Seattle City Council Public Safety & Human Services Committee 3/23/21

The March 23rd, 2021 meeting of the Public Safety and Human Services Committee will come to order.

It is 9.32 a.m.

I'm Lisa Herbold, chair of the committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Here.

Council Member Lewis?

Present.

Council Member Morales?

Here.

Council Member Sawant?

Present.

Council Member Herbold?

Here.

Five present.

Thank you so much.

So for today on our agenda, we'll first have a presentation from the Office of Emergency Management on their 2020 report and we'll discuss Council Bill 1199 81 again and consider a substitute version of that bill.

Before we get started, I would like to recognize that yesterday the council began its Monday morning meeting with recognition of our collective sadness and anger over last week's mass shooting in Atlanta, a hate crime where eight souls lost their lives, six of them Asian American women.

A, we start our meeting with yet another recognition of our collective sadness and anger over yesterday's senseless mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado, that left eight people dead, including police officer Eric Talley, a father of seven.

Gun violence is a scourge in the United States, particularly in the face of so many sensible policy options available to policy makers.

These shootings are absolutely heartbreaking and we grieve with the people of Boulder.

We'll now approve our agenda for the committee meeting.

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

Hearing no objection, today's agenda is adopted.

And at this time, we will transition into public comment.

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

Each speaker will be given one and a half minutes to speak.

Normally, it would be two, but because we have, I think, 51 people signed up, we are limiting the individual speakers to one and a half minutes.

I will call on each speaker by name and in the order in which you've registered on the Council's website.

If you haven't registered to speak but would like to, you can sign up before the end of the public hearing by going to the Council's website.

We'll try to get you in.

The link for public comment is listed on today's agenda.

Once I call a speaker's name, you will hear a prompt.

And once you've heard that prompt, you need to press star six to unmute yourself.

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

Speakers will hear a chime when 10 seconds are left of the allotted time.

And once the speaker hears the chime, we ask that you begin to wrap up your public comments.

If speakers do not end their comments at the end of the allotted time provided, the speaker's mic will be muted after 10 seconds to allow us to hear from the next speaker.

Once you've completed your public comment, please disconnect from the line.

And if you plan to continue following the meeting, please do so, but do so via the Seattle channel or the listening options that are listed on the agenda.

Again, there are 51 people signed up for public comment this morning.

in order to allow as many speakers as possible.

If there are no objections, I will amend the agenda to allow an additional 20 minutes of speaking for public comment.

We've amended the agenda to allow for an additional 30 minutes of public comment in addition to the 20 that are listed on the agenda.

And so with that, we will move into public comment.

And the first speaker who has signed up is Howard Gale, and Howard Gale will be followed by Kaylee Condit.

Howard, good morning.

Good morning.

Howard Gale, District 7, commenting on continuing police abuse and failed accountability.

The pandemic has afforded me the opportunity to virtually sit in on the meetings of police community oversight boards in other cities.

In Nashville, I have attended meetings which are notable in that both the main board meetings as well as work group meetings are all streamed live and preserved for later viewing in complete contradistinction to our community police commission, which preserves very few meetings online.

and intentionally blocks public access to workgroup meetings.

Nashville, San Diego, Oakland, San Francisco, Long Beach, California, Sonoma County, California, Newark, Portland, Oregon, Columbus, Salt Lake City, Atlanta, Honolulu, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh.

These are 14 of many cities that have recently established robust police accountability built on a foundation of 100% civilian investigation, policy development, and discipline.

Almost all of these systems have come about in the last few months via citizen initiative, because politicians in these places found it far easier to virtue-signal than to act with virtue.

As we approach the one-year mark post-George Floyd, it is abundantly apparent that the council will not deliver on its promises of 50 percent or any significant level of defunding, or on its promises to limit the weapons used by the SPD to abuse us.

given the failure of these promises and given the reality that the complete lack of police accountability will guarantee more death and abuse at the hands of the SPD in coming months, does Seattle not at least deserve what is a hundred percent achievable by you, full civilian control of police oversight, moving beyond police investigating police and a fair

Thank you, Howard.

Our next speaker is Kaylee Condit, followed by Mayor Khanna.

Kaylee?

Hi, my name is Kaylee Condit, and I'm a District 4 resident.

I'm also a faculty member at the University of Washington.

I'm calling because I want to encourage City Council to pass the original version of CB 119981 to reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 police budget by the full $5.4 million that was overspent in 2020 by the police department.

I believe these funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting.

Last year, City Council made a commitment to shift resources from SPD to Community Solutions.

Part of this commitment was Resolution 31962, which said City Council would not grant SPD any more funding to cover excess overtime.

SPD defied this resolution by overspending the overtime and asking City Council for more money, which City Council granted.

I believe City Council needs to honor its commitment to hold SPD accountable.

This means reducing their 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transferring the funds to participatory budgeting.

We need police budget accountability now.

Anything less than $5.4 million or going anywhere other than participatory budgeting would betray that commitment.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Samir Khanna will be followed by Peter Condit.

Hi, my name is Shamir Tan.

I'm a District 7 resident, also an employee at Amazon.

Thank you for the time.

I'm also calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of 119981 and reduce the SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that it overspent in 2020. These funds should be allocated to purchase supported budgeting.

Personally, it's very disappointing that we're even talking about going back on this commitment.

Nothing has changed since the ACLU, internal auditors and investigations have indicated equity overspending, significant gaps in internal controls and fraud.

But it honestly does not even come close to the frustration that we're going back on part of the commitment we made to BIPOC leaders, on the ground organizations and communities.

I also wanted to note that the Asian community leaders yesterday at an event for remembrance for the lives lost last week reiterated the absolute need for SPD defund.

City Council needs to honor its commitment to the people of Seattle and hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.5 million and transfer these funds to participatory budgeting.

Anything less would betray that commitment.

It would also betray the true needs of our community.

Please, I'm asking city council to show leadership here, this is our chance, and help build back trust from our community.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Peter Condit will be followed by Walker Thomas.

Peter?

Hello, my name is Peter Condit.

I use he, him pronouns, and I'm a small business owner, scientist, and abolitionist living in District 4. We are in a world where facts matter.

Speaking the truth matters.

Expressing intent matters.

If you intend to hold SPD accountable to its overtime budget, which you expressed in Resolution 31962, you must then hold SPD accountable to its overtime budget.

Today is the day that you must provide budget accountability.

If SPD does not respect the budget you set for them, how will you expect them to respect any of the other asks you have made of them?

There is no police accountability without budget accountability.

pass the original version of CB 119981, and reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that it overspent in 2020. Send those funds to participatory budgeting, where they can be immediately used to hire 35 to 40 community members from populations most likely to be harmed by police violence.

The full-time, fully compensated participation of such individuals on the PB steering committee and work groups will provide accountability for the program's success as a true alternative to policing and as an effective structure for providing public safety that serves everyone.

Defund SPD.

There's no police accountability without budget accountability.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Walker Thomas followed by BJ Last.

Walker?

Hello, my name is Walker Thomas.

I'm from the 3rd district.

I work in a homeless shelter.

In fact, I'm out of homeless shelter right now.

I stepped out to call y'all.

It is embarrassing and ridiculous that we have to call you to make you keep your promises.

Of course, we need to defund the police by 5.4 million.

They should not get money for overtime to abuse and hurt protesters.

Again, I work at a homeless shelter.

We don't have money for overtime.

We are so strapped for money.

And to work right now, everyone is at their wit's end.

We just don't have enough resources.

And the reason we don't have enough resources is because y'all will not take the resources, I think, from the most useless unit in our city, which is the SPD.

You need to show them you are serious, that they are under civilian control.

They cannot just do whatever they want, including they cannot just spend overtime and just repay it forever.

a completely ridiculous system.

You need to keep your promises.

All of y'all made very serious promises last summer when it was popular to do so, but now you need to actually prove it.

And you prove it by defunding the FPP, and you start by taking $5.4 million a hit without having it.

and you put that money in the participatory budget.

Budgeting so the community can actually spend it.

Again, we need this money for real things.

We need it for homeless people.

We need it for our schools.

We need it to make the city better.

The SPD does not need it.

Get serious to fund them.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is BJ Last followed by Laura Low Bernstein.

Hello, my name is BJ Last.

I'm a Ballard resident and a small business owner.

I'm calling to ask council to pass the original CB 119981 without amendment and lower SPD's 2021 budget by the full 5.4 million that SPD overspent by in 2020. These funds need to go to participatory budgeting.

Lowering SPD's 2021 budget by a smaller amount would be a failure to hold SPD accountable.

The substitute bill makes a mockery of accountability by actually increasing SPD's spending authority.

Section 2 removes less than $3 million from SPD, Section 3 immediately gives some of that money back to SPD, and Section 5 amends the budget proviso to effectively grant SPD an additional $5 million of spending authority that it did not previously have.

I can see why Councilmember Herbold kept the bill from the public until last night.

If the consent decree allows SPD to dodge accountability for its overspending and constantly have its budget increase, why will SPD ever come into compliance with the consent decree?

And if City Council refuses to hold SPD accountable for its overspending despite Resolution 31962, why should anyone ever expect City Council to hold SPD accountable for anything?

Pass the original CB 119981 without amendment.

If we don't have budget accountability, we don't have any accountability.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Laura Lowe Bernstein followed by Jacob Scheer.

Laura?

Hello everybody.

I'm Laura Lowe.

I'm a Northwest Queen Anne resident and renter but I'm calling today on behalf of Share the City's Action Fund.

We have members in our community from every council district and many of them are not able to call in and so I represent their voices as well.

We asked council for a yes vote on 11981. We need true accountability for SPD spending.

Without a yes vote Seattle City Council you are stepping back from assurances made to community members.

Defunding SPD by at least 50 percent isn't a slogan it's a policy proposal.

A yes vote gets us divestment from public safety that is making people feel less safe.

We need investments in creating a path to real community safety.

A Black-designed, Black-led, well-funded participatory budgeting process is a step we support towards a better Seattle future.

Please take the promises that you've made to so many Seattle residents and turn them into action.

Please vote yes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jacob Shear followed by Aaron Mandel.

Thank you.

Hi.

My name is Jacob Shear.

I'm an organizer for Real Change.

I'm calling today on behalf of Real Change's advocacy team to stand with our community in demanding that all city council members pass the original version of Council Bill 119981 and make good on their promise to reduce the Seattle Police Department's budget by the $5.4 million that SPD overspent in 2020. These funds should be reallocated to participatory budgeting through community organizations who, unlike the SPD, do work that actually benefits our communities.

SPD's overspending can be traced directly to their handling of the uprising for black lives this past summer, where we saw a brutal, militarized police response to Seattle residents demanding justice for racist state violence against communities of color.

SPD's overtime budget was used to target protesters with tear gas, pepper spray, and rubber bullets.

This is a shameful use of public money, and we demand that city council divest from upholding these racist, violent, and harmful practices.

To reduce SBD's budget by anything less than the original 5.4 commitment from every single council member will send a direct message to SBD that there will continue to be no consequences for the reprehensible actions.

Each of you made a commitment to reduce SBD's 2021 budget by no less than 5.4 million and we expect each of you to make good on this commitment.

Reallocating these funds to participatory budgeting will show Seattle that you are committed to true public safety where the needs of the community is most impacted by disinvestment and policing are centered.

Please pass the original CB 119981 without amendment.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Aaron Mandel followed by Jess Wallach.

Aaron?

Hi.

My name is Aaron Mandel.

I'm a lifelong D6 resident and I'm calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of CB 119981. and reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full 5.4 million that SPD overspent in 2020. These funds need to be allocated to participatory budgeting.

As I've heard everyone else say, last year, City Council made a commitment to shift resources from SPD to Community Solutions.

And part of this commitment was Resolution 31962, which stated City Council would not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess overtime.

City Council needs to honor its commitments to the people of Seattle and hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transferring the funds to participatory budgeting.

We need police budget accountability now, and anything less than $5.4 million or going anywhere else than participatory budgeting would betray that commitment and the community.

who heard the commitment of all of the city council members to do this.

And the 5.4 million, as I recall, was all for overtime, which was so much time of police brutalizing protesters during the uprising this summer.

And this money needs to go to participatory budgeting.

Thanks.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Jess Wallach, followed by D'Andra Doakes.

Jess?

We have Jess with us.

Remember to press star six.

Thank you Alex.

Hello.

There we go.

Thank you.

Thanks for your patience and good morning council.

My name is Jess Wallach and I'm a campaign co-director with 350 Seattle.

We build grassroots power for climate justice in Seattle's Green New Deal and we know that a healthy climate future starts with taking care of people now.

which looks like divesting from harms like pollution and militarized policing, and investing in what helps our communities survive and thrive.

That's why we supported council's commitment this fall to not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess over time, and to instead shift this funding to black-led participatory budgeting and community-led public safety solutions.

That's why I'm calling in today to urge you to uphold this commitment and pass Council Bill 119981 without amendment, SPD should be held accountable to its budget, like any other city department.

This is especially true given SPD has a history of overtime fraud, and so continuing to facilitate growth in its overtime budget is just fiscally irresponsible.

After police brutalized protesters last year, including folks I love, holding them accountable for this overtime spending that pays for this is the bare minimum.

Taking 5.4 million out of SPD's 2021 budget shows SPD that council is serious about police budget accountability.

And shifting this money to participatory budgeting shows Seattle residents that council is serious about creating true public safety, where the needs of communities most impacted by divestment and policing are centered.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is DeAndre Doak, followed by Jana Butler.

Thank you.

DeAndre Doak, District 6 in the Seattle Police Budget.

You're doing this backwards.

I've worked in public safety for the better part of a decade, and one of the odd things about it is you do try to create a world in which you are no longer needed.

I would love to live in a world where the police are needed, but that is not the Seattle of today.

You took it upon yourselves to own Seattle's crippling over-reliance on law enforcement and offer an alternative.

In the words of Councilmember Gonzalez, community-supported public safety centered on harm reduction.

If there's no rehabilitation program for the person injecting heroin in the alcove of my business to go to, then I don't see harm reduction.

Someone having a behavioral crisis episode due to a mental illness certainly prompts a 911 call in the city.

But when the fire department won't go, paramedics won't go, and instead the police are forced to go into a non-law enforcement scenario expected to address a non-criminal issue.

The only people responding to these calls are the people you are driving away with your budget cuts, your policies, and your rhetoric, and your unwillingness to exit the echo chamber of your council.

You are not replacing them.

You are hurting the very communities you are trying to help.

I hear calls for fair, non-biased policing, anti-racist policies, equity, empathy, transparency, and justice, not no police.

I hope you were listening to Deputy Mayor Washington last week.

When I call 911, I expect someone to show up, and I expect to be treated with respect, integrity, and courtesy.

Every person should have that very realistic expectation.

I am simply asking you to consider finding a solution first, not last.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Jana Butler, followed by Eric Green.

Good morning.

This is Jana Butler.

Thank you for your time today.

I represent the UW Parent Safety Alliance, and UW students, our sons and daughters, they face unsafe campus and off-campus streets on a daily basis.

They have been victims of rape, house break-ins, theft, battery, stalking, harassment, And much more.

And this happens daily, guys.

And these crimes are rising.

911 response rates are terrible.

In fact, often students call 911 and no one appears.

The Pan-Hellenic Association and the UW President and Board of Regents all agree that there are safety issues.

And the safety issues seem to be growing steadily worse.

Today you decide on further cuts to the Seattle Police Department to the tune of $5.4 million.

We have already lost over 200 officers.

There are open positions all over the city for crime investigators.

SPD and the mayor have already warned of the dire impact on public safety should these cuts be enacted.

SPD is at a staffing crisis.

As an alliance, we do not support this defunding initiative.

In fact, we believe that defunding the police is what has gotten us to the extraordinarily egregious public safety position that UW students and the Seattle community face today.

We firmly believe that the defunding initiative will result in furthering the current public safety crisis and is tantamount to malpractice.

There are not enough resources as it is to properly patrol and...

Thank you, Diana.

Please do send in your comments so we could receive the full intent of your message.

The next speaker is Kirk Green and Kirk will be followed by on again.

Kirk?

Kirk, if you could hit star six.

Thank you.

Yes.

Okay.

This is Kirk Green.

I'm a resident in District 7 and part of what I think is a silent majority of downtown residents who disagree with defunding the police.

There was a downtown Seattle Association study done that indicated 60% of Seattle residents, not just downtown residents, disagree with defunding the police.

I work and live downtown.

I'm part of a growing number of downtown residents and business owners who are sick and tired of watching our great city decline.

We pay taxes, we vote, we work hard to make this a great city.

We used to walk the city day and night without worry.

Now everybody's fearful of even walking downtown.

We watch protests, marches, followed by vandalism, theft, and chaos.

Store windows are boarded up, shops are closed, where owners have simply thrown in the towel.

We have to walk over homeless sleeping at our front doors.

We watch people urinate and defecate on the sidewalks.

We see drug deals openly go down across the street.

And now you want to defund the police.

Well, we had a black woman mayor who you forced out, and you're making a mockery of the work that police do because you release everybody that gets arrested.

No wonder the police have a hard time.

The Nordstrom windows were broken again by a man who had 78 prior arrests.

So we're asking you to step up, fund the police, and give them the support they need.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is John Gin, followed by Gedney Barclay.

John?

Hello.

My name is John Gin, a resident of Seattle since 1980. I believe our city is at a critical crossroad regarding public safety.

I'm stating my opposition to further cuts in addition to the $46 million in the SPD budget in 2021. The data in the January 6th memo from the budget manager showed several disturbing trends.

First, there was a significant increase in the departure of officers and associated separation costs.

Other impacts included diversion of staff, delayed at call handling and others.

The budget memo outlined next steps regarding recommends reducing or eliminating those cuts with several uses for the funds.

The recommendations seem prudent and thoughtful.

However, this proposed ordinance does not acknowledge any of the recommendations or the consequences to public safety.

I also believe the council is pursuing an approach that is at odds with moving towards the goals that I and hopefully most of Seattle residents share.

I acknowledge the need for police reform, including additional training, which may actually be negatively impacted by budget restrictions reduction.

With a few notable exceptions, I trust that most officers take to heart the motto to serve and protect, and we need to support those efforts.

I believe that now is the time for all parties to sit together with humility, reason, empathy, and vision, and work for positive methods to resolve the very real and immediate challenges facing our city.

Thank you.

Gedney Barclay will be followed by Shawn Glaze.

Gedney?

Hi, everyone.

My name is Gedney Barclay, and I'm a resident of Vashon, Washington, but I work on Capitol Hill.

I'm joining many others in calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of CD 119981 and reduce the SPD's budget by the full $5.4 million.

SPD overspent that $5.4 million to brutalize peaceful protesters.

Our city cannot literally reward this behavior with more funding, and we have to do the opposite and hold them accountable for spending resources against the interests of people.

To a point, I am sympathetic to my fellow speakers who are concerned about our city, but my concerns are slightly different.

We need to stop applying violent force to community issues whose root causes include a lack of affordable housing, mental health resources, living wage work, environmental reforms, and a strong social safety net.

Seattle's communities are strong, they are vibrant, and they know what they need.

That's why the participatory budget component is so important.

People don't need tear gas on peaceful protesters marching for Black lives.

So I'm asking the council to show your faith in the people, show your support for communities of color, and keep your commitment to the city.

Invest in your communities and not a local arms race, and transfer the full $5.4 million from the SPD to participatory budgeting.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Sean Glaze will be followed by Karen Palmquist.

Hello, this is Sean Glaze, District 2, Black, Queer, Non-Binary, one of the co-leads to the Black Millions Research Project.

This is straightforward.

I'm calling for you to follow through in your commitment to support the original CB 119981 and to make sure you encourage your fellow council members to do the same.

We can talk about budget accountability, and that SPD isn't expecting you to follow through on your commitment to black community.

We can talk about your commitment to protesters, to the city overpaid police to brutalize.

And we can talk about community that has been organizing for decades for this effort.

And I'm really hoping that your commitment to black community lasts longer than half a budget cycle.

The research that we did literally talked to thousands of directly impacted community members.

It was clear.

You must follow through on your commitments to defend the systems that harm us and to invest that money into participatory budgeting, investing it in community expertise so that we can finally start to undo the harm done, and to pay communities to do the work that must be done because we know communities won't waver in the face of political expediency.

If you care about Black lives, Black leadership, and Black priorities, you'll listen to the thousands of people that we talk to, as well as people who are in the larger Seattle community, about how Seattle needs to move.

You'll listen to Black people, and that means following through on your commitments to us and supporting the original CB 119981. Thank you.

Our next speaker is Karen Palmquist, followed by Caleb Kearnham.

Hi, this is Karen Palmquist.

I am a downtown resident, District 7, of 14 years.

I've lived in Seattle my entire 61 years.

I am 100% for police accountability.

I am 100% against the defunding of our police.

As said, I've lived downtown for 14 years.

My husband and I can no longer run.

I live on 4th Avenue.

I work on 1st Avenue.

I have to have my husband walk me to work and from work each day.

As you've heard from others, I've watched several businesses close downtown, windows boarded up.

It's dangerous.

It's awful.

When we run now, we run through the Amazon buildings knowing that there's going to be security and that we won't step on needles.

Three or four weeks ago, walking home from work, we were accosted by a man with his pants down and a sharp object in his hand.

We turned right to go down 3rd Avenue, hitting 3rd and Stewart.

We were again accosted by someone else.

My son lives in West Seattle.

He has rampant drug dealing and prostitution going on in his condo building.

They have called the police several times.

While the police have come, they've made it clear they are not able to deal with the situation based on the number of calls they are getting.

My niece recently moved to Ballard.

She's new to the city.

We had to work with her how to walk.

so that she wouldn't get accosted.

It's dangerous, it's unsafe, and we absolutely should not be defunding our police.

We have to get the city...

Thank you.

The next speaker is Caleb Kearnham, followed by Flora Wright.

Caleb?

Hello, I'm Caleb Kearnham, a UW student at UW Seattle.

Despite being involved in my community, I just wanted to say never heard of the UW Parent Safety Alliance, nor do I agree with their analysis.

In the U District, most of our safety concerns come from the houselessness crisis, which police are not the solution to.

All they do, spending overtime on this, is sweep camps from point A to point B, C, rather than funding shelters or solving the problem.

So, I support CB 119981 to transfer 5.4 million out of SPD into participatory budgeting, and I do not support a watered-down version of this bill.

This $5.4 million is nothing in the face of their total overtime spend.

Look, Seattle is hooked on its police budget.

We are addicted to increasing it year over year using whatever flimsy, repetitive evidence SPD comes up with and calls to present.

No organization in their right mind would come on to a call like this and say, yeah, you can decrease our budget.

No, they will say whatever they want and need to make it look like every penny of these $5.14 million are justified.

We are addicted to increasing the budget even when we are not even sure that it'll solve our problems.

So let's allocate those funds to participatory budget so that we as a community can get together and figure out how to solve these crises that have been facing our community.

Thank you.

Flora Wright will be followed by Alice Marabe.

Flora?

Hello, I'm Flora Wright, a resident of District 3. I'm calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of CB-1199-81 to reduce SPD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that they overspent on overtime in 2020, brutalizing protesters all summer and into the fall.

These funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting.

Last year, you promised you would take the same $5.4 million out of SPD's 2021 budget to hold them accountable.

If you back down now and vote for Councilmember Herbold's substitute version that funds everything SPD has asked for, it would be a slap in the face to the over 150 organizations that have fought for participatory budgeting, including Black Brilliance Research Project, who has worked endlessly to make it a reality in Seattle.

This comes after Council Member Herbold referred to cutting SPD's 2021 budget to offset overtime, quote, the best way I can think of, unquote, to hold SPD accountable for its overrun.

Honor your commitment to your constituents and pass Council Bill 119981 with no amendments.

Reducing SPD's 2021 budget any less than $5.4 million and transferring the funds anywhere other than participatory budgeting would betray your promise.

Thank you.

Thank you.

The next speaker is Alice Marabe, followed by Trevona Thompson-Wiley.

Alice?

Hi.

Good morning.

My name is Alice Marabe.

I'm a resident of District 2. I am calling also to support CB119981, the original version that grants the full $5.4 million to participatory budgeting.

Councilmember Herbold, you highlighted in yesterday's council meeting that SPD's request of money has nothing to do with their staffing shortage.

And you pointed out that the 2021 SPA staffing and hiring plan has always been fully funded since November.

So I'm hearing a lot of people who are concerned about defunding the police and what that means for their community, but actually this money literally would not resolve that situation.

And it's actually about budget accountability.

The situation is really clear cut.

SPD had a budget.

They decided to overspend it.

Council made a commitment to hold them responsible for that overspending and need to stand by it.

If you don't hold them accountable, this will keep happening every year.

SDB's overspending was reckless and wakeful, but it's especially sobering to consider how much their actual $21 million original budget already was compared to other city departments.

That's larger than the whole budget for the Department of Neighborhoods, larger than the budget for the Office of Arts and Culture, 1.8 times the budget of the Office of Economic Development, and nearly three times the budget of the Office of Civil Rights.

The list goes on.

That's just talking about SDB's budget for overtime alone, which is less than 10% of their total budget.

Our budget represents our values and priorities

like we we lost a little bit here.

You still with us.

Thank you.

Hi I'm Trayvonna a 29-year-old black woman from Seattle.

I'm here as a voice of those in black community wanting true change.

It is time Seattle invest in community needs and harm reduction programs.

I'm calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of CD 119981 and reduce the Seattle Police Department's budget by the full $5.4 million that STD overspent in 2020. Those funds need to be reallocated to community needs.

Last year, City Council made a commitment to shift resources from STD community solutions.

Part of the commitment was Resolution 31962, which stated City Council would not grant STD additional funding to cover excess overtime.

STD defied this resolution by overspending and overtime and asking City Council for more money, which City Council granted.

City Council needs to honor its commitments to the people of Seattle and hold STD accountable by reducing STD's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million and transfer that into participatory budgeting and anything less than $5.4 million.

or going anywhere other than that is a betrayal of participatory budgeting would betray, again, that commitment.

Invest in community needs and harm reduction programs.

And I yield the rest of my time.

Thank you, Tavana.

Next is Deanna Glaze, followed by Quan Hua Liu.

I'm Deanna Glaze from District 2. Reform is simply a code word for more money to the unaccountable institution of police.

Last year, a supermajority of city council agreed with community's demand to defund police by at least 50%.

We used this supermajority to overturn Mayor Durkin's veto in order to fund the Black-led research program that led to the participatory budgeting process that CB 119981 is funding.

the original bill to invest $5.4 million into participatory budgeting for true community safety.

Thank you.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

The next speaker is showing as not present, but I'm going to make a call for Quan Wah Liu, and following Quan Wah is Harriet Walden.

Let's move on to Reverend Harriet Walden, and I will watch to see if Quan Wah shows up as present later on in the public comment.

Reverend Walden.

Reverend Walden, if you could hit star six, please.

Good morning.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak.

And I'd just like to say I'm black and I was never surveyed by anyone.

And Mother's Post accountability is asking you to stop the drastic police cuts that violate the city charter and the constitution.

Every council member took the oath to protect the city of Seattle, protect the citizens by enhancing health, safety, environment, and the general welfare.

And also that each sector should have adequate police protection.

We've lost over 200 police officers here.

A lot of the special units have had to be disbanded.

And it's no follow-up for domestic violence, narcotics, or any of the other traffic cases that's out there.

But more overly, what we actually see what's missing here is no one is talking about the deflation of crime, and also all the mothers who are crying because their children were killed this year.

Last year, 21 people were killed in Seattle, and it's no movement to try to solve any of those crimes.

So you took an oath to protect the city, number one, And number two, we actually do agree with the judge.

And the judge has already warned the city that you're still under the consent decree.

I think a lot of this could have been avoided if we could have just said in the beginning that some of the things that the community want can be done now and some of the things can't be done because everything has to go back and to be signed off by the judge.

And a lot of the council members knew that Seattle was still under the consent decree.

Thank you, Reverend Walden.

Our next speaker that we have signed up here is Penny O'Grady.

And after Penny O'Grady.

Good morning, everyone.

We have Maine Delaney.

Thank you.

Good morning, everyone.

City Council, Council Member Herbold.

My name is Penny O'Grady, living in District 6 for 30 years.

I took you at your word.

When City Council unanimously passed Resolution 31962 in December, you made a promise to the people of Seattle.

A resolution means that a course of action is decided upon firmly.

Your resolution reflects that you were prepared for the Seattle Police Department to be over budget.

They were.

The police require firm guardrails.

It's the best way I can think of to hold them accountable.

It's how we hold the line.

Keep your word and pass the original CB 119981. Reduce the SPD's 2021 budget by the full 5.4 million that it overspent in 2020. Investing it in participatory budgeting will address the problems in our city that some of today's callers have described.

The police budget has increased and it hasn't helped.

We need a better solution, which is participatory budgeting.

What other city department is given a path to spend without limit and without consequence?

Police accountability means accountability in every matter.

Hold the police accountable for all their actions.

Hold them accountable for overspending their budget, deny SPD special privileges.

How does the Seattle Police Department establish trust with the community?

If there is any hope, it must begin with honoring agreements.

When you say that city council will not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess overtime, then it's on city council to hold a firm line with

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Mari Delaney, followed by Kenneth Dribble.

Mari?

Hello.

My name is Mari Delaney.

I'm in District 3, and I am calling in support of defunding SPD by 100%.

Nothing else is acceptable.

I yield my time.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Janet Zirbel, followed by Grace Christ.

Janet?

Remember to press star six, Janet.

Hello.

Hello.

My name's Janet Serban.

I live in District 4. I'm a lifelong resident of Seattle.

I'm appalled at the direction this city has taken.

I am not for defending the police.

I am 100 percent for accountability.

I work downtown.

I should not have to walk downtown.

Watch a mentally ill person screaming and shooting up heroin on my way to work.

Defunding the police is not going to help this situation.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Grace Christ, followed by Emma Lower.

Grace?

Grace, if you could hit star six, please.

Grace, you're still showing as mute.

I think pushing star six will help.

We might need to come back to Grace.

All right, let's hear from Melora then.

Good morning Council.

My name is Emma Lauer and I'm calling in from District 1 as a longtime resident of Seattle.

I believe that passing the original version of CD 119981 is an opportunity to lead Seattle in transferring funds to community-led safety programs.

We know SPD has been fully smudged since November and has $7.7 million in additional savings from 2020. We also know that 9-1-1 response times in 2020 are continuous with trends over the past two decades.

Everyone calling in today is asking for the same basic principles.

Safe communities and livable neighborhoods for working playing and raising their families.

That's what we're discussing.

Building out sustainable well-researched community response systems will take time but 5.4 million dollars will not significantly change SPU capacity.

These funds will be much better spent addressing Seattle's housing, income, and racial inequity crises that are making people unsafe.

This vote is a step forward that we need now.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Before we move on to the next speaker that has signed up, I want to see if we can get Grace Christ on the line.

She's still showing up at the present.

Grace, I see you're with us.

Can you hit star six?

All right.

Otherwise, we're going to have to move on to William Justin, followed by Kat Ferguson-Mahan.

William?

William, can you?

There you go.

Yes, this is William Justin.

I live in downtown by the Pike Place Market.

I've lived downtown since 1977 in Pioneer Square and the Market neighborhood.

That's 44 years.

The last three years, I've experienced a dramatic loss in public safety.

And our neighborhood is just a disaster.

For true community safety, you don't get that by reducing police resources.

you reform the police department, you give them the resources that they need.

Passing this council bill will be just going the wrong direction.

We should be increasing capacity for the police department rather than reducing it, but making reform within the department, a department that has proper resources.

We should also be dealing with the city and county prosecutors to take criminals off the streets.

Right now, they roam free on the streets.

My wife and I are not safe in our neighborhood, and as taxpayers, this is not what we should be paying for.

Please vote no on this council bill and consider a better way to reform the police department by giving it the proper resources, but the proper reform education and discipline that is also needed.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Kat Ferguson-Mahon, followed by Calico Goodrich.

Hi, good morning, council members.

My name is Kat LaTay.

She, her pronouns.

I'm a District 1 resident and a member of the South Park community and part of Chair Herbold's district, a community that is under-resourced and over-policed.

But we have great assets that we need to tap through this process.

I'm calling to ask City Council to pass the original version of CB 119981 to reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that SPD overspent in 2020. These funds should be allocated to participatory budgeting and placing decision-making in the community most impacted by state-fiction violence.

We need true public safety, and public safety is not created by police and prison systems, but defined by equitable public health, housing, and employment.

Remember, defunding is not the end goal.

It is a strategy toward a reimagined world Last year, City Council made a commitment to shift resources from SPD to Community Solutions, and part of this commitment was Resolution 31962, which stated City Council would not grant SPD additional funding to cover excess overtime.

SPD defied this resolution by overspending on overtime and asking City Council for more money, which City Council granted.

City Council needs to honor its commitment to the people of Seattle and hold SPD accountable by reducing SPD's 2021 budget by the full 5.4 million.

We need police budget accountability now and keep our commitment to our black and brown communities and invest in.

Thank you, Kat.

Our next speaker is Calico Goodrich followed by Deborah Cohen.

Calico.

Good morning, City Council members.

My name is Calico Goodrich and I'm a resident of District 6. I'm asking the City Council to pass CB 119981 without amendments and dedicate the full $5.4 million to participatory budgeting process, as you promised last year.

The SPD has proven over and over again that they do not provide any kind of meaningful public safety.

True public safety comes from communities having the resources to address their problems in a safe, effective, and culturally meaningful way.

We need access to mental health care, safe housing, child care, and education, not more cops.

The Black Billions Project has more than proved their case.

They have provided copious pages of evidence and explanations.

To ignore this well-founded research and then reward SPD's egregious abuse of overtime is a complete betrayal.

Please have the courage to reject the system that is not working, comfortingly familiar though it may be.

This system maims and murders people.

It's racist to its core and it has been for hundreds of years.

Keep your word.

Vote to invest in true public safety, defined, designed, and implemented by people who are most impacted by the violence in this country.

Cass CB 119981, unamended.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Deborah Cohen, followed by Marcus Pocket.

Remember to hit star six.

Deborah, are you there with us?

Can you hit star six, please?

There you go.

Deborah Bogan-Cohen, District 7. I represent a population you choose to forget.

I'm an 84-year-old woman, live downtown, pay my taxes and obey all the laws.

I'm afraid to walk outside my apartment.

This is not due to COVID-19 or the riots of last summer.

It is because there is no police presence downtown.

I do not believe I will ever again go to an evening lecture at the Seattle Art Museum or to a concert at Benaroya Hall.

I avoid Third Avenue, thus making Walgreens off limits.

It is too risky to go to my bank.

My son occasionally takes me to an ATM that is far from downtown.

I am pretty much a prisoner in my apartment.

This has all happened on your watch.

You have a responsibility towards voters like me.

The answer is not to cut the police budget.

It is your responsibility to put a robust police presence on downtown's streets.

Thank you.

Our next speaker is Marcus Puckett.

Marcus?

Hi, my name is Marcus Puckett.

I live in District 3. Heard some weird things brought up.

Solutions exist but can't get funding was brought up by somebody who claimed to work in the public safety sector.

There are plenty of solutions that exist.

They can't get funding because the police like all of their funding.

Without defunding the police, we can't adequately address the issues that everybody's complaining about in here.

Somebody brought up that defunding the police has led to these problems.

We haven't defunded the police ever in the city, so I don't know what you're talking about.

I mean, this all really comes down to, do you think that the Seattle Police Department owns you?

Or do you care about what your constituents want?

So that's really what it comes down to.

The Seattle Police Department recklessly abuses their overtime policies.

There's a lot of evidence.

And if this is what y'all care about, why are you bothering being city council members?

I yield my time.

Thank you.

And I think we have time for one more speaker.

I do apologize that I see we do have some other folks that are signed up and present.

A number of people are not present, but we did extend time significantly today.

I appreciate everybody being here.

We will end with Madison Flayne Bowden.

Madison.

Hi, can you hear me?

Yes.

Good morning, public safety and Human Services Committee.

My name is Madison and I'm a resident of District 5 and a member of the Seattle Democratic Socialists of America.

I want to add a content warning to my comment as I will be discussing police violence and murder.

I urge the council to pass the original version of the budgetary bill without the amendments and to defund SPD by the full $5.4 million that they overspent in 2020. A few weeks ago on the anniversary of the murder of Breonna Taylor by police, dozens of SPD bike cops trailed the protest along Alaska Way.

They rode on the same street where not weeks before an SPD officer pulled up with a rifle on a person experiencing a mental crisis and murdered them within seconds of their arrival.

We absolutely cannot continue to reward this abhorrent behavior by the police department by approving the overtime budget for them.

What does it say to Seattle minority groups when the city continues to consider this behavior acceptable enough for further funding?

As a trans woman, I do not feel safe when SPD officers are around.

I feel fear for my personal safety.

This fear would be alleviated if I knew our city was working to ensure the accountability of the police department.

I urge you to vote to pass CB 119981, unamended, to reduce the Seattle Police Department's 2021 budget by the full $5.4 million that it overspent in 2020. Thank you.

Thank you.

And with that, we will conclude public comment.

Again, thank you, everybody, for joining us today.

I'm sorry we weren't able to get to all speakers.

This committee discussion and possible action today will not be the end of the discussion, so please do get your comments in to the Council if you did not have the opportunity to speak today.

Will the clerk please read into the record agenda item one?

Agenda item number one, Office of Emergency Management 2020 Annual Report.

Thank you very much, Alex.

And so who do we have with us today to present the Office of Emergency Management report?

I believe we have Director Curry with us.

Yes.

Oh, fantastic.

Thank you.

Anybody else from your team?

Yes.

My deputy director, Laurel Nelson is also on.

Great.

Well, thank you so much for joining us.

I had the opportunity to review your annual report when it came out electronically and saw a number of things that certainly interest me, you know, not just the response to the pandemic, but some of the other things that you've been doing and thought it would be a great opportunity to have you come and present to us.

So thanks for being here.

Yeah, you bet.

Okay, so first of all, thank you Council President Gonzalez and Chairperson Herbold.

I so appreciate the opportunity to be here with you today.

Curry Mayor, Office of Emergency Management Director, and I'm also super excited that you wanted to hear about our annual report.

because not only has emergency management been involved in, of course, response to the pandemic, which has impacted our lives in so many crazy ways, all areas of our lives, but really everything about the crazy things that happened all over the city for the last year or so, and the things that we do on a regular basis to engage the community, work with our business partners and all of those communities that make up the diverse place that Seattle is.

So I've asked my deputy director to join me today and she will be doing the bulk of the presentation because she spent the majority of last year actually involved in the work.

I didn't come on until December.

And even though I was a neighbor and knew what was going on, I thought it best to have her speak with you directly about the engagement, but I'm also here for questions or anything else I can help with.

Maybe that's not in the report that you'd like to hear after that.

So I will mute, but I'll stay here.

So thank you very much again for the opportunity, and then I'll pass it to Laurel.

Great.

Thank you, Curry.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold and fellow council members and the community.

I appreciate the opportunity to be here this morning to share As we have done in the past, we've given insight to what we've worked on in the Office of Emergency Management through the years.

First off, I just want to share, I never imagined myself being in the position that I was in last year.

We were on the heels of losing a very seasoned, well-respected Emergency Management Director, Barb Graff, and the hopes of having a new director at the point when she departed.

Unfortunately, that didn't happen when she retired in February.

Here I am and just want to reflect on a year that, to me, created a lot of adversity and also learned that there's strength in adversity.

And you probably picked up some of my personal things that I dealt with myself last year that were just as challenging as many other community members and many of you may have experienced.

So I'm going to go ahead and share my screen here to get the report up on the screen.

OK.

Hopefully, you should see that.

So I want to just kick off.

Last year was a year, and I know we hear this term unprecedented, but it clearly was a year that in my 25-year career in emergency management, I never imagined we would be facing what we faced last year.

And there were lots of things that we had to face personally and professionally.

And I know each and every one of us had to experience that in some way or form.

So it was a year that, you know, also we were dealing with, as I mentioned, with the retirement of our director, Barb Graf.

So, you know, it's never easy to face change.

And that had an imprint on a number of us, myself included, who I'd worked with Barb for 13 years, as well as the rest of our team and our colleagues that have been in emergency management.

So I want to kick off, first off, thank you to the council and to Mayor Dirk.

And there were many things that came up last year with all the events that occurred.

And one of those was the effort to move the Office of Emergency Management out of the police department.

I think a lot of people didn't realize we were in the police department because we try to see ourselves, I'll call it non-denominational, where we try to really look at doing partnerships and coordination across all functions and disciplines.

So we are now officially our own department, which is in its first time history for the Office of Emergency Management in the city of Seattle.

This will be the first time that we are actually our own independent office.

So again, thank you for the support.

We're still working through all the idiosyncrasies of what that looks like for us to be an independent office, as you can imagine, but appreciate the support on that.

in addition.

Can you just give us a sort of a sense and a flavor of what you mean when you refer to the steps that you're taking to become an independent officer office?

What steps have already been taken and what are the next steps in the horizon?

Yeah, I appreciate that question, Council Herbold.

Yes.

So for us, you know, we had been in the police department, oh, At least I think the late 90s and subsequently with that came all of the fiscal budgetary HR support, etc.

So once we became independent, we had to look at ways on how we continue to do those types of normal business functions on a day to day basis.

So we've been working with the finance administrative services department.

and the Seattle Department of Human Resources.

That also means that we're an office that I think many of you know of from past reports.

We get a lot of grants to be able to help support resiliency in the city of Seattle and in the community.

Therefore, that means that we've got a lot of grant management that we need to do.

So when we lost that type of support with SPD, we had to bolster that up with what we could do internally.

We're still navigating that, Councilmember Herbold.

We are looking to add a position on board so that we can get that body of work fully fledged into a finance grant management budget.

type of body of work.

So we're a little thin right now, but we're navigating that and making sure that we get resources to be able to do that.

And then all of our HR support is through the SDHR, the Seattle Department of Human Resources.

That too has been a body of work because, as you know, we're working with a lot of FEMA reimbursement work, which our office has always done, but COVID has been unprecedented and monumental and very complex and very dynamic.

So we're working through a lot of steps to get temporary staff on board to help us through those processes.

Thank you.

The other thing I'm so tickled that we now have a new director on board, Curry Mayor, who I had known from city of Bellevue and through a national search.

It was great to get someone on board that we know from the region.

And Curry has an incredible, extensive background in emergency management over the last 20 years as well.

In addition, like many other city departments, we had to hire a staff in a virtual environment, which is a little bit different.

And we were very fortunate to come on board in the middle of last year.

Kate Hutton, she comes from the city of Los Angeles and has been an extraordinary asset for us.

So it was nice to be able to get additional team members on board and someone who has extensive experience.

So as some of you know from past briefings that Barb had done, you know, typical year is that we would activate the emergency operations center six to eight times a year.

Last year proved to be quite different and really had some hurdles and some challenges on how we do that in a public health emergency.

From the very get-go, and I'll talk a little bit here in a bit about COVID specifically, but early on, we had our activation for COVID-19, the coronavirus, on March 2nd is when we officially opened up the Emergency Operations Center.

As you'll see, we also had to face the Seattle Bridge, West Seattle Bridge, that had some complications.

We dealt with the activities in May through July and supporting the city-wide coordination on that.

We also had to deal with smoke, which we've had numerous years now.

And then we also dealt with any election activities that might have happened in November just because a lot of the issues that were happening nationwide.

So I'm going to dive into each of these to give you a little perspective.

So on top of COVID in early March and activating for that, we learned from the Department of Transportation that there were cracks that were showing up on the West Seattle Bridge.

Very quickly, we jumped into a coordination mode with SDOT and other critical city departments, as well as the community and the private sector.

Our main role during this event was really to ensure that we had action plans in place to be able to respond if for any reason, that bridge took more significant movement than we anticipated.

And we also were responsible for ensuring that we could get alert and warning information out to the community, especially those business areas that would be in direct impact of the bridge infrastructure itself.

So we ended up recruiting and utilizing our ACS, our Auxiliary Communication Services volunteers, You've heard about them probably in the past.

They're whiz-bang technological folks.

They're a great group of folks that for these types of missions, we actually deployed them out to the site around the Seattle Bridge impact area.

They're on Harbor Island and the businesses to make sure that when we do alert and warnings to that area, those businesses could get those alerts on their cell phones.

So there's a system called the Wireless Emergency Alert System, WEA.

And through a test in June, as well as doing a test in July, the first test in June gave us indication that everybody was getting notified through the WEA system on their cell phones.

And so we had folks that had cell phones with the different service providers like Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, et cetera, to make sure that when we push out a test like that, that those cell phones were receiving it.

Our first test on June 26, we realized that we had some holes and some gaps.

And so we remedied that and made the polygon a much bigger footprint to include a couple other cell towers also in that area to make sure that we had coverage.

And we did a second test on July 25th, which gave us success to make sure that if we had to do a WEA test, that particular footprint would get notified that there was an eminent concern with the West Seattle Bridge.

So the other activities that we dealt with last year was, I think, personally and professionally a very challenging time.

And it was personally and professionally challenging for a number of us who were in the Emergency Operations Center, ensuring that we were doing the citywide coordination and helping to support the efforts and the public safety out there.

So we saw the events, unfortunate.

You know, with George Floyd being killed and all the activities that happened with that.

So we also saw the events on May 30th and that caused us to be in a position to have the emergency operations center open for for several weeks in response to those activities.

We were open for 15 days, and you'll see we did a number of coordinated activities during that time with the various city departments and agencies that were in the EOC at that time.

I will make note, when we were in the Emergency Operations Center, we were actually physically there.

We were, of course, practicing the appropriate social distancing and the masking.

I do know that, and we had no one get sick out of that activity, so thank goodness for that.

But you'll see, you know, there was a number of coordinated activities that we did during that time.

There was a lot of businesses that were being impacted, so we dealt with debris and graffiti cleanup.

We also looked at ways and did a lot of collaboration with the private sector as well as a number of departments to make sure that we're securing damaged storefronts, downtown and also in the international district.

We tried to ensure that we had everything information wise we could share with the Office of Economic Development, who was the main point of contact to the businesses out in the impacted communities, as well as we provided logistical support.

So there were porta potties that were provided.

We had dumpsters that we had to deal with and being able to support other activities, especially in the Cal Anderson Park area.

So it was not an easy time, as I mentioned, and I know there were extraordinary impacts during that incident, but that was one of the activities that we dealt with during that time.

And lastly, I'll just say on this, all of us saw the incredible march that happened on June 12th, which was a Friday, and we were in the Emergency Operations Center doing our best to make sure that it was a safe march.

And, you know, there was well over, I think, 60,000 people that participated in that particular march.

And so there was, you know, a number of lessons learned from this particular event as well.

Laura, if we could just pause, I see that Council Member Sawant has her hand raised.

Council Member Sawant.

Thank you, Council Member Hurbold.

Laura could go back to the previous slide.

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

I mean, it depends on the Office of Emergency Management.

If you want to take it as a question and provide a response, that would be definitely appreciated.

But I just wanted to note.

obviously, this is a report from the Office of Emergency Management, not from the police department per se, but the Office of Emergency Management, as was noted a little while ago, was housed in the Seattle Police Department at the time and In fact, every time Mayor Durkan declared an emergency, and in those days, in the first days of the protest was practically daily, the Office of Emergency Management was placed in charge nominally.

And obviously you've noted several tasks that you were responsible for.

But I have to say, I mean, this is not surprising to me, but in the interest of the public, I want to note how It's a very sanitized version of what actually happened at that time.

We're talking about coordination of debris and graffiti cleanup.

And dumpsters were refused.

Obviously, I support dumpsters were refused.

But I think the most glaring thing in those days was the amount of public resources, public revenues that were spent on police overtime policing and violently policing peaceful protests.

And Seattle paid $6.3 million in overtime to the police during the first 12 days of the protests.

And that was not the only example.

In the same 12 days, New York City spent $115 million on police overtime.

Los Angeles spent um over 40 million dollars and that same time so you know this is going happening city this was happening in cities across the nation where we had the most historic street movement uh in america and what was happening was the cities were spending millions of dollars over policing these protests and so i i feel like This version really does not capture the actual events of those days.

If you're providing a report, I think that should be the highlight, not these things.

But I just wanted to note that.

And obviously, I recognize that the current director of OEM has been hired since then.

So it's not a question of individual.

I mean, my comments are not directed towards any individual.

But just to note that these reports really do not capture the realities that were faced by ordinary people and the tens of thousands of Seattleites who were out protesting against racism and against police violence.

So if I could jump in here really quickly, I think it's, so first of all, thank you for your comments.

Councilperson, I really appreciate you bringing that up.

And it really, I think, emphasizes the misunderstanding that people have about what emergency management does.

and it was really incredibly important for us to be separated from the police department.

Emergency management is really a citywide resource and our main function in any event is to provide situational awareness of what all city departments are doing and all city resources, where they're located, what they're engaged in, and then that cross departmental coordination and movement of resources to help people.

So being in the police department clouded that to some degree because people didn't, they thought, oh, that's part of police or they're doing police work in some fashion.

when really that's really not what we do.

I don't know if that's helpful or not.

I'm happy to answer other questions or give it back to Laurel, but I think it's really important to note that we're not a police function.

I understand that, and I appreciate the response.

But it's like you're talking about all city departments except the police department.

I mean, who empties the dumpsters?

It's not the emergency department directly, I assume.

It's not the police.

But you are talking about other departments.

But what's missing is the role of the police department.

That's just what I wanted to note.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Laura?

Okay, so the other event that we had to deal with last year, which we've seen over the last number of years is the smoke that comes from the wildland fires and uniquely last year with coven 19 it really caused again other issues and domino impacts, I guess, so We very, very early on, even before September, pulled together the departments that are involved in this type of planning, such as the public health department, the human services department, the parks department, fire, public utilities, et cetera.

And we really looked at what could we do when smoke impacts the city of Seattle.

It clearly, through the conversations that our planner had with public health, it was determined through the advisement of public health that really COVID had far more health risks and impacts than smoke.

So knowing that we couldn't do the cooling centers, knowing that we couldn't do the congregate sheltering setups, we felt that we would approach it as if we needed to go down that route We would look to public health to give us guidance and be able to pivot our operations appropriately so that we could do any sheltering if needed.

But those were sensitivities that we had to keep in mind for that particular planning effort.

And then most of last year, as you all know, really focused on the COVID response and a couple of things.

Last, I believe, January, February, we were in front of the council providing a briefing to everyone about the initial preparedness steps that we as a city were taking.

Back in 2008, 2009, the city had put together what we term a pandemic influenza plan.

That pandemic influenza plan, they had a number of planning assumptions.

It addressed how we would do communications.

It would address some of the human resource issues.

How would we do the overall communication?

How would we address our continuity of operations plans and maintain our services in the city of Seattle?

I think very quickly when we saw the first case come into the United States up in Snohomish County in late January, And we started to stand up our visit into that plan in February.

We started to brush it off.

We started to look at our continuity of operations plans.

We learned very quickly that that pandemic flu plan had a lot of planning assumptions that weren't lining up with COVID.

So we spent the month of February spending twice a week planning sessions with all the city departments and some of our connecting agencies.

Transit was one of those, public health obviously was one of our subject matter experts, and started to figure out as the cases increase in the Puget Sound region and in the city of Seattle, how would we use some of the core elements of that plan to be able to respond?

Then before we knew it, the cases, as we also on the news, the cases were increasing exponentially.

And we made the decision to officially activate the Emergency Operations Center on May 2nd.

Same thing, we went through the same process of, we were social distancing, we were masking appropriately in the EOC.

And then we had the governor's stay at home order on March 18th, and we all went virtual.

I will tell you again, in my 25-year career in emergency management, I never imagined that we would be doing a virtual activation because it's so critical on having face-to-face communication.

And that's why we have a space like an EOC.

So we pivoted very quickly and had to also pivot our procedures and our protocols on how we function in a virtual environment.

Thankfully, we have history in doing very successful coordination calls, like with the viaduct when it shifted a number of years ago, and we had to do spontaneous coordination on that.

When the viaduct was being taken down, we did coordination calls.

So we had a history of doing that, and so we were able to step into doing the virtual environment.

I wouldn't say it was still easy, but we were able to put the procedures and the protocols in place.

Also during the month of February, we were loaning a couple of our staff duty officers to public health.

They were getting hammered.

We were all, I don't think even imagine COVID would be what it was.

And our staff duty officers were serving in the health and medical area command to help them in any of their planning processes, as well as having that situational connection with our colleagues in public health.

When we activated the Emergency Operations Center from the very get-go, as we were planning and getting it set up before March 2nd, we had established four functions.

And those four functions actually stay in place today.

We established a Public Safety Branch.

We established a City Operations and Infrastructure Branch.

We established a Homelessness and Human Services Branch.

And we also established a Community Needs Branch.

Those became kind of our functional array of how we organized ourself in the Emergency Operations Center or virtually.

Those have stuck with us today.

So many of our meetings still focus on these four buckets, as they're kind of termed, and how we make sure that we're managing what's going on work-wise in those and how we're managing situational awareness.

We, yes.

I'm wondering if you could include in your comments a little bit of an explanation of what was most challenging about, you know, you spoke to historically, although you sometimes will conference in individuals or calls.

But historically, it's been very important for folks to meet face to face.

And if you could just sort of identify, you know, What was most difficult about not meeting face-to-face and how you address that?

Yeah, thank you Councilmember Herbold for that question.

So when you're face-to-face and you do stand-up briefings, you can get everyone and you can go around the horn and ask, you know, fire what's going on for your particular function, public health, etc. and you can get that information verbally with one another.

Because we were in a virtual environment, there was more orchestration and there were more processes that we had to put in place to basically replicate that.

So we ended up starting to do conference calls as part of our mix on how we were physically in the EOC and then conference calls while we're doing those briefings and the standup.

Technology works sometimes, technology didn't work sometimes, and we realized we had to have a very clear rhythm of how we orchestrated the feedback.

As we know, in the virtual environment, it's sometimes challenging.

You don't see faces.

You don't hear people.

People, you can have comments that they can add in at different times.

And in a virtual environment or coordination calls, that makes it a little bit more challenging.

So not only were people practiced on how to do that, but we had to basically take our procedures and adjust them for those idiosyncrasies as we did those types of calls and tried to do that, replicate that without being physically in the EOC.

A couple of other things, you know, there were, oh, there were conference calls, I guess, to your point, Council Member, there were conference calls that we had well over 200 people on those calls.

And, you know, it made communication a little bit more challenging when you're not able to have people in the same space.

So we had to make sure that we were very thoughtful about how we collect that information and push it out into our normal snapshot reports, our situational reports, etc.

How do we make sure that we're convening the right planning sessions with people and bringing them to the table?

to make sure that we're planning.

A term that I used a lot last year that probably some of you have probably used is I felt like we were building the airplane as we were trying to fly it.

And it was very challenging.

There were lots of policy issues that had to be made on the fly.

There were a lot of adaptations that we had to do on the fly.

I think it was such a novel situation that everything that you ground on when it comes to your plans and procedures, almost went completely out the window and we had to start afresh on everything.

The other thing with COVID last year is COVID is a very unique Federal Emergency Management Agency response.

FEMA, as far as I know, in my history, at least 25 years and possibly for its entire history, FEMA typically doesn't deal with public health emergencies.

And so this was such an anomaly And everything that we as tried and true emergency managers are used to working with FEMA on, you know, flooding hazards, earthquakes, hurricanes, all those natural hazards, this one also caused some unique challenges as well as, you know, really caused a significant body of work.

So we have a team member on staff who normal day-to-day, normal winter weather events handles the FEMA reimbursement process and the public assistance process.

I have never seen in my entire career again how complex, how dynamic, and how challenging this whole FEMA process has been.

So early on, you know, we tried to make connections with our colleagues.

We go through state, we go through county, and we go through state emergency management, and they too were just as overwhelmed.

So it was like, again, this nexus of everything that could possibly be complex and challenging and dynamic also happened on the FEMA reimbursement side.

So as I mentioned earlier, we are working to get additional staff on hand.

We've been getting some staff.

to help us out in that whole process.

This is a big body of work that beyond Erica Lund who brought millions of dollars into the city over the years.

And I think almost $41 million we've brought into the city over the years for public assistance reimbursement from FEMA.

This is pretty monumental.

So we're looking to make sure that we've got resources to be able to help support that.

Also last year with COVID, we knew that we were going to be facing a shortage with hospital status.

And so we early on worked with state emergency management and through FEMA established a field hospital.

I can't speak loudly enough of all the assets that came into play for that.

through FEMA and the National Guard who helped support in getting that set up.

I'm so impressed by that.

Thankfully, you know, we did not need to use that facility and we stood it up proactively and thankfully didn't need to actually put patients in beds for that field hospital.

The other things with COVID, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we did do the pivoting of our operations, all of us, every single person had to look at how we do things virtually in a business environment.

Additionally, we did a lot of community outreach and our community outreach team, who many of you have heard us talk about in the past of all their activities that they do in normal business days and normal disasters.

were very instrumental in our activities last year.

So we have a team of what we call community safety ambassadors, and they speak different languages.

Early last year, we had them actually team up with the Office of Economic Development and the Department of Neighborhoods.

And nine of those CSAs actually went out to it looks like 94 businesses by ensuring that they were providing face coverings to small and minority owned businesses.

So we've leveraged that outreach team for those efforts to make sure that we're working and providing information out there.

We're also for your awareness and doing an after action report.

So we were able to get some grant funds that were dedicating to specifically focusing on our coven after action.

It's been a year long activity.

We thankfully started early last year doing surveys on a bi-weekly basis to get feedback so people you know as over time you forget things we're collecting those and towards the end of this year we will have a final report that guides us on what did we learn from all of our response for COVID from last year into this year and then the lessons learned from that will also inform what we need to do to update our pandemic plan that we've got in place.

Other thing I'm very happy about, last year amongst all the things that we had to do, we also are required to update our all hazards mitigation plan.

It's a five-year plan that goes through state emergency management improvement as well as FEMA improvement.

This particular plan allows us and needs to be in place to allow us to access mitigation funds.

So last year we were working through the process of updating that plan.

We also engaged the community to get their feedback.

We used our outreach team and our community safety ambassadors in various focus groups to make sure that we were getting feedback from the community on what they see we need to do in the space of mitigation, which is basically trying to lessen the impacts of disasters across the community.

That particular plan will come to council.

Just a heads up, it'll probably come to the council in probably the May-ish time frame.

So do know that we're doing the final touch-ups on that particular plan, and you'll see that shortly.

A couple other things last year and continue this year is there is a Building Resilient Infrastructure and Community grant that has been in place through FEMA.

It's been renamed.

It used to be called the Pre-Disaster Mitigation Grant Program.

It's now called BRIC.

And we were able to successfully apply for that.

And this is a unique thing.

We actually applied on behalf of a private entity.

And this is in the spaces I know Council Member Herbold will be very happy about.

There is a particular building.

It's the Bremer Apartments.

It is actually an unreinforced masonry building.

And through this grant, we were able to get $5 million that is going to enable them to do seismic retrofit, as well as the grant covers the ability to relocate those occupants during that time so that they can do the appropriate seismic retrofit work.

This is a partnership with the Community Roots a housing association, and also the Office of Housing.

So we're tickled that we got this grant, and I think it gives us insight to what hopefully the future will look like for us in tapping these types of grants in the future.

Additionally, we also got a grant to do some SDOT work.

So you'll see here there is a bridge.

It's the 8th Avenue Northwest, excuse me, Northwest Bridge that needs to be seismically structured and seismically retrofitted.

Thanks to Erica for years.

We have successfully gotten hazard mitigation grants over the years.

I think we've gotten over $16 million for the year.

So we've got a good record on this and it's great to see that we're continuing to get these types of fundings to do these important projects.

Thank you, Laurel.

I'm just wondering, given that this grant, as it relates specifically to the Bremer Apartments, is sort of an inaugural approach to partnering with a nonprofit housing provider, is this something that we can expect to see replicated in future grant cycles.

And I just want to note that, you know, the surveys that the city has done and the engagement that the city has done with The development community and historic preservationists has really focused on prioritizing certain types of unreinforced masonry buildings and has recommended a mandatory seismic upgrade approach.

That again, focuses on particular characteristics of unreinforced masonry buildings.

And I'm very, very supportive of what you've done with the Bremer.

But I do want to note that a lot of well, some of the highest priority investments for URM and under the recommendations that have been made in the past for how we should implement a mandatory I'm not throwing shade at the work you've done with the from our fantastic work.

But I do want to note that the fact that we still don't have this mandatory URM program in place means that we really lost an opportunity, I think, to take advantage of the fact that a lot of these seismically vulnerable buildings that are places of gathering were empty this year.

And had we had a program in place, focused on those buildings, there's, I think, a lot of work upgrading those buildings that could have been done in the past year.

Given that we didn't have a program in place, again, I'm really grateful for OEM and being creative and working with the community to apply for this grant, and I'm interested in knowing more about how you plan to replicate that approach with other non-profits and community partners who own URM properties moving forward.

One, replicating the effort on these FEMA grants, but also what you believe are the next steps for working to develop a mandatory URM program for the city.

Yeah, I'll just speak on at least the brick piece.

I can't guarantee council member that this is going to be a continued practice, but I think we've made headway.

And so the success of us getting granted for the Bremer apartment, this ability to do also the costing for relocation, I think is a very, very positive thing.

I can't say, you know, a hundred percent that that will continue in the future.

But I think everybody is going to be watching how this goes and seeing how it possibly could be replicated in the future.

I think your questions on next steps, I know you've had conversations with Curry, our director on this, and I think she's got some insights on how she sees for next steps and looking forward to a further conversation with you on what those next steps are going to look like.

Thank you.

All right, I'm going to move through the next items here fairly quickly, because I think we're probably getting pushed to time here.

So just FYI, a lot of what we do, as I mentioned, day to day, is in the space of outreach.

So we were actively involved in weekly meetings last year.

And as I mentioned, we were actively involved in our partners with DON and the Office of Economic Development.

You'll see on here, we've done a lot of translation of our materials into other languages.

So I encourage you, we do have, if you search on YouTube, Seattle Emergency Management, you're going to see a number of YouTubes that have been translated into other languages.

We continue to build on having a better library to meet all those different language needs.

I can't speak enough about our Community Safety Ambassador Program.

You'll see a spot on there where you get to get introduced to a couple of our CSAs.

They're just fabulous and they really are the ones that make those connections out into their community and actually speaking in those native languages that, of course, I can't speak nor am I part of those communities.

So we really value those individuals that have those connections.

Also, you'll see on here, we continue to asked for people to sign up for Alert Seattle.

So we're currently at 58,435 signups.

And so last year, we made a milestone where we increased by 14,000.

So it's great that we continue to increase people accessing that system.

The other thing that we have in the Office of Emergency Management is we really tap into volunteers and people that there's so many people that want to do good things for their communities.

And we're so appreciative of those individuals who are willing to volunteer with us at the Office of Emergency Management.

So you'll see even last year during the COVID year, we still had lots of people that were willing to give their time to help in different initiatives in the Office of Emergency Management.

We're also doing a lot of work in the space of working with youth So we've got a pretty great youth program that we're starting to develop.

There are four to five schools that we worked with last year, and we're continuing to expand that program.

And these individuals also are helping us to promote Alert Seattle and get the information out to the community on how they can sign up for Alert Seattle.

I've mentioned this group previously, our auxiliary communication services team, same thing.

There's 145-ish or so of them that continue to help us through the year.

They too also pivoted their operations to be able to provide support last year during COVID.

They continue to do so this year.

But when the big earthquake does happen, they really are going to be our ears for us because we may not have radio, normal radio systems, normal communication telephone systems.

So we're really going to be reliant on our ACS individuals to make those connections and communication linkages for us.

And then lastly, I'll just share a couple more slides here.

The Stop the Bleed program.

So tickled about the Stop the Bleed program.

Through the years, we've been able to get grant funding that has allowed us to install Stop the Bleed kits at different locations.

So we have spent almost $21,000 from a grant to be able to provide public access Stop the Bleed kits.

We're looking to expand that with additional grant funds that we've received.

We have kits at the community centers.

We also have kits at the Seattle Center.

We're hoping to expand those with additional funds out to the public library system, as well as work with the public school system and community-based organizations.

We currently have 14 volunteers that help us to do this training.

They are individuals that are either EMTs or they're nurses.

We partner with the Harborview Medical Center with their physicians and volunteers who actually deliver this type of training and make sure that we can continue to keep the public lined up on how they can do effective stop the bleed.

As I mentioned, the safety ambassadors, we have currently 15 of them.

Actually, I think we've upped a couple bits.

So we now have 17 here in 2021. They speak 13 different languages.

We've used them and will continue to use them, not only to provide the preparedness message, but we're also using them to help us communicate out to the public on how we respond as a community and how we respond as a government.

We've got a plethora of plans that you've heard Barb talk about in the past.

We need to get the community input into that and we need to make sure that the community can support us when we do face the large emergencies that we need to respond to.

And then we also are, besides the community safety ambassadors, our outreach team is also creating MOUs with CBOs out there.

So one of those entities is the International Rescue Community, where we're actually ensuring that we've got outreach to the refugee population.

We've given them $5,000 last year to help do that preparedness education.

We also have the Villa Comunentari, that we're also given $5,000 to that reaches out to the Latinx community and making sure that we're getting the information out on preparedness to all of our population and community sectors out there.

We're hoping to expand into the Pacific Islander population as well for this year.

I think that that's it on, you know, I think that's it for the Office of Emergency Management.

I appreciate the time to be able to do the brief to all of you.

There's lots going on and appreciate, again, all the support that the council has done for the Office of Emergency Management.

Thank you so much, Laurel.

I really appreciate you being with us here today.

I appreciate the challenges of the previous year that you faced and the fact that you and your staff were on the ground in the face of of many of these challenges and the difficulties I know that that presented to, again, to you and your staff.

Appreciate having the opportunity to lift up your important work here with us today, and I believe we will see you again for a discussion of the All Hazards Management Plan.

I think it's coming up next, so thanks again.

Much appreciated.

Bye now.

All right, Alex, can you read into the agenda the next item, please?

Agenda item number two, Council Bill 119981, an ordinance amending Ordinance 126237, which adopted the 2021 budget, including the 2021-2026 Capital Improvement Program, changing appropriations to various departments and budget control levels and from various funds in the budget and adding or modifying provisos.

Thank you, Alex.

So I'm going to quickly hand this over to Greg to give us sort of an update on what is in the proposed substitute bill, but I want to just make some quick introductory remarks myself first.

This is the third meeting that the Public Safety and Human Services Committee has had on this particular bill.

We did have two previous meetings scheduled prior to the three meetings that we have had.

It was originally scheduled for the meeting of the 26th, but was not heard due to time constraints.

We then scheduled it for a presentation on February 9th.

But we held the discussion of the bill, even though we weren't planning to vote on it.

We held even discussion of the bill based on the request of the city attorney's office after comments in early February from Judge Robart, who oversees the consent decree.

So no discussion on the 26th, those scheduled, no discussion on February 9th, those scheduled.

But we did begin discussion on the 26th, On February 23rd, we had a high level overview of the bill itself and what had brought us to proposing the bill.

And I, at that point, indicated some of my interests in making amendments to the bill, consistent with things that I had said at the time of proposing the bill, which was, although I did see this as a way to hold SPD accountable for its overtime spending, that I was not going to be rigid in that when it came time to hear the bill itself that I would consider needs for SPD spending.

In the second meeting that we had, I invited SPD to present on its recommendations, and these are recommendations that it had made in preparation for the January 26th meeting.

So these recommendations have been publicly available since January 26th.

And the police department did come and present on March 9th to do the overview on their recommendations for funding, additional funding for 2021 spending.

It's important to note that the bill before us now is not about funding for police officer staffing, and that is because the 2021 SPD staffing and hiring plan is and always has been fully funded since November.

Again, the 2021 hiring plan, so these are the funds that are available to SPD to hire new officers for 2021, has been fully funded since November based on the assumptions around the maximum number of people that SBT can hire.

We did not, the council did not vote for a 2021 hiring freeze as was discussed at the end of 2020 during the budget process.

And I think from the perspective of some, I can say for myself, I did not support a hiring freeze because I was clear during the summer rebalancing process, as well as throughout the 2021 budget discussions, that I was comfortable with making reductions in SPD's budget that would realize no more than $100,000 reductions in police officers.

Now, none of our budget cuts actually resulted in layoffs of police officers, but nevertheless, 186 officers left the police department in 2020. The council, we heard today in public comment the call for folks on the council to reallocate funds from SPD to scale up alternatives.

The council has done that.

I believe we will continue to do that.

We did so in the 2021 budget.

And the substitute bill that we're about to discuss continues that commitment of reducing the SPD budget and using those funds to fund community alternatives.

Last week, the council approved $10.4 million for community alternatives.

The Human Services Department last year moved quickly to award $4 million.

to the community safety initiative.

Again, these are funds that were provided by the council to support community investments so that we can move away on reliance on policing.

And then finally, of course, the council also, in last year's budget, $30 million for participatory budgeting to be spent in 2021. prompted by the mayor's executive order on reimagining policing and community safety.

So that work continues as well, and I've been working to try to get some updates from the executive in this committee to hear more about that work.

As I've mentioned on numerous occasions, everything that we do as it relates to public safety, has to be put within the context of a consent decree with the U.S.

Department of Justice.

Judge Robart, who oversees the consent decree, has stated concern about significant cuts to the police department budget and emphasized the importance of scaling up policing alternatives.

The federal monitor, who was appointed by the judge, has expressed interest in this ordinance.

As I mentioned earlier, we delayed a discussion on this ordinance in February because of concerns that we had heard from the judge.

We took some time.

The council and the executive worked with the city attorney's office to send a memo to the monitor that explains the cuts that were made in the 2021 budget and the nature of the bill before us.

So we kind of hit pause in order to have that that time to explain to the monitor the impacts of the reductions that the council had made in the past.

And the monitor in I'm going to quote from this letter again.

be answered as expeditiously as possible and prior to further actions by the city on the budget of the Seattle Police Department.

Upon receipt of the analysis, the monitoring team will confer with the Department of Justice and advise the court.

want to, again, recognize that these are questions that the monitoring team is asking of the Seattle Police Department.

So the intent is that the Seattle Police Department answer the questions that the monitoring team is asking, And then the monitoring team consider the answers to these questions before the council.

And we would likely hear from the monitoring team and the judge based on their consideration of the police department's answers to the questions.

And we'd likely hear from them before the council takes final action.

So even if there were to be any committee action today, it's likely that, well, it's not likely, we would have to delay full council action until the monitor and the Department of Justice have received the responses to the questions from SPD and advised the court.

So again, this is somewhat similar to the council's consideration of legislation regarding less lethal weapons.

And to be clear, it can end up being a limitation on the council's authority as listed in the charter.

It's true that the legislation We recognize that this resolution originated with the council statement in resolution 31926, which stated that the council will not support any budget amendments to increase the Seattle Police Department's budget to offset overtime expenditures above the fund's budget in 2020 or 2021. And because it did not align with this resolution, we propose this budget bill that's before us now to reduce the police department's budget by $5.4 million.

Again, as proposed, the reduction would come from funds approved for salaries that are not expected to be spent.

So again, the origins of the reduction are from salary savings because of officers who have left the department.

And so we had budgeted for those officers to be in the department, they've left the department, and there are more officers that have left the department than the department can hire from.

The council previously placed a proviso on a comparable amount of funds if they did not end up getting spent on salaries in 2020. So again, since it was introduced, SPD has brought forward new spending proposals that were not included in the mayor's 2021 budget.

So the mayor did not propose these items in her budget.

In addition, Judge Robart has made his comments at the status conference.

I wanna note since it's an issue of concern that council has authorized funding several times for public safety in the Chinatown International District after the 2016 Chinatown International District Public Safety Report that I understand that the chief of police is working to fund some of those positions, or at least one of those positions that have been authorized independent of our action today.

I know that community members have interest in seeing that that position gets funded.

I think there are still some questions about whether or not that position is funded through SPD or another department, but I understand that those conversations are ongoing.

High-level, before I hand it over to Greg, depending on where you sit, this bill has something that everybody has been asking for.

It includes a cut to SPD to hold them accountable for overtime spending.

It includes a cut of $3 million approximately and sends two of those approximately $3 million to be spent on It also, the place where you sit is to recognize that in light of reductions in police department staffing of officers, that there are things that the police department can do to mitigate the impacts of the loss of officers.

And if you're interested in funding some of the civilian community positions that were frozen in the mayor's proposed 2021 budget that the council approved, there were about $4 million worth of civilian positions frozen, then this bill has something in it for you as well.

Other items that I have identified as priorities, because I've heard from the city auditor, I've heard from members of the public, including the press, on concerns about public disclosure.

I have investments in this bill related to that.

And then also investments in the bill related to recommendations coming out of the Office of the Inspector General.

So with that, I'll hand it over to Greg Doss to run us through the more detailed overview that I know he's prepared for us.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Good morning, members of the Public Safety Committee.

Very thorough introduction by the chair, and that leaves me with not as much to do.

What I'm going to do today is to walk you through the proposed amendment, amendment number one.

It is a very complicated amendment, and so I have a PowerPoint presentation that I would share.

And would like to know if folks can confirm that they can see it.

I can see it.

Excellent.

Okay.

So I'm going to go ahead and walk you through the amendment.

I'm going to start with a table that has all the elements of the spending that are requested in the amendment.

And just to orient you to this table, what you're seeing here is at the very top line, projected salary savings.

As we have talked about in the past, Council Central staff analysis found that the unplanned separations in 2020 could result in as much as $7.7 million in salary savings in 2021. Again, those are for officers that have already left the department and the total of their salaries funded in the adopted budget, but that will not be needed, will be $7.7 million as estimated.

Then the bill proceeds to direct spending for the $7.7 million.

It does so in two ways.

The first way is to redirect $4.85 million of that salary savings for SPD's use.

And when I say redirect, what I mean is that there is legislative intent that is spelled out in the legislation, although it is not, there is no proviso that says that the department has to do these things.

Rather, it leaves flexibility to the department to do whatever its top priorities are, just recognizing that the first four lines on this spreadsheet are the department's top priorities as they have articulated them in a memo both to the monitor and to the council in January.

And so as you can see, the first four items, SPD redirected 4.85.

And then the second four items, that is Council Member Herbold talked a little bit about those investments.

I'm going to go into them in more detail.

That money is moved into other departments for the functions that she spoke about.

And so go ahead and jump into it.

Sorry, I grabbed the wrong thing.

SPD has expressed an interest in using salary savings to mitigate the loss of officers to respond for more calls for transparency and accountability and to allow the agency to continue its compliance with the consent decree.

Some of their requested expenditures include the $1.8 million for separation pay, and that is for 2021, the top line.

The second line, $2.18 million for technology investments, and there's three things there.

The first is maintenance and expansion of the data analytics platform.

The second is purchase of a capacity planning tool that will allow SPD to evaluate demand for 911 response and to calculate staffing requirements for alternative 911 response scenarios.

And lastly, there is funding there to purchase an early intervention system that would allow SPD to better predict and guide interventions for employees that are exhibiting signs that they need support.

SPD has said that these technology investments would support its ability to comply with the federal consent decree.

As the chair alluded to, SPD has also asked for some civilian funding.

They asked for a total of 1.4 million.

As you can see here in the table, the civilian funding line, line number three provides 795,000.

That's about half a year's worth of funding for civilian positions, recognizing that it takes some time to get civilians on board at the police department through recruitment and backgrounding.

And so, uh, half a year of funding there, and that funding would support two crime prevention coordinators, four community service officers, one community service officer supervisor, one management system analyst supervisor that would work with the, um, uh, the data management group, uh, one management senior, or one management systems analyst that would work in the budget and, um, uh, the budget section, and then a couple admin staff analysts for public disclosure.

So now moving on to the fourth line, as you'll see here, there is an addition for another public disclosure position.

This is beyond the two that were asked for by SPD.

And this position would be dedicated to fulfilling public disclosure requests related to the Office of Police Accountability.

There is already one position in SPD that works on public disclosure requests for the Office of Police Accountability.

That position and this new one would be requested to be dedicated for OPA support.

And that is because, you know, as the chair said, the city of the auditor found that there were staffing issues in the public disclosure unit and that this would allow for a more timely response.

Then lastly, on the subject of public disclosure, there's an addition of an information technology specialist that's funded in the Seattle Information Technology Department, but would work with SPD public disclosure to help facilitate email search functions.

That's a function that is done by Seattle IT throughout the city, with the exception of SPD, and they don't currently do SPD because of various criminal justice requirements around systems.

This particular position that's funded in Seattle IT would need to be given clearance to do this, and the departments would have to work out how that would happen.

The bottom line is that it would provide additional capacity for that function.

And here again, it's the $100,000.

It represents a half year of expenditure on that position.

And I should mention the same thing with the OPA position above, a half year of expenditure.

Greg, can you pause for a second?

Yeah.

Thank you.

I see Council Member Morales has her hand raised.

know.

Thank you.

Yeah, I do.

Thank you.

Sorry.

Many screens open.

If we could stay on slide one for a minute.

I just want to make sure I'm understanding this.

So there's 4.85 million in priorities.

We pull out the separation pay, which I can understand perhaps was unanticipated, the scale of it anyway.

There's 3 million left for things that presumably have priorities before, right?

In the technology, PDR has been an issue.

I think that was identified in 2015. So it's not like these are new issues that the department has just become aware of.

Is that fair?

So I think, you know, what I would say is that when the department has talked about this, they have recognized that.

They, they, through normal course of managing their budget, have salary savings that at some level that they are.

able to dedicate to these kinds of issues.

And the challenge that they're having this year is that there is an express desire by the council through at least one proviso to hold salary savings for potential redistribution for participatory budgeting.

And so the department doesn't necessarily know that it can count on its salary savings to purchase these things.

So when they were putting together their budget and their plan for 2021, they may have thought that they could cover some of these salary savings, and now they're saying that they don't have that flexibility.

Additionally, they've said that some of these things are emerging that are coming up that would probably be more relevant for the IT needs.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I'm sorry.

I recognize that the police department has taken some actions as it relates to public disclosure requests.

But the revelations that of the amount of time it takes for public disclosure responses The concern of state officials who have oversight on public disclosure has made this a higher-priority investment area for me.

And so that's – as it relates to public disclosure, as it relates to evidence storage, this is a relatively – this is coming out of a relatively new set of recommendations from the Office of the Inspector General.

These dollars do not go to SPD, they would go to FAS and they are to address a problem that is resulting or has in the past resulted in the destruction of evidence by the police department and the very clear need for another location for evidence to be to be stored.

Some of the, again, some of the public disclosure funds are not going directly to SPD.

Some of them are going to Seattle IT.

Again, in recognition that the Seattle Police Department is only one of the only departments in the city that does not have Seattle IT doing their email.

searches for compliant records, and some of the funds are going, though, you know, OPA is still within SPD.

It is being budgeted within OPA for the OPA functions.

Yeah, I guess, you know, the point I guess I'm really trying to make here is that the department can choose to prioritize its budget however it wants, whether it's for evidence storage or for technology issues, and last year it didn't, right?

Instead, the department chose to prioritize its budget on overspending its overtime pay, and I just want to keep that front and center as we're having this discussion.

I fully agree.

And I think from my perspective, that's why the decision of the council to propose this legislation last year, this cut, creates, I think, a dialogue with the police department that maybe we didn't have before about rather than just kind of leaving it up in the air, their salary savings, they can use it for things that are their priorities, they can use it for things that are our shared priorities.

My hope is that we can still take a strong position against overtime spending that exceeds their budget while also having a shared conversation about our shared objectives using this budget bill as a tool to do so.

So I don't have too much more to add.

Council Member Herbold is, again, quite thorough in her explanation.

So the only thing that I would do now is cover the last line, which is that there is $225,000 that is added for HSD to add five additional crisis responders to the SPD crisis response team.

That particular contract for the mental health professionals that are on the crisis response team is funded through HSD, and the $225,000 again represents a half year of funding for five additional mental health professionals.

And so if there's not any questions on this slide, I'll go on to the next.

Okay, so There is a proviso change in this legislation.

It takes a proviso that was added to the 2021 budget, and that was SPD-011B-002, and it modifies it.

The original proviso withheld $5 million until future appropriation and expressed an intent to monitor SPD's salary savings relative to the staffing plan such that if more salary savings became available due to either additional separations or to fewer hires, then that salary savings might be redirected to participatory budgeting.

And what this does, this legislation, this amendment, is that it would modify that proviso so that it no longer holds the $5 million in perpetuity, but rather requires SPD to submit staffing reports each month, and for each staffing report that they submit, a portion of the proviso will be released.

And the way it works out is that there would be eight months that would occur between now and the end of the year.

The $5 million divided by eight comes to $625,000.

So basically every time the department submits a report, It'll receive 625,000 of authority released from this proviso.

The point of this proviso is to require the department to send staffing reports, including projections for both hiring and separation.

so that the council can continue to monitor salary savings and can continue if it wishes to involve itself in the spending of those salary savings or not.

But at least gives the department or the council the ability to monitor it.

Whereas the statement of intent on the 2021 budget legislation didn't require these reports.

It just requested them.

This particular proviso would require them and then release some of the proviso each time they complied.

The council has an intense statement in this legislation that says that it intends that in amending this proviso that SPD would have access to future salary savings to fund its staffing plan.

So I'll stop and ask if there's any questions on that proviso change.

Okay.

I'm sorry.

I have my participant screen up.

I did not see you there.

I can't figure out how to raise my hand.

I'm sorry.

The function is like disappeared from my screen, so I'm going old school here.

My apologies.

Greg, on this particular, so this was a budget action that I sponsored in last year.

And I'm still becoming familiar with the impact of this proposed proviso.

So if I understand what you're saying correctly, this substitute bill would amend the proviso that the City Council adopted in 2020 to begin slowly releasing the savings Um, of the 5Million dollar, the salary savings, um.

Under in the 5Million dollar proviso back.

To SPD.

That's the effect of this.

Okay.

There are additional salary savings, right?

Yes, because the bill that we had before us was a $5.4 million bill, and there was a $5 million proviso in addition to this.

What we're doing now is we're working from a $7.7 million base.

So we're already scooping some of the salary savings.

as contemplated under the $5 million proviso.

And so I think it's reasonable to assume that there may be additional salary savings, but this would only go into effect if there were additional salary savings.

Council Member Herbold, this would actually be in effect regardless of whether there were additional salary savings.

It is the case that this would hold up $5 million of appropriation authority that would release dependent on reports, and that would happen irrespective of whether or not there were salary savings.

You would know that there is additional salary savings because of this proviso and because of the requirement for them to send staffing reports.

So I am a little confused here.

It's titled the $5 billion salary savings proviso.

$5 million.

The revised version holds $5 million still, but releases it based on the reporting requirements.

But but I think I want to get back to the point I was trying to make, which is it does that, but it also releases in increments.

The the salary savings that are part of that $5,000,000 bucket, correct?

Well, it's releasing the $5 million proviso.

Right now, we don't necessarily know that there is going to be an additional $5 million in salary savings.

We know that there's the $7 million in salary savings that occurred from 2021. I can say that if current trends continue, it is likely that there will wind up being $5 million of salary savings in 2021. But irrespective of that, this particular item would hold $5 million, whether it's salary savings or anything else, and then just release it slowly.

And so if there was other salary savings in the department, the council would need to act to grab it.

I don't mean to be dense, but I really don't understand.

What's happening on this one?

So I I just don't.

I'm not.

I'm just not grasping what the.

What the impact is, and I think maybe I'm struggling with understanding.

You know, sort of crosswalk between the underlying Council budget action that we adopted in 2020 and what this new amendment does and I just I'm just not.

Fully understanding what the effect of this proposal is on the underlying.

Proviso and that's probably just me, but I'm struggling to understand it, so I will.

If there's anything else you can sort of point me to to help orient me, that would be super helpful.

The discussion continues.

I can do a little bit of reading up in the background.

I do have the actual proviso language here at the end, and I don't know if this is helpful or not, but.

This this shows how the proviso is.

It had been held until authorized by a future ordinance.

So $5 million was being held up.

And then that $5 million is no longer held up.

Instead, it is released pursuant to these requirements here, that it be released one month at a time with the report 625,000 each report.

I don't know that that necessarily helps you, but that's the actual language.

I see this is actually helpful.

So what we're doing, I think what I'm struggling with is how we dealt with these kind of provisos historically in the past.

Because I think that the original intent was really to be able to capture these savings for council priorities that may be outside of the area of SPD, that might be outside of SPD's budget.

And, and so I think what I'm, what I'm, what I'm struggling with is, um, is, is just a shift in how we are, um, um, executing this at this point.

And I understand it's a policy choice and that's why we're having this conversation.

So I, this is, this, this is a helpful and I appreciate the additional clarification.

Yeah, I think one last thing I'd say on this, it would have been cleaner probably if the legislation eliminated your original proviso and then put into place a new proviso that does what this does, because as you point out, this is different.

Can I rephrase a way that makes sense to me?

Under Morales, yes.

I think my understanding of what this is doing, you know, the original intent of that proviso from last year was to effectively begin to limit budget authority so that we could address our longer-term goal of slowly reducing the budget of SPD and doing something else with those public dollars.

This amendment erases that goal.

That's how I'm seeing this and basically just gives the funding back, assuming there's a report.

If that's a misinterpretation, somebody please help me understand that.

I think that the context is a little different.

As far as I can tell from the conversation in the sense that.

When we pass the $5,000,000 proviso originally.

It was in the context of not having the $5.4 million additional proposed bill and so now now.

Now there's a question about what to do with the $5,000,000 proviso, which from my perspective was always intended.

to capture potential salary savings for other council priorities that are outside of the Seattle Police Department.

But now we have a situation where we're considering this 5.4 original bill that would reduce the budget by $5.4 million.

And additive to that is $5 million, which, again, is a layering that that I'm not sure existed when we actually debated, considered, and voted on the original $5 million proviso.

But I understand that now we are faced with a policy question of whether we want the $5 million proviso as originally passed to be added to the $5.4 million, or if we are effectively swapping those out for a net neutral effect.

Thank you.

That's what I'm tracking.

Yes.

I think it's I think I'm remembering a sentence in the letter to the monitor that explains some of these things.

And I think the thing that a sentence that resonated with me as it relates to the relationship between the five point four million dollar bill and the council member council president Gonzalez's proviso is that

You're welcome.

they had the same source of funds, the salary savings.

And we didn't, and I think that is what we're grappling with right now, is this question of the use of salary savings now versus the controls that we want to put on the police department's budget as it relates to other priorities that we have in the future.

Council Member Swan, I see your hand up.

Yeah, I don't know.

I think that a lot of the explanation here is, in my view, unnecessarily complicated.

And I feel that essentially what Council Member Morales just said is what makes sense to me.

I mean, I see this essentially as the As this proviso changed, essentially giving the police the access to the $5 million without council action.

In the original proviso, which my office had obviously supported, it said that it would require a council bill to release the $5 million to the police.

This bill would remove the requirement for a council bill.

And I have no doubt that at that time, I had publicly wanted the promises like this would, to reduce the police budget would not come to fruition.

And the five million proviso is an example of that.

But I think that what is happening now is that this amended version is saying it will not actually reduce the police budget.

And that they do not even, police department do not even need a future council bill to get access to the $5 million, that they just need to provide some reports.

That's what I see is happening.

Thank you.

Councilmember, just to add clarity, this amendment does reduce by $3 million the police department budget.

Your and Councilmember Morales' assessment of salary savings going forward is accurate.

There would not need to be another council bill to release that funding.

And I moved on to this slide because this provides some context.

There is intent language in this legislation that speaks to future salary savings.

And what it says is that the, um, intent of the Council is to provide flexibility to SPD to be able to address emerging issues, to mitigate recent officer, uh, departures, and to prioritize obligations under the federal consent decree.

Um, this would allow the department to be able to plan to use future salary savings beyond the 7.7 million that the Council is, is, is, uh, redirecting today, um, to their priorities, and that might include, um, everything from patrol augmentation to special events.

There's also some language in the bill about intent around, um, maximizing efficiency on staffing special events, um, and that's a bit of a separate issue, but, uh, related in the sense that if there's additional salary savings they should try to maximize them by ensuring that there's a civilian sworn mix of staffing that allows them to make the most of any additional new salary savings.

But ultimately, yes, you are correct in your assessment, Council Member Morales and Gonzalez as well.

The idea going forward is there would no longer be a lock on salary savings requiring a future appropriation.

Those salary savings would be released over time.

And Greg, is it accurate to say that based on the reporting that this proviso requires, if we find that conditions of change based on that reporting, whether or not it relates to future salary savings or some other topic that the reporting requires, that we could, the council, through this committee, could take action.

So for instance, if we find out that there's future salary savings and we have concerns that they are not going to use those future salary savings to fund shared council SPD priorities we could take some action then?

The council has the power of the person absolutely in a supplemental budget they could do that and it's my understanding that that was your intent with this And so the only other thing that I had to say about this is that there is language around intent for the current salary savings to 7.7 million.

We have already covered all of these items, so I'm not going to go back into it.

But what this is asking is that SPD use its salary savings to address its own requests that they have noted both in memos to the monitor and memos to this committee, requests and priorities that Councilmember Herbold has noted.

And then, as we just discussed, future salary savings would become available for them to address emerging issues, consent decree issues, and mitigation for officer losses.

So with that, I would ask if there are any questions.

Okay, so originally I had hoped that we could discuss moving the substitute and potentially make a committee recommendation, again, with the understanding that we would not move any committee recommendation to full council until after SPD answers the monitor's questions, the monitor considers those answers to SPD's questions, and provides feedback to the court and allows the court the opportunity to comment on the police department's answers to the monitor's questions, as well as the new bill that we are considering now.

And I should say, I have also shared with the monitor that a copy of this bill of the proposed substitute, I should say, and have expressed to the monitor my intentions to not take final action in full counsel on the bill.

There have been some concerns expressed to me that even making a committee recommendation might create some confusion with the monitor and might create some concern from the judge.

And that may be a different approach where we could move the conversation forward without sending a signal to the court and to the monitor that we are not pausing to consider the Seattle Police Department's responses to the monitor's questions.

And that perhaps a way to move the conversation forward in a small way today is to move the substitute But not to actually take action on the substitute day.

And so I just want to get a sense.

And this is less about what your position is on the substitute.

It's more a question of whether or not that seems like a reasonable next action to take, to have a vote on substituting the original bill for the existing bill, regardless of what your position is on the substitute, whether or not I think that's a reasonable next step take.

Opening up if you have thoughts.

desire to want to spend a little bit more time with the legislation.

Frankly, I've heard that from the executive and the federal police monitor, but I've also heard it from folks in community who also would appreciate a little bit more time with the substitute bill before we formulate a committee recommendation.

So I think in this instance, I'm seeing some agreement here on at a minimum, I would be supportive of holding off on a committee recommendation and I would be supportive of putting the substitute bill before us as the thing that we continue to discuss, but holding off on a committee recommendation seems to make sense to me at this point.

Okay, well, seeing none, I'm going to take that as agreement.

Again, not on the on the substance of either the original bill or the substitute.

But I'm going to take that as consent on the recommended process.

So I will move the proposed substitute as listed on the agenda.

Is there a second?

Second.

Thank you.

Will the clerk please call the roll on the proposed substitute replacing the bill that's on the agenda?

Council President Gonzalez?

Council President Gonzalez?

I'm sorry, aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

I'm sorry, this is, sorry.

I think I'm about to ask maybe the same question.

We need to debate.

We need to discuss the motion.

My apologies.

Council Member Swann, was that what you were going to ask as well?

Yes, and yeah, and just from the beginning, I couldn't figure out how the position on the substitutes substance is divorced from this vote.

Anyway, yeah, it's the same question.

Let's hear from folks on the motion before us.

My apologies.

Council Member Lewis?

Yes.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you for bringing forward this substitute bill today into this conversation.

I know that a lot of work has gone into crafting this and consulting with a very broad constituency.

I just want to comment on a couple of things that I like about the substitute and a couple of things that I'm still frustrated about.

regarding broader process, not necessarily confined to the work of this committee, but just the broader situation we find ourselves in with the broader public safety conversation.

Because we heard a lot in public comment that I don't really disagree with on any end of the spectrum.

We heard from a lot of downtown residents that are incredibly frustrated that there is a massive concentration of people in severe urban poverty with severe public health needs that are going unaddressed, and that that is manifesting in some cases into public safety challenges that are dramatically impacting livability.

We heard from a number of people testifying that when certain lines are drawn from the council in terms of the expectation of what the police department will do in response to mandates from the council, that there needs to be a hard and fast enforcement of those rules.

And I think in a lot of respects, this bill balances a lot of those considerations and I want to go into talking about how I think they do.

I also just want to take this opportunity sort of outside of the four corners of this to outline.

Some of the places I hope this conversation goes moving forward from here.

So, first, I want to speak to some of the things I really like in the bill in terms of investments to immediately respond to some of the issues that we are seeing in the community.

First, Madam President, as you, or sorry, Madam Chair, as you mentioned earlier in this conversation, either way that we go, be it the original bill or the substitute, there is no impact, no impact whatsoever on the police staffing plan that was adopted by this council last fall.

This bill will not result in fewer patrol officers.

This bill will not result in more patrol officers.

On that topic, this bill is neutral.

That is a separate issue.

And I appreciate you addressing that at the beginning of this, because I think there is widespread confusion amongst members of the public, amongst certain editorial boards, in various places in the media, that what we are debating right now is going to have a tangible impact on patrol numbers, and it won't.

So that's the first thing that I want to point out.

But what it will have an impact on is material on the ground services that are civilian and that are public health oriented that can come in and help smooth our transition to a public safety system that emphasizes those kinds of services more.

I think some people forget that the community service officers, which are a civilian, essentially social worker unit, that this council has wanted to move into a civilian department.

I continue to support that kind of a movement and that we almost did last budget cycle, but it wasn't quite ready for that kind of a transfer.

The CSOs, even though they're still housed, unfortunately, in the police department, have a community organizing and community service function that is separate from a carceral law enforcement focused method of safety and service.

Just to give a little bit of an overview, and people can read the bios, by the way, of all of our community service officers online, which are an incredibly diverse, talented, and exceptional group of public servants.

The organizers, or the officers in the community service officer core currently, are former organizers for One America.

They're former practicing social workers.

They're a workforce that collectively speaks fluently nine languages.

They are former youth counselors.

They are former union organizers.

And these are the folks that under your substitute bill, Madam Chair, we're going to get more of.

And we're going to expand the service footprint of the community service officers and see that tangible impact in the community in short order.

And I think investing more in community service officers is a good idea.

And honestly, that investment that we make in the community service officers, hopefully will ultimately be transferred into a civilian controlled department, even though they aren't at this time.

So even though technically that is still in the police department, it is not a service that we would traditionally associate with traditional policing and certainly is more in keeping with the model we are trying to transition to.

This is also going to fund, as Greg laid out, five civilian mental health responders from the Human Services Department.

So that is money that is still being taken out of SPD and being redirected.

And these civilian mental health responders are going to be stood up on a faster timeline than some of our other community investments and will be able to get out there and have a tangible on the ground impact for a lot of the challenges that folks in public comment work.

uh...

addressing and they'll be addressed in a way that does not focus on arms policing as a way to intervene in public health challenges it's going to be focused on sending appropriate civilian responders that are paid for and supervised in the human services department not to the police department that is critical uh...

it's going to address the public records backlog you know part of this we should call the uh...

uh...

the uh...

the uh...

uh...

public media relief package because i know from talking to journalists for years that there is massive consternation about the slow, slow trickle of information, critical information for the public to be aware of the activities of one of the largest law enforcement agencies in the Pacific Northwest that get held up because of an under-resourced and under-utilized public records department.

So that investment is going to be made.

On top of all this, we're going to free up $2 million for participatory budgeting to bring the total to $32 million.

So there is still a significant investment that is additive to the participatory budgeting.

So for those reasons, because of those very tangible alternatives to traditional policing that are gonna get funded and that are gonna move as a result of the substitute, I'm gonna support the substitute today.

And I wanna speak a little bit more broadly at this point, just to express that we need to keep our discussion and debate focused on what I think the biggest vulnerability has been of the effort up to this point to really be able to emphasize and describe to the general public what some of the alternatives are going to be to policing as we reduce policing and scale it up, and also what the plan is going to be to scale those things up.

We have set up a very comprehensive and consultative process to do that, which is appropriate.

We're gonna be making generational paradigm changing and shifting investments in our public safety system.

those investments, unfortunately, to be consultative to the point that they should be, to be lasting, to have the feedback and the guidance of BIPOC leaders to fully shape and build those systems, takes longer than a couple of months.

And we have received solid, comprehensive recommendations and work through the Black Brilliance Research Project that this council is currently working on.

We are working on setting up a participatory budgeting process to scale and fund a lot of those interventions.

And I want to, and services, but I want to just take a second to maybe highlight if we could pursue related to that work or on a separate track, or maybe with resources that aren't the participatory budgeting resources, investing and scaling some kind of low acuity response system like Kahoot!

or like STAR.

And the reason I bring this up separately is because You know, I think the other day in his column, Danny Wesny had a little bit of a point that I think as far as the public sees when they see these discussions, they're constantly seeing conversations around cutting the police, which I think there's broad agreement that the police are not a best practice first responder for mental health, for urban poverty, for low acuity crimes of survival that can be addressed by addressing poverty and the sources of poverty.

and investment in community.

And we don't really need to look that far to find some first response services that are, in a lot of respects, best practices that have been proven by the analysis and data of some of these cities.

And I just want to briefly talk a little bit about the STAR program and just advocate publicly here that maybe on a separate track, we try to carve off some resource for HSD to construct and build and contract a STAR program with our provider community.

And I just want to raise that STAR for the folks from downtown that called in during public comment.

responds effectively and proactively to the types of public health related instances that have been described by a lot of people, particularly at the downtown court, people who are intoxicated, people who are trespassing, people who are engaged in an indecent exposure, all that have very high correlations to substance addiction or behavioral mental health challenges.

Instead of sending police, Denver is sending this program called STAR, Support Team Assisted Response.

Just to put out there the cost of STAR, for $1.4 million, Denver estimates that they're going to be able to have four vans.

It's currently one van as a pilot, but they're expanding it.

They released their six-month report at the beginning of this year.

For $1.4 million, Denver is going to get four vans.

So they're gonna increase it from one van to four.

That will include six teams, each team composed of one medic and one mental health clinician.

So that's an EMT and a mental health clinician.

So that's six medics, six mental health clinicians and four vans for $1.4 million a year to allow seven day a week coverage to immediately respond with professionals on the ground to deal with these low acuity issues and get people the assistance and the help that they need.

To put it in perspective with the 5.4 million we're discussing, I mean, just for, not that, you know, this 5.4 million could be used for this, but assuming it costs the same or that we would use the same procurement as Denver, that could be 14 vans, 21 medics, 21 mental health clinicians that could be on the ground, operationalized, responding to these types of issues.

I only raise that to say that the cost of a lot of these replacements relative to the cost of police, is something that's really worth considering, especially when we look at what the result has been in the STAR program in Denver, in how that has actually responded to a lot of these ongoing chronic issues on the street in a more effective way, emphasizing public health and emphasizing low acuity first response.

So I just that's unrelated to our discussion of purely of the bill here, but I do think that we need to increasingly emphasize as a council and as part of our effort, and I think we will as we gear up the participatory budgeting process, that there are great alternatives out there that are going to be able to fill the void of what a lot of folks in the community are expressing concern about and seeing in terms of some of the public health and public safety challenges that we have as a city.

And that actually, in a lot of ways, with the CSOs and with the mental health responders, we can get some of those resources out there faster, but we need to keep building toward something like a STAR response program that is community-based, provider-based, and can respond to the types of issues that we are seeing.

So I'm gonna support the substitute today.

With that, I don't have anything else to add, and I'll turn it back over, Madam Chair.

Thank you very much.

And they do have a couple recommendations that they're going to continue looking into for exactly those types of programs.

So we can continue to have a conversation of whether or not it needs to be a separate track.

I appreciate that the community has both identified this as a need and expressed it as a priority for funding through participatory budgeting.

But I'm looking and happy to have those conversations of whether or not we need to more directly fund a function like this.

So thank you for that.

Council Member Sawant.

and actually, just to respond briefly to that, Madam Chair, that is why I duly wanted to recognize the Black Brilliance Project in my remarks.

I have read the report and the part where they delve into that and appreciate that work entirely and stand ready to continue to work with them in doing whatever small part I can to help shape that ultimate investment.

Council Member Swann.

Thank you.

I'm needless to say opposing this substitution amendment, which in my view, yet again, betrays the promises made to the Black Lives Matter movement.

I went back to see my comments from the council meeting on December 14th of last year, when I was the only council member to vote no on the bill to give the Seattle Police Department an additional $5.4 million to essentially cover the millions they illegally spent on overtime they were not authorized to spend when they filled the streets with riot cops to abuse Black Lives Matter protesters.

At the time, I said, and I quote, I'm voting no on this supplemental budget, which gives the Seattle Police Department an additional $5.4 million to fund the extra overtime they used abusing and intimidating the Black Lives Matter movement.

Every city department is allocated a budget at the beginning of the year, and those are the funds they have available to do whatever they need to do.

Here we are in the last council meeting of the year, the same year we had a historic Black Lives Matter movement, a year in which under pressure from the street heat, the democratic establishment made sweeping promises to defund the police by 50%.

We now hear that the police have spent $5.4 million more than their budget.

$5.4 million that did not belong to them and are requesting retroactive permission for the millions of taxpayer money they have stolen.

They have taken this money in order to abuse the Black Lives Matter movement, spending millions in overtime to fill the streets of Seattle with tear gas and other weapons.

And they have taken this money for personal enrichment with individual officers amassing hundreds of thousands in overtime pay.

Imagine a car thief who tells you that if you just retroactively give them your car, then they will not have stolen it.

And the Seattle Police Department does this almost every year to the point where the council even passed a resolution in the summer pledging to say no if the police made this request at the end of this year.

Now is the test.

Will council members hold the line or yet again backfill the already bloated police budget with renewed pledges to hold the line next year?

Unfortunately in the finance and housing committee last week councilmembers on the committee unanimously voted to approve this police funding this year while pledging to take it from next year's budget.

But what does it mean to take the money from next year's budget if councilmembers prove that they have no intention of holding the police to that budget?

What if the police go over the budget by 5.4 million dollars again in 2021?

Will the council hold the line then?

or push it back another year?

What if they go over by $20 million in 2021 or $50 million?

What will make council members more willing to hold the police to their budget next year, given that this year the council already took the extra step of passing a resolution pledging to hold them to their budget?

Does the council need to pass two resolutions in 2021 saying, no, but for real this time?

In committee public comment, community organizers demanded the council hold the line.

This is not holding the line.

It is moving the line back a year with no guarantee that it will not move again and again and again.

Of course, the reality is It is not about lines or promises or resolutions or even the goodwill of elected officials.

It is about the power of the movements in the streets.

At the height of the justice for George Floyd movement, council members were forced to promise to defund the police by 50%.

A couple of months later, when the movement had receded by quite a bit, that was reduced to just a couple percent and then a promise to not to add that funding back at the end of the year.

And a couple of months later, here we are.

The lesson for our movements is we must depend on our own strength.

And quote.

Now, today I say, do councilmembers remember saying they support defunding the police by 50%?

Then do councilmembers remember that they cannot be funded by 50% in 2020 because reducing the number of police officers would take up to four months, but they promised to do so in 2021?

Then do councilmembers remember saying that they will not increase the police overtime budget in 2020?

then do council members remember that saying that they will increase the police budget in 2020 by 5.4 million dollars but they certainly but they will certainly cut that amount from the police budget in 2021 At this point, anyone who is surprised by the substitute bill is unfortunately woefully naive, and I have no doubt that there will be supplemental budgets proposed this year to add even more to the police budget.

I want to return to the essence of the defund demand.

Our movement demanded the police be defunded by 50% to cut the police resources used to violently police peaceful BLM protests, but not only that, to harass and abuse communities of color and other working class and poor communities on an almost daily basis.

I oppose this substitution and urge council members to vote to pass the original bill following through on at least this one promise made to the Black Lives Matter movement.

I also want to address the issue that was discussed during Greg Dawson's presentation.

The same substitute bill releases an additional $5 million in the police budget that was previously bound by a proviso.

That means that the substitute bill as a whole cuts two to $3 million from the police and then gives the police access to $5 million.

So on balance, it increases the available police budget by over 2 million.

As Malcolm X famously said, Quote, if you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, that's not progress and quote.

I think it is also crucial to point out that working people will need to get organized and fight for an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police, including hiring and firing.

subpoena powers and the power to set policies and procedures.

My observation from having talked to hundreds of people in a politically broad spectrum is that even those working people who are not sure about defunding also strongly support an elected community oversight board with full powers over the police.

So it's absolutely essential that community members and protesters and working people and progressive labor unions understand that relying on the political establishment does not work, we will have to build an independent fighting movement for this.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Sawant.

Council Member Morales, please.

Thank you.

I'll be quick.

I know some of us are late for another meeting.

I want to say that I do.

I'm struggling with the substitute bill.

I feel like this is really giving the department back everything that they're asking for.

And we really should hold the line on budget accountability for the department.

As I said before, there were decisions made, the department made choices last year to overspend on their overtime budget.

So I think we need to move that $5.4 million out of the department and leave to budget with the remaining savings that they have, rather than sending a message that overruns are acceptable.

Made their budget choices, and like every other department, should operate now within those constraints.

So I think the original bill was about holding the department to some budget accountability for their overspends last year, and I think that remains the issue.

So I will not be supporting the substitute.

Thank you, Council Member Morales.

If there are no further comments on the bill, I just want to briefly say this is not a $5.4 million cut.

It is a $3 million cut.

It does maintain a proviso and allows this committee to stay in the driver's seat around budget accountability as we receive future reports.

from SPD on staffing and overtime issues.

And so, for me, this is maintaining accountability while also listening to a broad sector of the community about what community needs, community safety means for them.

And I look forward to continue work with this committee in driving forward those discussions.

Thank you.

With that, will the clerk please call the roll?

Council President Gonzalez?

Aye.

Council Member Lewis?

Aye.

Council Member Morales.

No.

Council Member Sawant.

No.

Council Member Herbold.

Aye.

Three in favor, two opposed.

Okay.

Well, thank you all.

So we will continue our discussion around the budget legislation before us.

Understand that we should expect to hear more from the monitor and potentially from the court as this moves forward.

appreciate the continuing conversation with the committee members as we've had today and as I know we will continue.

I would like to adjourn the meeting and the next Public Safety and Human Services Committee is scheduled for April 13th.

We are adjourned.

Thank you.