence Awareness Day.

We know that the Wear Orange campaign begins the weekend of June 4th through 6th.

The Greater Seattle Moms Demand Action is joining us today to receive this proclamation.

We are joined by Nancy Dombrowski on behalf of the Greater Seattle Moms Demand Action.

And I want to thank Council President Gonzalez.

for her leadership in gun violence prevention policy and appreciate the work of everyone in her office in this important work that is so critical to our communities.

Today is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate our commitment to gun violence prevention and support community leaders and gun sensible advocates who are working every day towards a future free from gun violence.

I'd asked the Seattle Police Department for some data about gun violence during 2020, and the police department does an annual report on gun violence, and they report that in 2020, there were 421 reported incidents of shots fired, up from 332 such incidents in 2019, and an increase of 89 incidents which represents a 27% increase.

We had 301 incidents of shots fired in 2020. And so that's compared to 235 such incidents in 2019, an increase of 66 incidents or a 28% increase.

We had 97 non-fatal injury shooting incidents in 2020 compared to 79 in 2019, an increase of 18 incidents or a 23% increase.

And then sadly, we had 23 fatal shooting incidents in 2020 compared to 18 in 2019, an increase of five incidents or 28% increase.

I just want to recognize the origins of the Wear Orange campaign.

Wear Orange is the color that Hydea Pendleton's friends wore in her honor after she was shot and killed in Chicago at the age of 15, just one week after performing at President Obama's second inaugural parade in 2013. After her death, her friends started to wear orange to raise awareness about gun violence.

And what started with a group of friends on the south side of Chicago has turned into a national movement to honor the hundred lives cut short and the hundreds more injured by gun violence every day and to demand action.

Orange expresses our collective nation as a hope for a future free from gun violence, where our movie theaters, our concerts, our places of worship, and our schools are free from gun violence.

I want to recognize the work done here in Seattle with the adoption of gun laws aimed at limiting gun violence, including requirements to report theft, the loss of firearms, taxes on retail sales of firearms and ammunition, and regulations for the safe storage of firearms.

And I want to also recognize some of the objectives accomplished this year in the state legislative agenda.

Thanks to the work of gun common sense advocates for responsible solutions to gun violence, which assisted the passage of Senate Bill 5038, prohibiting the open carry of firearms at public demonstrations.

And also want to uplift the work that this council has done and will continue to do to increase funding for a variety of violence prevention programs, in the example of increased funding of $14 million in 2021 for violence prevention programs.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Herbold, for those comments.

Colleagues, at this point, I am gonna ask if anyone else has comments, and we will hear those comments from Council Members before, again, I suspend the rules and allow our guests to address us.

So I see that Council Member Strauss has his hand raised.

Council Member Strauss.

Thank you, Council President, and again, just really glad to see you back.

Really, thank you.

Really good to see you.

I also want to thank Councilmember Herbold for bringing this forward and also V in your office, Council President, for bringing this proclamation forward, because we know that gun violence is preventable.

When gun, when this date was set as a.

as an awareness day seven years ago, that was a year that we could not get one gun responsibility bill passed through the legislature.

And today we are seeing multiple common sense pieces of legislation that protect public health and ensure responsible gun ownership being passed through the legislature every year.

And there was actually an article in today's Seattle Times by Joseph O'Sullivan and Sarah Jean Green about extreme risk protection orders and the path that they took legislatively seven years ago.

And at that time I worked for Senator Frocked, working on one of the first drafts of the extreme risk protection order.

And when we couldn't get a hearing at the state legislature, I left working for Senator Frocked to join the Alliance for Gun Responsibility to see that bill be passed by initiative with 69.4% of the vote in the 2016 election just to demonstrate that common sense gun legislation has the support of the state, even if it can't get a hearing at the legislature.

And I just take this moment to note that we We would not be here and we could not have done this without grassroots advocates, without the Alliance for gun responsibility without mom's demand action and without grandmothers against gun violence, these organizations these local grassroots organizations are what move the needle, they move the needle, more than any of us can hear sitting in at the Seattle City Council so.

I just wanna take this moment to thank you, Nancy, Moms Demand Action, all the grandmothers out there with Grandmothers Against Gun Violence, and of course, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility.

Thank you, Council President, and great to see you, Nancy.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss for those comments.

Are there any other comments from council members?

I don't see any other hands raised, so I'm going to go ahead and suspend the rules in order to allow our guests to accept the proclamation.

So if there is no objection, the council rules will be suspended to allow Nancy Dombrowski from Moms Demand Action to accept the proclamation and provide remarks.

Hearing no objection, the council rules are now suspended.

And Nancy, welcome to the city council meeting.

I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you to accept the proclamation and make some remarks.

Welcome.

Thank you so much.

As you know, I'm Nancy Dombrowski.

I'm a volunteer with Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

And on behalf of our local group of mothers and others of greater Seattle, we thank you for your $14 million investment in community-based prevention programs.

Also, we're very excited about the 30 million for participatory budgeting in neighborhoods most affected by gun violence and moving ahead on creating a community safety and communication center.

And we know that gun violence is a public health crisis and it requires systemic solutions to prevent its viral spread.

And we certainly appreciate your sustained focus on this uniquely American problem.

So thank you.

Thank you, Nancy, for those comments, for accepting the proclamation, and for all of your work on preventing what is a very preventable public health epidemic that is gun violence.

Really appreciate all of your work and the work of Moms Demand Action across the city and across the country on continuing to advocate for sensible gun laws that keep us all safe, but also really want to appreciate you and Moms Demand Action for a couple of years ago, really taking a strong stance on advocating for additional investments in upstream community safety initiatives that really, you know, are focused not just on a law enforcement response first focus, but on building resiliency and strength within communities, particularly those that are most negatively impacted by gun violence.

So thanks to you, Nancy, and the folks over at Moms Demand Action for that ongoing advocacy.

Well, we appreciate it, and we can't wait to get back to the city council chambers sometime soon.

Sometime soon.

All right.

Thank you.

All right.

Thanks, Nancy.

Thanks for joining us.

You're welcome to sign off at this point.

And we really appreciate you being with us.

Thank you.

Okay, colleagues, we're going to move to other items of business on the agenda.

Next up is approval of the minutes.

The minutes of the City Council meeting of May 24, 2021 have been reviewed.

If there is no objection, the minutes will be signed.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are being signed.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the minutes?

Approval of the introduction referral calendar.

If there is no objection, the introduction referral calendar will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the introduction and referral calendar is now adopted.

Approval of the agenda.

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

Hearing no objection, the agenda is now adopted.

Okay, cause at this time we are going to open up the remote public comment period for items on the city council agenda introduction referral calendar and the council's work program.

I want to thank everyone for their ongoing patience and cooperation as we continue to operate this remote public comment system.

It remains our strong intent to have remote public comment regularly included on meeting agendas.

However, as a reminder, the city council reserves the right to end or eliminate these public comment periods at any point if we deem that the system is being abused or is no longer suitable for allowing our meetings to be conducted efficiently and effectively.

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

The public comment period for this meeting was scheduled to be 20 minutes with each speaker having two minutes to speak.

However, we have 40, two individuals signed up to date for public comment today.

I do want to make sure that we have an opportunity to hear from everyone.

So I am going to go ahead and extend public comment on the front end this morning to allow us to hear from everyone who has called in so far.

So if there is no objection, the public comment period will be extended to 60 minutes.

Hearing no objection, the public comment period is now extended to 60 minutes.

If we need to extend it a little further to allow for everyone to address the city council this afternoon, we will make sure to do that accordingly.

So speakers are, again, going to be called upon in the order in which they registered to provide public comment on the council's website.

Each speaker has to call in from the phone number used for this registration and using the meeting phone number, ID, and passcode that was emailed to them upon confirmation.

This is different than the general meeting listen line call-in information.

So if you're listening to me right now and you're waiting to give public comment, make sure that you double check the email confirmation that you received from our staff.

Check that you're calling from the number that you used to register and that you called into the specific number using the ID and passcode that was emailed to you when your registration was confirmed.

If you have called into the general meeting listen line, you will show up as not present on my end on our public comment sign up sheet.

If you are showing up as not present, I am going to continue to call your name so that you understand that I'm not skipping you and that we are having difficulty seeing you in the waiting room and therefore are marking you as not present.

So again, make sure you double check that information that you received in the emailed confirmation to make sure that you have called in with the exact number that you registered with and that you have called in to the appropriate number, not the general meeting listen line.

Again, I'm gonna call on each speaker by name and in the order in which they registered on the council's website.

If you haven't registered to speak yet, but would like to, you can do so by going to seattle.gov forward slash council, that's C-O-U-N-C-I-L.

And you can sign up and register to give public comment before I end public comment today.

Once I call on your name, you will be unmuted and you're going to hear an automatic prompt of you have been unmuted.

That's gonna be your cue that it is your turn to press star six and then begin speaking.

Again, you're gonna hear an automatic prompt.

After you hear that prompt, press star six before you begin to speak.

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

As a reminder, public comment should relate to an item on today's agenda, the introduction and referral calendar, or the council's work program.

Speakers are going to hear a chime around 10 seconds.

That chime means that you have 10 seconds left of your allotted two minutes to address the city council today.

Once you hear the chime, we are going to ask that you begin to wrap up your public comment.

If you do not end your comments at the end of the two minutes, that your speaker, your microphone is going to be muted so I can call on the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, I'd ask that you please disconnect from the line and if you plan to continue following this meeting, you can do so on Seattle Channel or one of the listening options on the agenda.

So the public comment period is now open and we're gonna begin with the first speaker on the list.

Oops, just give me just a minute.

And the first speaker is Howard Gale followed by Shamir Howard, welcome.

Hi, good afternoon.

Howard Gale, District 7, commenting on failed police accountability.

Last week, Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson announced that three Tacoma police officers had been charged in last year's murder of Manuel Ellis.

It took the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter movement and the presence and the unimaginable strength of family and friends to keep this case in the news.

It also took the highly unusual intervention of the governor and attorney general in order to provide for a truly independent investigation.

But what about all those people killed by Seattle police whose killings didn't get the prerequisite press coverage and whose families couldn't navigate what is an unresponsive and victimizing accountability system?

What about those who didn't have family in the area to advocate for their loved ones and to bring their cases to light?

The families and friends of Charlene Lyles, Iosea Falatogo, Danny Rodriguez, Ryan Smith, Sean Leifer, Terry Kaver, and Derek Hayden had to suffer not just their loved ones' murder, but additionally suffer from the fact that they were killed in Seattle, where truly independent investigations have been and remain impossible.

We still have a system where it is only police that investigate police.

We still have a system where the head of the body that investigates police is someone who spent his entire career defending police officers.

Please go to seattlestop.org.

That's one word, seattlestop.org, to find out how we can bring real civilian accountability to Seattle.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Shamir Tana, followed by Alice Marabe.

Hello, Shamir Tana, District 7. I'm calling to say that council should reject Bill 119981. SPD's excess overtime spending and ongoing salary savings should go to community-led participatory budgeting, not back into a department that uses its resources to harm community members.

I'd like to read a part of my testimony that I submitted to the National Lawyers Guild on SPD's violence in June 2020. I arrived at the SPOG headquarters for a peaceful rally All of a sudden, I was surprised that country music started blaring on the speakers and dozens of police officers came out of nowhere using tear gas and stun grenades.

Looking back on it, it felt like it was a game to them.

Once things died down and people left, I then saw multiple police officers aggressively charge a group of BIPOC individuals from 50 feet away.

They were just sitting on the ground trying to collect themselves.

This is just one of the countless incidents I can't even fathom.

And to be clear, by not rejecting this bill, you are choosing this violent behavior instead of community.

Instead, please listen to what BIPOC community and organizers are saying.

Uphold your commitment and reject this bill.

Anything else, past measures, excuses, more words, means being complicit in the system we have today.

Thank you for your time.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Alice Marabi, followed by Kirsten Wagner.

Alice, welcome.

And Alice, if you're with us, make sure you press star six so we can hear you.

Okay, thank you.

Hi, this is Alice Marabi calling from District 2 to ask council to reject CDA and also the impact of the original bill that now grants more resources to SPD instead of holding them accountable for harming community members.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence last summer from a person identified as J.H.

On June 7th 2020 J.H.

was peacefully protesting in defense of Black Lives 11th and Pine when multiple explosives fired by SPD discharged in his immediate vicinity.

His bicycle was hit and so was he receiving two abrasions to his legs.

A separate incident on July 1st 2020 J.H.

was protesting at Broadway and Pine where a line of riot police was facing off with protesters.

The officers instructed protesters to stay on the other side of the sidewalk and J.H.

complied.

But suddenly police rushed at the protesters into the portion of the crosswalk where protesters were standing at police instruction.

Multiple officers tackled J.H.

pinned him to the ground and punched him.

He heard his bicycle helmet crack and the weight of the officers pinning him made it difficult for him to breathe.

The officers finally pulled him to his feet after he exclaimed I can't breathe.

J.H.

was arrested and told that he hit an officer with his bike and resisted arrest.

He was booked held for about 18 hours and charged with third degree assault and failure to disperse.

Those charges have since been dropped.

As a result of the explosive devices and physical force the SPD deployed against him J.H.

suffered from pain trauma and multiple injuries including a fractured rib bruised and swollen hip sprained right thumb and cuts and bruises over his entire body.

Please reject this bill.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in, Alice.

Next up is Kirsten, followed by Peter Condit.

Hello, my name is Kirsten and I'm a resident of District 6. Council should reject Bill 119981. SPD's $5.4 million of excess overtime spending and their $11 million of ongoing salary savings should go to community led participatory budgeting.

not back into a department that uses its resources to harm community members.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence on July 25th, 2020 from a person identified as TVM.

TVM and her husband saw a man step into the street while recording the protests.

A police officer ran over the man's foot with their bikes, causing him to fall.

Her husband tried to help the man to his feet, but was tackled to the ground by the police.

As TVM reached for her husband to help him, she was also tackled by an officer.

Multiple officers piled on top of her back, pinning her face down, and at least one officer kneeled on her neck with intense pressure.

The officers tore off the motorcycle helmet she wore without loosening the chinstrap, causing her neck to wrench and her face mask to dislodge and cover her face.

Officers also cut the straps of her backpack with a knife and took it.

She was then handcuffed and transported to the East Precinct, where she was kept in handcuffs for four hours.

TVM felt pain in her shoulder, wrist, back, and neck.

She was not able to hold her head upright.

Officers asked if she was injured, and she said yes, but they did not evaluate her, send a medical professional to see her, or check her handcuffs.

After she was released the next day at the hospital, TVM was diagnosed with a bulging disc between her C5 and C6 vertebrae and with severe swelling in her neck.

As a direct and proximate result of the excessive force and chemical weapons used on her by the city and SPD, her unlawful arrest and her unlawful treatment at the King County Jail, TVM suffered pain, trauma, chemical exposure, neck injury, calf injury, loss of mobility in the left arm, bulging disc, neck swelling, PTSD, and more.

TVM was unable to work for over a month following this assault.

Please reject Bill 119981. Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Peter Condit, followed by Walker Thomas.

Hello, my name is Peter Condit, and I live in District 4. I support Council Bill 120087, which releases $1 million for PB, and I strongly reject Council Bill 119981, which has been changed from its original form to release $10.9 million additional dollars to the Seattle Police Department this year.

It takes $8.4 million of those dollars directly from what was promised to community via PB.

If council passes this bill, you will be rewarding SPD for their past violent behavior, which would sabotage any hope of accountability going forward and endanger me and other residents in the street.

I'll read a testimony of SPD's violence from a person identified as AI.

One of my friends was next to me, and he was standing with his hands in the air, holding flowers.

Another friend was kneeling.

I began to kneel, and I was hit in the chest with a flash grenade, and another flash grenade went off at my feet.

I couldn't hear anything.

My ears were ringing.

I was hyperventilating, then I lost consciousness.

I can remember smoke and what seemed like fire.

The next morning, I woke up in the hospital with a tube down my throat.

A doctor told me that I went into cardiac arrest on the street, and if the volunteer medics had not provided on-site chest compressions, I might have died.

For days following my discharge, my throat was very sore and I tired easily.

I couldn't walk or stand for a long period of time without difficulty breathing.

I felt like someone was standing on my chest.

I've had vertical and noises sound louder than usual.

My chest still feels strange and hollow, and even wearing a seatbelt is uncomfortable.

I wake up every morning with serious throat pain.

I continue to experience trauma from that night.

When I close my eyes, I see police shields in my face.

I am committed to ending police brutality.

I want people to listen to black voices and understand that police brutality is systemic and that it must be stopped.

This story is not about me.

It is about continued police oppression and the lives that have been lost.

I hope that people continue to speak out and they stand up for justice.

Thank you for listening.

Thank you, Peter.

Next up is Walker Thomas, followed by Tally KB.

Hi, my name is Walker.

I live in D3.

I'm calling to add my voice to the choir of people begging you not to give SPD any more money.

It's unbelievable to me that we have to keep doing this after a year of just constant police violence.

I'm one of the people who was gassed and beaten, along with everyone else protesting for black lives.

And if it couldn't be more clear, all they are doing is using their money to do this.

Just this weekend, there were more police downtown intimidating protesters than there were protesters, all those people getting overtime.

And I worked in a homeless shelter.

We need that money so, so desperately.

We need all that money you're spending on the police and their training and their equipment.

to actually make a difference in people's lives.

When we get the police to the shelters to try to help us out, they're always completely useless.

They do not care about it at all.

They're only in this to beat up protesters, and y'all need to stop funding them.

We could not be more clear about this.

You said you would do it last summer.

Prove it right.

You have to actually do it.

We don't want them around.

Everyone is super duper clear about this.

Defund the SPD.

They do not get overtime for beating people up.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Tali, followed by Matt Offenbacher.

Hello, my name is Tali, and I'm a resident of District 4. I use she, they pronouns.

I believe the council should reject Bill 119981, SPD's $5.4 million of excess and overtime spending, and their over $11 million of ongoing salary saving should go to community-led participatory budgeting and not back into a department that uses resources to harm community members.

I personally have been protesting last year and this year and am all asking you to please think of the future of Black Indigenous and children of color.

I know some of you are parents and I think it's important to think about how your decision will impact them.

and how it's going to impact current elders and parents and to unhoused communities and to LGBTQ plus communities.

Your decision today to hold police accountable can make an impact and positive change to all communities.

It can actually create safety.

My experience has been hard and I think it's important that you hear some of these things that I witness all the time.

I have seen Black trans people be beaten, bloodied, scared to go to hospitals, scared to like what will follow.

I have a knee on my back.

I have been choked.

I've had chemical gases that created long-term damage to my lungs and now have to use an inhaler quite often.

The things the police say about salons and Nikita Oliver and lots of black activists, it is important to note that they are harmful and they're going to continue to create harm.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling in Tali.

Next up is Matt Offenbacher followed by Alice Lockhart.

And I just want to note for the record that we have been joined by Council Member Lewis.

Matt, please.

Hi this is Matt Offenbacher and I live in District 3. I'm calling to ask you to please reject Bill 119981. Do not reward the Seattle Police Department for last year's excess overtime much of which they spent harming peaceful protesters.

Please put those funds in the police salary savings and the community led participatory budgeting.

I'm going to read an excerpt now from testimony by a person identified with the initial DT.

writing about the events of June 25th, 2020. I arrived to the Seattle Central Lawn in the early afternoon.

The crowd was overwhelmingly made up of peaceful protesters.

The first explosions I heard were when our march turned a corner and saw a large group of bike police up the hill unleash a round of flashbang grenades onto the street before chasing everyone down the hill.

The police deployed this first round seemingly to create a lot of noise and scary smoke as they charged down the hill at us.

This came out of nowhere.

It honestly was terrifying.

I've never seen anything like it.

Later, police started throwing blast balls and flashbang grenades indiscriminately into the crowd.

My impression was that they are increasing the level of violence and intentionally terrorizing people.

I had multiple explosives land and explode at my feet.

I got hit in the face with a large piece of a shell from a blast ball that exploded at my feet.

I got chemical burns all over my face.

I was really scared.

I've seen pictures of people who lost eyes that way.

There was so much smoke in the air.

The rate of deployment and the volume of weapons was much greater than I'd seen at earlier protests.

I can't think of a better way to describe the Seattle Police Department's use of force.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for calling in.

Spencer Rittering, you are showing up as not present on my end.

Again, Spencer Rittering, if you call in before the end of today's meeting, I'll make sure to circle back to you.

Next up is Alice Lockhart, followed by Flora Wright.

Alice, make sure you hit star six so we can hear you.

Sorry.

Good afternoon, council.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

Go ahead.

Oh, cool.

Thanks.

I'm Alice Lockhart, speaking in argument against Council Bill 119981. And I'll read a little bit of testimony from EB, a registered nurse.

E.B.

attended a protest against police brutality as a nurse, not a demonstrator, and writes, not long after I arrived, I observed police pushing protesters west on Pine.

They were deploying batons, pepper spray, and flashbang grenades.

E.B.

writes of being pepper sprayed directly in the face, not once, but twice, with absolutely no provocation as E.B.

attempted to assist protesters injured by police.

E.B.

says, I was not a threat.

I was not dangerous.

I was not breaking anything or hurting anybody.

I am a nurse.

E.B.

wrote that S.P.D. used a constant barrage of flashbang grenades and pepper sprays to forcibly corral the crowd further and further out of Capitol Hill.

At one point, I witnessed a woman shot at close range in the chest with some kind of gas canister.

The force of the impact was incredible.

I examined her later, and I suspect the hit broke her ribs.

In her conclusion, E.B.

wrote, I had witnessed nonviolent protesters being continuously assaulted with batons, pepper spray, and flash grenades for no other reason than their inability to immediately comply with law enforcement's demands while under assault.

I had seen multiple people struck at close range with projectiles that could have easily shattered their bones.

I now had four prone, incapacitated, helpless people with me, screaming and vomiting from pain on the ground.

Please don't reward police abuse.

Vote no on Council Bill 119981. Thank you.

Thank you, Alice.

Again, as a reminder, Spencer Rittering, Jesse Roth, Becca Rose, Michael Wilmarth, all of you are shown as registered but not present.

Please double check that you're calling in to the correct number with the number that you registered with so we can get you out of the waiting room.

if that is where you're at.

Next up is Flora Wright, followed by Emily Graham.

Hello, my name is Flora and I'm a resident of District 3. I'm calling to tell council to reject CB 1199.81.

The current substitute bill voted for by council members Herbold, Gonzalez, and Lewis, as well as the amendment added when it was voted out of committee, turn this bill from a consequence for excess overtime spending to a $10.9 million increase to SPD's budget for money which was promised for participatory budgeting.

This goes against all quote unquote commitments made by council and all community demands.

SPD's $5.4 million of excess overtime spending and their $11 million plus of ongoing salary savings should go to community-led, black-led participatory budgeting.

It should not go back into a department that uses its resources to harm and brutalize black residents and other community members speaking of gun violence.

The accounts of SPD violence being shared throughout comment is the violence that you will fund by passing CB 119981. Your constituents have been clear.

Do not give SPD more money.

Reject CB 119981. I yield my time.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Emily Graham, followed by Trevona Thompson Wiley.

Emily, welcome.

And Emily, if you're with us, remember to press star six.

Hi, sorry that took me a second.

My name is Emily Graham and I'm a resident of District 3. Council should reject Bill 119981. SPD's excess overtime spending and ongoing salary savings should go to participatory budgeting, not back into a department that uses resources to harm community members.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence on June 7, 2020, from a person identified as JK.

Around 12 p.m., J.K.

was in the front of the crowd near the barricade playing her drum.

The police attempted to move the protesters back, but J.K.

couldn't move very far, stuck between a mass of protesters on one side and a line of officers on the other.

Suddenly, an officer grabbed J.K.

by the neck and yanked her into the police line, knocking J.K.

unconscious.

J.K.

does not know how long she was out.

When she regained consciousness, she was lying on the ground behind the barricade and missing her protest equipment.

After EMTs provided her with some cursory treatment, The police moved her to a cell.

J.K.

was disoriented and on the verge of vomiting from the head injuries she sustained, yet she was not provided with further medical treatment.

While in the cell, an officer ripped away from J.K.

a blanket she had been provided by the EMPs.

J.K.

was also placed in handcuffs while still being held in the cell.

Eventually, she was moved to King County and released later in the day on June 8th, 2020. J.K.

was charged with failure to disperse and obstructing a police officer, and these charges were dropped.

City Council must stop supporting SPD's abuses of the public and must oppose this bill to send more money into their coffers.

Giving money back to SDP is a tacit support of this abusive community that we've heard so many stories about today.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Trevona Thompson-Wiley, followed by Sarah Burkhalter.

Hello, my name is Trayvonna.

I'm a resident of District 2. I am calling today to tell City Council to reject Bill 119981, SB 5.4 million of excess spending for overtime and the 11 million more of ongoing salary savings should go to the community and not back to the department that literally brutalizes them.

I wanted to read a testimony of SUD violence on July 25th, 2020 from a person identified as JC.

It is actually being used in the ACLU as a lawsuit currently.

On July 25th, 2020, I walked with my sister, CA, and my girlfriend to the protest area in Capitol Hill.

We arrived in East Pine Street between 10th and 11th Avenues around 8.30 p.m.

When we arrived, protesters were chanting and playing music.

Occasionally, one of the protesters would talk to the police.

But the police and the protesters were on opposite sides of the street.

I looked back and saw one protester dragging another protester away from offices.

I looked to my left and saw my sister standing between another protester and about four other officers.

I rushed to her side and the officer hit me twice in the arm with a baton.

As I backed away another officer sprayed me directly in the face with pepper spray.

At this point my eyes were beginning to swell and I was having trouble blinking.

My entire face was burning.

Within a few minutes my eyes were completely swollen shut.

I'm wearing a white helmet in the video posted on Twitter, and that shows it there.

And they're just saying they posed no threat.

Their sister posed no threat.

And I wanted to end with the story by saying I've been at a protest, and I've seen examples of protest violence myself with the police, especially the fact that a protester literally had their head right in front of me, ran over by an SPD bike cop.

The image of that I've never been able to get away, and the fact that We are literally on the year anniversary of the uprising, and SPD may get more money, literally should not happen.

And the city council should stand behind the community and not behind SPD.

I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Sarah Burkhalter, followed by Emily Childs.

Hello, Sarah Burkhalter, District 6. Thank you for your time.

Council should reject Bill 1199-81.

I join my voice with others.

We should put resources toward community-led participatory budgeting, not back into a police department that harms community members.

I will read a testimony of SPD's violence on September 23rd, 2020 from a person identified as AF.

Quote, on Wednesday, September 23rd, the night after prosecutors in Louisville decided not to charge Breonna Taylor's killers with murder, I protested in Capitol Hill.

That night, the Seattle Police Department hit me in the head with a flashbang, choked me with pepper spray and gas until I could not see or breathe, chased me until I had a panic attack and thought I would vomit and pass out, and badly injured many people around me.

I've been to many, many protests since the killing of George Floyd, including several with heavy police violence, like the protests in early June and on July 25th, but SPD's response on September 23rd felt especially brutal.

There were about 400 of us out protesting at the beginning.

For a while, SPD followed behind us in their police vehicles, their lights flashing.

At some point SPD started aggressively pushing us back as they always do.

I was fairly close to the police trying to move back but with a huge crowd ahead of me.

We yelled move move at the protesters in front of us trying to get them to make space so we could move.

But at one point the crowd was just so backed up that we couldn't move at all which was really scary.

SPD started throwing an inordinate number of flashbangs at us when we got to Broadway.

They threw so many at us that a woman on the sidewalk who was just walking by started yelling at the police to stop it and stop terrorizing the neighborhood.

Next thing I knew she was on the ground being dogpiled by a bunch of SPD officers.

A couple people built a barricade and lit it on fire.

Other than this, the only time I saw a protester damage property that night was when someone spray-painted a vehicle and immediately got arrested.

The vast, vast majority of the crowd was not doing anything destructive or dangerous.

Some people went towards the East Precinct a block away.

I heard an explosion of some kind happen at the East Precinct, and all of a sudden, protesters came running back down towards us, followed by bike cops.

The bike cops moved around the fire onto the sidewalk and started pushing us back, heck, perspraying the entire front line of protesters.

They must have directly pepper sprayed 20 people who hadn't done anything other than put their bodies on the front line.

Please reject Bill 1199-81.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Next up is Emily Childs.

And Jesse Roth, you're showing up as not present on my side.

So after Emily Childs will be Penny O'Grady.

Hi, this is Emily Childs in District 2. I'd just like to take a moment to review some of SPD's greatest hits of the past year.

They pepper sprayed a child in the face.

They filled Capitol Hill with so much tear gas that babies woke up vomiting.

They stopped Aubriana Indo's heart with a blast fall.

They caused countless injuries ranging from concussions and permanent spinal damage to the largest bruises I have ever seen to protesters exercising their right to free speech.

They murdered Terry Caver.

They murdered Sean Furr.

They murdered others in the middle of a mental health crisis.

They violated the jail's COVID protocols to arrest and dehumanize protesters.

For these reasons and many more, I call on you not to give SPD more money and to reject this version of DB 119981. Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Penny O'Grady, followed by LaTanya Sevier.

Hello my name is Penny O'Grady and I live in District 6. I urge council to reject CB 1199-81.

SPD's ongoing salary savings should go to community-led participatory budgeting not back into a department that uses its resources to harm community members.

I'm going to read now from some testimony given in response to SPD's actions in 2020 from a person identified as SS.

SS says that a September protest, SPD pushed us back with bikes and pepper spray into a parking lot.

When we were able to get back into the street, they continued to chase us.

Lines of bike cops would ride in, skim their bikes as close to the protest as they could, shoving us forward.

I was trying to walk away from the police line, but unable to walk fast enough to satisfy SPD.

as they pushed us, SPD, through more explosives that were loud like concussion grenades.

I don't know from where SPD was throwing the flashbangs, but that night they hit with such force that they ricocheted off the ground high enough to reach my head, and I am six foot three.

The flashbangs were very disorienting, especially combined with SPD bike officers hitting people with their bikes immediately afterwards.

SPD's mood seemed jubilant.

I saw officers smiling as they threatened us with force and forced us to march.

It seemed like this was a game to them.

SPD bike officers rode at us.

One officer was shoving his handlebars into people's faces.

There was no justification for this.

We were moving back as fast as we could.

Early on in the March, SPD started following us very close.

They quickly started grabbing protesters.

They grabbed protesters as we were rounding a corner and then again as we were going up a hill.

It seemed like they were grabbing anyone they could pick off from the crowd.

SPD pepper sprayed us two to three times from close range.

One of the people I was with stuck his head down as an officer unleashed a torrent of pepper spray into his face from about one foot away.

The force from the pepper spray moved his goggles out of place and the goggles began filling full of pepper spray.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Latanya followed by Claire Baumkamp.

Hello, my name is Latanya Sevier.

I'm a 39-year-old black, queer, non-binary person renting in D2.

Council should reject Bill 119981. SPD should not be rewarded for violently brutalizing community members protesting police brutality.

They also shouldn't be rewarded for overspending their overtime budget after council told them explicitly not to.

You all said you would withhold their funds if they overspent, and I urge you to do so today.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence on July 25th, 2020, from a person identified as EL.

On July 25th, 2020, EL marched with BLM George Floyd protesters from Seattle Central Community College at the East Precinct.

Upon arrival at the intersection near the precinct, EL immediately heard flashbangs.

He did not hear any warning or request for dispersal before police began using explosive munitions on the crowd.

He began filming as protesters ran from the police.

SPD officers began forming in a line across 12th Avenue, pushing protesters south.

He was retreating backwards when he heard some commotion behind him.

Suddenly an officer shoved EL and knocked him backwards to the ground, knocking his phone out of his hand.

As he reached for his phone, still on his hands and knees, another officer grabbed it from his hand.

An officer then smashed his face to the pavement while others kneeled on his back, legs, and arms.

They then handcuffed him, cut his backpack off him, and transported him to the West Precinct.

At the West Precinct, E.L.

was denied water for about three hours.

An officer yelled in his face when he asked why he was being held.

He was eventually transported to King County Jail.

Upon arrival at KCJ, the officers that escorted E.L.

inside slammed his body into the door between the jail and the garage.

A jail guard slammed his head into the surface of a desk, breaking his two front teeth as depicted in a picture online.

I urge you today, please don't award SPD violence.

Reject Bill 1199-81.

That gives more funds to SPD to inflict violence on community members.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Claire Baumkamp, followed by Ashton Ebbe.

And Becca Rose, if you're listening, you're showing up as not present on my end.

Claire, welcome.

Hi, my name is Claire.

I'm a resident of District 6. I'm calling to oppose Bill 119981 because I believe that there are better uses of SPD's $5.4 million of excess overtime spending and their $11 million plus of ongoing salary savings than continuing to pour money into a department that does things like deploy blast balls and chemical weapons against members of the press.

I'd also like to address Council Member Herbold's claims that the recent amendment is necessitated by the consent decree.

The consent decree was put in place in response to SPD's violent conduct.

The fact that this decree is being used to block efforts to remove funds from SPD's budget and thereby prevent them from enacting further violence is truly unbelievable.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence on July 25th, 2020 from a person identified as JM.

On July 25th, JM was out on the street with Converge documenting the protest.

J.M.

was standing off to the side of the street with a group of members of the media and had the press badge clearly displayed.

The police began deliberately attacking the group by throwing blast balls right at them, even though the group only contained members of the media.

The police repeatedly lobbed explosive devices far into the crowd that seemed to explode at shoulder or head level.

One blast ball exploded very close to J.M.

and a piece of shrapnel hit them in their neck and arm.

Even though they were wearing a neck covering, J.M.

felt extreme pain and they had to be helped to the group because they could barely stand.

JM still can't hear correctly out of their right ear due to the explosion.

Within two minutes after being hit, JM and their colleagues began quickly moving away from the area and away from the advancing officers.

There was a large crowd in their path as they retreated, so they could only move as fast as the people in front of them.

JM held their press badge over their right shoulder to make sure the police could still identify them as press.

As they were walking away, the police started quickly advancing and pulled out OC spray.

J.M.

did not hear a dispersal order or any warning, and the police began indiscriminately spraying blue DioC spray into the group.

J.M.

was sprayed with blue DioC spray on their face and arm.

And there's more, but I think that's my time.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling in today.

Next up is Ashton Eby, followed by Lena Sullivan.

Hi, I'm calling in to oppose CB 119981 from District 7. Um, if council intends to necessitate that SPD fund public records appropriately and the, uh, higher five mental health counselors, they need the proviso existing budget, not grant money to SPD.

The I'll, I'll skip past that.

Um, anyway, I'm going to read some testimony as well.

Um, quote.

I have been peacefully protesting in Seattle in defense of Black lives since May 30th.

In that time, police had tear gas pepper sprayed and arrested me and nearly hit me with a car all without justification.

I have also attended to many other people's injuries caused by police.

I attended the Labor Day protest outside of Spog.

SPD officers launched blast balls at me, maced me in the face, and forced me to march quickly while I screamed in pain, unable to seek treatment for my injuries.

The police weapons and forced fast march triggered an asthma attack, causing me to pass out on the side of the road.

Ken, people tried to flee the gas, but the police had positioned themselves in a few different places to cut off access to anywhere we could possibly go to escape.

Police threw blast balls indiscriminately into the middle of the densely packed crowd.

Two of them exploded near my feet, hitting my feet and leaving burn marks on my sneakers.

Police pulled the part of the crowd where I was in into a parking lot across the street from Spock.

I thought SPD might allow us to disperse, but they did not.

Instead, they funneled protesters into a thin line, seemingly indiscriminately blasting Mesa, everyone who fell out of this line.

I had a brown and white umbrella open for protection from police weapons and police blasted it with pepper spray so much that it turned orange.

I walked screaming in pain because of the mace in my eyes, crying for help.

A stranger held onto my backpack to push me forward so I wouldn't be in danger of falling behind.

I saw a multitude of other people with open wounds, including a person whose hands were covered in blood.

I yelled the rest of my time.

Give her calling in today.

Next up is Lena Sullivan and Michael Wilmarth.

If you are listening, you are showing up is not present on my end.

So after Lena will be Aiden Carroll.

Hi, my name is Lena and I'm a resident of District 4. I'm calling to again add my voice to the choir asking you to reject Bill 119981. SPD's $5.4 million of excess overtime spending and their $11 million plus of ongoing salary savings should go to community-led participatory budgeting.

I am also going to read a testimony of SPD's violence on July 25th 2020 from a person identified as X.

Quote on July 25th 2020 around 7 p.m.

X was attending a protest near the intersection of 11th Avenue and Pine Street.

Like many protesters X wanted to have conversations with the officers though most of the officers would not reciprocate.

During one such interaction, another officer about six feet away raised and fired a bullet at him, excuse me, fired a weapon at him, presumably a rubber bullet or a baton round, striking X in the abdomen.

The projectile injured both his torso and his right arm and caused pain, trauma, and other damages, including but not limited to laceration on his ribcage, laceration and contusions on his right arm, tissue damage, scarring, tingling sensations, restricted range of motion, disrupted sleep, difficulty concentrating, depression, and symptoms of PTSD.

X also suffered infringement upon his constitutional rights.

The Seattle community is yet again coming together today to firmly tell you that you need to hold true to your promises to divert resources from SPD and to put them towards the community.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Aiden Carroll and Aiden After Aiden is Stephanie Anderson.

Stephanie, you are showing up as not present on my end again for all of these.

All of you that are showing up is not present.

Please double check the number that you are using to call in and make sure that you're calling in to the number provided to you and not to the listening line.

So next up is Aiden.

Aiden, welcome.

Hi, my name is Aiden.

I am in Residential District 6 and I'm calling because Council should reject Bill 119981. uh...

fpd five point four million extra overtime spending and they're eleven uh...

plus million of ongoing salary savings to go to a community-led participatory budgeting which did not wait until next year uh...

not back into a department that you'd read it to harm community members on the topic of of gun violence the tragic shooting incident or the park yesterday in nirvana is now being used to protect sleep everyone in that camp by thursday morning and that is the wrong with when there's a when there's a uh...

a shooting or and cry with him when you live in a house neighborhood don't demolish the house their own block at the very least people who in that in camera should have priority for ongoing how to become available but now i'm going to read a testimony of s p violent on may thirtieth from a person identified as eighty two i have heard the protest every day since the killing of george boyd i don't come up i've heard it in chicago during the week in seattle and we can't talk to you squirted by file is a bill of property during the weekend of may thirtieth and june twelfth i thought that i believe department chemical agents being tear tear gas mason by the pepper spray as well as by figuring it against protesters even a child we're not doing anything other than to go home went on saturday i was on the front lines of partisan westlake when i see the beginning of the public indiscriminately against protest This is how I first exposed to tear gas.

In the Navy during boot camp, recruits were exposed to tear gas while we were wearing gas masks and told to puncture the seal so we could feel what tear gas feels like.

On May 30th, SPD's gases burst through the crowd well beyond the immediate vicinity where it was deployed, making my eyes sting and triggering my trauma, causing me to have an attack.

SPD also deployed flashbang grenades.

I also saw an SPD officer mace a little girl who posed no risk to the officer.

On June 6th, SPD kept repeating that they wanted producers to move back, but the crowd.

Hi, Aiden, I'm sorry we ran out of time for you, but you're welcome to email your comments to the full council at council at Seattle.gov.

Next up is Sarah Lindsley, followed by Natalie Schmidt.

Sarah, welcome.

Hello my name is Sarah Linsley and I'm a resident of District 6. I urge council to reject Bill 1199-81 which gives 10.9 million of increased funding to a police department that uses its resources to harm community members.

Those funds must go to community-led participatory budgeting to create true community safety.

To illustrate SPD's harmful actions I'd like to read an excerpt from a legal testimony from a person identified as NG about their experience as a journalist covering a demonstration in downtown Seattle on May 30th 2020. Quote on East Pine Street I saw a truck playing music as protesters danced around it.

It was an uplifting joyful scene.

I paused to observe and record a video when law enforcement threw a flashbang grenade into the crowd without warning.

They deployed tear gas seconds later.

The dancing protesters at first scattered but then coalesced back into a group.

Law enforcement pushed them back and continued to deploy tear gas and flashbangs.

I was shocked and frightened by the consistently unprovoked aggressive use of force by law enforcement officers and multiple different groups of peaceful protesters.

I saw no evidence that any of these severe crowd dispersal tactics were warranted, and there was never any warning before they were deployed.

At this point, I decided to leave the area because I feared for my safety.

There was tear gas everywhere, flashbang grenades exploding in the street, and I was anxious that the police would further escalate their tactics.

I decided that reporting on the situation was no longer worth the pain of enduring tear gas and the risk of suffering violence at the hands of law enforcement.

witnessing the aggressive and discriminant deployment of chemical agents and flashbang grenades by police at these protests, have made me reconsider how I approach my assignments.

There's a new element of trepidation, anxiety, and fear to my experience of being a journalist.

I am determined to assert my rights and do my job, so I will continue reporting.

But I would not be surprised if other journalists felt that their ability to report from the ground was significantly impaired by these law enforcement tactics.

This testimony is just one of many illustrations of the violent actions of SPD that would be rewarded if council passes Bill 119981. Please reject.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Natalie Schmidt followed by Stephanie Karacoffi.

Go ahead, Natalie.

Star six.

My name is Natalie Schmidt, and I live in District 3. I'm calling to urge you to reject Council Bill 119981 on the grounds that it provides millions of dollars of additional funding for SPD.

Just a few months ago, you promised the people of Seattle that you would cut SPD's funding, and this bill flies in the face of that promise.

The bill's discussion of where the funds will go is a disingenuous distraction.

The city must take a strong stand and defund SPD.

It is SPD's responsibility to address their own budgeting issues.

In response to today's proclamation, I just want to remind you that SPD has never protected our community from gun violence.

They either cause it or at best respond to it.

So please stand strong and honor your commitment to the people of Seattle to defund SPD.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Stephanie Karakoff.

And again, Henry Wing and Emma McVeigh, your showing up is not present on my spreadsheet, so double check those call in details.

And if you call in before we conclude, I will make sure to give you your two minutes.

Stephanie, welcome.

Hello, my name is Stephanie and I'm a resident of District 3. Council should reject Bill 119981. SPD is excess overtime spending and their ongoing salary savings should go to community led participatory budgeting and not back into the department that uses its resources to harm community members.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD violence on August 16th, 2020 from a person identified as NF at approximately 10 PM NF was protesting at SPOG headquarters on fourth Avenue, South and Lander street.

The police told protesters that they had four minutes to evacuate.

They were directed down an alleyway.

As NF backed up, the police charged forward.

Someone tripped behind NF, and as they were backing up, they were caused to trip and fall to the ground.

NF was arrested before they could stand up.

NF was cuffed while on the ground, remained on the ground for about five minutes, and then waited 30 more minutes on the curb before being transported to the West Precinct.

They were handcuffed tightly with hands behind their back and the backs of their hands pressed together.

They were held in those handcuffs for two hours and informed officers that their arm was hurt, but nothing was done.

When they arrived to the county jail, they realized they could not bend or raise their left arm.

When NF reported the injury to the jail nurse, the nurse did not examine NF arms and failed to detect what medical providers later found, that NF arm was broken.

On August 17th, 2020, basically the next day at 10 p.m., they were released, they sought medical treatment, and x-rays revealed a radial head fracture at the elbow.

So NF's arresting charge was failure to disperse, prosecutors declined to file any charges.

As a direct and proximate result of the excessive force used on them by the city and SPD, the unlawful arrest and the unlawful treatment at King County Jail, NF suffered pain, trauma, and other damages.

Please reject Bill 119981 and do not further fund violent police.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Carmen Woodson, who is showing up as not present on my spreadsheet.

Carmen, double-check that you're calling into the right number with the number you used to register, and we'll make sure to get back to you.

Next up is Eric Salinger followed by Lydia Lippold Gelb.

Eric.

Hi, I hope you can hear me.

My name is Eric Salinger.

I live in District 7, and I'm also calling about CB 119981. This has just been a really emotional and hard public hearing for me, honestly.

It's sickening to listen to this, to understand that we're still here and we're still debating funding the police department, which has done all of these things.

We have had a year for the police department to demonstrate any signs of accountability, and we have seen nothing.

We were told to wait for the accountability partners to do their work, and the accountability partners have done their work, and we've seen training referrals.

We've seen a couple of written reprimands.

We got a assistant police chief demoted, but there's really been no addressing the root cause of any of this stuff.

There's been no reform.

There's been no commitment to reform.

Uh, and we have the dubious honor of sending the largest delegation of police officers to the Capitol six and to the Capitol insurrection on January six.

This is not a department that's trending in a good direction.

Uh, I understand that you feel that the court monitor has told you you have to pass this, but none of you have to vote yes on this.

And I don't know how you can even think about doing that.

I don't know.

You can think about giving them more money after you're hearing this stuff.

It's, it's frankly, it's completely heartbreaking and it's unacceptable.

If the court monitor doesn't want to produce accountability, and the court monitor wants you to approve more funding than maybe he should raise it himself in harvard in cambridge massachusetts which is where he apparently lives he doesn't live here every single person i talked to today i told them that i was going to this meeting and every single person said i have to work i'm glad that someone is showing up to say things for me because i agree with you a hundred percent we shouldn't be giving the police money this is completely absurd This is frankly heartbreaking and it's ridiculous that we have to constantly show up and beg for these nickel and dime cuts.

You are the people we can hold responsible for holding the police department accountable.

You're our elected officials.

Please do your job.

Thank you.

Okay, next up we have BJ Last and Lydia Lippold, Gelb, both showing up as not present.

If you call back in before the end of the meeting, I'll make sure to give you your two minutes.

Next up is Aaron Mandel, followed by David Haynes.

Aaron.

Hi, my name's Aaron.

Can you all hear me?

We can hear you.

Go ahead.

Okay, cool.

I'm a resident of District 6. uh...

i'm calling in because i strongly council should reject bill one one nine nine eight one at the east five point four million of excess overtime spending in their eleven plus million of ongoing salary savings to go to community-led participatory budgeting not back into a department that uses resources to harm community members uh...

i'd like to just talk about my personal experience being at protest this summer uh...

i pay at inhaled tear gas countless times and i've had asthma that's been pretty much under control most of my life and just like so many people coughing and i've had asthma that's been not under control for the first time since i was a little kid and it's been a really terrible experience and i feel like it's just not something okay that cops should be using at all whatsoever and they clearly showed time and time again that they would Use that on anybody and everybody to whatever, I don't know what they were doing, but I just strongly encourage that council.

Remember the countless people that have called in throughout the last year to talk about how terrible this experience was and traumatic.

It was as people were on the streets protesting.

So I just like to encourage the council to reject bill one, one nine, nine, eight, one.

That's all I got.

Thanks for calling in Aaron.

Colleagues, we have about.

About 5 more people to go, so we are almost done here with public comment.

Next up is David Haynes followed by Jamie Flesher.

David.

Hi, thank you.

I'm a resident of district 7. And I'm still owed money from a company in District 6 and 7 who coerced the cops to have me jailed holding a sign that says backpace to load.

Now, perhaps City Council will realize there are no qualitative choices in housing for first-time buyers, and that the only answer is a robust, higher-level, intellectually-stimulating, noise-abated floor plan with more view and less drive-through.

i.e. we need a 21st century first world quality housing, commercial and school build-out.

A job creation for real equity.

It's obvious City Council is going through some such hard times because God is trying to convince Council to get out of politics and is completely distracted from the fact society has imploded because the same City Council policies aided, abetted, crack, meth, heroin, sex crime, predators, and violators who are conducting an uncivil war on community with impunity.

City Council should focus on their own family and retire from campaign for re-election, since Council doesn't know what normal is for families, and stop using tragedy as sympathy boats, especially when people's lives are being destroyed every night around First and Cherry Street, where no cops are policing malt liquor sales taxes at the 24-hour 7-Eleven, paying cops overtime elsewhere as all these evil predators destroying the homeless lives and any innocent passing through nightly all around the Pioneer Square area.

And it's unfortunate the policies and the sabotaging of police reform by the city council and the mayor and Lee has justified like council retiring.

So anyway we need an investigation of the homeless outreach and police who never around Pioneer Square as all these evil people have taken over the neighborhood.

Please investigate your political donors of homeless.

Next up is Jamie Flesher followed by Grace Harvey.

Jamie.

Jamie just make sure you press star 6. There you go.

I can see you now.

Thank you.

Hi my name is Jamie Flesher and I'm a resident of District 1. HMPL should reject Bill 119981. SPD's $5.4 million of excess overtime spending and their $11 million of ongoing salary savings should go to community led participatory budgeting not back into a department that uses its resources to harm community members.

I'd like to read a testimony of SPD's violence on May 30th 2020 from a person identified as AW2.

AW2 is a videographer and graphic designer residing in Seattle.

He is a 28-year-old Black man who protested every day between May 30th and June 7th 2020. On three separate occasions that week he and his partner were personally exposed to police violence in the form of tear gas pepper spray and flashbangs while peacefully protesting.

These incidences occurred in Westlake Park and at 11th and Pine.

AW2 says quote before this week of trying to protest I only symbolically and systematically understood what George Floyd and Eric Garner must have experienced when they were screaming out I can't breathe.

When the tear gas engulfed me on multiple occasions this past week the words I can't breathe became more than symbolic.

I personally and physically experienced what it felt like to have police violence literally choke me to a point where I was uncertain if I would remain conscious.

This experience has affected every part of my life.

I can't sleep because every night I'm not at the East Precinct.

I incessantly check Twitter and Facebook streams with friends and allies to ensure they are still safe.

And when I wake up in the morning I can't work because my brain has been on overdrive worrying all night.

Headaches are a constant.

Appetite is an all-time low.

The pain and trauma of historical violence and oppression met with day-to-day violence perpetuated by the Seattle Police Department has coalesced into what I might describe as one of the worst weeks of my life.

I know that when I attend a protest where Seattle Police Department is present I will never be safe.

But I also know that these protests are an important part of holding the City of Seattle and Police Department accountable.

If I do not continue to exercise my First Amendment right nothing will change so I will continue to protest.

I will continue to protect my community knowing full well how this may adversely affect my health.

I yield my time.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Alaina Lessing followed by Grace Harvey.

Hello.

My name is Ilana and I am calling with a request to defund the police.

You all made a promise, 50% at least last summer.

You made this promise when SPD was tear gassing neighborhoods full of people.

You were harming and beating up protesters and SPD has done nothing to change.

They haven't even shown the basic about accountability of admitting what they did was wrong.

And then they went and they spent money over their budget, money that you promised to take away, and now you're thinking about giving me back?

This is absurd.

The original intent of this bill was to defund the police, and yet we're somehow giving them more money and more overtime?

SBD just recently wasted a huge amount of time and resources at Alki Beach.

Tell them if they're If they need the money so bad, tell them to stop doing that.

In addition, SPD has systematically harmed BIPOC members of the community, and that's why it sparked the original problem.

People like Charlene Miles and countless others have been murdered at the hands of SPD, and it's up to you to do something.

Thank you.

Thanks for calling in today.

Next up is Grace Harvey.

And James Survid, you're showing up as not present.

So after James will be Julia.

Hello, my name is Grace Harvey, and I'm a resident and homeowner in Seattle.

I personally took many of the declarations that were read today.

And personally, one of mine was a declaration that was given One year ago today, I was tear gassed at least inside of my own home.

The collective trauma that I experienced along with my community and my loved ones, taking down those stories and seeing them and witnessing them was enormous.

I still flinch every time a door is shut too loud outside of my house.

I went to the Museum of History and Industry yesterday and was completely overwhelmed to see my own experience in the display cases.

I am still affected by what I experienced.

You should care about the First Amendment and the right to peacefully demonstrate.

You should care about BIPOC communities.

You should care about police brutality in your own city that is whacked and terrible nationally.

If you need more reasons take these.

I'm a white homeowner, and there are tech employees in my household, and I care about this.

Deliberative democracy, like participatory budgeting, increases your likelihood of re-election.

The consent decree, the monitor isn't the authority, and in Seattle, we haven't sorted out who's in charge yet.

They had to do this in Portland, but we haven't done it yet here.

You don't know that the monitor is in charge.

The Geneva Convention outlawed chemical weapons in war.

It's worse that we use them on our people at home.

Historically, we've added more money to the police department to try and solve problems that we have, and we've consistently seen now that it doesn't work.

I'm urging you to vote no on Council Bill 119981. This impacts all of us deeply.

Thank you for calling in today.

Next up is Julia Buck followed by Coco Weber.

Hello, my name is Julia Buck and I'm a resident of District 6. I am calling to ask that Council reject Bill 119981 Um, as written, um, we should not be holding SPD accountable for overspending by giving them more money.

Um, I'd also like to read a testimony from SPD violence on July 25th, 2020, um, from a person identified just as JB too.

Um, Quote, as we turned the corner, the crowd was forced to split into two groups.

I was in the middle where the group divided and I was hit with something on the back of my leg.

There was a line of police officers about half a block away throwing flashbangs at us indiscriminately.

I linked arms with the protesters next to me.

One of the people next to me was hit in the back with a projectile.

This person posed no threat.

After I was hit with a projectile, I quickly moved to a nearby alleyway to get behind the crowd.

The back of my leg was red and stinging.

Although the injury did not draw blood, I had to limp to walk, and it was very painful.

The injury caused a bruise about the size of a softball.

I moved to a nearby bench where someone brought me an ice pack.

I continued to hear near constant sounds like firecrackers, which I now believe were flash bangs.

I posed no threat.

I was not breaking anything, hurting anyone, or threatening the police.

I was exercising my rights to protest and to assemble.

From the alleyway I made my way to Cal Anderson Park.

After watching the protest for a few more minutes, I left the march and returned home.

I'd like to encourage council to please reject Council Bill 119981. Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

Our last speaker who is signed up and showing up as present is Coco Weber.

Welcome.

Thank you.

My name is Coco and I'm an educator and District 4 resident who has experienced police brutality while exercising my constitutional right to protest.

I joined the masses the masses in asking you to reject CB 119981. We must have budget accountability in order to have police accountability.

If not from the council then who.

If not the council who will stand up to the police who have terrorized So many civilians, so many testimonies you have heard.

What more do you need from us?

We need checks and balances and the box stops here with you.

While exercising my right to protest, I have been shot by rubber bullets point blank where I still have tissue damage.

I have been gassed.

I've witnessed police brutality countless times, including the police brutalization of a petite black woman whom I saw shoved to the concrete when the police moved in to attack a group of protesters.

She wore no protective gear.

She was in shorts, pink sneakers, and a jean jacket.

I filmed from my car as multiple officers piled onto her back and neck and screamed in pain.

The police tried to stop me from filming and told me to drive on.

But when I kept doing it, they broke my window of my car, dragged me out, and arrested me too.

I shared a jail cell with her where she showed me her terrible pain and bruising.

And she was super shaken because the police had also put their hands up her shorts.

In the course of our booking, I heard police officers ridicule her, both to her face and to each other, and side comments in a way that they did not do with white protesters.

Meanwhile, in the U district where I live, we are hustling to meet our unhealthy neighbors' most basic needs, water, food, tents, sleeping bags, and supplies for food.

When the smoke came, that was us.

When the heat is coming back, we're going to have to figure out how to do this again.

Like, we didn't have cooling centers last time.

We were like I was we were knocking snow off of tents and like trying to hustle new tents.

We are asking you to take care of the people, reject CB119981 and give the funds to participatory budgeting.

Thank you.

Thank you for calling in today.

I am scanning the sign up sheet one last time to see if any of those who were not present have signed in and I don't see any additional Members of the public who are both registered and present and available for public comment.

So we're gonna go ahead and close out the period of public comment and dig in on other items of business on the agenda.

So our next item of business is payment of the bills.

Will the clerk please read the title?

Payment of bills, council bill 120091, an ordinance appropriating money to pay certain audited claims for the week of May 17th through May 21st, 2021, and ordering the payment thereof.

Thank you so much.

I move to pass Council Bill 12091. Is there a second?

Second.

It's been moved and seconded that the bill pass.

Are there any comments?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzales?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Item number one, will the clerk please read item one into the record?

Agenda item one, Council Bill 120080, an ordinance relating to land use and zoning extending for six months a moratorium established by ordinance 125764, and extending by ordinances 126006, 126090, and 126241 on the filing, acceptance, processing, and or approval of any application to establish a new principle or accessory use or change of principle or accessory use for any site currently used as a mobile home park as defined in section 23.84A-032 of the Seattle Municipal Code and ratifying and confirming certain acts for a public hearing.

Sorry, folks.

Toggling between screens here.

Okay, so as presenting officer, I'm now opening the public hearing on Council Bill 120080 relating to land use and zoning extending for 6 months and moratorium established by ordinance 12. 5-7-6-4 and extended by ordinances 1-2-6-0-0-6, 1-2-6-0-9-0, and 1-2-6-2-4-1 on the filing, acceptance, processing, and or approval of any application to establish a new principle or accessory use or change of principle or accessory use for any site currently used as a mobile home park as defined in section 23.84a.032 of the Seattle Municipal Code and ratifying and confirming certain prior acts.

The online registration to sign up to speak at this hearing opened at 12 o'clock noon today.

And I'll call on speakers in the order of registration.

The online registration will remain open until the conclusion of this public hearing.

The rules apply to the public comment period also apply to this public hearing.

If there are any speakers, each speaker will be provided two minutes and a 10-second warning to wrap up comments.

Speakers' microphones will be muted at the end of the allotted public comment time.

Public comment relating to Council Bill 120080 is only being accepted at this public hearing.

Speakers are asked to begin their comments by stating their name.

And let me take a look here and see if anyone has signed up for public comment on this particular council bill.

I do not see anyone signed up for public comment on this particular council bill.

So at this time, I do not have anyone remotely present to speak on Council Bill 120080. Will staff please confirm there is not a member of the public in the queue before I close this public hearing?

Councilmember or Council President Gonzalez, this is Deputy Clerk Schwinn.

We still would like to open the public hearing and close it.

I did.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, I already went through the whole opening of it, so now I'm at the point of asking whether there is anyone remotely present to speak on Council Bill.

Thank you.

Will staff please confirm that there is no one from the public available to speak during this open public hearing.

Confirmed.

Thank you so much.

Again, being that there is not a member of the public remotely present for this public hearing on Council Bill 12080, this public hearing is now closed.

So we will move to item two.

Will the clerk please read item two into the record?

Madam Clerk, you may be muted.

Thank you.

Agenda item two, Council Bill 120089, an ordinance relating to the City Light and Seattle Public Utilities Departments temporarily removing the charge of interest on delinquent utility consumption and utilization accounts.

That's a short title.

I'm finished.

Okay.

Sorry.

My script did not call for the short title, so I wanted to make sure I gave you the time in case there was a little technological hiccup, but thank you for reading the short title into the record.

I move to pass Council Bill 120089. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

You're the sponsor of this bill, so I'm going to hand it over to you to walk us through the legislation.

Thank you, Council President.

Colleagues, as I noted at our Council briefing this morning, Council Bill 120089 would extend the temporary suspension of interest charges on delinquent utility account balances for Seattle Public Utilities and Seattle City Light customers during the COVID emergency.

This will benefit customers who may be struggling with their bills from either of our city-owned utilities.

This bill is the third extension of this pandemic relief policy.

It was on the introduction referral calendar, May 24th.

The three previous bills also went straight to the full council.

We passed the previous ordinances in March 2020, September 2020, and December 2020. This relief bill would extend the suspension of interest charges through the end of this year.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Peterson.

Are there any other comments on the bill?

Hearing no additional comments, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Council Member Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item three.

Agenda item three, Council Bill 120087, an ordinance relating to appropriations for the Seattle Office for Civil Rights, amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget.

Thank you, Madam Clerk.

I move to pass Council Bill 120087. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Morales, you're the sponsor of this bill, so I'm going to hand it over to you to walk us through this legislation.

Thank you.

Council President, there is an amendment.

Do I address that first or should I address the base bill?

It would be helpful if you address the base bill first and then we will take up the amendment.

Okay.

So thank you.

So colleagues, this bill lifts the proviso on some of the participatory budgeting funding and directs the Office of Civil Rights to begin engaging with community members to draft a request for proposal.

That RFP will begin the search for an organization that will manage the actual participatory budgeting process.

An RFP would allow for an open and transparent process, gives our organizations the opportunity to bid on the work, and will lead to a more equitable outcome for our community members.

I have to say I'm really excited to be getting this project started and to listen to our neighbors' calls for a seat at the table about how our public dollars get spent.

We did hear in my committee last week that OCR will be working with community members this year to find the right organization to launch participatory budgeting.

Next year, community members will begin to brainstorm ideas for how investments should be made.

In my committee meeting, we heard from two guests, Council Member Menchaca from New York City, who said about their experience in New York that people were really hungry to connect to their government, to share the ideas that they have, and that once people started seeing their ideas were being listened to, once they began to understand the cost of a program or project, They no longer felt outside of government, but really began to understand how the government works.

And it also brought their neighborhoods together and people started teaching one another about how these processes work.

That's the potential of participatory budgeting.

It's about democratizing access to power and resources, and it's about increasing civic engagement.

So our neighbors understand how these processes work and understand that their representatives are listening.

We also heard from Sean Good, who we've heard from before.

He's with Choose 180. And Sean, I think, said something really important, which is that the $28 million we're talking about here, won't begin to make up for the economic inequality in some of our neighborhoods.

It won't begin to address the injustices or gentrification that our communities of color have experienced.

But what it will do is begin to blaze a trail that speaks to how we do this in the future and acknowledges that this is the right way to allocate taxpayer dollars so that those who have been pushed farthest to the margins can begin to have access to power and resources.

That's the path that we're working on today.

That is the equitable way for us to address our role as elected officials.

And with today's vote, that's what we begin to do.

So I am excited to get this moving and look forward to my colleagues' support.

Great.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales.

I'm going to go ahead and have you make your motion on the proposed amendment describe the amendment and then we can consider the amendment and then we'll open it up for general comments on the bill as amended assuming the amendment passes okay um i move amendment one um i'll wait

or shall I just grab it?

Sorry.

Okay, so Amendment 1 adds a sunset provision.

This bill would- Wait, hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on.

I'm so sorry.

It has to be seconded before we can discuss it.

So Council Member Morales has moved proposed amendment as presented on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Great.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on the agenda.

Now we can have that discussion, including a description of the proposed amendment.

My apologies, thank you very much.

So the base bill does create three new positions at the Office of Civil Rights to help manage the process, coordinate other departments within the city so that this work can get done well.

What the amendment does is provide a sunset provision so that it abrogates those three positions at the end of December 2023. At that point, council will determine how to proceed with the participatory budget program and what the appropriate staffing level should be.

So we are just trying to give ourselves latitude to make adjustments and course correct with this program as we move forward.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales.

Are there any comments or questions on the proposed amendment as described by Council Member Morales?

I'm not seeing any hands raised, so will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of the proposed amendment?

Strauss, yes.

Herbold, yes.

Juarez, aye.

Lewis, yes.

Morales, yes.

Mosqueda, aye.

Peterson, yes.

Swant, yes.

Council President Gonzales?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries.

The amendment is adopted and the amended bill is now before the council.

Are there any additional comments on the bill as amended?

Council Member Mosqueda, please.

Thank you very much Council President.

I just wanted to take this moment to say congratulations to Council Member Morales, to her team and to the community at large who's been long advocating for this.

We know that participatory budget is a cornerstone to how we are considering reimagining policing and reinvesting in community priorities that have been long put on the back burner and I wanted to say thanks to Councilman Morales and the community who's been advocating for this.

This is an exciting step forward as we begin the process to make sure that dollars are going directly into the communities that have been long underinvested and underserved.

And look forward to the chance to follow the community's lead as we can receive feedback from the participatory budgeting process.

And really proud that our city has been a leader across the nation.

many other cities have called to us.

Folks with the local progress have been looking at our participatory budgeting process and our model.

And I'm looking forward to this process yielding additional information for directing investments into community-based solutions.

Obviously share the frustration from council member Morales and team and the community that this hasn't been done sooner and appreciate the opportunity to vote on this today so that we can get these wheels into motion and get some feedback for our upcoming processes.

Appreciate it and congratulations.

Those comments, Council Member Musqueda.

Are there any additional comments on the bill as amended?

Council Member Morales, do you have the last word?

You can close out debate.

Well, thanks so much, everybody.

I do want to thank everyone who's worked so hard in the last year to get us to this point.

The organizing that started last summer was critical to moving the city in this direction.

And this is a direction of a more democratic way to allocate resources.

So I want to thank the folks at Decriminalize Seattle, King County Equity Now, Freedom Project, the Black Brilliance Research Project.

I also want to thank my staff, Lakeisha Farmer, Darzel Touch, Alexis Turla, who all had a hand in keeping this moving over the last year.

And I want to thank central staff, Amy Gore, Asha Venkatraman, Liz Schwitzen, for helping us with all the technical aspects of how to do this right so that we can serve community well.

And finally, I want to thank Dana Robinson-Sloat, Stephanie Guzman, and Joseph Pija for helping us really elevate the voices of our community members so that we can share the information about how this works.

We are adding a page onto the council website so that folks have a place to go and can follow along in the process and can answer some of the basic questions about what it is we're trying to do here.

So thanks to everyone who's worked so hard on this, and I'm eager to get us started.

Thank you so much, Council Member Morales for those closing remarks.

You wrapped it up very well.

With that being said, I'm going to ask that the clerks please call the roll on the passage of the amended bill.

Strauss.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez.

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes as amended and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Congratulations, Council Member Morales and members of the community.

That's a unanimous vote in favor, once again, a unanimous vote in favor of a participatory budget bill.

So appreciate the work that's been done here.

Will the clerk please read item four into the record?

Agenda item four, appointment 01915, the reappointment of Martha Lucas as member of Community Involvement Commission for a term to May 31st, 2023.

Thank you so much.

I move to confirm appointment 1915. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you, Council Member Strauss.

Council Member Strauss, you are the sponsor of this amendment, so I'm going to go ahead and hand it over to you.

Thank you, Council President.

This is an appointment to the Community Involvement Commission, which advises the mayor and council on community engagement.

Martha Lucas serves in the District Four position on the commission, and we previously considered her appointment earlier this year.

That appointment was to serve the remainder of a term, which has since expired.

This appointment is to a new full term on the Community Involvement Commission.

We recommend a yay vote.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much.

Are there any additional comments on the appointment?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the confirmation of the.

Strauss, yes.

Kerbold, yes.

Juarez, aye.

Lewis, yes.

Morales, yes.

Mosqueda, aye.

Peterson, aye.

Sawant, aye.

Yes.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The motion carries and the appointment is confirmed.

Will the clerk please read item five into the record.

Agenda item five, appointment 01916, the appointment of Jessica Hernandez as member, Urban Forestry Commission for a term to March 31st, 2024. I move to confirm appointment 1916.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

Council Member Strauss, you are the sponsor of this appointment, so I'm going to hand it back over to you.

Thank you, Council President.

This is an appointment to the environmental justice representative position on the Urban Forestry Commission, which advises the city on issues related to trees and the urban canopy, including the urban forestry management plan.

Jessica Hernandez has a PhD in forest science from the University of Washington and has focused her research on the intersection of food, climate, and environmental justice through the indigenous and decolonial lens, particularly focused on the urban native communities of Seattle.

We recommend a yay vote.

to Dr. Hernandez.

Thank you so much.

Are there any additional comments on this appointment?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the confirmation of the appointment?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries and the appointment is confirmed.

Will the clerk please read item six into the record.

Agenda item six, appointment 01918, the reappointment of Vanita Sidhu as member Seattle Design Commission for a term to February 28th, 2023.

Thank you.

I move to confirm appointment 1918. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'm gonna hand it back over to Council Member Strauss, who is the sponsor of this appointment to walk us through this item.

Thank you, as always, Council President.

This is an appointment to the Seattle Design Commission, which is part of the same set of appointments that we considered last week, but this one was inadvertently left off the agenda.

My apologies, Vanita.

Vanita Sidhu is a landscape architect and principal at Site Workshop.

Vanita's work includes the UW Medical Center, Lakeside School, Children's Hospital, and parks and other public facilities.

We found Vanita to be a, highly capable and desired candidate for this position, and we wholeheartedly recommend a yay vote.

Thank you for your service, Benita.

Thank you so much, Council Member Sprouse.

Are there any additional comments on the appointment?

Hearing none, will the court please call the roll on the confirmation of the- Sprouse?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

Yes.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

Motion carries and the appointment is confirmed.

Item seven, will the clerk please read the short title of item seven into the record.

The report of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee, agenda item seven, Council Bill 119981, an ordinance amending ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021 through 2026 Capital Improvement Program, CIP, The committee recommends that city council does not pass as amended the council bill with a divided report with council members Gonzalez, Morales, and Sawant in favor of the recommendation and council members Herbold and Lewis opposed to the recommendation.

All right, colleagues, thank you so much.

I'm going to go ahead and move this bill so that it can be placed before us for consideration discussion.

And a vote.

So I will move to pass Council Bill 119981. Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you so much.

It's been moved and seconded.

I'm going to hand it over to Council Member Herbold, who is the chair of this committee, and she is going to address this item for us.

Thank you, Council President Gonzalez.

Would you like me to just do what I hope could be a pretty quick overview of the bill before we start talking about amendments?

Yes, so let's discuss the base bill as it came out of committee.

And then it's a little confusing because they came out with a do not recommend passage by the committee, but I still think you can have a conversation and queue up for the viewing public.

The components of the base bill that received the do not recommend vote by the majority of the committee, and then we can consider amendments.

After we consider amendments, we will open it up for a discussion on the bill as amended.

Hold on to your comments about the bill as a whole until we have gone through the exercise of the amendments.

I think that would be the cleanest, most logical way to go through this particular piece of legislation.

I'm sorry, I understood your direction and I'm trying to follow it.

And then the last thing you said seemed to contradict it.

I was going to speak to what the bill is that is before us now.

Is that your understanding?

Yes.

You are different because you're the sponsor of the legislation and the chair of the committee.

So because you are the chair of the committee, you get to speak to the base of the bill.

What I'm asking is other colleagues to hold on to their comments related to the entirety of the bill for when we have an amended bill before us to debate and vote on.

Thank you very much.

My apologies.

So, uh, just, uh, want to first off clarify that this legislation is not about the police department budget for officer hiring.

The budget for officer hiring was fully funded in the 2021 budget adopted in November.

Nor is this bill about a particular number.

This bill is about Council fiscal oversight of SPD spending.

As background, the City of Seattle is under a consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice.

Any items covered by that consent decree require review and potential approval by the judge overseeing the consent decree.

and the court-appointed monitor.

Developments in this legislation, after it was originally introduced, were driven by the consent decree process and specific statements from the monitor in court about this bill.

In August 2020, the council adopted Resolution 31962 that the council will not support any budget amendment to increase the SPD budget to offset overtime expenditures above those funds budgeted in 2020 or 2021. Nevertheless, an additional $5.4 million in spending requests came from SPD in late 2020, and that did not align with the previous resolution.

So because Council voted to add $5.4 million in funds in late 2020, contrary to our policy to not do so, Council stated our intent to propose legislation to reduce the 2021 SPD budget.

After this bill was introduced, Judge Robart, who oversees the consent decree, had sharp criticism of the council on budget issues.

The monitor subsequently noted concerns have been raised about the possibility of various cuts to SPD's budget impacting the city of Seattle's ability to comply with a range of requirements of the consent decree.

In response to the judge and the monitor's comments, I sponsored a revised version of the bill on March 23rd, including nearly $3 million in cuts to SPD's budget, with $2 million going forward toward participatory budgeting, and $1 million in spending moved from SPD to other departments, and releasing a $5 million budget proviso.

The committee majority of three council members voted in support of this new version of the bill before the committee.

It also allowed for funding for civilian positions and technology requests the SPD made at the March 9th meeting.

Some have asked what those technology requests include.

They include a new early intervention system in recognition that the system currently employed is inadequate.

And that early intervention system is intended to predict and guide interventions for employees with signs that they need support as a way of enhancing police oversight of police officers who may be displaying bullying activity in the course of the work.

It also included some data analytics platform and capacity building tools that will allow, among other things, for the analysis that we are all doing together, the council and the mayor and community members and the public, for doing analysis on 911 alternative responses.

New bill also provided funding for public disclosure response positions as recommended by the city auditor in his 2015 report and extensively reported on by the Seattle Times and called out by the Washington State Public Disclosure Commission director as problematic if left unaddressed.

And also for evidence storage as recommended by the Inspector General because SPD has insufficient space for physical storage of evidence.

Again, the majority of committee members voted to substitute the introduced bill with this new version.

Monitor, meanwhile, asked a series of questions of the police department, and upon receiving the reply from the police department, wrote to the council That even after the committee meeting supporting the smaller cut and lifting the $5 million proviso, he wrote, court and the monitor are increasingly concerned about the reduction of funding the Seattle Police Department.

In response, I proposed an amendment noting central staff now estimates up to $13 million in salary savings and releasing a $2.5 million spending proviso.

Out-of-order layoffs based on sustained misconduct is not possible at this time due to the intersection of public safety civil service rules and state law.

That's it.

The legislation includes additional funds, can be spent in training and control, again, as identified by the monitor.

So that is the background and the description of the bill before us today.

Thank you.

Great.

Thank you so much for the description of the base bill.

Colleagues, again, you will have an opportunity to either ask questions about the base bill or Make comments on the base bill, but I did want to get us to consider some of these proposed amendments before we open it up for a broader discussion and debate around the bill.

I just think that the conversation will be.

Uh.

Richer and and more accurate if we have a final.

amended bill before us for for debate.

So if that's okay, I'd like to go ahead and ask Council Member Herbold to address her first proposed the proposed amendment one, if there's no objection with that.

All right, go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

This one should be super easy.

This is a technical amendment that was distributed via email to council members this morning.

It was inadvertently left off the agenda.

And as central staff noted, it's a technical amendment recommended by the city attorney's office.

I move to amend Council Bill 1199-81 as presented on Amendment 1, which was included on the record of Council Bill 1199-81 and distributed via email to Council Members this morning.

Second.

Great.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 1. Are there any additional comments on the proposed Amendment 1?

Again, this is just an amendment with technical Uh, what has been described as technical modifications to the base bill?

Um.

And so it's just a vote on the amendment itself.

Council members a lot.

Thank you.

President Gonzalez, as was explained, this amendment is an entirely technical amendment, so I will be voting.

Yes, on the amendment.

I just wanted to be clear.

to members of the public that I oppose the bill as a whole and will vote against it when it's time for the final vote in a moment.

This is just a vote on the technical amendment now.

I also wanted to just also add my comments to make it clear for the record coming out of the committee because of the way the minutes appear for the bills that have more no votes than yes votes out of committee is confusing as council members have stated.

I voted no on the bill in the committee, Because the majority of the committee voted no, the minutes show a do not pass recommendation.

And then list all the no votes as a yes, do not pass, which is very confusing.

But just to be clear to members of the public, I voted no on this bill in the committee and will do so again.

Thank you.

Thank you for that.

Okay.

Any additional comments on proposed amendment one?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the adoption of amendment.

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

None in favor, none opposed.

The motion carries.

The amendment is adopted, and the amended bill is now before the council.

I understand that Council Member Lewis has a proposed amendment as well, so I'm going to hand it over to Council Member Lewis to make his motion and see if there is a second.

Thank you, Madam President.

I move amendment two.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded to amend the bill as presented on Amendment 2. I'm going to hand it back over to Council Member Lewis to walk us through Amendment 2, and then we will have discussion, debate, and a vote on proposed changes.

Thank you, Madam President.

I'm bringing Amendment 2 as an option for the Council to consider and potentially a new way for us to think about a corresponding bifurcated strategy for how to consider our ongoing process of defunding the Seattle Police Department and reinvesting in alternative public safety investments.

I want to say at the top that the amendment in no way implies from me a lack of commitment to participatory budgeting.

I do not I think that the money that has been apportioned already, the $30 million apportioned for the participatory budgeting process should in any way be reallocated from that process.

Since we know in the legislation passed earlier this meeting from Council Member Morales, that we will be setting up a very deliberative process with enough time to be supplemented.

by additional appropriations on top of the 30 million, I would be supportive of putting additional money into that participatory budgeting process.

I do bring this amendment for us to have a discussion and a conversation of ways that we might be able to, at the same time we are building toward that participatory budgeting process, make some more short-term investments in some other public safety programs that we know are working extremely well and could be responsive to the massive need that we see in the community.

And that I believe has eroded confidence from some community members in our ability to be responsive to the public safety challenges the city is facing.

And in a way that the police will not be frankly responsive under the investments that we're making here or under some of the staffing investments through the staffing plan that we funded.

The big issue as I see it, and like I'm digressing a little bit and talking more generally about our public safety policies based on the emails that all of our offices get, is that a lot of community members who are very compassionate are frustrated for a variety of different reasons, as well as some who are frankly not that compassionate, but are frustrated for a lot of different reasons with the state, of unsanctioned encampments and chronic homelessness in the city of Seattle, and with the inability of us as a city to provide an appropriate level of shelter and care in a way that is culturally competent, that is resourced for the actual issues people are facing, and that gives community members a contact or someone that they can call that is not the police to intervene in these kinds of circumstances.

The Just Care program, which we talked about last week and which I talked about at briefing this morning, is something that could be scaled to provide that level of response for every neighborhood instead of just the Chinatown International District and Pioneer Square, where it currently serves.

There are plans to expand it under our American Recovery Act appropriations, but that still is not going to be to an extent where they can do the work that they are doing on a citywide basis.

So I do just want to talk just really briefly, like a little bit more about Just Care.

This amendment would move the $2 million instead of moving it into the participatory budgeting process, would move it into the procurement that we are pursuing with the county to protect and expand the Just Care program.

As we heard last week, the Just Care program is composed of a consortium of providers, many of which are BIPOC led.

You know, obviously we heard from Dominic Davis, who was on our panel, who works with the consortium to provide culturally competent security at a number of the hotels that the consortium leases.

Asian Counseling and Referral Service is a foundational partner.

The Public Defender Association, the Chief Seattle Club have all been a part of this multi-provider effort to really, really get into these areas that have been the subject of public discourse around the public safety discussion and resolve the underlying problem for all stakeholders involved, to provide safety, security, and healthcare to the people that are currently living in encampments, to provide a resource that is an alternative to the police from business owners, to intervene in some of these situations.

And it has been directly responsive to the issues that we're facing.

I have concerns as we're a year into, and there's been a lot of retrospectives on the action that we are taking as a city to continue down this path of developing community-based alternatives, that council efforts are losing momentum in a lot of respects.

It's because of, as far as I can tell it, what my predecessor council member Bagshaw called the C-test, the ability for people to see and understand what the alternatives are, how they're responsive to their needs, how it affects their daily life.

I say this as someone who is uniquely positioned, because I have constituents who have seen the C-test.

I have people who have reached out to my office that are not necessarily historic proponents of housing first and harm reduction, but they've seen it work.

And they've seen it be responsive to their concerns.

And they have the zeal of converts, and they're leaning into it.

This is the kind of momentum that will help to drive broader restructuring to set a new national standard of centering harm reduction, housing first, and culturally competent care as a replacement for militarized policing.

I'm worried that if we're not able to quickly respond and give other neighborhoods that impression of some of these alternatives, I'm worried that the inevitable inertia of things is going to lead ultimately to backsliding.

be it backsliding that's ordered by a federal court who's impatient with the process or unconvinced of the merits of waiting for community investments that are taking a while to get off the ground, be it the backsliding of future mayors or councils.

I am worried about losing the moment and just, you know, using this amendment more broadly to convene this conversation that perhaps some of these community investments should be made out of order of the broader participatory budgeting process in order to build public will and in order to be directly responsive to situations where frankly people in these encampments are suffering from diseases typically common in third world circumstances, being exposed to being victims of violent crime that we know recently culminated in a murder over the weekend of a neighbor who was unhoused.

And we sit here, with resources and money where we could continue to build on the work of standing up this alternative system that is citywide and that can be enjoyed by every neighborhood.

You know, again, you know, I do want to conclude that, you know, I mean, this $2 million alone is not going to do that.

But I do think we could start to set an expectation that as we expand and build out a Just Care citywide network of care, that that money should come from the Seattle Police Department.

It is money going into what community members typically think and associate that the police department should be doing.

I have a whole email inbox, as I'm sure my colleagues do, of people saying, we need police to show up to this encampment.

And then have a whole colloquy with that person being like, you could have 50 police show up at that encampment.

They can't do anything.

The police cannot provide mental health care.

The police cannot provide a referral to a shelter space.

What the police will do is show up and say they cannot do anything and then drive on, which is another thing that is common in a lot of the emails I have, because they're telling the truth.

They actually can't do anything when they show up to these encampments unless they can establish probable cause immediately for a crime happening right in front of them.

And then if they do that and they put the person experiencing homelessness in jail, they're going to be back on the street in a few hours because the jail also cannot provide mental health care or treatment or the things that our homeless neighbors need to be successful, but Just Care can.

And I think that we have an opportunity to have a conversation of putting this nexus in where in addition to funding the broader cornucopia of things we're gonna invest in through participatory budgeting, that we also carve some money out to intentionally and strategically build a citywide Just Care network that we do it at the expense of the police department, since it is caseload that is being transferred.

I think there's a nexus, and it makes sense.

And, you know, maybe it won't be through this amendment.

Maybe it'll be through a different conversation that we have, but we're accumulating salary savings for officers that are leaving the department, that under the proviso that we set in the fall, I think we could be strategic with those salary savings to treat a citywide just care response system the way, the same way we do treat the police department and the fire department as a permanent and ongoing institutional pillar of our public safety system that has the resources dedicated in such a way that they can build capacity and scale up and depend on that appropriation on a rolling basis.

My amendment is a way to introduce that conversation into the discourse of what we're doing here at the council.

I understand it probably won't necessarily be successful today.

I am sensitive about the fact that it was previously earmarked for participatory budgeting, and this would be rerouting it.

And I acknowledge that I have a cognitive dissonance about that, and I'm not necessarily thrilled about that.

But I'm also just saying this out of very sincere frustration, not with my colleagues here and not with the provider community, but just generally that there are resources, there is will to address these ongoing problems, and they seem solvable to me.

And we had that whole hearing with Just Care where it seems eminently solvable if the people doing the work can get the resources and support from leaders that they need.

And maybe we don't do it here, but I did want to queue up the conversation.

I appreciate your consideration.

And with that, I'll yield it back to the floor for comments, questions, and appreciate the time to talk about it.

Thank you, Councilmember Lewis.

I am going to ask if folks have any comments or questions on that amendment.

If you could use your raise the hand feature in Zoom, that would be helpful to me in keeping track of those who would like to make comments on Amendment 2. First in the queue is Councilmember Herbold, followed by Councilmember Morales.

Mostly as the sponsor of the underlying legislation with the proposal to allocate these funds originally to participatory budgeting.

I just want to say I welcome this discussion.

I welcome this amendment.

Um, a lot has changed since December of last year, whereas with today's vote on customer morale is legislation, we are still strongly in support of that $30 million investment in participatory budgeting.

But the idea of Adding to a pot of funds that it is not likely that we will see those investments on the ground until 2022 at this point really, to me, underscores the need to look at where we could be spending dollars on programs that are on the ground.

working and making a difference for all of our communities.

Our communities of neighbors who are unhoused as well as communities of business people and residents who have homes.

So I really appreciate the creativity for Council Member Lewis here and the sense of urgency really.

I was at the SPD African American advisory council meeting a couple weeks ago.

I mentioned that in briefings a couple weeks ago, and they were really distraught that they were not seeing investments in alternatives.

And they were really concerned about an increase of violence in their communities.

And just giving, again, this is not a criticism of any city department or of our processes, but just to give another example, the $14 million in additional capacity building for public safety investments that the council voted on last November are not projected to be out the door until August.

And I think people are rightfully concerned about those investments and other investments within the context of our reductions to the police department being ones that can produce public safety outcomes.

Thank you again.

Thank you Councilmember Lewis for bringing this forward for discussion.

Thank you Councilmember Herbold.

Next up is Councilmember Morales and then Councilmember Sawant.

Thank you.

So I want to thank Councilmember Lewis for bringing this forward.

I will say that I don't intend to support the base bill here.

But I do think that this is exactly what we mean.

Supporting this sort of a deep investment in a program like Just Cares is exactly what we mean.

when we say that we should be shifting the SBD budget into critical services.

Community safety means lots of different things and certainly supporting investments, a greater investment in our homeless services and community members.

and something as innovative and and comprehensive as Just Cares meets that goal and meets that criteria.

So I will be supporting this amendment and whether we do this here or we do it with you know in a different way later this year I think this is exactly the kind of direction we need to be going and I want to thank Council Member Lewis for bringing this forward.

Thank you Council Member Morales, Council Member Sawant.

Thank you.

I support increasing funding for Just Care, and I also support the participatory budgeting funds.

So I oppose this amendment, which pits those two good programs against each other.

Remember, this was a bill to cut $5.4 million from the police department's budget to make up for the $5.4 million that they stole from the city last year by spending more than they were authorized to.

In amendment after amendment, this bill to remove $5.4 million from the police department was then reduced to $3 million, and then a $5 million SPD proviso was effectively lifted, and then a $2.5 million proviso was effectively lifted.

So now this bill increases the funds that the police department has access to by $4.5 million, rather than decreasing it by $5.4 million.

It has become the opposite of what it was when it started.

Why does the funding for just care have to be taken from the funding for participatory budgeting?

It should come from the money allocated to the police department as has been promised by the council again and again.

My office this morning consulted with a leader in the decriminalized Seattle organization this morning about this amendment which they said they had not previously seen and they raised that this amendment obscures the fact that the police department's budget is not being cut and instead good programs are being pit against each other.

I agree with the arguments that Council Member Lewis made that Just Care is a much better use of funds than the police, absolutely.

But unfortunately, what this amendment does is take those funds from participatory budgeting, not from the police.

I would be happy to support an amendment that increases funds for Just Care by taking the money from the police budget, not in the form of putting good programs against each other.

And so I will be voting no on this amendment.

Councilmember Lewis expressed discomfort with what he called the cognitive dissonance of using funds that was previously planned for participatory budgeting.

But let's be clear, that dissonance is particularly problematic because this bill as a whole no longer cuts $5.4 million from the police department.

If that was not the case, then this amendment might have been different.

So I'll be voting no.

Thank you, Councilmember Salon.

Are there any other comments or questions on proposed amendment two.

Okay.

All right.

Colleagues, I just really quickly wanted to chime in on this particular amendment.

I don't think that the intent of Council Member Lewis is to pit two good programs against each other.

I see the intent and the desire here is to have additional resources to support a program that many of us have been very supportive of historically and I think will continue to be supportive of programs that are modeled after the Just Care pilot program.

I think my concern with this particular amendment is is that I do worry that what it would do is effectively take money that we had designated for participatory budget processes and ahead of the designated process in the provisos that I sponsored last fall begin the process of reappropriating those dollars to a different use.

So I'm concerned about that cognitive dissonance that Council Member Lewis described in his opening remarks, but also worried that we have not done the necessary work with some of the impacted stakeholders to ensure that they understand what the effect and the impact would be of adoption of this particular amendment in the context of the base council bill.

So for those reasons, I'm not going to be able to support the amendment in its current process and form and presentation.

That does not mean that I am not supportive of Just Care and models like Just Care.

I think we've all taken really strong votes and have taken important steps to make sure that that model is continued to be supported.

And we, in fact, have the Seattle Rescue Plan before us that was on today's introduction referral calendar that allocates no less than $49 million to additional homelessness and housing needs throughout the city.

And we'll continue to have those conversations, not just as part of tranche one of those federal dollars, but as tranche two of federal dollars.

And I just want to make sure that the viewing public understands that that will continue to be an opportunity to meet the needs described by Councilmember Lewis, which I absolutely believe 100% of this council is an agreement that we need to do and we must do more and more urgently to meet the needs of those who are unhoused and the impacts that that creates on the city as a whole.

So for that reason, I'm not going to be able to support this particular amendment at this juncture.

any other comments or questions before Council Member Lewis gets the last word.

Okay, I'm not seeing any other hands raised.

So Council Member Lewis, I'm going to ask you to make closing comments so we can close that debate here and call this amendment to a roll call.

Yeah, I'll be brief, Council President, because I know that there's probably going to be a lot of speeches on the underlying bill.

So yeah, you know, I appreciate the Council's consideration.

I do own that this was sort of a spur of the moment amendment.

So it wasn't really socialized with a lot of our partners.

So I mean, I'll own that.

I do appreciate the discussion that it generated.

I do think we should start to think of some of the salary savings that are being realized from police department attrition for projects like this, regardless of whether this amendment passes or fails.

You know, I mean, another consideration that I'll just say here too, I mean, for people who are advocates more about taking those savings and doubling down on, you know, increasing the resources for the police department.

You know, the police department can only staff up so much in a given year.

We funded their hiring plan for the year already.

This entire bill has absolutely no bearing on that.

Our provider community can staff up faster to do some of the public safety work that a lot of people clamoring for more police.

Um, don't know it yet, but they're actually clamoring for people like just care to get hired.

Um, and I think that it could be a way for us to have a conversation to connect those attritional salary savings where it's like, you know, we could hire more cops, not going to be here for three or four years because of how long it takes to hire them.

Or we could hire some of these things that happen quicker.

And, um, you know, hopefully this amendment discussion, uh, um, queues up a discussion like that.

And, um, you know, I'm ready to vote on it and move on to the underlying bill.

Okay, great.

That does conclude discussion on proposed amendment to.

So I'm gonna go ahead and ask that the clerk please call roll on the adoption of amendment to Rouse.

Yes.

Her bold.

Yes.

War is yes.

Lewis.

Yes.

Morales.

No.

Mosqueda.

Aye.

Peterson.

No.

Sawant.

No.

Council President Gonzalez.

No.

Five in favor, four opposed.

Okay, the motion carries the amendment is adopted and the amended bill is now before the council.

Are there.

Now I'm going to open it up to comments on the bill as amended.

So, are there any further comments on the bill as amended and councilmember herbal you'll get the last word on the bill as we close out as we close up debate.

So Council Member Sawant, I see that your hand is raised.

If anyone else wants to speak to the bill as amended, please do let me know by raising your hand.

Council Member Sawant, please.

Thank you.

This bill has become a farce.

It has been amended and amended until it now does almost exactly the opposite of what it initially claimed to do.

It is the bill that formally would have removed $5.4 million from the police department for socially beneficial purposes, and now effectively this bill increases the police department's budget by $4.5 million.

As George Orwell said in 1984, quote, the ministry of peace concerns itself with war, the ministry of truth concerns with lies, the ministry of love with torture, and the ministry of plenty with starvation.

These contradictions are not accidental and nor do they result from ordinary hypocrisy.

They are deliberate exercises in doublethink." This bill has become an important case study into how the political establishment, including the Democratic Party, shelters the police from accountability again and again. When the police murder of George Floyd inspired a mass movement for Black lives across the country and around the world, thousands of Seattleites took to the streets, tens of thousands, took to the streets to protest police violence. Those overwhelmingly peaceful protesters were met with yet more police violence. Tens of millions of dollars in police overtime, tear gas, pepper spray, blast balls, flashbang grenades, airplanes with forward-looking infrared real-time video, and mass arrests were used by the police to essentially wage urban warfare against the people of Seattle. In the context of the largest street protest movement in U.S. history, the majority of the city council, seven of the nine council members, pledged to support the movement's demand to defund the police by at least 50 percent. City councils in other cities made similar promises. When it came to the budget, however, on the Seattle City Council, I was the only elected representative to stand with the movement's demand. Not only did the majority of the council, all Democrats, refuse to follow through on their pledge to defund the police by 50%, but also at the last council meeting of 2020, when the council was told that the police had overspent their budget by $5.4 million to brutalize the Black Lives Matter movement, The majority of the council voted to retroactively give the police those $5.4 million extra. Again, I was the only council member to vote no. At the time, the majority of the council promised to take that $5.4 million from the SPD's 2021 budget to hold them accountable. And I warned at that time that that could not be trusted. And here we are. Do council members remember their promises to the justice for George Floyd movement? Do council members remember saying they support defunding the police by 50% last summer? Then do council members remember saying that they cannot defund the police by 50% in 2020 because reducing the number of police officers would take up to four months, but that they promised to do so in 2021? Then do council members remember saying they cannot defund the police by 50% in 2021 because that would require reducing the number of officers in 2021 and before they do that they will first need to research out of order layoffs. As a side note, doing police layoffs out of order was never a demand of the Black Lives Matter movement. Then do council members remember adding $5.4 million to the police budget in December of 2020 but promising to remove it again in 2021? Now council members are saying that out of order layoffs of police are not possible and please forget that they ever promised to reduce the size of the police force and forget about removing $5.4 million that the police extorted in 2020. Now, rather than a bill that has the police breaking even by cutting in 2021 what was added in 2020, this bill has been amended again and again until it actually adds the police's available budget. It cuts $3 million from the police budget with one hand and gives the police access to $7.5 million with the other hand by lifting two provisos. As Malcolm X famously said, if you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that's not progress. Essentially, their consequence, the police department's consequence for going over budget last year is to get extra money this year. This is what police accountability looks like to the Democratic Party's establishment. Ultimately, this is about the power of mass movements on the streets. At the height of the movement, council members promised to defund the police by 50 percent. A couple of months later, that was reduced to just a couple percent points. and a promise not to add that funding back at the end of the year. And a couple months later, here we are. The lesson for our movements is that we must depend on our own strength and not put our faith in the establishment. Finally, I would also like to respond to the excuse that has been circulated that the council cannot defund the police without the agreement of the federal monitor. I want to be clear, council members vote on the budget, not the federal monitor. and council members are responsible for their own votes. If council members agree with the federal monitor or any other part of the political establishment, that is their political decision, but it is not something that the federal monitor decides. The city council is the city's highest legislative body. I do not agree with the federal monitor or any part of the political establishment, And my vote as my votes always and including this one will reflect that. If council members were serious about defunding the police, they would pass a budget that defunds the police. What would Judge Roberts do? Place an injunction of the city budget as a whole? That's not realistic. So instead we get letters from the federal monitor expressing concern and council members fearmongering that those letters are legally binding court decisions, which they are not. Of course, if council members were serious about defending the police, they would certainly not be increasing the police budget, which is what this bill does now. People will need to get organized and fight to win an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police, including hiring and firing, subpoena powers, and policies and procedures. My observation from having talked to hundreds of people in a politically broad spectrum is that even the working people who are not sure about defunding also strongly support an elected community oversight with full powers over the police. This bill is not accountability. It is the opposite. And if you track its progression over the last year, it shows the myriad of ways the political establishment protects the police from accountability. There are conservative politicians who openly advocate for police violence. There are liberal politicians who pretend to be horrified by police violence, but always have an excuse for not following through on their promises. There are federal courts who throughout history have defended the power structures of the ruling class against movements and ordinary people to the point that the consent decree against police violence is used to prevent grassroots efforts to stop police violence. This is what it means when our movement says we need system change. This is why I am a socialist. I voted against the substitute bills in the committee that transformed a $5.4 million police cut to a $4.5 million police add. Because those substitute amendments have transformed this bill, I will now vote no on this final bill. Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Salon.

Are there any other comments on the bill as amended?

Council Member Juarez, please.

Thank you.

I'm going to vote to support, and I hope I say this right.

Please correct me if I'm wrong.

I want to support Council Member Herbold, which means that she, so you'll figure that part out, but let me just say what I want to say.

I'm not going to, I always respect what Council Member Sawant has to share with us, but in the real world, we don't always have the luxury to just talk about the political establishment or completely disagree all the time with a federal court judge or a court monitor.

And sometimes it's just not realistic to just completely and decisively decide that you're gonna wipe out a whole police department.

We do have a charter that we have to uphold, whether it's one officer or 1,200 officers, we have to have something there.

And I think what this council has demonstrated in the last year is that public safety is community safety and community safety is protectors, not warriors.

And more officers doesn't make us more safe.

And I think we all agree on that.

I don't think there's no need to point fingers and call names and be called the democratic establishment or whatever.

So meanwhile, back on earth, I just wanna say this, particularly to council member Morales, I wanna end this chapter Because I think it's caused, as you've all heard me say before, a lot of trauma.

And I want to start the healing.

And I think Council Member Morales, with her hard work and tenacity, is going to allow us not only to close the chapter, but to begin a new chapter with participatory budgeting.

And I agree with the Council President, we're not pitting one idea against the other.

Both can be true, and they will continue to be true.

And we will continue to do that because as elected leaders, we can't just pander to our base or to a echo chamber.

We have to represent all of Seattle and the needs of our city.

And if anything, over this year, I think what we've learned is that we are going to reimagine and redirect funds from the police to upstream projects to take away from the harm and the trauma that has happened in our communities.

Everyone agrees about that.

And for the first time, what we're learning is we're finally putting together a plan.

It's not perfect and not everyone will always agree.

And I want to thank Council Member Lewis for bringing this forward to shift the $2 million over to the Just Care.

So whether it's participatory budgeting, whether it's just care, these are conversations that we weren't having a year ago or six months ago.

And now we are through the leadership of everybody.

I am in the camp of closure, being decisive, being a leader, making a decision and moving forward and moving on.

And I'm also in the camp of believing in this great city and healing.

And I think that's what's going to happen today.

That's how I'm going to vote today.

And I think we've all been through a lot and I don't think it does us any good to continue the divisiveness We've all experienced different levels of frustration.

And I think Council Member Lewis outlined some of that.

When people come to us, call us, when they want camp removals, when they are upset about the homeless, when they're upset about the police.

And I think that we've seen it in the city.

Sorry about that.

And we've seen it nationally, not just in this great city, but across this nation.

And I'm ready to turn the page and get some stuff done.

So I will leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez for those comments.

Really appreciate it.

Next up is Council Member Morales.

I will be brief.

I will say that I voted against this bill twice in committee, so I don't think my vote is going to be a surprise here.

And, you know, I think for me this really does come back to the original intent of this bill, which had been to hold the department accountable for their overspending.

They've already acknowledged that they could absorb the reduction through salary savings.

And if they find later that they have additional needs, they can always come back to council to request additional funds.

And that's how we hold the department accountable.

The only thing that In their request that isn't new that we know that they are obliged to pay is the separation pay.

And again, salary savings could cover this.

So my feeling about this is that SPD created its own funding crisis when they decided to overspend on overtime last summer.

And giving the department more funding won't prevent crime.

It won't address homelessness or reduce substance abuse.

It won't improve mental health outcomes for our community members.

Only investing in community services will do that.

And so our goal, I think, which we share, should be investing public dollars in a way that can actually change community conditions on the ground so that it leads to better health and well-being for our neighbors.

and rewarding SPD for overspending outside of its budget authority won't accomplish that.

So I cannot support this bill and will be voting whichever way it is that registers that disagreement.

Okay, Colleen, because there's some lack of procedural understanding as you all frame your thoughts here.

A yes vote on Council Bill whatever the bill is, number is, is an actual yes vote on passage of the bill.

A no vote is you're voting the bill down.

So, look at Council Member Herbold is disagreeing with me and also confused.

She thinks she's supposed to also vote no.

So I'm gonna call upon the clerk.

My understanding is that there is a recommendation from the committee to not pass the bill, but my understanding is that that doesn't change how a yes or no vote effectuates the passage of this bill.

So, Madam Clerk, can you just help us understand, is it the inverse or is it business as usual in terms of how we vote here?

Council President Gonzalez, it is confusing because the committee recommendation was to not pass.

But in order to bring it forward today, we had to make a motion to pass the bill.

So the motion before us right now is to pass this bill as we just had it amended.

So if you are in favor of the underlying bill, you are going to vote to pass it.

But if you're opposed to the underlying bill, you're going to not.

which is totally opposite of what came out of committee, but that's where we're at.

I apologize for the confusion.

No, no, no.

I just want to note for the record that my procedural proudness and I remain the queen of process here.

So I am feeling like that's a win already for this week.

So again, if you want this bill to pass in spite of the committee recommendation, you're going to vote yes.

Okay.

You want this bill to fail consistent with the committee's recommendation for a do not pass, then you're going to vote no.

Okay.

You are the queen.

Somebody send me a crown.

Right.

Um, next up is, I think, hold on, let me look at this.

Got a little, okay.

Council member Peterson is next and then council member Mosqueda.

Thank you, Council President.

First, I'd like to commend Councilmember Herbold for her hard work as chair of Public Safety Committee and her work to craft a compromise on this bill.

Even though I'm not in agreement on several elements of it, I just want to commend her for trying to work through this and come up with a compromise and echo many of the comments that Councilmember Juarez mentioned.

I have worked hard to be clear and consistent for my constituents.

And at this time, I cannot support what I see as additional cuts to public safety until effective alternatives are in place.

This council bill is complex, especially with the amendments.

But at the end of the day, it continues to reduce resources from our police department at a time when we are seeing record breaking attrition of officers.

So I will be voting no.

I believe it's premature to label the loss of police officers through attrition as budgetary savings that can be immediately scooped away and spent elsewhere.

The record-breaking attrition of officers is alarming, and response times to priority 901 calls are too long.

By the end of the year, I want to be sure the department has the funds it needs to hire more crime prevention officers, to retain good officers, to ramp up recruitment of diverse and progressive officers, to implement the federal consent decree, and heed the warnings of the federal judge and his monitor.

to increase training, to return experienced officers to community policing work instead of working overtime on patrol.

Yes, let's lift the budget provisos to free up some of those dollars, but not by ultimately cutting more with the other hand.

While the intentions were positive, I believe this bill has become a distraction since it was conceived six months ago.

Despite the well-intentioned amendments at committee and today, I believe this bill sends an unproductive and negative message to the remaining city government workers in the public safety field who are already stretched thin.

But it also takes time and attention away from the most impactful task at hand, for justice and reform, and that's revamping the unjust and flexible and expensive contract with the Seattle Police Officers Guild.

So I look forward to getting back to supporting the work of our Labor Relations Policy Committee so they can revise the police contract in a way that's positive for the community, for the officers, for the budget, and for sustainable and systemic justice.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Councilmember Mosqueda, please.

Thank you, Council President.

I, too, want to thank Council Member Herbold.

Council Member Herbold, thank you very much.

As Chair of Public Safety, you have really taken the reins in shepherding this bill through your committee, and we know that that's been no small task, that this has been months of work, and it's been increasingly made more difficult when the chief and the executive offices have weighed in, when the judge and the court monitor have been weighing in.

This legislation, I believe, was intended to hold SPD accountable for their overspending last year.

And our intent, as we described at the end of last year, was to use the council's power of the purse and the legislative branch, as we are supposed to do, to ensure that the executive agencies spend within the bounds of their budget and to make sure that there has been a reckoning or a balancing between this year's budget and SPD and last year's overspend.

As we heard in the Budget Committee just last month, it is very highly irregular for a council to be asked to authorize spending after the fact.

And to have a retroactive authority granted should be something that is very uncommon and happen very infrequently, but that's not been the practice here as it relates to SPD.

Not only is it highly irregular, it's out of alignment with what we see in the state's RCW 3532A, where it says there shall be no orders, authorizations, allowances, contracts, or payments made or attempted to be made in excess of the expenditure allowances authorized in the final budget or is adopted or modified and any such attempt in excess expenditure shall be void.

That's what the RCW says.

But yet that's exactly what happened last year.

And so the provisos that we put into place we now know were ignored or dismissed by SPD at the time and instead What spending was authorized for last year's our priorities that the council did not want to see prioritized and what it left on the table for funding was things that the council absolutely wants prioritized like payment for family leave and benefits and severance.

These are items that we could not simply just not pay.

So at the time, just as a reminder, the council authorized, and after this fact, authorization for those payments.

That overspend total was 5.4 million, and there was a desire, and I think there continues to be a desire by me, that this year's budget rectifies that overspend and that this year's budget corrects for the overspend that SPD created in terms of their debt from last year.

The $5.4 million number is not arbitrary.

It comes from the following three items in last year's overspend by SPD.

$1.9 million in FEMA reimbursement, $1.9 million in parental leave payback, and $1.6 million in separation pay.

All of these things we knew were important to pay, but unfortunately those were left to be paid.

Instead, the department paid money on items that we heard about during testimony today.

We've seen the videos and we've heard from firsthand accountants of where people had been met with excessive force for expressing their First Amendment rights at the protests that were taking place just a year ago this week.

The testimonials today constitute, I think, a makeshift tribunal on what was experienced at the time of protests a year ago.

And we remain, I think, as a council committed to making sure that there is accountability for those pieces, not only accountability for the overspend in the budget, but accountability for the situations that we continue to hear about on a daily basis and that were outlined in today's public testimony.

We remain in the midst of a federal consent decree that's almost a decade old now, and we also remain committed to addressing the call for action from the folks who have been calling in for over a year to make sure that we align, we realign our investments into things like mental health and case managers, making sure that homeless folks have social service providers showing up and that when there's a traffic infraction, that we don't have armed officers showing up for these things.

The council has begun some very important efforts.

A lot of those efforts led by Council Member Herbold through her committee and ongoing work in the budget last year.

And I appreciate that those initial investments were made to realign our values to what the community has been calling for and to divest in areas that have been over-invested in over the year.

On this bill, I think that what we are trying to do is what we were trying to do is respond to the need to balance that $5.4 million addition that council was forced to make last year and to remove it from this year's budget.

And doing that while also having to respond to the calls from the court monitor and judge, I think, have made this bill a little bit out of alignment with what we were originally intending to do.

I disagree with the concerns and the fears cited by the court and the monitor, and I hope that the court and the court monitor do listen to all of the public testimony that was provided today through this quasi-tribunal that was offered via public comment, and that there's a careful examination of the central staff memo that accompanied the conversation around this bill.

Notably, the council has not put SPD in a position where they are not able to respond to emergency calls or perform basic functions, and the department does have the resources to fulfill the full hiring plan as we funded last year.

Central staff's memo does the math.

It shows that SPD's entire staffing model is still fully funded and that it is expected that there will be 13 millions in salary savings over the course of this year.

I think it's important to continue to remember that SPD's hiring plan, as requested by the mayor and the department, is still intact and that it can be what was noted to be reasonably accomplished was fully funded.

Through the committee process, we've learned that due to continued higher than attrition rates, that 13 million dollars in salary savings is anticipated.

And I am hopeful that with this bill, if it does not pass today, that we can direct those funds, those 13 million to things where I think that there is common.

agreement between what the bill offers and what I think we all would like to see.

And that's more quick response and accurate and adequate response to the public records request, making sure more funding goes into community service officers, the IT needs, the physical storage of space.

And even if we were to fund all of those things and fully make the $5.4 million cut so that we could both fund Just Cares and participatory budgeting, there would still be over $5 million in unspent dollars at the end of this year.

I think today's testimony was very powerful.

I think it's heartbreaking that the stories have continued to surface about the violence which folks have heard.

And I do hope that this testimony from today helps to paint a full picture of the issues that we have been trying to address, trying to rectify in this year's actions and last year's budget.

But unfortunately on this bill today, I will be voting no because I am concerned about the $5 million proviso that's being lifted.

I'm concerned that there's not a full $5.4 million cut, though I appreciate that it's a near $3 million in cuts that's being suggested here.

And I will continue to work with my colleagues here and look forward to continuing to work with the community to continue the path to make sure that we are holding accountable the department that overspent their budget outside of what the RCW directs the department to stay within, and that we continue our efforts to reimagine and reinvest in community services and decrease the situations in which an armed officer is being required to show up.

Again, the city of Austin, Seattle, New York, and Los Angeles are among the four cities that are continually held up as being on the right path towards reimagining, and that work is not done, and we will continue even after today.

But I appreciate the work that's gone into this, and I recognize the incredible obstacles that the good chair has had to address while considering this legislation, and really appreciate her work, and regrettably will not be able to support today.

Thank you, Council Member Mosqueda.

Are there any other comments on the bill as amended?

Okay, colleagues, I just really wanted to quickly make some remarks as well.

I do want to, like so many others have, start by acknowledging Councilmember Herbold's hard work over the last several months.

To make progress on this legislation and to try to develop a sound and well reasoned approach to this particular budget action that the council has literally been considering since December, and so I do really appreciate her willingness comes from herbal's willingness to engage all of the parties that have.

expressed concern or interest in the legislation over the past several months.

That includes community advocates, SPD, and the mayor's office, and also the Monitor and Department of Justice representatives, as well as members of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee.

And I think that the fact that it appears that almost all of the stakeholders involved in this budget action or who have interest in this budget action appear to be to be seemingly dissatisfied with the current version of this legislation.

I don't think that that's a reflection on Councilmember Herbold's policy work and effort in the background to get us a piece of legislation that we could potentially support.

But I do think it's a reflection and the result of, quite simply put, the deep division that exists in our city on the issue of policing and their budgets.

So I think, you know, unfortunately, despite Councilmember Herbold's well intentioned and thoughtful attempts to find a compromise solution here on this particular bill, I will be voting consistent with my vote in committee, which is a vote against this bill.

As I expressed during the Public Safety Committee's discussion of this legislation, my reasons for voting no on this bill are a little different.

I feel primarily that it's premature for us to be making several of the budget actions that the bill proposes we compromise on, including cuts to the Seattle Police Department's budget that the monitor has raised significant concerns with.

I believe it's important that we have further engagement with the monitor to provide additional explanation about how this cut will impact or, more importantly, not impact the department's ongoing operations, specifically the staffing plan.

It also, of course, lifts the $5 million proviso on the SPD staffing plan.

In my opinion, I think it's still too early in the year to fully lift or begin the process of lifting the proviso in order to give SPD additional flexibility with their budget.

I'd like to continue to have, you know, we, of course, continue to have significant policy disagreements with leadership about how they manage the department's budget, including overtime.

And so I continue to believe that this proviso right now serves an important role as an accountability mechanism.

And it's my position that the council needs to retain this proviso, the $5 million proviso in place until later in the year so that we can effectively execute our oversight role and ensure the department is not expending resources in a manner counter to the policies.

set by this council.

So again, I think the more appropriate time for us to consider those lifts would be in the fall budget process when we have a better understanding and fuller context of what SPD's budget will be at the end of the year.

We know that the executive will be back before the council with proposed SPD budget changes later this year.

That's going to include costs associated with grant acceptances, special events, overtime costs, separation pay.

Paid family medical leave, reimbursement, these are all issues that may need to be addressed, may need to be addressed via a supplemental ordinance or through our ordinary budget process.

So months from now, when the council is making these decisions on SPD's budget, I believe we will have more flexibility to take more thoughtful action if the proviso is still in place and if any of the other provisos are still in place.

So for these reasons, I am going to vote consistent with my committee vote.

which is a no vote on this particular version of the council bill, but do deeply appreciate everybody's hard work on this.

This is not easy, and I know that we are all reaching our votes for some similar reasons and some different reasons, but I hope we can continue to move forward on this really critical issue together with as much consensus as possible.

So with that being said, I'm gonna hand it over to Council Member Herbold to close out debate so we can call this bill to a roll call.

Thank you.

Sorry about that.

Just taking notes.

So closing out the discussion, first want to respond to a number of the comments I heard from folks during public testimony, speaking to their experiences with excessive use of less lethal weapons, which can be lethal.

I appreciate the testimony and regret these experiences in our city.

I do want to say that this is another issue that is under the purview of the consent decree.

The council adopted legislation prohibiting the use of most less lethal weapons.

The judge overseeing the consent decree placed a restraining order on the council's legislation and criticized the legislation for not protecting public safety.

The legislation under the consent decree requires his approval.

So just barreling ahead in this instant means that nothing has happened.

We have no ban or regulations on less lethal weapons.

Similarly, barreling ahead with the budget bill risks the same outcome, that no budget reduction will happen.

In my opinion, colleagues, your vote is not about a political win on either side of this issue.

Yes, those who don't support any cut at all don't like this bill, and those who want the cut to be bigger don't like it either.

But this bill is not about a number.

It's about burning.

It's about accountability.

The objective of this bill is to exercise fiscal oversight of the Seattle Police Department while simultaneously funding important public safety investments in areas where there was broad agreement and heeding the authority of the consent decree in these matters where the court is suggesting our actions overlap with consent decree obligation.

Nevertheless, this bill was voted out of committee with a do not pass recommendation with three votes in opposition to despite the fact that the majority of committee members, three members, voted in favor of the amendment on May 11th and in favor of substituting the original bill for a smaller budget reduction in March.

Over the summer and fall budget cycles, the council listened to people calling for a 50% cut to the Seattle Police budget, and we also listened to people who opposed it.

And we demonstrated that we can listen to multiple voices in our city and compromise to meet our objective to redefine public safety in our city.

The ability to listen to multiple voices is critical to change moving forward.

To Councilmember Mosqueda's point that requests for funding after the fact should be rare, I agree.

But it's June, and these separation and technology needs funding needs were identified by SPD in February.

If this bill fails, we are virtually guaranteeing that this dysfunction will happen again later this year.

To Council President Gonzalez's point about the timing of the $5 million proviso lift, Just a reminder, this is not a full lift.

This is a gradual lift as we get reports from SPD.

And respectfully, this was in the amendment supported back in March that the majority of committee members voted in favor of bringing it in front of us.

And if there was concerns about that approach, I would have happily considered a different approach had I known.

SPD's highest spending is during the summer.

And as we found out last year during the supplemental budget process, most of the money will already have been spent.

With your vote today, please do not allow both those who do not want us to exercise oversight of SPD's budget at all, as well as those who advocate for an all or nothing approach to revert us back to the status quo.

If this bill doesn't pass, there will be no budget cut at all.

So council members who wish to support the investments in the bill and the council's fiscal accountability over SPD, I urge you to vote yes.

Thank you.

All right.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for your final remarks.

That does conclude debate on this particular bill.

So at this point, I'm going to ask that the clerk Please call the roll on the passage of the bill as amended.

Rouse?

No.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Yes.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

No.

Mosqueda?

No.

Peterson?

No.

Sawant?

No.

Council President Gonzalez?

No.

Three in favor, five opposed.

Okay, the motion fails and the bill does not pass.

Okay.

Colleagues, thank you so much for that conversation and that debate.

Again, I really want to appreciate all of the hard work that went into that very long legislative process.

And again, my deep gratitude and thanks to Councilmember Herbold, who is our current Public Safety and Human Services Chair.

Having served in that role for four years, I understand how difficult and challenging It is, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and the work that you continue to do.

And I know that you will continue to lead us and work with all of us on these really important issues.

So thank you so much for your effort.

Okay, next up is item eight.

Will the clerk please read the short title of item eight into the record?

The report of the Land Use to Neighborhoods Committee, agenda item eight, council bill 120086, an ordinance relating to the transfer of city property located at 525 North 85th Street, authorizing the conveyance of the property to the Finney Neighborhood Association, a Washington nonprofit corporation, consistent with the intent of resolution 31856 and to provide for the continued delivery of social services, the committee recommends the bill pass as amended.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

You are the chair of the committee, so I'm going to hand it over to you to walk us through the report.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Deputy Clerk Schwinn.

CB 12086, transferring the property at 525 North 85th Street to the Finney Neighborhood Association, enacts a transfer of the Greenwood Senior Center from the city to the Finney Neighborhood Association, which currently operates the Senior Center.

This transfer is being done in line with the city's process for mutually offsetting benefit properties, and it was meant to be transmitted to Council last year alongside the transfers of Bird Bar Place and the Central Area Senior Center.

Unfortunately, it was delayed and it's now before us.

So this was intended to be part of that package.

Under the terms of the transfer, Finney Neighborhood Association would receive ownership of the property and would be obligated to continue providing the social services associated with the Senior Center.

Additionally, should a future redevelopment on the site occur, the agreement requires that affordable housing that any housing be affordable to 80% of the area median income, and at least half of the units would be affordable to 60% of the area median income.

We made one amendment in committee from Council Member Peterson, thank you Council Member Peterson for your amendment, to clarify language that allows the city to reclaim ownership in the event that Finney Neighborhood Association does not meet its obligations.

I can tell you many in our community have been very eagerly awaiting the passage of this bill, and I look forward to passage today.

I recommend a yay vote.

Thank you.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Council Member- Yes.

Thank you.

Council Member Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

No.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Eight in favor, one opposed.

Thank you so much.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Will the clerk please read item nine into the record.

Agenda item nine, council bill 120084, an ordinance relating to land disturbing activity, updating the grading code to align with updates to other codes and amending sections 22.170.020.050.060.070.

0.110 and 0.190 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you so much, Madam Clerk and colleagues.

My apologies for not using my camera.

My Wi-Fi here is glitching a little bit, so it seems to improve when I turn the video off.

If that resolves, I'll make sure to turn my video back on.

But in the meantime, I'm gonna hand this over to Council Member Strauss, who is the chair of the committee and is gonna walk us through this piece of legislation.

Thank you, Council President and thank you Deputy Clerk Schwinn.

The, this legislation and the next two bills are all related to the technical codes that are updated regularly by the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection, these bills come to Council after years long process processes that begin With updates to internal guidelines and eventually continues on to state level updates and finally city level updates.

This legislation specifically is updating the grading code, which is flat surfaces without subterranean.

anything, and no buildings.

This will be the first update to the grading code since 2009, and the updates are minimal.

Examples of the changes in this code include requiring a grading permit when land disturbing activity on a site exceeds 5,000 square feet rather than one acre, requiring a grading permit whenever groundwater is being extracted, and broadening the definition of potentially hazardous location to include any site on EPA or ecology list for investigation or cleanup of contamination.

This is technical in nature, and I urge a yay vote.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much.

Colleagues, are there any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Rouse.

Yes.

Herbold.

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Will the clerk please read item 10 into the record, and the short title is fine.

Item 10, Council Bill 120083, an ordinance relating to Seattle's construction codes, amending section 7.13.

.13.7 and 16131.1 and table 2902.1 of the 2018 Seattle Building Code adopted by ordinance 126278, the committee recommends the bill pass.

Great, thank you so much, Deputy Clerk, that was a mouthful.

Okay, I'm gonna hand it back over to Council Member Strauss to walk us through this legislation as well.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Deputy Clerk Schwinn.

This CB, Council Bill 12083 is updating Seattle's construction codes.

We updated the construction codes earlier this year following the same process I described of updating international, state, and then local building codes.

This legislation makes minor technical corrections to the construction codes we updated to ensure the code is consistent with the intent.

I urge a yay vote.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any additional comments on the bill?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosquera?

Aye.

Peterson?

Yes.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzales.

Aye.

Nine in favor, none opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf.

Will the clerk please read item 11 into the record.

Agenda item 11, Council Bill 120085, an ordinance relating to boiler and steam engine operations, amending chapters 6.420 of the Seattle Municipal Code.

The committee recommends the bill pass.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

You're the chair of this committee, and I'm going to hand it over to you to walk us through this legislation.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you, Deputy Clerk Schwinn.

This is the last of the three bills, CB 12085, which is relating to boiler and steam engine operations.

This is the final of our technical code changes and updates the steam engineer and boiler operator licensing code, which was last updated in 2006. The changes include updating the code to reflect the process that has moved online since the last update and adds exemptions for individuals installing boilers under manufacturer instructions and requiring applicants for a license to attest to their training and experience and require that any fees be paid in a month in advance of licensing.

We urge a yay vote on this highly technical bill.

If we had been here yesterday, if we had not had a holiday on the Monday, we would still be in the month of May, which was building safety month.

I would have been able to say this is the end, concludes the end of our building safety month by updating our codes.

Instead, I hope that everyone enjoyed May, the building safety month.

Thank you, Council President.

I urge a yay vote.

Thank you so much, Council Member Strauss.

Are there any additional comments on this bill?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the passage of the bill?

Strouse?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson?

Aye.

Sawant?

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The bill passes and the chair will sign it.

Will the clerk please affix my signature to the legislation on my behalf?

Will the clerk please read item 12 into the record?

Agenda item 12, appointment 01917, appointment of Nick Setton as member, Pike Place Market Preservation and Development Authority Governing Council for a term to June 30th, 2022. The committee recommends the appointment be confirmed.

Thank you so much.

I move to confirm appointment 1917. Is there a second?

It's been moved and seconded to confirm the appointment.

I'm gonna hand it back over to Council Member Strauss to walk us through this appointment.

Thank you, Council President.

Appointment 01917 is the appointment of Nick Sutton as a member of Pike Place Market PDA Governing Council.

Nick has served on the constituency board of Pike Place Market since 2016. He serves on the board of friends of the market and has been a tour guide of the market since 2011. not only leading tours, but also creating tours and helping develop current regulations for market tours at large.

This is one of the constituency seats on the PDA Governing Council, and because the constituency did not fill the seat in the time required by PDA rules, the PDA Council has made this nomination and selected Nick from the two finalists the constituency had been considering.

Nick's appointment followed all of the PDA's rules, and he has begun serving in this role pending confirmation.

We urge a yea vote.

Thank you, Council President.

Thank you so much.

Are there any additional comments on the appointment?

Hearing none, will the clerk please call the roll on the confirmation of the appointment?

Strauss?

Yes.

Herbold?

Yes.

Juarez?

Aye.

Lewis?

Yes.

Morales?

Yes.

Mosqueda?

Aye.

Peterson.

Aye.

Sawant.

Yes.

Council President Gonzalez.

Aye.

Nine in favor, nine opposed.

The motion carries and the appointment is confirmed.

Other business.

Is there any further business to come before the council?

Yes.

Council Member Hurdle, please.

Thank you very much, Madam President.

As a reminder.

Oh, so sorry.

That's okay.

Um, I'm sorry, I had called on Councilmember Herbold first.

So let's go to Councilmember Herbold.

And then we will hear from you, Councilmember Mosqueda.

Thank you so much.

I asked to be excused from the City Council meeting on June 7 2021.

Thank you so much.

If there's no objection, Councilmember Herbold will be excused from the June 7 City Council meeting.

Hearing no objection, Council Member Herbold is excused from the June 7th City Council meeting.

All right, Council Member Mosqueda, go for it.

Thank you very much.

Sorry for the interruption.

Colleagues, I forgot to mention this at this morning's council briefing.

I just wanted to know, as a reminder, for amendments that you would like to see to the ARPA and HOME federal relief dollars, our Seattle Rescue Plan, as we're calling it, which will be discussed on Friday, June 4th at 9.30 a.m.

in the Finance and Housing Committee, if you do have amendments.

The deadline is noon next Tuesday.

So that way we can have a full week to work on those with central staff.

So again, noon next Tuesday, if you do have amendments after hearing the discussion and reading through the bill, we greatly appreciate it.

Again, those can be either directed to Allie Panucci or the central staff person that's directly working on the item, as noted in central staff's memo that went sent around to the entire full council.

And thanks in advance for your time on that.

Thank you so much, Council Member Muscat.

I appreciate the reminder.

And as Camila says, she is ready to say bye-bye just like the rest of us are.

Is there any other further business to come up before the council?

Okay, colleagues, hearing none, this does conclude the items of business on today's agenda.

Our next regularly scheduled city council meeting is on Tuesday, June 7th, 2021 at 2 o'clock p.m.

I hope that you all have a wonderful afternoon in the near 80 degree weather that we are currently having.

Bye-bye, Camila.