Select Budget Committee Meeting Session I 11-24-26

Good morning, the November 4th, 2026 Select Budget Committee meeting will come to order at 9.30 a.m.

I'm Dan Strauss, Chair of the Committee.

Clerk, will you please call the roll?

Council President Hollingsworth.

Council Member Juarez.

Council Member Juarez.

I saw her.

I see her.

I'll come back.

Councilmember Kettle.

Here.

Councilmember Lin.

Here.

Councilmember Rink.

Present.

Councilmember Rivera.

Can you guys hear me?

Councilmember Saka.

Good morning.

Here.

Councilmember Juarez.

Uh-oh.

Councilmember Juarez, we hear you.

Okay, Council Member Juarez is present.

Council Member Foster and Chair Strauss.

Present, and can you call Council Member Rivera one more time?

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Seven, present.

Wonderful.

Thank you, colleagues.

Here we are on November 4th, gonna go through the Chair's package today.

Before we begin, if there's no objection, the agenda will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the agenda is adopted.

We'll move into...

We have technically two...

Are we on?

We're on.

We're live, Councilmember Warren.

Okay, I can't hear.

I can't.

Present.

Present.

Can you hear me?

We can hear you.

They can't hear me.

We can hear you.

Kelly, I don't know what's going on.

They can't hear me.

Might need to...

There you are.

Okay.

We're going to figure out what's going on.

Yep.

Okay.

Just one moment.

We have two items on the agenda today and clerk, would you mind just reading both into the- I'm sorry, chair, can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

And we also have council member Foster present.

Agenda items one and two introduction and overview and chairs balancing package for briefing and discussion.

Thank you.

We've got a presentation from central staff.

We're going to start off with the top of process and then highlight the, I believe six items, seven items that were added in to the balancing package that were not presented as amendments last week.

And then we're going to get into the balancing package itself.

What I was really happy to do is across, this is a representation of everyone on council's work.

I'm really proud of everyone's asks and bringing together the priorities of our city from the people that you represent and the people you care for.

At a high level, everyone got pretty much one big ask and many small asks.

For public's awareness, I added two statements of legislative intent per council member.

We're asking only three total, really.

Maybe if you need a fourth, we can talk about it, but that allows for council members to choose what their additional slide is.

We are balanced four years out.

I don't need a law or an executive order to tell me to balance a budget four years out, so I'm proud of that.

We did make a decision based on, colleagues you may know, that last year I passed a law that I sponsored regarding the Jumpstart Reserves and how they are funded.

We are suspending the payment for next year, but we're not taking from the Jumpstart Reserve and we're just not adding to it.

And colleagues, as you may remember in the revenue forecast this year, we had a very flat lined economy.

It wasn't going up, it wasn't going down.

In the past, it's been going up.

This is what reserve accounts are for.

When the economy is going down, we need to use them.

When the economy is going up, we need to add to them because the economy is flat right now.

that suspended payment is the only reserve money that was used to balance this budget.

The Continuum of Care Reserve is funded.

The Federal Reserve is funded.

The Rainy Day Reserve is funded.

The Emergency Fund is funded.

The Jumpstart Reserve is still intact with the amount of money that was put in this year.

Those are kind of my high-level highlights.

I'll turn this over to central staff to walk us through where we are in the budget and where we're going.

And just as a reminder, today central staff will be highlighting all of the items in the balancing package.

If we've discussed them at length in the past, we won't be going into them in depth today.

But if something substantially changed, that's when central staff will share what those changes are.

I also really appreciated everyone's ability for the general public.

I met with council members on Monday to share with them which of their priorities are in this chair's balancing package.

At that time, I also said, if you need to make changes to what's in there, go ahead and make changes before we submit and publish today's agenda.

due to that, there might be some changes in this chair's package that even I'm not aware of.

And so I just want to thank colleagues for your partnership in this of this chair's package really represents all of our work together to meet the needs of Seattleites because each of us either represents a different district or citywide in different constituencies.

And even though we are elected by districts, it's all of our job to represent the entire city.

And I see that through the proposals that you brought to council last week and I see reflected in this chair's package.

So with no further ado, thank you colleagues for all of your hard work up till here.

With that over to you Lish and Calvin.

Good morning, Le Schwitz and Council Central Staff.

And Calvin Schell with Council Central Staff.

As a reminder, we are in step four of the Council budget process, presenting the Chair's balancing package, a set of balanced amendments to the 2027-2028 proposed budget.

Today we'll provide some background on the process, key changes in the balancing package, and then we will walk through the amendments that have changed or are new since the Councilmember amendments were discussed a couple weeks ago.

We're going to focus on any changes or new items and skip over anything you've already been briefed on, but we're happy to discuss anything that's presented.

And just for the record, because there was a little confusion at the beginning, all council members are present.

Thank you.

You will have an opportunity to change your sponsorship of scaled or changed council budget actions and slides.

So if there has been a change made that you don't agree with and you were a sponsor before, please let us know that you'll no longer wish to be a sponsor.

Or if you see something that really excites you, please let us know that you want to co-sponsor it in an open session today.

Today's balancing package is the Chair's recommendation for what could be a consent vote at the November 13th committee meeting.

In terms of a consent vote, those are things that the Chair believes have general support across the Council.

He has asked you in each of his meetings with you to identify if there are items that you want to have an individual vote on.

Today is one opportunity to do that.

And over the next week, please convey that because we will be putting together the package of votes next Tuesday.

so that we can get them published on Wednesday, 48 hours in advance of the committee's consideration of final votes on the budget in the committee.

And Director Woodson, I might add, and then I'll turn it over to Cal, just to add a little bit more flavor there.

On Friday the 13th, we will vote on items in four distinct groups, maybe five distinct groups, I'll put it in five distinct groups.

We have amendments to the budget, as one lane that has three groups.

Amendments to the budget will be consent package.

Anyone can speak to anything in the consent package.

You don't have to pull it out to speak to it, but we'll be able to take hopefully as many of our amendments all at once in one vote rather than saying yes or no 150 times.

From there, we will vote in group B items council members have asked to be pulled for individual votes.

This is what central staff in my office needs to know before Tuesday, if you would like an item pulled for an individual vote.

All it takes is one council member saying, I want it for an individual vote, and that's what we're gonna do.

And then is group C, which are amendments that are in conflict with each other.

What I see as the likelihood is, Same source of funding.

Folks are looking for the same source of funding.

This is critical that on Monday when you turn in your budget amendments that you have identified the source of funding.

With the budget, we have group A, the consent package, group B, individual votes, and group C, in conflict with each other.

From there, the next group is all of the budget legislation that does not have amendments will take in one vote, and then from there, each individual piece of budget legislation that has an amendment will take from there.

So that's the flow of events.

All that to come back to say today, if while we are going through this presentation, you see an item that you would like to have for an individual vote, you can either say it in open session or please let our office and central staff know, no later than Monday at 2 p.m.

because we have to make those decisions ahead of essentially first thing Tuesday morning.

That's my only add-on there.

I'm gonna turn it over to Cal, but I also wanna just check, because we're going deeper on process today than we have in the last number of checkpoints.

Are there any questions at this time?

I see Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you for taking us through that process.

A quick question on, so if a council member requests a CBA to be removed, when will the sponsor, and you're saying we have till Monday to do that so we don't have to do it today, when will the sponsor know if their item was asked to be removed from the package?

Because usually you hear in chambers if that's happening, but if it's something that was not said in chambers, when will the sponsor know that their item was requested to be removed?

Thank you.

Great question.

We'll hopefully let you know Tuesday because the deadline is Monday at 2 to let us know.

And I can guarantee you will know no later than Wednesday morning.

So Tuesday at the earliest, Wednesday morning at the latest.

And that's because, again, as part of my budget reform process, before I was budget chair, the agendas were published within 24 hours, which did not leave the general public opportunity to read through and come and testify at the meeting on the 13th.

Sorry, I took the floor a little bit too much.

No, it's fine.

Thank you for answering the question.

That'd be great.

Tuesday, of course, is always better because then we can decide what we want to do.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further questions?

Deputy Director Chow, anything to add?

Back to you, Lish.

Great.

And I'll mention, we haven't really discussed this, but it's likely that any amendments that are submitted next week, self-balanced amendments, would be in that Group B. There are seven new amendments included in the chair's balancing package.

They're listed on pages five and six of this first presentation, and we'll talk about them as we get to them when we're walking through the entire chair's package.

And I'm going to hand it over to Deputy Director Chow to talk through how the chair's package is balanced.

So good morning, council members.

Some of the questions that we've had is how is the package balanced?

And so we wanted to highlight for you the general fund and the jumpstart fund resources that were used.

Currently, the chair's balancing package relies on general fund balance.

This is the amount available over the biennium, so for 27 and 28. It is 1.5 million of general fund balance and another 7.8 million of revenue forecast that was presented to the forecast council a couple weeks ago.

There is 1.1 million in the errata.

There is a proposal for a new 0.01% sales tax, which is essentially the share of the King County tax that goes into effect on January 1st.

So it is not a new tax for taxpayers, but it would be claiming the city's share of that sales tax.

And then, as the Chair mentioned, there is a reduction of about $22 million of contributions to increase the Firefighters Pension Fund stabilization reserve.

And then separately from Jumpstart Fund, we have $10 million from the revenue forecast.

We have $13 million from an off-cycle payroll expense tax payment.

And then, I'm sorry, this is the one that is related to what the Chair mentioned, the reduction in the Jumpstart rate stabilization account, $19.1 million.

The jumpstart rate stabilization account remains funded at $20 million, and that is persistent in 27 and 28. And the chair's package does not impact the emergency fund, the rainy day fund, the Federal Reserve, or a continuum of care.

Next slide, please.

One of the other major revenue issues was the decrease in real estate excise tax.

The October forecast was down almost 20 million.

The chair's proposal does deal with this issue as well.

It uses 10 million of REIT revenues or reserves.

It also reduces REIT for a couple of center site improvement projects, 4.3 million over the biennium.

And it eliminates real estate excise tax for the FAS animal shelter, 5.7 million.

This project was not eligible for REIT and CBO has identified other funding for pre-design for the project.

Unless anyone has any questions about resources, I'll turn it back over.

Colleagues, any questions about resources before we move into all of the proposed council-generated budget legislation?

Seeing none, keep on going.

All right.

In addition to the package of legislation the executive has proposed, there are five new bills that would be-that are proposed to be included in the for council consideration.

The first two were discussed last time we met, two financial sustainability bills.

There's a proposal to create a fund to recapture and sort of sequester funds that are repaid by police officers who received an overpayment earlier this year.

There is an amendment to our do not solicit penalty provisions to better define how those funds should be used.

And then there is a new proposal to access the city's portion of a sales tax increase imposed by King County.

There are seven amendments to individual bills being proposed.

amendments to the year in supplemental and the 2027 budget adoption ordinance related to Office of Housing funds to automatically carry forward those funds.

There is an amendment to propose voluntary separation bill from the executive to create basically a sunset date for that legislation after three years.

There are proposed amendments to permit fees legislation to better align the fees with the City's Comforts of Plan place types.

There's an amendment related to the Transportation Interfund Loan to modify the terms of that loan, particularly the length of the loan.

and there is another amendment to that bill to establish reporting requirements.

Tomorrow is public hearing on all of the provisions.

Monday is the final deadline for amendments.

Noon, self-balanced, two co-sponsors.

If you have proposed an amendment in the past and it didn't show up in the chair's balancing package, it does need to be resubmitted.

to confirm that you want to move it forward, and you will need two co-sponsors at that stage.

We have...

a very short turnaround time to get those completed.

So we need all of those amendments to be complete.

We need to understand what you're proposing, where the funding is coming from, if it's an increase in funding, because we have basically a day to turn them around and get them ready for an agenda.

and director, I'll just also add in the balancing package, there is little to no additional room for ongoing funding.

So a lot of these proposals are one-time funds.

I know that some colleagues, I provided one-time funding and you've already split it over a number of years.

I just note that as we move forward into this part of the budget, the difficult part will be finding the ongoing funding.

And just wanted to highlight that, be transparent about it, as well as if an amendment does not, does take us out of financial balance in the four year cycle, it will unfortunately not be an amendment that I can support.

So just wanted to add that clarity there.

Back to you, director.

Next Friday the 13th and potentially the 16th are scheduled for committee votes.

The following week we'll be making sure that everything is in balance before your final vote, two weeks from Friday.

And if I could add that November 13th vote is really the substantial policy decisions of this body and everything else after that is us making sure we got it correct and doing the technical balancing to make sure there's no errors.

Just to add on on process for today's conversation, we are reviewing items.

If you want to have discussion or ask questions, please do so, but also debate or really getting into the depth of topics that should be reserved for Friday the 13th when votes are happening.

Today really is intended as a briefing for all of us as council members, as well as the general public as to what is in the chair's package.

With that, are there any questions on process at this time or where we're at?

I'm seeing no additional questions, so if we want to move into the second item of business.

It has already been read into the record.

Great.

Thank you.

We are going to go alphabetically through departments.

We're going to be talking about the highlighted rows, which are rows that are either new items or items that have been adjusted through the balancing process.

Many of those adjustments have been taking things that were proposed as ongoing funding and turning them into one time because there is really a lack of funds, particularly in 2029. Arts 3B is one of those.

It provides $75,000 in 2027 and 2028 for a public event celebrating the African-American community for a Moja Fest, and that was proposed as ongoing funding, and it's turned into one time.

Arts 6B.

I think on the dais, Councilmember Saka mentioned that the original funding that was published was incorrect.

This corrects that in Reflex's intent that $235,000 be provided in 2027 and 2028 for a Delridge art wall.

Arts 8B provides $55,000 for art instruction programs in West Seattle, and Arts 13A is new.

It provides $600,000 for the HOPE Corps, which provides place-based arts programming through the Office of Arts and Culture, and it spends the sunset on a Creative Placemaking Division Director position in the Office of Arts and Culture.

Thank you.

Before we continue on, I just wanna first address the creative placemaking arts director, as that is something that I made a change on, which is when we looked clearly at the arts budget, as well as the fact that we are adding nearly, I think four and a half to $5 million to the office of arts and culture today from the general fund that they're staffing.

And this is something that council member Rivera has been bringing up for years about term limited staff there.

and there's currently a question of whether or not the staffing is correct to continue the work.

For instance, this division director is in charge of the work that was done for the FIFA World Cup and was scheduled to stop because the World Cup is over and we're adding a bunch more arts funding into the arts department because we've seen the positive impact of placemaking and vibrancy that they create.

So this essentially just extends the sunset on that division director.

I just wanted to be clear there.

Colleagues, questions, comments, concerns on arts and culture items?

Council Member Rivera.

Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I appreciate your interest in the Office of Arts and Culture.

I don't think I know, I don't know anyone who doesn't support in general arts and culture at the city, so much so that we actually do have, it's the only department that I know of that has a dedicated funding source to add tax.

That said, this is a sizable increase to the department and so I just have concerns about the fact that this department has a pretty big budget and so adding the large amount of funding to this department inhibits us from being able to do some other things.

So I guess I just have some questions about this particular add rather than proviso some of arts' funding to do some of this work.

There's often all departments at the end of the year often have underspend.

And so I just it just it's a sizable contribution notwithstanding the fact that we all care about art so much in the context of our inability to do so many other things that I know that we all care about and we all probably added things that didn't make it in.

because we just don't have the funding.

So I just wanted to acknowledge that despite the fact that we do love arts and I'm glad and I always have been grateful that we have this dedicated fund source.

They do, which means it insulates them from a lot, but other departments don't.

And so I just wanted to note that and note the sizable increase for Hope Corps in general.

for just one thing.

So anyway, thank you, Chair.

I really appreciate that perspective.

Colleagues, any additional questions, comments, concerns on page one, Office of Arts and Culture?

Seeing no further comments, we'll move on to page two, Community Assisted Response and Engagement.

There are four CBAs here and none of them are new or changed.

Any questions, comments?

Move on to slide three, the City Budget Office.

All right.

CBO2B increases CBO by $100,000.

That was reduced from $150,000 in the original proposal.

CVO 5B increases appropriations across multiple departments.

It extends 13 positions for six months and restores two positions, one in the Office of Economic Development and one in the Department of Neighborhoods permanently that were proposed to be laid off in the Mayor's proposed budget.

CBO 98A is more of a technical amendment to respond to the reduction in real estate excise tax revenue, and CBO 99A are corrections to the errata in the proposed budget.

In particular, there is a correction to the amount of funding that is allocated to democracy vouchers next year.

Due to an error, the proposed budget didn't reflect that there's an election for seven council members that's going to be occurring next year, and so that is adjusted to better reflect expected expenditures.

Thank you.

Before we move on, just checking to see colleagues, any questions, comments.

CBO 5B is, as I've discussed in the past, any position, any staff that are subject to layoff that we were not able to preserve their jobs.

We were able to preserve two jobs for everyone else.

This is the additional employment time to get them through to June 30th.

For a number of reasons, just, I mean, to give people more stability to find a new job, also so that we're not laying people off on New Year's in the middle of the dark during a holiday season There's just so many reasons to do this.

And it's because each of these, it's 13 FTE on this piece of paper, but those are 13 families.

That's 13 mortgages or rent.

That's 13 sets of groceries.

These are people and we need to do our best to take care of them because they've served our city well.

And it's the hardest decision that we can make to lay off city employees because unlike the private sector that is accustomed to regular layoffs and high pay, City workers are here to serve the public for the third bottom line as well as because city government and governments of all types rarely lay folks off.

So just want to thank everyone for their service and it's with a heavy heart that some of these actions are occurring.

Any other comments?

I see Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

You know, I wonder if SDHR is able to, and I've often wondered, and I've brought this up before, but able to, you know, sometimes we have positions across the city that we can then, you know, transfer folks over to, and so I wonder whether there is an opportunity here for these folks and just in general, because this has come up before in the context of the last three years, how can we partner with SDHR so they can provide support to folks and maybe there are positions in the city that we can transfer folks to, or maybe there's some kind of connection point we can make to help folks find jobs.

that's the piece where I'm wondering is not contained in here as part of this but I often think if we're able to help folks find a position within the city it even matters more than a temporary piece although I appreciate what you're trying to do chair but I do think that I have seen this across the city folks moving around and when there are vacancies and folks being able to be offered those.

So anyway, I just want to note that here as well, important, and we've done that for other positions in the past, and I wonder whether there's an opportunity here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very well said, Vice Chair.

Two years ago, when we laid off employees for the first time since 2008, as part of our budget reform work here, we requested a statement of legislative intent from SDHR regarding the project hire which is the group that rehires employees either trying to change jobs or subject to layoff.

We did make some improvements, additional improvements are needed, and so that might be something I partner with you on for the next round for another slide.

Great.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

Wonderful.

Colleagues, any additional questions on City Budget Office?

Seeing none, let's move on to Department of Education and Early Learning.

There's one statement of legislative intent that is unchanged.

Thank you.

We'll move on to Department of Neighborhoods.

All right.

For the Department of Neighborhoods, funding was added to the Central District and Southeast Seattle reinvestment program.

It increased from $2.5 million to $3.4 million in 2027 and from $2.5 million to $3 million in 2028. It's provided as one-time funding, and one position rather than two is proposed to be added to support the reinvestment program.

added $10,000 each year for a community safety coordinator in Soto to match that position with the amount of funding that we provide for similar positions in other neighborhoods.

and D1 6A.

Funding was originally proposed in the CLC Light Budget to fund a lease for City Light property for a community garden in Ballard.

According, talking to the departments, it was determined that it's probably better placed in Department of Neighborhoods rather than City Light.

Same proposal, shifting which department is responsible for the funds.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any questions on Department of Neighborhoods?

Council Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Is this because, are you intending like the P-patch program?

Is that the kind of thing?

Sorry, I didn't say pee patch, but I know Don has pee patch.

You're totally great.

Yeah, the good old Picardo patches.

No, so this was the community gardening project that's done in parking strips, and the nonprofit had parking strip space in the area which the Seattle Public Utilities Ship Canal Water Quality Project has to work, and so this was actually the first time in all of the Ship Canal water quality projects work over almost a decade that they were not able to meet a community need.

and so there was not a new place for them to go.

And so this proposal here is $40,000 one time for two years to pay the rent to ratepayers to use the city-owned space.

The nonprofit has grants for the soil, is getting in-kind donations for soil delivery, is getting in-kind donations for wood and other materials.

And so they're self-funding this whole project.

What they just need is land.

They had land until we needed it for something else.

And so this is just us paying rate payers the rent for the community gardening nonprofit to operate.

So no overhead to the nonprofit, nothing else.

We're just paying ourselves so that they can use the space.

Did that answer your question?

Fantastic.

Thank you.

Colleagues, other questions?

Seeing none, let's move on to FAS.

This one I see was supposed to have my name because this was not a budget committee item, but we'll get that changed.

As you see, this is why the quality assurance work between the 16th and the 19th is critical and why no amendments will be accepted after the amendment deadline next week.

Finance General has a number of adjustments.

Finance General 2A is a new CBA related to the vehicle residence program.

FG902B is a new balancing adjustment that is really technical and just for balancing, as is 903A, 904A, 905A.

These are all ones that are making the technical adjustments to make the balance work.

and I'll take any questions if there are any.

Yeah, absolutely.

Let me speak to the VRAP funding first.

We did not bring VRAP amendments to the amendment process because we were in dialogue with the mayor's office about how to best use the money.

Unfortunately, they weren't available to meet until I believe it was last Friday.

We met last Friday and outlined a plan together with CBO and the mayor's office and central staff for how to use this funding.

And then over the weekend, the mayor decided to veto the legislation.

We've had an interesting week.

All that to say, amendment that you see here in the chair's package was an amendment that had been created in partnership with the CBO and the mayor's office.

Clearly, if the veto is to be sustained, we'll need to move all of the funding that has been allocated for specific purposes, we'll need to move that all into one location for proper disbursement.

And I say that because even today, none of the funding to support vehicle residency has gone out the door.

We've been talking about this for months.

There's no funding that has gone out to assist contracted outreach ahead of the Glassyard Commons opening that is supposed to happen maybe next week or maybe later this month.

There has been no resource allocation to help them help our outreach workers pay for people's gas, pay for minor repairs, pay for getting the vehicle in their name to get their title.

This is all work that needs to be done that I've been clear about needing to be done since day one, even if there is not a safe lot to direct people to.

because these resources of repair, assistance, gas, and legal ownership of vehicles needs to happen with or without any of the proposals I brought this year.

As well, there's a discussion for two safe lots.

We'll come back to the safe lot amendment in just a minute.

But under all of the conversations we've had, There's also been no concrete discussion of if we're going to fund a shelter storage that is now allowed under law.

And so we need to fund services to help people living in their vehicles more than we're doing today, period.

The fact that this funding has not gone out the door today with Glass Yards Commons opening later this month is unacceptable.

and so understanding that if the veto is sustained, we'll need to move all of the funding into one location for proper disbursement because the amendment that is in the chair's package was one that was created in partnership with CBO and the mayor's office before they made the decision to break the commitment to work together.

So that's generally what's going on here.

Colleagues, any discussion?

You're off mute if you want to go, Council Member Juarez.

You got a little surround sound vibe check.

Can you hear me?

Yes, we can.

Good to go.

I apologize, I'm using two phones and a laptop and for some reason the speakers are not working on my work laptop.

First of all, thank you Councilmember Strauss for Doing this on the VRAP and I'm going to say it because it's true.

I'm very disappointed in the mayor's office.

I think it was disingenuous and I'm just going to use the word when you work this hard and you have this must trust and then you believe things are going to move a certain way because we believe it's all good for the city and all good for our relatives and all good for our people.

The mayor lied.

So let's just say it.

Let's just call it what it is.

And I'm not happy about it.

And so let's just move forward and I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Councilmember Warris.

Any further discussions on this slide?

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I just wanted to ask central staff just because this was a new ad, and just to make sure we understand what this budget action does, can I ask you to just speak to it in a little bit more depth in terms of where the resources are coming from, where they're moving to, and what they would do?

Great question.

Jen?

Absolutely.

There is a lot happening in the CBA, so I'll just walk us through it.

The first thing the CBA does is it does decrease HSD by 3.5 million in 2027 and 2028. I know that appears to be a bit odd, but what is happening there is that there is a separate CBA HSD 052A that adds 3.5 million for a new safe lot.

Additionally, we have 3.5 million in the baseline budget and the proposed baseline budget that can be used to support vehicle residents.

So this just backs it out.

So essentially we're not double counting.

kind of like erasing the chalkboard, and then we can start again by assigning costs to their appropriate departments and purposes.

So the way that that is then assigned is that there is about one million going to HSD and that could be used for things like contracted outreach or capacity building for contracted outreach or for things like assistance to vehicle residents to be able to help them meet code like being able to have a tire repair or gas in order to move and stay compliant with the SMC.

This is just 2027. There's about a half million that would go to fund seven HSD counselor positions.

Those are outreach positions.

And that half a million assumes that those seven positions would be staffed for half the year.

there is about $435,000 going to FAS.

That would be for to stand up and then lease a RV storage lot.

So some one-time costs related to fencing and then just ongoing lease costs.

There's also money going to FAS related to just increased costs related to impound and storage if we end up impounding a lot of additional vehicles.

there's about 345,000 going to SDOT and that would be just for a temporary senior planner, especially as related to developing the director's rule that's part of the VRAT program.

And then there's about 600,000 going to finance general and that's just on hold for various other costs that have not yet been figured out like what the SDOT cost might be for a permit technician or other costs related to over time for SPD officers or just cost related to parking enforcement officers.

In terms of the source of this funding, I think what I'll say here is that there is $5 million in the 2026 adopted budget.

that has been really set aside for work related to VRAP or supporting vehicle residents that has not been expended or committed.

And so a portion of that will be carried forward into the 2027 budget and then reserved for these purposes.

Councilmember Frost, are you still on the floor?

Just let my notes catch up with Jen's fantastic.

No, that was great.

Thank you so much, Jen.

Okay, understood.

And just to clarify on your last point, the source, was that the five million that, if I recall correctly, was previously proviso-ed and that's now being carried forward?

Is that accurate?

Yes, and I think the mechanics of that are that it would be, HSD's appropriation would be reduced by 4.8 million in the year-end supplemental, and then essentially those resources then become available for the 2027, for the balancing package, and that's sort of the relationship between those two things.

200,000 will remain in the 2026 budget for HSD to begin contracted outreach work.

Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Very clear question.

We essentially took the money from before and then what we'll see later on is that we would then replaced the money that this is taking.

So it's a net zero change, but it is, This was in partnership with the mayor's office to identify that SDOT strategic advisor, to identify the funding for these outreach folks, but kind of candidly, if the mayor's veto is sustained and the mayor wants to go a different direction with a new work group, which was part of the legislation that was already passed, This all might change and so that's why I just flagged that I may be bringing an amendment next week to put it into one pot of money to ensure that we are getting the money out the door for contracted outreach to help people who live in any type of vehicle.

And that's helped with making sure their vehicle is running, making sure that they have tabs, that they own the vehicle, making sure that they have gas and making sure that they have resources to find a more stable life.

that is what this money is for.

And that's with or without a safe lot opening because these folks need this assistance with or without a place for them to go because the city is the one that's failing in the fact that we haven't had a safe lot open in over a year and a half, potentially two years.

Thanks for my editorial there.

Colleagues, any additional questions on this?

I'll just end with, it is astonishing to see that this funding has not gotten out the door with Glassyard Commons opening in just a few weeks.

And if anyone from the mayor's office or CBO's or HSD is watching right now, you need to get that money out the door by Friday.

This is ridiculous.

Let's move on.

Next slide is HSD, one of three.

HSD 12B adds $500,000 to the Valid Food Bank.

This was previously identified as $800,000 a couple weeks ago.

HSD 21B increases HSD by $250,000 in 2028 for an operational funding plan for Veterans Shelter and Service Campus in West Seattle.

Previously, this was proposed as a 2027 ad, and it was shifted to allow for the statement of legislative intent response to the plan.

Thank you, colleagues.

Any questions here?

The changes to mine was just that it reduced the funding request.

We were not able to fund it at the level requested.

Any additional questions here?

Seeing none, let's keep moving on.

Next one is HSD30C.

This one adds $2.5 million in 2027 and $2.5 million in 2028 for gender-based violence supportive services.

This is a reduction from the last week's discussion of $8 million in 2027 and $8.3 million in 2028. HSD 40B increases HSD by 750,000 one time and the same amount again to expand services for senior centers.

This had previously been identified as an ongoing ad and has been switched to one time.

And HSD 42B increases HSD by 500,000 one time for on-demand residential intensive outpatient substance abuse treatment.

This is a reduction from the proposal that was previously got $750,000.

Thank you.

We spent a lot of time this weekend working to see how much of each of your priorities we were able to fund.

Council Member Rink, I was very excited to fund your gender-based violence supportive services at $5 million.

I see that you've split it into two years.

I appreciate that.

I appreciate your advocacy on this item.

Colleagues, any additional questions on page nine?

Seeing none, let's keep on ticking.

Wow, we're gonna be out of here by 11.

And there are no changes to these HSD items, but happy to talk about them if anyone wants to.

Thank you.

Colleagues, do you wanna speak to any of the items on slide 10?

Vice Chair Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

You know, I just wanted to acknowledge, Councilmember Foster, your ad for the medical debt relief.

And just add to that that, you know, you may or may not know this.

I just more recently found this out because I was really interested in this in the context of what we're seeing across the country.

And the state, since 1989, has a law called Charity Care to fund this type of work.

and it's really great because folks actually, you know, if they're staying at a hospital, they can sign up for this.

So it's really going to the folks we know we need it.

And then, you know, shout out to Governor Ferguson, when he was Attorney General, he sued some of the hospitals to make sure this work was getting done in 2022. So all to say that I just feel really, because I was concerned about folks, I went and did some research and I was really glad to find out that the state has this program.

So all to say that I appreciate your concern.

and then also to add to it, the state is also doing this work.

And so, you know, a lot of folks are struggling and sometimes this is especially a hefty hospital bill is why folks sometimes become homeless, as you've talked about, Council Member Foster, and many of us have.

And so I just wanted to add that as like a complimentary comment.

in terms of this work and that our state has taken this seriously.

And I appreciate that.

And many others, excuse me, maybe others didn't know about this too.

So I wanted to state that publicly as well.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Very well said.

Councilmember Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And thank you for that, Councilmember Rivera.

I wanted to say, I think that the charity care work is really, really important.

And I just want to make sure I clarify the distinction between the two.

because I do think it's really critical because charity care is important.

And unfortunately, residents are still ending up with medical debt even with charity care.

And we're seeing that across the city.

We're seeing that across the country.

So I'll just share with you.

I'm working to pull this up now.

When we looked into this, we actually pulled up medical debt in Seattle and looked at it by zip code and then took that and made that into a rough estimation of medical debt by council district.

that would be addressed by this budget ad.

I'm scrolling to that right now.

So it's $6.6 million in medical debt.

And looking at, let's see, council districts, I think we see District 4, $273,000 in medical debt addressed by this, because even with charity care, so many people are still leaving the hospital with bills that they can't pay, and then that's just saddling them.

But the state has taken a lot of really fantastic action, you know, including ensuring that medical debt doesn't count negatively on your credit and putting limitations, I think it's a 1% limitation on the the interest that your medical debt can incur.

So I think we're seeing lots and lots of fantastic action, but really excited about this.

This is probably one of the things I'm most excited about in our budget because it's gonna have just a really clear and immediate impact with such a small investment comparatively.

So thank you for bringing that up, Councilmember Rivera.

Thank you, Councilmember Foster.

Council President Hollingsworth followed by Juarez.

Hi, thank you, Chair.

Thank you for HSD052A.

I was proud to sign on as a co-sponsor to that and you bringing that for the recreational vehicles for SafeLot.

Just want to be transparent.

I'll be looking at self-balancing for another SafeLot for families with children, as well as I think that that's really important, exploring it, whatever pathway forward.

But I know that people have brought up about some folks sleeping in their vehicles, and that being some of the issues that are, some families that could be, you know, that are sleeping in their vehicles.

And I think it's important that we have a safe lot for families and children as well.

So I just wanted to bring that to the floor.

I've been talking to some council members and looking forward to exploring that as well with you all.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Deputy Director.

Yeah, council members, staff have highlighted for me that we did make one slight error on exactly this item, HSD 52A.

It actually should be HSD 52B, the only difference being that it was made one time to deal with balancing.

All right, we'll come back to that.

With that, 52B is the item that we just discussed about the safe lot funding.

So this is the back filling it back in.

Council Member Juarez followed by Rivera again.

Mr. Chair, I apologize.

I meant to say something.

Is it okay if I go back to page 9 real quick?

Let's round out this page and then we'll go back to page 9 if you wouldn't mind.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to add my co-sponsorship to 052B.

on that new safe lot for RVs and other vehicles, because I know that it's important to find a place for folks to be.

And so thank you for adding that extra lot in order to accommodate all the vehicles we're seeing across the city.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, anything else on this page?

We'll go back to slide nine.

Council Member Juarez, you're recognized.

Thank you.

I'm going to pull a quick one here.

I did want to say that I really wanted to support Councilmember Foster on the debt relief for medical debt.

So that's that's page 10. But let me go back to nine.

I apologize because I didn't catch this going through.

I was taking notes.

HSD031, the gender-based violence.

Council Member Wink, thank you for your advocacy in that area and what we're trying to do with gender-based violence.

So I'm kind of signaling my intent in the steps of Council President in order to be transparent, honest, open, and build trust with my colleagues and other branches of government, because I think your word is your bond and it's important.

I would like to just signal by intent that speaking with the folks at the Seattle Indian Health Board, the CEO, Esther Lacerro, and Abigail Elkohawk, and our continued efforts in gender-based balance and missing murdered indigenous women and girls, and now which we've now included young women being trafficked on Aurora, that with the three clinics that the Seattle Indian Health Board has, one on 12th and Yesler, one in Lake City Way, and one on Vashon, and then our work, their work with KSARC, the county, of course, tribes and tribal leadership and the full and federal legislation that we did against the Violence Against Women Act in the last five years, led by many, many tribes and indigenous-led organizations that I would like to signal now that I would like to have some conversations about some of that funding being peeled off for the Seattle Indian Health Board of that 5 million to support gender-based violence.

And so I just wanna put that on the record now so everybody knows.

And of course, to thank Council Member Rink for bringing this forward.

And I do believe I was a co-sponsor as well.

No, I wasn't, I was a sponsor.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any other questions here?

We'll move back to slide 10. Last call, question slide 10. Moving on to slide 11, City Attorney's Office and the Law Department.

All right.

Law 2B was originally proposed to add four assistant city prosecutors.

It was adjusted to add two city prosecutors.

Thank you.

Council Member Kettle.

Chair, thank you.

I just wanted to say thank you for the support to include Councilmember Foster and her CBA, which is really important.

I had a conversation with City Attorney Evans yesterday, and she is obviously very happy with this support because it will allow her to move forward and for us to tackle the challenges that we face in public safety.

And so I just wanted to say thank you for the support related to law, AKA City Attorney's Office.

Thank you.

Well said, Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair, and I will just echo Councilmember Kettle and say thank you so much for your support in putting the $1 million to address the backlog into the Chair's package.

And then I wanted to just ask a clarifying question in terms of the changes to Law 002B.

So it changed it from four positions to two positions, and then are they limited positions?

Are they term-limited positions, or are these permanent positions?

Those are permanent positions.

These are permanent positions.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Any additional questions?

Seeing none, let's move on to page 13.

Ledge 1A is a new proposal that would transfer one position that is currently working on the Sound Transit 3 team on behalf of the city from SDOT to the Legislative Department.

The intent here is to leave the position embedded in that work team, but to have that person report directly to the legislative body and support the legislative representative to the Sound Transit Board.

Thank you, Deputy Director, colleagues.

This one is new and it represents a change in dynamics.

I will just kind of share the big background, which is Sound Transit pays the City of Seattle for one position.

to assist with our interactions between the two governments.

Historically that has been one individual and historically that individual has staffed both the mayor as a board member at Sound Transit as well as the council member who is the board member at Sound Transit.

In worst case scenarios in the past, the council member who is a board member wouldn't get the memo that is prepared by staff when the mayor didn't attend these meetings.

And that is because in the chain of command, in the organizational chart in our city, this individual response is directed by the mayor.

It's much like any of the executive departments.

And so worst case scenario in the past, They wouldn't write a memo if the mayor wasn't going to a meeting, but this year some other things happened where the mayor did not support some of my work or some of my priorities at Sound Transit.

And I understand if it's not wanting to support my priorities because the mayor's free to have different priorities.

and the way that functionally works is this team is negotiating with Sound Transit and other board members across our region representing the City of Seattle's position.

I can tell you that we had a difference of opinion on what that position was, but that's the okay part.

I'm just kind of highlighting it's okay for us to have differences.

What didn't work for me this year was because the mayor did not support my work, I was not able to receive the staffing that I needed from our city staff in my work as a board member at Sound Transit.

And so I take myself out of this just to say if anyone up here is a board member at Sound Transit, it is critical that you are able to rely on consistent staffing because the amount of information and level of negotiation occurring at Sound Transit is so high.

And so because I didn't receive staffing support, I had to write my own amendments.

I didn't have a team to write my amendments like I had relied on that every board member from the council has been able to rely on.

And I actually lost support at the last minute at the Sound Transit meeting for that amendment because the other board member stated it was not properly written.

Wasn't properly written because I wrote it.

I wrote it because I didn't have staff support.

and so no matter who is on the sound transit board, it's clear to me now that we need to have dedicated staffing.

I did receive, when I shared all of this with the mayor in July, there was a commitment to fix this issue and that commitment has not yet been fulfilled so many months later and that is why I'm bringing this proposal.

I hope that this does not change how this whichever individual this is and how they are embedded within the sound transit team, just to say that when board members who are appointed to the sound transit board, when they are in that position, that if they have a difference of opinion with the executive, that they still receive the staffing that they need to properly represent the city of Seattle at the sound transit board.

Thank you colleagues.

That was a long one.

Any questions, comments on that?

Seeing none, we'll just keep on moving.

No changes to the two proposed items for the Office of the Mayor.

Thank you.

Any questions there, colleagues?

Councilman Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Colleagues, I just want to thank you again for supporting the ad I made for the National Network for Safe Communities.

And then just to say actually and acknowledge that the founder of the focus deterrence work, David Kennedy, won the Stockholm Prize in Criminology for this focus, very specific focus deterrence work.

And it is the highest prize in this field prize you can get.

and so really wanted to acknowledge and again just lift up that I really did do the research to find something that I think would be additive and important for Seattle to have and just showing the Stockholm Prize is something that shows the how this effort is really seen in the field as a real positive effort that has really led to some positive results in the cities that we've already talked about.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on slide 10?

Seeing none, let's move on.

Calvin, Deputy Director.

Thank you, council members.

I just wanted to apologize for making a correction that I did not mean to make.

HSD 52B that I mentioned was actually not selected in the chair's package.

The way we had it identified as ongoing in the package was correct for the safe lot.

I apologize for confusing the council.

Thanks, Cal.

Had a minor anxiety attack up here.

Glad you all saw that.

With that, I also incorrectly stated what page we're on because I have it minimized over here.

They're smaller than my eyes can read.

So we were on page 13. We're gonna move to age 14.

OCR 2B, this is another one where ongoing funding was changed to one time.

Thank you.

Any comments, questions here?

Slide 15.

OED 1C reduced proposed funding for West Sale Business District cleaning by $25,000 in 2027. OED 3B reduced proposed funding for commercial tenant attraction in Pioneer Square by $100,000, providing $100,000.

and OED 1.5 reduced funding for the sale or stabilize, activate and invest locally fund from $2.5 million to $1.5 million.

Thank you colleagues.

Questions here?

just noting the increase of activations in Ballard.

This was the conversation we had last week about Jimothy, but I didn't share with you the other half of this conversation, the sister city connection to our sister city Reykjavik.

In Iceland, the wool industry created a wintertime story that it was designed to have people use more wool.

And so the story was that if you didn't get new clothes in the winter, you would be eaten by a cat.

And so in Reykjavik, there's this long going story about how kids need to get clothes in the wintertime, otherwise you'll get eaten by this cat.

And so the way that we are incorporating the sister city relationship into Ballard is to use the story of the cat as a means to do clothing drives for different nonprofits in the Seattle area during the winter time.

I will admit I didn't think that anyone would pay attention to a winter cat as I'm not seeing a lot of eyebrows go up in here, which is the assistance that Jimothy provided us as being the second animal part of this experience that it's a one-time cost that will last probably 15 to 20 years.

Thanks for letting me share more.

I see Council Member Lynn.

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to speak briefly to the SAIL fund.

First, I want to thank everyone for the support.

It did decrease in the Chair's package from 2.5 to 1.5, with a million going to CID, 0.5 going to Lake City, and it is meant to be combined with funds from last year.

which includes some carryover funds because it took a little while to deploy all of those funds.

This funding is just so essential for these neighborhoods.

And we were just in a meeting yesterday in Little Saigon hearing from how impactful these are.

And we were hearing from the community in Little Saigon about when are they gonna see some real relief.

And as I mentioned, it has been taking a while to get some of these funds deployed.

I'm certainly hopeful that in the next year we're gonna see some real progress.

At the same time, I also expect that we're not gonna completely solve the issues in Little Saigon CID in the next year.

And so I just wanna, even though these are one-time funds, I do expect that next year I probably will be coming back to have a digital request here on the sale funds.

So just want to highlight that.

And again, thank you for your support.

Thank you for being a champion of this.

And just to confirm with you, Councilmember Lin, the funds that have not yet been spent plus what you have been able, plus what you provisored, that does amount to $2.5 million.

Is that correct?

And if not, we should raise it.

I'm not sure if I have the exact number of what's been spent so far.

It's sort of a moving target.

I don't think it quite gets us up.

Well, it could be 2.5 between the two, between Lake City and CID.

I think you're correct.

Yes, with the carry forward, I think that does get us up to that 2.5.

in terms of CID specific has been, not that I absolutely care about Lake City Council Member Wires, but I've been primarily focused on CID Little Saigon and the deployment of those funds.

So, yeah.

Well, I'm not going to wrestle you for it, Council Member Lynn, but if you want to go there, let's go.

That's not something I want to choose.

While I am facilitating in kind of an open fashion, it's because we're making good time and we don't have votes today.

But next week I will be a little bit more strict in my facilitation.

Councilmember Warren is a Lake City resident.

We are glad to have your service.

Sorry to see you go.

And we are excited to have a new Lake City resident join us up here as well.

So council member Lynn, if the two don't add up to 2.5, you can count me as a sponsor on an amendment.

Anything to add from central staff at this time?

I just wanted to clarify that if we're talking about the Chinatown International District specifically, there is $1.6 million that is going to be spent in 2027 that includes the carry forward.

And then there is, for Lake City, there is $1.85 million that will be spent in 2027 that includes the carry forward.

So if you're counting the carry forward from 2026, there will be over $3 million spent from sale.

That's great news, and Council Member Lin, if that doesn't do the job for you, just let me know, because this is not the solve-all for CID.

It is a critical layer of the solutions that we're deploying.

Council Member Cowell.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Council Member Lin, for this.

And Chair, I just wanted to and create an opportunity for you to say bingo, because I'm not sure what happened, but can you add my name to the list?

Oh sure, for sale?

Yes.

Councilmember Kettle adding his name to OED6B, bingo.

Thank you for that.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any additional comments on slide 15?

Moving right along.

OED 11B adds $1 million of general fund to the back to business fund.

Previous proposal was to provide OED funding.

Thank you.

Councilmember Rivera, do you want to speak to it?

I have some context to add after you speak.

Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

No, just, you know, this is a really important program as we've talked about.

All of our, many of our small businesses across all our districts have been really suffering and have had public safety issues, store, sorry, storefronts broken into and windows broken.

It's very costly for them to have to fix these things and oftentimes their insurance rates go up if they claim, make a claim to the insurance.

So, you know, we started this fund post-COVID to help some of these small businesses and then we've kept it going over the years, really, because they continue to suffer from these issues.

And, you know, I always say, colleagues, if you want to see how well a city's doing, you look to see how well obviously all its residents are doing, but also in terms of the economy, you look to see how well the small businesses are doing.

So it is really something that I've always very much supported in general, our small businesses, particularly so many of our black and brown businesses that are also struggling and so this really provides some small help to businesses and it's something I know they've taken advantage of over the years, not advantage, that sounds terrible, but that they've been able to get support from over the years that I think is important to continue and I appreciate those of you colleagues who signed on to support this.

Thank you, Chair.

Sorry.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

Well said.

Just commenting on this back to business funding, the proposal that the Vice Chair brought forward was to proviso funds within the Office of Economic Development.

Office of Economic Development was very clear through the CBO.

Oftentimes there's arguments with departments about whether it's a proviso or whether it's new money.

Oftentimes departments will say to us, don't proviso that money because something else won't be done and then that something else can never be articulated.

And so it's very unclear to us in those moments.

What happened in this situation is that the Office of Economic Development was very clear with their answer of what could not be done if a proviso was added.

that gave us the clarity that we needed to say more funding was needed rather than using their existing funds.

And that's why I put forward the $1 million of new money to meet the needs that Vice Chair Rivera had indicated.

And then just noting that her original proviso was for $1.6 million because $0.6 million still exists.

0.8, sorry, 0.8, a lot of numbers this weekend.

And so if you are going to bring a proviso to ensure that that 1.8 stays within the back-to-business fund, you can count me as a co-sponsor.

May I?

Please, Council Member Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

I want to thank you, Chair.

I know I changed the CBA at the...

I want to thank you and your office for working with me on the CBA because I did change it, as you know.

last minute after hearing about the department and knowing that these funds were really important and you were able to make it work.

So I want to thank you for that part of it.

And I very much appreciate OED and all the hard work that they've done over the many years and particularly post-COVID as I said.

So I do want to thank you and your office for working with me to change the CBA as an ad versus a proviso.

And yes, we can, we'll talk offline on the provisoing.

So to make sure it is going to support these small businesses or small businesses in this way.

Thank you.

THANK YOU VICE CHAIR COLLEAGUES ANY ADDITIONAL CONVERSATION HERE COUNCILMEMBER FOSTER THANK YOU SO MUCH WITH THIS MOVING FROM A PROVISO TO AN ADD I'D LIKE TO ADD MYSELF AS COSPONSOR ALL RIGHT ADDING COUNCILMEMBER FOSTER TO OED 11B COUNCILMEMBER RANK THANK YOU CHAIR STRAUSS I WOULD LIKE TO DO THE SAME AND ADD MYSELF AS A COSPONSOR ON THIS I'M GLAD TO SEE US MOVING IN THIS DIRECTION THANK YOU GREAT ADDING COUNCILMEMBER RANK TO OED 11B Councilmember Rivera.

Well, I'm gonna come back to you after Councilmember Lin.

Councilmember Lin.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Councilmember Rivera.

I'd also like to be added.

I will say we've heard from a lot of small businesses in D2 about the importance of these funds and, you know, speaks to this larger issue where we really see the impacts of some of our city's failures when we see the impacts to our small businesses and, you know, things like the broken windows program and so on.

Of course, we wish we could address it on the front end, but until we get a handle on some of these public safety concerns, helping them reopen and address those impacts is just the least we can do.

So I appreciate that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director and then Director Whitson, but I'm going to just ask, does everyone want to co-sign this one?

I think it's...

your last remaining.

I'm the only one.

I'm the only one to put it in the chairs package.

Colleagues, what you are seeing in this moment is I don't co-sponsor people's stuff because I just put it in the chairs package.

That's how I show support for your items by just putting it in the chairs package.

Yes, I would like to co-sponsor so that we have bingo.

Councilmember Rivera to close this out and then we'll keep on moving.

Thank you.

Apologies, Chair.

I did mean to say colleagues, the reason why I put this in a proviso was because it wasn't, we've been adding it one time because the need is still there and it wasn't added in the as a baseline item and I thought it's so important but I know we are restricted by the funds that we can add to the budget.

So really it was proviso not because I don't support the department.

I just thought it was the best way to get some of OED's funds to go to this program knowing that we're having these challenging budget conversations and I didn't want to add to the expansion of the budget.

So that was why it was provisoed and I think it's important to say that because it's not that I want to proviso a department's money, any department, but we are where we are fiscally and financially and so that's why sometimes I think we have to proviso money.

It's not that we want to, is that if we see there's a need that we need to fill and there's no money to fill it, then we know we have the proviso as a mechanism and that is why.

So really wanted just to state that for the record.

Thank you.

Well said and we couldn't have done it without the information provided by the department when making these requests.

Well done to Director Yarse and to Councilmember Rivera.

Let's move on to page 17, Office of Housing.

Housing would provide $5 million for affordable rental and home ownership projects.

3 million of those dollars would go to home ownership projects.

Thank you.

Council Member Foster, want to say anything?

Just keep on moving?

Sounds good.

Keep on moving.

No changes to OIRA.

Great.

Council Member Juarez does not have her hand.

We can keep on moving.

No changes to the OLS item.

Councilman Wink, anything to add?

Nope.

Moving on.

For OPCD, $1 million is provided for the African Community and Housing Development Public Market Project.

It was $3 million request.

Great, I'll just speak to the lidding of I-5.

There was some text amendment change, just highlighting the connection to Interstate 395 in Washington DC to that project that was completed, zero public dollars, all private money.

It reconnected the street grid, created public space, and it now contributes to property tax revenues in DC.

Something that we really need to do up there at Pinehurst.

Colleagues, any other questions here?

I was very excited to support the African community and market there.

That was great.

Let's move on to 21.

No changes to the proposals for the Office of Sustainability and Environment.

Yeah, let's grow those microforests.

Any comments?

Seeing none.

I'm really excited about those microforests.

Councilmember Lin, excited to work with you on that.

SDCI.

No changes to the items related to SDCI.

Colleagues, any comments?

Seeing none, move on to SDOT.

For SDOT, funding is provided under SDOT 3B for one year of the district project fund.

Thank you.

I'm going to stall for just a second in case Councilmember Sokka wants to say something about this.

Colleagues, I was for our citywide elected position eight and nine, I was very excited to be able to support both of your priorities at $5 million a piece.

It's incredible work that you've requested to be completed and I was excited to support you in that way.

When it comes to the district council members as well as the tension with SDOT, the The levy delivery plan is out of cycle with our budget cycle.

This has been something that we've been discussing for quite some time.

I'm in continued conversations with the Seattle Department of Transportation about their fiscal models, their fiscal sustainability, how they're using their funds.

these conversations were supposed to be taking place all throughout the budget process and they only began about a week ago and so I have another meeting with them next week to discuss their fiscal sustainability that's more related to the Interfund loan but one of the tensions that we're running into is SDOT's responsiveness just kind of period we have found SDOT to be responsive by using the district project fund and This is another situation of adding provisos to see work get done in departments.

SDOT is a department that historically has not been able to share with us what the trade-offs are and I believe that it is due in part to their fiscal accounting practices as well as to their limited budget.

And so one part of this work to My goal would be so that there would be no provisos from council on the SDOT budget.

My goal would be no provisos on any department for any budget.

But I think that is farther away for SDOT than any other department.

one of those solutions here is providing district project funds.

And so I really want to appreciate Council Member Saka for requesting.

I think the original request was $18 million.

If that wasn't your request, that was the number I had in my mind because I think it would be important to give each council member a million dollars to spend for city or district priorities a million dollars per year because just one crosswalk can cost a million dollars.

If you have to cross lanes of traffic with a new light, that's a million dollar crosswalk.

and those safe passages across that busiest street are the safe passages that are needed the most.

And so that is why we were able to add $7 million here, one-time fund.

I would have loved to add $18 million since we supported the citywide electeds other priorities.

I would have loved to add $14 million, but we didn't have the budget for it.

We did have the budget for $7 million.

And Council Member Saka, now that I've stalled out long enough, I want to turn the mic over to you.

Just really appreciate you for bringing this ask.

Thank you, Chair.

No, appreciate you for including it in the Chair's package.

This is a highly impactful program that this Council created a couple years ago to supplement any number of traffic safety programs that currently live throughout the department, throughout SDOT.

There are two dozen plus.

We did an inventory of them.

if you want to geek out over all the various programs, traffic safety programs, check the tracker tool because there's some good information in there.

But in any event, very impactful program to allow council members to have more directional kind of control and say and be responsive, more directly responsive to our constituents and traffic safety is for me personally, it's my highest priority as the chair that oversees transportation.

So really excited for this investment.

Would have obviously loved to see more million dollars over multiple years, but we'll solve additional challenges on a going forward basis if we continue it.

But excited that we'll be able to kick it forward for next year as well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Saka-Wellside.

Councilmember Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

I initially put my hand up just to help you stall, but since it's up, I just wanted to add a thank you to you, but to Councilmember Saka on this, too, because it is important.

And to your point about SDOT, SDOT is not as tied into community the way we are.

It's just a fact.

I'm seeing it in different ways myself.

and in fact I got an email today from someone who's well deep into all things transportation and they were concerned about the mayor's cuts related to safe routes of school and given what we're doing at least in district seven with the district fund in terms of vision zero, safe routes of school, this gives that kind of flex to address any upcoming issues, any issues that may pop up related to those areas.

And it gives some flexibility and as I like to say, allows us to square the circle.

So thank you, Chair and Council Member Sacco.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on page 23?

It's a three, 23. Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much, Chair.

I really appreciate that.

I just had a question for central staff.

What is the one-time $7 million ad for the district project fund is in 2027. It's not ongoing.

And then it's just creating a specific line in the capital improvement plan for SDOT for the district project fund.

Is that functionally how it works?

Amanda?

Yes.

Amanda Allen, central staff.

Yes, that is correct.

Got it.

The project will still exist in the future.

There's no funding allocated to it.

There is a capital improvement project that created this program and so this extends the funding for another year.

Okay, thank you.

And then if there's a project that a council member works on and identifies through 2027 but for some reason isn't able to get executed, will that automatically roll over into 2028?

That's correct.

It will automatically roll over.

Great.

Thank you.

Councilmember Foster, you still have the floor.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And what is the SDOT CIP budget for 2027?

Central staff?

for this project, the SDOT budget as proposed was zero.

For the district project, are we talking about the district project?

I'm gonna pull this back out just a little bit and then I'm gonna ask central staff to maybe confirm some just baseline facts that may help explain some of this.

So two years ago, we put $14 million into the district fund.

That was a one-time add of $14 million intended to be deployed over two years.

Clearly, we did not expend that $14 million over two years, partially because the program was just being started.

And so we now have a system and function to do those district projects.

And secondly, not everyone's projects amounted to that amount of money.

And so that money is carried forward.

We are adding $1 million per council district right now, but there's not a distinct, unless council member Saka is tracking what everyone spent.

It's a general fund for district projects that has been allocated 1 million per district now for three years.

I'm gonna check with central staff to make sure I got that right and then take it back to you council member Foster.

That's correct.

Anything else to add, central staff?

So I would just say that this CBA adds money in 2027. The mayor's proposed budget did not have any funding included in the CIP in 27.

Can I clarify any additional funding?

And any money unspent from this year and last year would carry forward into next year.

Okay.

Now I'm going to go Calvin and then back to you, Council Member Foster.

No, Council Member, I just wanted to make that point as well.

Okay, great.

Now back to you, Councilmember Foster, always asking the good questions.

Thank you so much.

I'm just going to clarify my question.

I appreciate the clarity there in terms of the resources that are currently in the fund.

I was actually just asking about SDOT's total capital improvement project budget.

Oh, the total capital improvement project.

I'm going to ask for the team to get back to you after this, because that's a much deeper conversation than I think we were prepared for today, unless you've got it at the tip of your fingers.

Unless it might be.

I see you flipping pages.

I'm going to ask for us to keep moving on, if that's all right with you, Council Member Foster.

Thank you so much.

I look forward to following up offline.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any additional questions on page 23?

Again, when we get to next week, I'm going to be much more aggressive in my facilitation.

I noticed we had a little talking over each other just a second ago.

Moving on to slide 24.

SDOT 12, 14, and 15 are three new proposals.

SDOT 12 would provide $6.8 million in SDOT for the school safety CIP project.

That's the amount of funding that's anticipated to be available or that's proposed to be available for safe routes to school projects.

SDOT 14 would proviso $250,000 in SDOT for pedestrian and traffic safety improvements in District 6. And SDOT 15 would proviso $2.5 million in SDOT to support bus service on routes 15 and 17. Thank you.

I see Calvin, do you want to say something?

Yeah, just to answer the question about how much is in the SDOT CIP, in the mayor's proposed budget for 27, there is $294 million assigned to the capital improvement program, and in 2028, it is $351 million.

Thank you for getting those numbers quick.

I'm gonna speak to these three new provisos.

It came out to us last week that the Safe Routes to School funding line had been cut.

When we followed up with SDOT, they said that was not true.

And so whether or not it was or was not true, we are making it very clear through this proviso of what needs to be done in the future because taking money from kids to get to school safely is not a way to balance the budget.

Secondly, the proviso of $250,000 for District 6 pedestrian and traffic safety improvement is specifically at the intersection of 80th Street and Stroud Avenue.

Neighbors created a petition, worked with SDOT to get traffic calming measures on their street, which is essentially an arterial between Green Lake and 80th.

SDOT came out and provided some solutions, which was all paint on the ground, which has not been working or meeting the request of the neighbors.

This proviso is specifically to meet one of their 10 plus requests This one responds effectively to no turning left off of 80th down Stroud.

This is for paint and post barriers much like is at 80th and Ashworth.

This is the request, this is one of many requests that the neighbors made.

went out, did work, did not do the work as requested.

We don't always have to do the work as requested, but the work that they provided was insufficient to meet the neighbor's needs, which is why I'm putting a proviso in here for no left hand turns off of 80th onto Stroud.

Last one here is the proviso in SDOT to support bus service on the 15 or 17 routes.

Colleagues, in our revenue forecast, the Seattle Transit measure came in with an additional $2.5 million of sales tax revenue for next year.

Interestingly enough, to provide all day service, direct bus service to Ballard also costs $2.5 million per year.

This is peak service with enough frequency to get to and from work.

It goes down to once an hour service midday and extends till 8 p.m.

at night.

The reason that I bring this forward is because this has been an ongoing conversation for quite some time.

The current travel times by bus without the direct service from downtown to Ballard is 40 to 45 minutes.

That's scheduled time, not actual time.

Even just like, I mean, in the SDOT slides earlier this year regarding Seattle Transit measure, you can see that the same frequency of service that the rest of the city benefits from stops at 15th and Leary.

It was said at the TIAS that that meant that there was frequent service going to Ballard.

Technically that is accurate by about three blocks Right now, travel times from downtown Seattle to Ballard by bus are similar to the travel times from downtown to Tacoma by bus.

Ballard is a regional growth center.

We've taken on a lot of density and it is critical for us to have the transit reliability that we need to match this density.

I got a commitment from the mayor earlier this year for assistance in making transit faster to Ballard.

It's been radio silence since then.

When this was discussed at the Sound Transit, public meeting just a few weeks ago.

She suggested that bus lanes were the answer, but unfortunately there's one lane roads for the rapid ride D where we can't put bus lanes and the route 40 was just, just had a ribbon cutting last week while we were here on the dais.

Those route 40 improvements did help.

They changed travel times from 55 minutes to 45 minutes.

This proviso here is a proviso for however we can get direct service, transit service to Ballard fastest.

My preference is for the 15X, which is essentially a rapid ride express, but we can't do that now because Metro suspended that route.

we can utilize the 17X by increasing the funding through this proviso.

It does require a county council vote because of that level of service change increase, and I've already been in discussions with county council colleagues.

Colleagues, I just say, if you think that we need more density especially if you think that we need to be adding more density in Ballard or that Ballard has taken on, if you think that Ballard has taken on density in the last decade, this is something that I need your support on because we need to have a commensurate level of transit service in the regional center as compared to the rest of the city.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further questions on this?

Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Chair.

And yes, regional centers should be in a special category.

And the fact that Ballard Regional Center doesn't have that support, there's really a black mark on Sound Transit and the county and the city.

I just wanted to highlight, you know, SDOT, the new SDOT 12A item here.

It kind of goes where I was just talking to when I was asked about safe routes of school and it also talks about disconnects too.

And so I appreciate this having in, being butted in.

And it's really important and I just wanted to add a little story from yesterday morning.

Yesterday morning that includes Council Member Lynn.

Yesterday morning, I went to Coe Elementary and spoke to the entire third grade on the election day, and I was talking about government.

And I had all my show and tell, because when my daughter was in third grade, I was still a stay-at-home dad, and I remember it.

It's not that long ago.

and so engaging with the kids, talking federal, the president, and so forth, and coming down.

I mentioned the county level, and I didn't have a sign, but I said, don't worry, your council member, Jorge Perón, A, doesn't live too far, and B, his sign's actually somewhere else, I won't say exactly where.

But it wasn't with me in terms of being show and tell.

But then we get to the local level and I was explaining to the kids the different ways that we make a difference as a city on the local level.

And I highlighted the work that's been done in and around Coe Elementary.

In the past, some of the work that we've done when I was on the Queen Anne Community Council, but more recently, just in the last year, there's been a number of improvements, four-way stop intersections with crosswalks and the like.

It's really made a big difference, Coe Elementary, and the kids all understood it because they seen it and they understood, and they understood why we were doing it.

I will admit, I also noted to them, please get the eye contact with the driver, maybe acknowledgement waive, because maybe the drivers don't see you, so be careful.

But this is really important.

And by the way, I mentioned Council Member Lynn, it's because I forgot to turn off my phone, and Council Member Lynn called me, and I said, oh, it's Council Member Lynn, and I took the phone, I put it on speaker, and all the kids said hello to Council Member Lynn, and then Council Member Lynn said a few words back to the entire third grade of Coe Elementary.

So I wanted to thank him publicly here.

So it added to the dynamic presentation is for those that know eight and nine year olds, you have to be a dynamic in your presentation.

So thank you, Council Member Lynn.

And thank you, Chair and Vice Chair.

Thank you, Council Member Kettle.

Council Member Foster, you're recognized.

Thank you so much, Vice Chair.

I just wanted to ask about this one, only because this is the first time we're discussing it.

So as we're considering proviso-ing this, how do these routes, 14 and 15, do we know how they compare to, I'm forgetting the name of the matrix that SDOT does when they're determining how to prioritize service?

Do we know if these would be routes that are in the top tier in that prioritization matrix?

Thank you for the question, Council Member Foster.

So Route 15 is no longer active, so it's not part of the menu.

And in order to have a route created or reinstated, it would take a vote of the King County Council.

Route 17 is operating right now and it is not the priority within the frequent transit network, which I guess is what you were referring to earlier.

I guess I would add that the 15 and the 17 were primarily express routes to handle commuter traffic.

They were largely taken over by the RapidRide D service, which does make a detour through Lower Queen Anne.

So they do connect regional centers.

They had been focused, especially prior to COVID when overflow was a really big priority.

They did receive a lot of funding at that time.

Overflow has been less important since COVID to deal with sort of the overall network.

So they still do support the regional connectivity, but it will require conversations with King County and King County Council ultimately makes decisions on the routing.

Council Member Foster, you still have the floor.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And so just to clarify, it would be both 15, both and or either 15 or 17 would trigger a vote for the King County Council, not just 15. Is that accurate?

What my understanding is, and then I'll turn it over to central staff, is to do service level increases.

So to bring a route that has been suspended, that requires the two-year process.

So they are currently beginning the two-year process.

So the earliest we could bring the 15 back would probably be two and a half years from now.

they can make adjustments on existing routes within a certain range without a vote of the county council.

to make this level of service increase does require a vote by the county council because it's changing in existing routes increase.

And to answer the question that you asked while I had stepped away for just a moment, it is when SDOT came to committee earlier this year to talk about the transit measure, they both said that Route 40 and the D-line were the two routes that they were using that met their matrix.

And what was very clearly articulated right back is that those two routes, the travel times are the issue.

and then the frequency is also the issue because the route 40 has to go over the lowest baskill bridge in the city and the D line has to go through uptown.

And so if I had my druthers today, we'd do the 15 because it's a route D express, but right now the 17 is the vehicle to use until we're able to bring back a different route.

Oh, last thing.

When we passed the transit measure this year, we also included a provision that puts growth centers in the matrix that did not exist before.

Thanks for listening to everything I had to say.

Foster, you've got the floor.

Thank you so much.

I just wanted to ask if central staff could respond to my question, please.

I would just echo what our budget chair, Strauss, has shared and specifically any investment that requires an increase in a routes budget more than 25% requires the King County Council action as well as adding a stop or removing a stop every quarter of a mile.

requires their action.

So certainly at this level, the changes for 17 would require the council's action, the King County Council's action.

Councillor Foster.

Thank you so much.

And again, just want to make sure I'm understanding it since this is our first discussion on it.

The other question I had here was, I heard the Chair, Chair, I heard you say this is 2.5 million in part because the updated revenue forecast projects 2.5 million higher in sales tax revenue through STM.

And I just wanted to, I'm happy to take this with Tom offline.

Does that ongoing what they're anticipating?

So we'll check in with Tom.

I believe that that ongoing new revenue is ongoing.

I will state that I had been asking the mayor's office to respond to the commitments that had been made in July regarding the current STM that voters just approved.

The information that I received is that they would not make any decisions until after election day, which was after the date needed to get increased service for this upcoming spring.

That all happened essentially last week, the week before.

It all also happened at the same time that we got the revenue forecast, which is why I just kept asking questions and kept pushing on it.

I would not have brought this proviso if we did not have that new revenue.

Councilmember Foster, and then I don't know if we need to go back to central staff.

Happy to have the conversation.

I love where you're leading us.

Thank you so much, Chair.

And again, I just want to, there's a couple things on my mind here, and I believe I supported your amendment during STM to include regional centers in because we share a lot of the same beliefs around density and growth and transit service.

What I'm really seeking to understand, and I'll make this as a statement, and then I'll take the rest of my inquiry offline, but what I'm really seeking to understand is timeline that's needed for approval by King County Council, how that relates to provisoing the dollars.

One, I want to make sure we're not provisoing dollars that sit and wait for two years while they go through accounting process.

You know, I also, as a citywide council member, I want to understand any potential trade-offs with this decision.

I think Ballard certainly needs more service.

And I want to make sure that we're seeing the big picture here, because I think that's part of my responsibility.

So thank you so much, Chair.

Amen.

Councilmember Foster, I love where you're going with all of that.

I will just say that if SDOT responds that the Route 40 and Rapid Ride D are their vehicles to get that increased service, that that does not meet the needs of the community.

Awesome, thanks.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Central staff, did Councilmember Professor Foster and I get anything wrong here?

Sorry, that's because you actually teach a college course, not for anything else.

Seeing nothing else, let's keep ticking on slide 25, Seattle Fire Department.

Oh, no, we have two more.

Oh, we have two more.

Councilmember, thank you.

Sorry, Councilmember Saka and then Rivera.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, Chair.

First off, I want to thank Seattle voters for very generously approving the Seattle transit measure yesterday.

Such a huge, impactful investment.

It's going to benefit a lot of people, expand transit service, provide more.

access, you know, especially to folks in need, a lot of accessibility, capital improvements, climate electrification, bus electrification efforts baked in.

There's so much there to celebrate and just want to thank the generous voters of the City of Seattle for overwhelmingly approving that measure.

And now that the election is firmly in the review, I'm excited to be able to say that.

But and I want to thank you, Chair, for your zealous advocacy on expanding more transit service to Ballard.

You have been entirely clear and consistent about that as one of your priorities dating back from a long time and most recently through the Seattle Transit Measure conversations that we had when crafting that legislation to put before voters earlier this summer.

and so broadly I support you in your efforts to bring more transit service to Ballard, especially given the light rail situation.

Also just curious to better understand, I had a few questions that were more kind of along the lines of what Council Member Foster was speaking to a moment ago.

the proposal would effectively require a parallel King County Council vote and authorization.

What happens to the funding if the King County Council either never took it up, never considered it, never granted that authorization, just because they never took it up or they considered it and intentionally declined to do it for whatever reason.

What happens to that funding then?

Thank you for the question, Council Member Saka.

So all of this funding is held within the transportation, the Seattle Transportation Benefit District Fund.

So any unspent funds from one year to the next stay within that fund.

If there was a reason exactly as you described that they decided not to take this up or the process was too long, these provisod funds would stay put within this fund and would continue to be allocated within this program area.

I see Deputy Director.

Yes, the other thing I'd want to highlight is that, you know, when considering what the city's investment in transit are, these are big dollars and they have a very high cost escalator and so in terms of how SDOT has to program that funding, it's not linear, right?

We preserve some additional money in it and it means when we get to the renewal we have to reconsider what the and what the rate is to be able to provide what we're doing.

So all of which to say is this amount of money, 2.5 million, is well within the wash that happens every year in terms of trying to preserve money keep money to help address advancing labor costs, frankly, and overhead costs as this thing goes forward.

So it would sit in, if it's not spent, if the proviso is there, it could not be spent this year, that amount would be remaining in STBD, and the council would have to remove the proviso to make that available, and there are presumably other needs that will have to be dealt with in future years.

Thank you.

So if that King County action didn't happen for whatever reason, then it would automatically still be restricted.

And the Seattle Transit Transportation Benefit District pot, specifically for these purposes, expansion of service on routes 15 and 17, it could only be used for that.

And then the trade-offs would be whatever whatever else might be in the queue or in the hopper couldn't necessarily use that funding to support those.

The proviso would exist on appropriations in 27. This is operating dollars, so the appropriations that are not spent would not automatically carry forward.

There would have to be a proposal to carry forward that as part of a year-end carry forward ordinance or some other legislative body.

And then the council would have an endorsed budget for next year, and we would go through the budget process again next year.

Got it.

So it would not automatically carry forward?

It's not currently.

Subject to specific, intentional, deliberate counsel action?

Operational appropriations do not automatically carry forward.

Okay.

Thank you.

No further questions.

Thank you.

Again, I'm being a little relaxed with...

how we're facilitating.

I am gonna ask next week, central staff, just take a pause before answering questions in case I see a different person to go to, as well as council members next week, please remember to just take a pause to make sure I'm not calling on any other central staff.

With that, council member Rivera to close us out.

Thanks chair.

Thank you for the school safety CIP proviso.

My understanding, and I think I heard correctly you say this, money's being allocated for the school safety CIP and you're just being extra cautious by provisoing it to make sure it's actually spent for that, correct?

For that purpose?

Correct.

We received different pieces of information from SDOT and because of the factual inaccuracies, we are being certain with them about how much money should be spent for children.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

And then on the proviso, the 254 District 6 pedestrian safety improvements.

It's a proviso.

So are you trying to proviso the increase to the district project fund?

Because presumably this is a type of improvement that can be a district funded project.

So I just want to better understand if you're trying to proviso part of the 7 million for this project.

Thank you, Council Member Rivera.

No, I am not provisoing the district funds.

If I had used the district funds to help the residents of Stroud Avenue with their cut through speeding traffic and SDOT had gotten it wrong, then I would go back and use the district funds to do that.

SDOT responded to the neighbors' concerns with solutions that did not help.

And so this is where I am asking SDOT to go back and fix their work The neighbors had 10 to 15 different requests.

SDOT did none of them.

They painted white lines on the ground.

What we are asking for today is that no left-hand turns are made off of 80th onto Stroud as is the case with Ashworth and 80th that had a similar problem previously.

Thank you.

Back to you.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, I understand I have a couple of SDOT projects in the district similarly situated and that SDOT hasn't actually that had done the work or did the work not in the way that was supportive of the constituents that live near the projects.

So I understand that piece.

On the bus service routes 15 and 17, I just have a couple questions going off of both what Council Member Foster said and also Council Member Saka.

These two routes, the 2.5, you're looking to reinstate a route and then add service to the other route, but this is one-time funding.

Presumably, you'll need ongoing funding.

I just want to understand how this works.

Clarify and then turn it back to the central staff.

One of the two routes, Not both.

And then the upcoming Seattle Transit measure that passed last night has additional funding as well as has the growth center aspect in their matrix.

And in the past, the mayor had made commitments to be supportive of this, but then radio silence.

So we don't really know where the mayor's at, but central staff, anything to add there?

No, I would just say that the funding for the Route 15 and 17 comes from the Transportation Benefit District, new revenue coming in.

And there's almost $45 million anticipated to be allocated to transit operations.

So this would be carving out a portion of that for this additional service.

Councilmember Rivera?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Amanda.

I thought I heard you say neither of these routes were on the Tier 1 projects.

I know that we had had a broad discussion about which routes are being prioritized as that came with the whole map, actually, and I was a little disappointed because it didn't extend to Magnuson Park, where I have Folks, as you all know, living at the park that very much rely on bus service to get out of that area.

That's not easy for them to get to if they don't have a car.

So anyway, that route was not part of that matrix, but nevertheless, we were also, and thank you to the voters for passing the transit measure last night.

I know there were some routes that are being prioritized.

I thought I heard you say these are not the two that SDOT was prioritizing for the expansion of those operating hours.

Amanda?

That's correct.

I think as Cal's mentioning, the Rapid Ride D and the 40 are the ones that SDOT's prioritizing.

The Route 15 is not currently in operations and Route 17 is, but has not been identified as a priority for the frequent transit network.

Councilman Rivera?

Thank you, Chair.

So in essence, this is just allocating funding for these two routes that were not part of the priority matrix.

And Chair, I fully understand, as a district representative, you want to take care of your district.

So I understand that part.

I have a district I'm trying to take care of as well.

But I'm a little concerned that this is happening outside of what we were told.

If the transit measure passes, this is what SDOT's proposing, but we'll have another follow-up conversation about that.

So I'm just wondering whether that follow-up conversation will happen, if we'll have opportunity to make, you know, amendments to their proposals, if we have routes in our respective districts that we would like to see have more service hours.

and whether this could actually wait for that.

I just, I'm trying to understand why now and not later and then whether, that's one question and my other question is whether SDOT will come back to us with their, now that the transit measure did pass with their actual, here's what we propose for service hours.

Amanda?

Or central staff?

So speaking perhaps on behalf of the budget chair, I think the goal is just to accelerate any engagement with the county to prioritize funding for these particular routes to Ballard.

As far as SDOT coming back to the council and vetting a list of investments, Maybe Cal can speak to that.

I don't understand.

I'm not under the impression that that is an activity that they do necessarily.

Cal?

It is a negotiation between SDOT and Metro on what service hours we can actually provide.

They do take direction informally from council members and it's certainly within the council's prerogative to have that conversation and potentially take it into committee.

They report on their results.

We have not historically had that level of direction of sort of a formal request.

To my mind, a budget request like this is moving in that direction more on the thou shalt.

Preserving resources by proviso is essentially taking some of that direction, but historically it has been more informal.

And I would just say, I mean, to the extent that this council helped to shape the Seattle transit measure and to identify what the priorities for funding should be.

That's the formula that SDOT is using to identify where their investments should be.

They're looking at equity concerns.

They're looking at where growth is happening.

They're looking at where the gaps are.

They're looking at ridership.

So using that information is what is what they're primarily focused on along with engagement with the county.

Cal?

And just to reiterate that these decisions do go through Metro's planning process.

They have an engagement process that's part of it.

It has to be tied to how the other service is being deployed.

So I don't want to minimize the amount of sort of technical transit service planning that has to go to make these things work.

And that is really at a much lower level than the council has historically been involved with.

Vice chair.

One more thing I'll just mention.

The numbers are just out there.

There were cuts that Metro made to Seattle service during the pandemic.

Was it $2 million?

Significant cuts that they made to Seattle service.

And there is going to be a concerted effort in 2027 to engage with the public around how they should reinstate some of that additional service.

So that also might be an opportunity where we can be engaging, where we, I'm speaking on your behalf, where the council members could be engaging and also animating your constituents to engage with King County Metro to help to inform those priorities.

and I can find out the details of how much that is, because I'm not remembering the number right now.

Okay.

Before I move back to Council Member Rivera, any other statements from central staff?

It's okay.

I'm just raising hands.

Thank you.

Council Member Rivera, and then if you have more questions, I will facilitate with central staff.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you Amanda, helpful to help.

And just for the record to clarify to my folks that are living at the park are low income and really rely on the bus service.

So wanted to say that for the record.

And then also what are the impacts?

My last question is, what are the impacts of provisoing these funds to the priority areas?

I don't know what the level of impact is.

So it would be helpful to know that.

Central staff.

Council member Rivera, your question is what is the impact of allocating this funding to the 15 and the 17 to the rest of the service?

Yeah.

Yeah.

So I would just say that on a holistic level, any diversion from the frequent transit network is a diversion from the frequent transit network.

when you look at 2.5 million to the, as compared to overall $45 million, it's a sliver of the overall pie.

And you know, if every council member kept chipping away at it, then it would have a cumulative effect.

Okay.

Thank you.

Councilman Rivera.

Appreciate it.

Appreciate the time.

Fantastic.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Further discussion, I will just say thank you for a good conversation.

Let's move on to slide 25.

SFD 5A would add $1 million of one-time funding to repair the fireboat Leschi.

Thank you.

And we can also talk about Councilman Rivera's increase of overtime.

The fire boat Leschi has $3.2 million worth of repairs that are needed.

The mayor included $2 million of funding for those repairs.

I have added the next million dollars to just have the whole thing fixed.

Central staff.

No, just to reiterate your point, SFD 1B was highlighted to reflect Councilmember Rivera's sponsorship, her prime sponsorship.

Councilmember Rivera.

Sorry, this one didn't have a blue, so I thought this was more the same one that we've been talking about, but I know Many of us, not just me, obviously this is not specific to the district that I represent.

Many of us cared about ensuring that we had proper fire service across the city and the ability to maintain the level of service, as we heard from Chief Scoggins, meant that one time, sorry, not the one time, the overtime hours were really important to maintain that level of service.

So I see this as something many of us wanted, not just myself.

Thank you, Chair.

Thank you, well said.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Moving on to slide 26.

No change to this add to the municipal court.

Thank you.

Moving on to 27.

All right.

SPD 106B.

is a revision of a proposal to add funding for noise suppressors.

In between the original proposals and development of the chair's package, a dedicated funding source was identified for these purposes.

It can only be used for police department purposes.

and so it is funded at $150,000 for 2027 and 2028. Thank you.

Colleagues, any discussion on these items?

Councilman Rivera.

Oh, sorry, that's an old handshare.

Thank you.

No problem.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

SVD 108B was amended to add that Security could be provided at City Council meetings where there's a credible threat, and SPD 113B adds five paralegals to support civilian investigations at SPD.

The original proposal was 47.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion on this item?

Seeing none, we can move right on to the next department, Seattle Parks and Recreation, slide 28.

SPR 2B is 100,000 for one-time improvements to Roxhill.

This is a smaller amount than was proposed in the first round.

SPD5D is 125,000 in both years, one time for recreational programming at Alcott Community Center and 210,000 for public realm improvements to SDOT.

This is a revision in amounts from the last round, which was previously 175,000 in each year to parks, 50,000 to SDOT for cameras and 275,000 for public realm improvements.

SPR 6D is a similar adjustment in spending for the South Park Community Center and adjacent public realm improvements.

It is currently in the package at $125,027, $125,028, and public realm improvements for SDOT of $210,000.

Previously, these were also $175,000 each year for parks and $275,000 for SDOT.

And SPR 9B is an increase of 1.1 million in 2029 and 7.1 million in 2030 for the West Magnolia Playfield field conversion.

This reflects a change in identified fund source as well as identifying additional project costs to fully fund the project in 2030.

Very well, very well.

Colleagues, any additional questions on Seattle Parks and Recreation?

Just stating, during the last proposal conversation, Council Member Foster asked good questions about REIT funding.

Part of the answer to that was that the animal shelter had REIT funding associated with it, and the animal shelter was not an appropriate use of REIT funding.

So that was part of where this all came from.

Just also very excited for United Indians of all tribes.

I believe that we did have some text amendments just making it more clear that it is for any land that they steward because they steward more than just the Wolf Creek Trail area.

Colleagues, any other discussions on Seattle Parks and Recreation?

Seeing none, we'll move right on to our last slide of text.

Last slide, and the item SPR 19B is basically changed.

This previously included additional funding, but consistent with a number of the UCT-related positions, this item has been reduced to position only.

Thank you.

And colleagues, this was the conversation about trash.

I'll turn it over to Director Whitson in just a second, just to say I did the funding increase in this previously was for additional trash pickup rather than investing the trash pickup here.

I supported your amendments to have trash service increased in other geographically specific areas around the city.

Director Whitson.

The original proposal for these positions was to restore administrative assistant positions that had never been filled and discussions with the department.

Maintenance laborers seemed like a much more effective position to add.

Thank you.

Well said.

Colleagues, any questions on slide 29?

Seeing no questions at this time, that does bring us to slide 30, which are questions.

We took questions along the way instead of holding.

Colleagues, is there anything further at this time?

I've got some closing remarks.

They're not long, so I'll just go last.

I have one, Mr. Chair.

Please, Council Member Juarez.

I want to make sure and I'm looking at my notes and I know Councilmember Foster gives me a hard time about this about my notes and my receipts.

On page 25 I believe I was a sponsor as well with Councilmember Rivera and yourself and Saka and Councilmember Hollingsworth regarding the Sail Fire Department and Councilmember Kettle.

I am not listed as a sponsor.

Can you repeat the number?

SFD-001B on page 25. Fantastic.

I see it now.

We'll make- Thank you.

That was probably an error of us merging stuff together.

I'm not gone yet, okay?

Can you let my desk get cold?

Goddamn.

Sorry.

Oops.

Of course, Council President Emeritus.

Calvin, Council Members, this is one where there were two that are fundamentally the same and with your approval, we can recognize that everyone is supportive of this proposal.

So I'm going to clarify because there were two proposals that were the same and one that was different.

So I'm going to just recall sponsorship on this.

that if you would like to co-sponsor SFD-001B, $7.1 million of overtime, please raise your hand at this time.

And we have council member Juarez already.

And so have council member Saka, Kettle, Lynn, Juarez, already have Strauss and Hollingsworth and Rivera.

I have Council Members Hollingsworth, Juarez, Kettle, Lynn, Rivera, Saka, and Strauss.

Wonderful.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez.

Colleagues, any other final comments?

Council President Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Chair.

I just want to take this moment and I know, excuse me, there's still plenty of work to do, but just after going over through this and getting all the information, I know we've moved through this process and it's been a challenging one.

Just thank you for putting together I think a great shares package.

I know other people will be bringing different amendments for self-balancing, but I just wanted to thank you and your team and your staff for the work that you've done and the work ahead as well.

I know it's hard to try to get all of our priorities and make sure everything's in there and try to figure out you know, city-wide, district-wide, but just wanted to just acknowledge you and just for all your hard work and just thank you and to the central staff as well, who's here.

So appreciate you.

Thank you.

Jesse did a lot of work and even got some medical data erased.

Nice work, Jesse.

And to my whole team, Anthony, Emma, Joel, thank you.

And Ian, of course, thank you for all you do.

Council Member Rank, I see your hand.

Ms. Thank you, Chair Strauss.

I'm going to follow Council President Hollingsworth's lead and take this opportunity as well to thank you for your hard work over the weekend, to honoring all of our requests, and want to particularly thank you for the investments you've included on gender-based violence.

Looking at, again, breaking that 5 million into 2.5 million to be funding those organizations for the upcoming biennium will be tremendously impactful.

giving the organization some ability to plan a little bit for the future.

As we know, my goal is ongoing funding.

I understand the structural challenges in our budget, but we'll keep pushing for it.

But I want to thank you for putting forward this funding in the chair's package, as well as I want to thank the colleagues who co-sponsored that budget action.

I know we didn't quite get to a majority there, but I want to thank Public Safety Chair Kettle for your support on this, as well as Council Member Foster and Council Member Lynn for standing by it.

and thank you also to the full council for near unanimous support on the statement of legislative intent here.

This is really the mechanism by which that we will be working alongside the Human Services Department and bringing this work into committee over the next year.

And I'll also take this opportunity again to thank you chair for including a few of the other ads I had put forward.

The African Community Housing Development International Market Project is tremendously exciting as well as the affected persons program and funding that outreach to domestic workers and the ability to teach more of our community.

The updated legislation that we passed is tremendously important.

So I wanna thank you again, Chair.

Thank you to central staff for your work over the weekend.

Thank you to the entire team that worked tirelessly to put together this package.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Colleagues, any further discussion?

Any further discussion?

I'll just say, you know, as I closed out our committee work last week, I correctly identified that the mayor's proposed budget unnecessarily took austere measures to balance the budget.

And part of why I said that is there's no new funding of any kind.

We were able to utilize the sales tax increase that was already passed by King County.

We've added new revenue into this chair's package.

We increased the structural budget deficit by $4.4 million and reduced it by $4.3 million because we identified new revenue.

We also built back the projects that mean most to the service provision of Seattleites.

If the fire department gets there a minute late, your life might be forever different.

We've reversed those cuts.

When we look at the DOI toxicology backlog where people who have been arrested for drunk driving, haven't been able to be prosecuted because the backlog is existing.

If that person hits another human being We've not done our job, but Chair's package puts money back in.

Same thing with the sexual assault kits.

If they can't be tested, we can't get criminals off the streets.

We've restored some, not as many as I wanted to, some of the civilian detectives so that if you have crime perpetrated against you, you can have your case solved.

As Council Member Rank just mentioned, we needed to make large investments in gender-based violence.

I'm gosh darn proud that this is the sixth year in a row that we've made a historic investment in housing.

And that's beside Seattle Social Housing Developer.

I'm also incredibly, it means a lot to me that we are funding our senior centers, that we are funding our food and meal providers, that we have an additional safe lot in here and that council member Salk is taking a citywide because of your district funding request line item, we're able to make improvements for everyday Seattleites to our transportation citywide.

These are just some of the things as we just went through the entire proposal, this budget, this chair's package does a lot.

This is also the third year of our budget reform work.

and through three years, we still have more work to do.

And through those three years, we have taken a 280 plus structural budget deficit where we were only financial planning for two years in advance once at the end of the biennium, only one year in advance.

And now due to council action over the last number of years, we are financially planning four years out.

Again, I don't need an executive order or a law to tell me the right thing to do.

which is to balance four years out.

We're balancing four years out.

We're continuing to reduce the structural budget deficit.

Even though we took some of the hardest decisions a few years ago when we had to lay off many, many more employees, we had to make that hard decision again this year.

So I say that this structural reform has not been easy.

but it has been necessary because we don't have the building growth that we were experiencing in the 20 teens.

We also need to get our construction back up and running because right now to have a fiscally, to have fiscal sustainability and to reduce the structural budget deficit, the number one answer is getting our city building again.

that's it.

We have to get our city building or our downtown core activated more because that's what's holding us back right now.

We can do all the progressive taxes.

We can do all of the not progressive taxes.

We can get reform from the state, but what ultimately will get us out of our structural pinch is getting our economy off the flatline and rocking and rolling again.

And the number, the easiest way to do that is to get our construction projects going again.

Colleagues, that's all I have to share at this time.

Any final questions?

We have a public hearing tomorrow, virtual at 1 p.m., in person at 5. and then we have amendment deadline at noon on Monday.

That is production deadline, not concept deadline.

The agenda for the November 13th meeting will be posted on November 11th.

We'll take up the November 13th meeting.

If we can get all of our work done, we will not have to come back on November 16th.

If we don't get all of our voting done on the 13th, we will come back on the 16th.

We will have a few days of quality control, quality assurance.

We will meet on Thursday, November 19th for the final committee vote and then we will vote the budget into law on November 20th.

To maintain this schedule, we cannot have any new amendments of any kind, walk-on, proposed, self-written, nothing.

We cannot have any new amendments after next Monday at the noon deadline.

This does conclude the Wednesday, November 4th, 2026 Select Budget Committee meeting.

Our next meeting is tomorrow at 1 p.m.

Thank you for attending.

The last thing I'll say is what a great night last night, hail Texas.

If there's no further business, we will be adjourned.

Hearing no further business, we are adjourned.

Thank you for your time.