Seattle City Council Briefing 2/5/2024

Good afternoon, everyone.

Today is February 5th, 2024. The council briefing meeting will come to order, and the time is 2.01 p.m.

I will note that Councilmember Morales is excused from today's briefing.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Councilmember Saka?

Here.

Councilmember Strauss?

Present.

Councilmember Wu?

Present.

Councilmember Hollingsworth?

Present.

Councilmember Kettle?

Here.

Council Member Moore.

Present.

Council Member Rivera.

Present.

Council President Nelson.

Present.

Eight present.

Thank you very much.

If there's no objection, the minutes of January 29th, 2024 will be adopted.

Hearing no objection, the minutes are adopted.

Okay, today we've got one briefing, two proclamations to sign, our usual preview of city council actions, council and regional committees, and lastly, an executive session, so it's a fairly full agenda today.

And with that, I'll move on to my president's report.

Tomorrow at full council, we'll have one item on the IRC in the consent calendar, which is our weekly claims ordinance.

We'll also be presenting a pair of proclamations that are up for signature later today, which my colleagues will introduce.

And that's it for tomorrow's meeting, full council meeting.

And it's really exciting because this week marks the very first week of our council meetings.

Having gotten the vacancy process behind us, we can get down to our normal council business.

And I'll let the chairs talk about what's on their agendas and their committees later on.

But just to note for the viewing public that we'll have four committee meetings this week.

with transportation tomorrow morning, land use on Wednesday afternoon, libraries, education, and neighborhoods on Thursday morning, and governance, accountability, and economic development on Thursday afternoon.

So, now we begin the work.

With that, I will just note that although we had been very focused on the the vacancy-filling process, it doesn't mean that that's the only thing that we've been doing.

In addition to our council members, the new members getting onboarded, all council members have spent the last few weeks meeting with department directors and finding out what legislation is in the pipeline, and they've also been thinking about what their top priorities are and which ones they might be advancing on their own initiative.

So to me, this week feels like the true beginning of the new term, and I look forward to attending the meetings on the committees on which I sit.

All right, moving on here.

Normally we have an OIR legislative session update, but we canceled it this week at the request of our OIR team in Olympia because they've got a time-sensitive meeting with the Speaker of the House at the same time.

As many of you know, today is the fiscal committee cutoff which is the last day to pass bills out of the House Fiscal Committee and the Senate Ways and Means and Transportation Committees in order to get those bills to the House or Senate floor for a vote.

So given that deadline and the fact that time in Olympia today is of the essence, our OIR team will be sending along updated materials tomorrow reflecting what bills are still viable.

So in case you're wondering why you haven't gotten that yet.

So now we'll move on to our next item, which is a presentation on the development of the 2025-2026 biennial budget from Ben Noble, our new director of council central staff.

And just as an introduction, I asked for this briefing following Mayor Harrell's announcement on January 22nd of a hiring freeze for executive departments, which I fully support.

As I've said before in different circumstances, dealing with our, right now, $229 million operating budget deficit will be a monumental task all year.

So we can't just wait until September, which is when we normally start the Council's budget process after the Mayor's proposed budget is transmitted.

And as the legislative body, Council plays a strong oversight role, and part of that role is understanding the work that departments will undertake to align their budgets with this reality, as well as bringing new members up to speed on our general budget process and the range of options at our disposal to fulfill our constitutional duty to adopt a balanced budget every year.

So welcome, Ben.

Please proceed.

Thank you very much, Council President.

Council President.

Oh, yes.

Go ahead.

I'm sorry, I forgot.

Oh, thank you, Council President.

Just as chair of the Finance Native Communities and Tribal Governance Committee, I'm excited to have this meeting.

Colleagues, as you know, this week I will be in Olympia advocating and filling my role on AWC's board as a regional committee.

I'll be speaking more to that, which is why this week's committee is canceled.

Our first meeting will be on the 21st of this month, where we will be taking the next level of depth beyond what Ben is able to present.

You may know that Ali Panucci is our central staff lead on the budget, as well as Edmund and Tom.

And so we're gonna have the CBO present at committee, as well as the three of our central staff.

And while we have not ironed out all of the when is a select budget committee going to occur compared to a finance committee occurring, I'm inviting all of you to the February 21st meeting.

So if your questions can't be answered today, they will be able to be answered on the 21st.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Would you like council members to hold their questions today until after your presentation, or do you mind if they answer during?

I'm fine for questions throughout, and hopefully I'll be able to answer them.

And thank you both for the introduction.

In my mind, there's a couple reasons to be doing this at this time of the year, which is relatively early.

One is, and I think you both highlighted this in the introduction, that the budget is obviously going to be, if not the critical, among the very critical issues that you all face this year.

some significant financial challenges, which I'll touch on today, but obviously will be the subject of more detailed discussions.

The other reason I think it's timely to do this, and you'll see this as I proceed, is the budget process is actually underway, particularly on the executive side.

So although you won't see the mayor's proposed budget till the end of September, the process has begun.

And the goal today is to give you a sense of that overall process, and I'll actually take some time to say a little bit more about the steps that are now underway on the executive side.

I DO WANT TO ECHO SOMETHING THAT COUNCILMEMBER STRAUSS SAID, WHICH IS, ALTHOUGH I AM HERE TODAY, I'M HERE ALONE TODAY BECAUSE ALI PINUCCI HAS A PRESCHEDULED TRAINING.

ALI IS REALLY OUR LEAD ON BUDGET.

OBVIOUSLY, I HAVE SOME EXPERIENCE AND EXPERTISE THAT I WILL BRING AND OFFER, BUT SHE LEADS A TEAM THAT INCLUDES EDEN AND TOM MIKESEL, EDEN CIZIK.

It's been a decade since I've been here, and among the many improvements that have been made since is that central staff has been reorganized and actually staffing increased so that you have a team that is dedicated to budget year-round, particularly Tom and Eden under Ali's leadership.

As you'll see today, I'm going to talk about some work that is underway on our side.

And candidly, in past years, that probably wouldn't have been the case.

We would have been busier with other things and not had the time to dig into this stuff.

So I really appreciate the way the team is now organized and staffed.

And I appreciate the fact that we have you on our team because you used to head up the budget office.

Yes, I do have some experience with this, and that will be evident as I talk about some of it.

So I'm going to dive into a PowerPoint, and again, as we said, happy to take questions as we go.

Let me do all those things.

Oh, that worked great.

Awesome.

So just in terms of a quick outline, the major thing to do is to talk about how the city's budget is developed and really show you the timelines on the executive side and on the council side and talk about work that is underway.

Then talk a little bit more in depth about the council's role.

You'll see both in evaluating and assessing and ultimately approving the budget for 25 and 26. but also in making modifications to this year's budget to 2024. There's a process about that as well, and I will highlight that.

And the balance between the finance and the select budget committees, and as well, I've actually added a slide since I pulled together the outline that highlights the roles of each of your standing committees and then also of the forecast council.

And then lastly, again, highlight some work that our team on the central staff side has underway already.

So just to lay the groundwork here, we follow what's called a modified biennial budget process.

I'll describe why it's modified and not a true biennial process as I go through this.

But in the fall of the even numbered years, and that would be this year as 2024, you ultimately will vote to adopt a budget for year one, which in this case will be 2025. And then you'll do that by ordinance.

That will be, you will legally appropriate the better part of $7 billion across city departments, then you will also endorse a budget for the second year, so for 2026, and you will do that by resolution.

That will not have the force of law, and you will need to come back, and I'll talk about, you need to come back in the fall of the odd-numbered year, so in the fall of next year, to reaffirm and ultimately to make the legal appropriations.

Again, hopefully I won't say this too much, but since I was here last, some important improvements have been made on that front.

I regard improvements as well.

Because in the past, we talked about a biennial budget, but the second year was really just like a whole new budget process all over again.

There was not much weight put on the endorsed budget.

candidly on either the executive or the council side.

And through some work done in the last few years with the budget office and central staff working collaboratively, moved to a process that's really designed to be much more of a biennial process.

So that endorsed budget is meaningfully the baseline for the departments.

And it is the goal of the executive to hold fast to that, if you will, as much as possible, and ultimately should be your goal as well.

And I think there's good reason for that.

Principally, that allows departments to have at least a two-year planning window, which in the bigger scheme of things is not that long.

And that kind of consistency is really important.

It also, frankly, frees you up and the executive up to do more work over the course of the year, particularly in the fall.

I don't mind saying this.

There's some self-criticism in this as well, but the budget process is not particularly efficient.

If you think about an engine, it generates a lot of heat and doesn't necessarily move things as forward as much as I think everyone would like.

Not firing that engine up every year is not a bad idea because it allows you to focus on other things.

So that's essentially the modified biennial process.

A true biennial process, you would adopt a two-year budget and then only revisit as necessary.

THERE'S A HOST OF REASONS WHY THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE DOING, INCLUDING SOME LEGAL IMPEDIMENTS.

THE CITY'S BUDGET PROCESS IS ACTUALLY SET OUT IN STATE LAW, UNIQUE TO THE CITY.

WELL, UNIQUE TO ANY CITY WITH MORE THAN 400,000 RESIDENTS, SO MORE OR LESS THE SAME THING.

SO QUESTIONS ABOUT THAT BEFORE I MOVE ON?

JUST HIGHLIGHT THAT BASIC SETUP.

I HAVE A QUESTION.

SO IS IT CONTEMPLATED THAT IN THE ODD YEARS THAT THERE IS ALSO A BALANCING PACKAGE?

There was still the odd year, or the second year, everybody, as the State Council and the executive, needs to respond to changing conditions.

And I just recently left the world of revenue forecasting.

And as good as I was at it, and the team was, two years out, we're not going to get that right.

So there'll be changes on the revenue side.

And there'll be changes on, if you will, the expenditure side for good reason, that priorities will evolve.

Things will happen.

the West Seattle Bridge will be forced to close.

Not again, but you get the idea.

I mean, they're small, and yes, I know I'm just a customer saga.

There are things that you don't anticipate.

Some of them large, some of them small.

That's all to say.

So this chart...

Director Noble, sorry.

I just have a point of clarification.

So it's contemplated that you pass the first year and then on the second year of the odd year of the biennium, it's endorsed, but it's still, you should be contemplating unforeseeable things, but for the most part, and by and large, as much as you can, you should stick with what got endorsed as a part of the process.

Is my understanding correct?

That is the way the systems have now been set up, and that is the goal.

So, yes.

I mean, I want to be just a little bit careful.

Can I support that and encourage you?

It is still a council prerogative.

Until you make the appropriations in the second year, there is no legal budget, right?

But the systems can work better, I think, and from a policy perspective, providing that kind of steady and predictable approach is helpful.

And on the financial planning side as well.

So, all ways around.

Thank you.

So this next graphic, I'm going to spend some timeline because it's kind of busy and it really tells the whole story.

So this thing is color coded some as well.

So the executive phase of things is in shades of gray.

No underlying meaning to that, just that that is the color.

And then council is more in blue.

And I'm going to start here at the left, because that's the timeline, and move to the right.

so uh and i'm going to start by talking about the executive process um because it largely is what's underway now will millow mentioned work that the council can be doing now and then also talk a little about about revenues because that's one of my favorite topics so right now the process initiates with the executive delivering budget guidance to the departments and that has happened and i'll talk about that in just a moment but the idea here is that the The executive has an overall sense of the city's financial condition and what resources are likely to be for 25 and 26, and again, as we've highlighted, facing a significant deficit.

And they begin this process by getting feedback from the departments about, okay, so how are we going to react to the situation we are in?

Sometimes, in better years, if you will, there's a sense that there's gonna be additional resource, and this guidance could come along the lines of, hey, if you had some additional resource, what's the most impactful thing that you could do?

Painfully, that's not the situation we are in.

So the guidance that was delivered to departments was about aligning them towards a smaller budget for 25 and 26. A few terms of art that I want to explain.

As departments contemplate that and feed things back, they start from a base budget, which is a meaningful term of art in this business.

But a base budget takes your current year budget, so in this case in 2024, and adjust it for likely increases in cost, things like inflation, labor costs, whatever those might be.

So it's essentially a question of, if you were to do all the things you're going to do this year, next year, what would that cost?

And that sets the base budget.

I would add that sometimes there are one-time things in a budget, and those come out of a base budget process.

So, you know, if the department had been given half a million dollars to build something, there's no expectation that that would be an ongoing expenditure.

So that's not in the base budget.

So there's an adjustment upward for inflation, but then could be an adjustment downward for one-time things that were there.

But they're given those base budgets and then asked to bring forward potential modifications.

In past years, in the eight years that I was budget director, that direction typically took the form of, here's a percentage reduction on your allocation of funding.

And I'll talk in just a second about which funding.

So it was really stated as, how much can you cut?

The guidance this year went out in a different way, some ways it leads to the same place, but I think it's a meaningfully different set of guidance.

It says this is the maximum, but it gives a range for each department, but this is the maximum resource that you are going to have in 25, 26, realistically.

So given that maximum level of funding, what would you fund?

What would you put into your budget?

And that's the guidance that has gone out to departments And first round coming back soon, March 6th.

That framing and those maximum targets have been framed specifically around the combination of the general fund and the jumpstart revenues, which on a forecast basis are about $2 billion.

So it's a little bit bigger than the $1.7 billion in the general fund.

That itself was a policy choice on the executive's part, recognizing that there is, at least legally, in the broadest sense, some flexibility between those funding sources.

I say in the broadest sense because there is adopted city ordinance that currently sets the priorities for the Jump Start revenues.

Those have evolved over time.

implication in the way that the request has gone out is that the executive would at least consider modifications to those going forward.

Again, with the deficit that I'm about to highlight, I think that makes sense.

And they are fundamentally both completely fungible dollars.

That is to say, they can be used for any general government expense.

A distinction there from something like the commercial parking tax, which is specifically limited to transportation purposes.

So the guidance has been about A maximum budget target, you know, over their expenditures associated with existing funding from Jumpstart and from the general fund.

And the targets are all less than 100%.

So, because again, we are facing a deficit, so there's not an opportunity, an obvious opportunity to be increasing departmental budgets.

The ranges have varied across departments, so in particular, public safety, care, human services, those kind of direct things, have a range of 95% to 98% of their services.

projected baselines for 25 and 26, so relatively narrow, to give you a sense of kind of the low end there.

Some of the departments have much lower, again, in percentage terms, targets.

Some of those, particularly departments that have in recent years, and by recent, I mean the last two, three, four, seen their budgets grow significantly, largely with infusions of the payroll, of the jumpstart payroll employment tax.

And again, one thing i want to emphasize about about the direction and the responses from the departments is that they are collecting information at this point um and if the mayor and his team are going to have meaningful choices to close a very large deficit they need a set of options that extends beyond the just predicted If they sent out targets that would just barely close the gap, that wouldn't leave them any choice about, you know, this is a good idea or that's a bad idea.

So, again, it is a standard thing to ask for a set of choices or opportunities, or I'm trying to think of the word, anyway, proposals, that's where I was looking, that are larger in total than the deficit amount.

There is then an iterative process, so I'm kind of working on now to the second phase of this, where departments prepare their submittals.

There's actually an iterative process about that, so the first set of responses is due from the departments basically a month from now, March 6th.

The budget office and the mayor's office will process those, and they're high level, so there'll be departments that have not been given very much time to respond.

Ultimately, when you're bringing forth a detailed budget proposal, you have to get down to specific funding amounts and positions, and it's a technical exercise.

So this initial phase is like, let's get the ideas on the table.

The executive is then in a position to say, you know what?

These are worth pursuing.

Bring us back.

um in april a more detailed uh a more detailed proposal for uh along those lines or you know that one we're not interested in take that off the table um and it could be based on the discussions take that off the table you know we thought of something why don't you work up a proposal like this um and those come back um to the to the executive again in april in april may time frame and then vetted by CBO and reviewed with the mayor's office.

And then they shift, using this diagram here, into the kind of darker gray to June, July, August.

That's really when they start to make the decisions.

So they've now had a first round of information and a second round of information, and they begin decisions particularly in the July and ultimately August timeframe.

So the mayor largely wraps up decision-making Well, ideally, and maybe the mayor is listening, but probably not, on behalf of the budget office, ideally in August, because it becomes a bit of a scramble as you move into September, and having managed that team, the longer that takes, the more scramble.

But meaningfully, they got to make decisions no later than early September in order to bring you a budget towards the end of September.

There's a lot of work in the production and getting all those details right.

So that's the timeframe that they are now working on.

I should also add, and it's going to come up as we talk about modifications to the 2024 budget, that at the same time that they issued the guidance to the departments on the targets for 25 and 26, they also, as you all are aware, announced a hiring freeze for this year with meaningful exceptions and important exceptions, which I'll highlight here, and then also a review of significant labor contracts.

Again, I think the reasons for that additional direction, I think twofold.

One is recognition that there are challenges actually now in 2024 that we face in terms of balancing the budget.

And then also looking ahead and knowing how significant the challenges are Bringing on new staff in an environment where we might be forced to let staff go doesn't feel like a particularly ideal situation.

So the hiring freeze is announced across the city, but again, with exceptions for police, fire, care, other first responders, also to backfill for folks who are on parental leave, so that covering critical functions.

They will also have an exception process or a review process, so departments can bring forth some positions and say, hey, we really can't function without this one, and you wouldn't want us to.

And that's all on the executive side.

I mean, these, as we have discussed, I think with each of you individually, THE MAYOR AND THE EXECUTIVE HAS THE AUTHORITY TO SPEND THE BUDGET OR TO NOT SPEND THE BUDGET.

SO THIS IS THE MAYOR CHOOSING TO BACK OFF ON SPENDING RELATIVELY APPROPRIATED LEVELS, AGAIN, RECOGNIZING THE FINANCIAL SITUATION WE ARE IN.

SO THESE ARE UNILATERAL DECISIONS ON THEIR PART, BUT I THINK THEY WILL KEEP US INFORMED, KEEP YOU INFORMED AS THEY GO.

AGAIN, THEY'VE ALSO IMPOSED A REVIEW ON SIGNIFICANT CONTRACTS.

I don't want you to do...

Well, I'm just going to say I'm not going to apologize.

In a different context, as the pandemic hit, when I was serving as budget director, I did the very same thing, hiring freeze, and then said, you know, no new contracts out the door.

Very different situation.

Like, we were literally thinking about hoarding cash.

As the pandemic hit, we had no idea what was going to happen.

But the financial challenges that the city faces now aren't...

It's interesting.

In some ways...

We didn't know what they were, and we were worried just about how severe they could be and actually thought they might be more severe than what we're facing now.

The difference now is maybe not as bad as it could have been, but we know what it is.

So responding in this way at this time, again, I can see why they would do it for what it's worth.

So that's the executive process.

Let me take any questions on that, perhaps, before I move on to talk a little bit about Council's work during that process.

I'm not seeing stuff.

So just to highlight.

I have a question.

Oh, please.

I might have more specific questions about the specific direction to the different kinds of departments, but did you say when you were mentioning public safety, I'm talking about building the budgets, did you say that the 98% or so applied to, I think you said police, fire, care, and I think you said human services.

Did you say human services?

I think I did, and I want to confirm.

I have some notes, so allow me...

Correct.

HSD and homelessness, sort of that realm.

So again, 95% to 98% of current funding is the anticipation in that direction.

Thank you.

So we'll talk more about this too coming up, but over the course of, again, sort of now to September, late September, when you receive the budget, and I'm gonna, my next slide blows up the council part of this and goes into greater detail, so we'll talk about the council budget process in October and November.

But as we'll describe, there's ongoing work with the budget, both in terms of looking ahead to the 25 and 26 budget, also making modifications to the current budget, And then also just in basic accountability, and you all asking departments about how they're using the 2024 resources, are they, you know, to the extent that they requested funding for specific initiatives, what's the status of those initiatives and the like.

And that is work that we'll talk about you can be doing in your normal standing committees and or in the budget committee, select budget committee, and or potentially in the finance committee.

So that's to say that the executive's underway, but you all can be as well.

And now I see some questions.

Director Noble, quick question.

As part of this, there's certain constraints and restraints, and there's assumptions that they're making.

And one big change is obviously we have a very new council that comes at this in a very different way.

Is this going to be part of their planning process in terms of recognizing that You know, we have a two-thirds swap out, and, you know, we come from a very different, not very different, but, you know, different perspective.

Yes.

So we've, again, previewing a little bit, but I'll get there.

We've had some discussions with them about a different approach, a somewhat more collaborative approach.

Also had some discussions about how some of the work they have done in getting ready to lead the executive through decision-making is information they could transfer candidly to central staff, and for us to do the same for you.

We had already been planning, you know, sort of build some things for you, but if we can cooperate with them, and they've done some of this work.

We've got three dedicated staff.

The Budget Office has a larger number.

They're doing a lot more work.

But to say that they, you know, there's expertise and accomplishment here that we can take advantage of.

Hey, Ken.

I was gonna say thank you, and yes, collaboration doesn't just reside here.

It's with us, through you, and to the executive on this point, too, so.

Thank you.

And Councilmember Kettle, or Council President, if I may.

Yes.

Yeah, Council Member Kettle, this speaks to what I've been saying in our council briefings the last couple weeks about using select budget committee a little bit differently and a little bit more often because it is important, which is also why I'm inviting everyone to the 21st meeting.

even though it's not a select budget committee, because I see a very real need to walk through the process that the executive is going through so that we understand what efficiencies and where are they finding them so that it doesn't get to September before we're having our first look at this process.

I understand.

Thanks.

May I?

Thank you, Council President.

Ben, I have a question about the accountability piece you just raised and the status of the initiatives that were included in the 24 budget.

Given most of us weren't here for when the 24 budget passed, what's the best way that we can get a read into what those initiatives were that got included that we should be looking at, if you will?

Talk to your central staff is the short answer.

So if you talk to your committee coordinator, they can link back to me, to Ali, to others, and we can bring that forward for you.

Good question.

Thank you.

Before I leave the slide, let me talk about one of my favorite topics on it, revenue forecasts.

And not just because it's my favorite topic, because it is really relevant to this.

So per the little arrows at the bottom there and the labels, there are three revenue forecasts that are prepared over the course of the year.

One to be delivered at the beginning of April.

We'll talk some more about the forecast council in a few moments as well.

That really sets the frame.

And that'll be the first forecast that we have done since October.

So it's actually the biggest span in the year over which we kind of wait for an update.

Sometimes I use the word update, but the truth is there are grounds up forecast reviews, forecast development.

The April one sets really the tone for the executive in all of its decision-making activities.

right up to the August.

So as it's looking at the initial submittals from the departments, as it's making its initial decisions, the mayor's making initial decisions in June and July, it's with that April forecast.

And that forecast will potentially put more resource on the table in the general fund and in Jumpstart or take some off.

It depends on the economic conditions and the like.

As of two years ago, the forecast office is fully independent of both the council and the executive, so ideally delivering that news, whatever it is, without an incentive to do anything but.

And I can assure you that that was the case, and I have every confidence it will be going forward.

There's then an update in August.

It's due, I think, by August 10th.

There's actually statutory requirements now for an April.

The April forecast is due April 10th.

August, I think, August, no later than.

So depending on the weekends, we'll likely time it out.

The August forecast, again, arrives early in August and then becomes the technical basis for the mayor's proposed budget.

The mayor's budget will be balanced to a forecast because nobody really knows what city revenues will be in 25 and 26. Actually, we don't even know what they will be in 24 at that point.

But it is balanced to that level and must be.

There is then one more bite at the apple, which happens in October, looking at probably the second or third week in October, which is a last check-in, if you will, before you all act.

It's a relatively short time since the last.

The revenue forecast in July is prepared with data essentially available through the end of, excuse me, August is done through the end of July.

the October forecast sort of beginning to mid-September.

The way the forecasts work is we have a national forecast firm that gives us their perspective on where the national economy is going.

Over time, we in the city, first in the budget office and now in the forecast office, have a model that takes that national forecast and turns it into a regional forecast because our economy is different than the nation.

So for a long time, we were doing better because no small part because the technology was booming here.

Now, model might suggest that we're going to grow a little bit slower than the nation as a whole.

So we do a regional economic model, and then that regional economic model is fed into another set of models that take regional economic variables and tie them to city revenues.

So ultimately, national forecast becomes regional forecast.

Regional forecast becomes how much sales tax, how much B&O, et cetera.

And again, that happens three times a year, August for the mayor's proposal, and then you'll get an update in October.

Generally, the October update doesn't move a whole lot, but it moves some, and it can then put the mayor's budget out of balance, either to the positive or to the negative.

It seems like that happened two years ago, if I'm not mistaken, this October forecast.

Maybe it was in 2021 during that budget deliberation period, and then it seemed like last year there wasn't going to be a balancing package, and then in response to an October forecast, then there was a balancing package, and the whole schedule changed.

So you said that you use a national firm for the October forecast, and then you boil it down.

Is there any...

Does the timing always have to be in October?

Well, the...

It's hard to do it much earlier because...

Because then you run into August.

Exactly right.

I mean, we...

In general, perspective has been that not to make...

To only make significant modifications in the October framework if there are really significant modifications to make.

Because the team is forecasting, but CBO does some of the forecasting for kind of more minor revenue streams, forecast office major ones, and they're...

between August and, you know, between July and September in terms of data, there's not that much of a difference for most of them.

But there could be very significant economic changes.

So I'm going to forget whether it was two, I guess it was probably two years ago, the Fed was in the, was just starting to significantly ramp up interest rates and then they made some significant moves in that time frame that changed forecasts inflation spiked in a way that people hadn't anticipated so those kinds of significant material changes we really think you need to incorporate but i don't think it benefits really anybody at some ultimate minor tweaks in part because the way the overall forecast works is we've been quite accurate.

But part of the reason we've been accurate is that some revenue streams go up a little bit, some revenue streams go down a little bit, and like that noise on average settles out to being pretty accurate.

But if you focus on every little bit of positive and try to spend it and, you know, you're missing the bigger picture about really what's going on and the inherent uncertainty.

But material changes we think should be reflected.

Thank you.

A quick question.

It used to be that forecasts were done four times a year, correct?

And then it switched over three times a year?

Technically, they've only been done...

In terms of revenues, they've been done three times a year.

The October forecast was previously delivered in early November, but working with council over the last couple of years, really realized that for you all to be making informed decisions, having it come late in the process actually just adds a certain amount of chaos, candidly.

And again, we...

If you wait a little bit longer, there's always better and more information, but at some point, it's like sort of an 80-20 rule.

There isn't that much more to be gained by waiting, and there's a lot to be gained for you for having the information sooner and being able to respond to it.

So the other thing is, there is an...

There's a...

We've been doing a little bit of an update late in the year, largely to help inform departments about the inflation forecast is something a lot of people care about as they worry about setting rates and some other things.

So we don't do a full-blown revenue forecast.

We do run the regional economic model, and then we can feed that.

For instance, the utilities rely on the regional forecast to feed their own forecasts of load and consumption and the like.

So that's another piece that's done.

I'd be remiss if I didn't offer significant kudos to the team that I left at the Budget Office for doing really great work.

So thank you, Jan.

Thank you, Sean.

So let me dive in a little bit, though, to talk some more about the council process.

And this sort of frames up the process that's been used for the last couple of years.

This isn't all written in stone, and we'll be working with Chair Strauss to work out details.

But I think it gives you a frame for what's going on here.

You basically have eight weeks from beginning to end.

So it's basically end of September to Thanksgiving, give or take.

And we need some time at the end.

We, central staff in the budget office, to be sure that everything actually adds up.

So there's a little bit of time at the end, a couple of days where we're scrambling to be sure that that the committee's work, that we really did balance, because there are a lot of things moving on.

But it starts with the mayor transmitting the budget, and then sort of step one on this.

And then step two, there's a period where You all and central staff are really learning what's in the budget.

The executive, even at a collaborative level, won't be able to share all the details in any case.

And so that works in a couple of ways.

One is traditionally departments have been brought in to do presentations where they can explain what's in their budget, what's not in their budget, and a little bit about how those decisions were made.

Central staff is at the same time reviewing the budget and identifying issues that we think are material to you.

Departments might or might not be highlighting those, right?

They have their own story to share, let me just say it that way.

And we can provide you some additional information as well.

And then it provides you all an opportunity as you start to learn what's in the budget to figure out, oh, there's this thing that I don't think, I can't live with this.

And you can...

You can come tell central staff that.

You can tell the budget chair that.

You can be talking about that in public, depending on what the issue is and what strategies are.

But you're learning as well.

And I don't mean that in any kind of pejorative way.

It's natural.

If it's printed, it's like this thick, and it takes a while to get through.

Then there's the revenue forecast arrives.

Again, sort of, I think we're scheduled now for like the third week of October.

And that can set things off kilter, either to the good or to the bad, and almost certainly will by at least a little bit.

And a little bit in this world is a few million dollars, right?

We're talking the general fund, which is primary focus, and it's the primary focus of the revenue update, It plus Jumpstart, again, is $2 billion.

So even $20 million of that is 1%.

So that seems like a very big number, but in the bigger scheme, it's not.

But revenue forecast arrives, and then there's The last few years, the approach to rebalancing has been to allow the chair to take a shot at either finding ways to allocate new money, or if there's a reduction, to figure out where the initial cuts.

Again, this is now relative to the mayor's proposed budget, because the mayor proposed a budget on the August forecast.

We now have the October forecast, and it's different.

So in a standard legislative way, it's the marked up budget that is then put into play by the chair.

And with that marked up budget, the chair's balancing package in play, there is then two to three weeks, a full three weeks, for the council to fully debate what amendments, what changes, what it is you might want to have.

And there's a process about that.

There are internal timelines, so we try to do it in an orderly way.

You could imagine that just a simple idea that There is two or more of you separately want to add something, some funding to something, and have identified the same source, so something that you're going to reduce to add.

And if you're both targeting the same reduction, it can't be used to fund the same ad, right?

So part of figuring out that orchestration and, you know, is there an order of decision making?

Is there potential to have compromise before the proposals are brought forward?

All of that is work that's going on in that timeframe.

And then ultimately in budget committee, you bring forward amendments and vote them accordingly.

And again, to highlight, Without going into detail, we'll have more opportunity.

In addition to actual changes in funding, there are other tools that you take on in that time as well.

For instance, statements of legislative intent or provisos.

So statement of legislative intent could be something where mayor is funding something, you're on board, but you'd like to get some reporting back.

And so it's a statement that says, is our expectation as council that that this department will come back at this frequency to let us know how this thing is going.

We're going to give you the money, let you go, but we want affirmative feedback on this timeframe, an example.

Another one might be a proviso where you're like, you know what, this seems like a really good idea, but before we fully allocate it, before we fully appropriate this, we actually want a little more information.

So that might be, again, numbers made up, a million-dollar proposal, and you say, look, Of that million and a half of it, we're going to hold back.

We're going to say, you can't spend this money until we release it with an ordinance sometime next year.

And then that might further say, why don't you come in February with a more detailed plan, and ideally we can release the money by March, or whatever that might be.

So it's not just amendments that are shifting funding.

I think of those as oversight and...

and accountability.

And those are equally meaningful steps, sometimes one more than the other, depending on kind of the funding shifts.

So that is, it's super high level.

Your process, again, ends with your passing the budget and ideally the mayor signing it.

And generally by Thanksgiving, as I understand this year, Thanksgiving is a little bit later than usual.

So every hope that that will be the case.

Yes, a question.

Where is the participatory budget in all of this?

So I need to review specifically where we are on the appropriations, but there was, as I recall, $30 million set aside for that, and it is waiting, I suspect, to be fully appropriated, but I don't know this, so that there would be a bill to come back to appropriate it assuming it had not been already appropriated.

Alternatively, it sits in the hands of one of the departments, and once the funding decisions are made, they will be able to allocate it directly.

And I will get back to you with where that thing stands.

It was supposed to be a budget action last year, and then it wasn't, and so I think nothing has been transmitted to us yet.

Councilman Morales will know specifically, but I can find out for you as well.

But we don't.

The council doesn't have any role in that.

That's all set out.

Well, at this stage, if the money hasn't been appropriated, then it would need to come back to you for that final appropriation, and that would give you an opportunity to review the decisions about what has been funded.

I think that's the case, but again, I don't want to spread my ignorance further.

Director Noble, sorry, that's my understanding as well.

And is this part of the initial $100 million that had a been in the last administration allocated for three different types of participatory budgeting efforts, or is this a separate?

My understanding is that we are now done.

Ultimately, there was $30 million that was one time reserved for participatory budgeting, and the process to allocate it, to really engage the public, to have them participate, that was really the point, has taken a couple years to play out, and we are now reached a stage ready to do those appropriations.

What's left over from the last administration.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Council President, Mayor, to add a little bit more context to this, the city of Seattle has been doing, so participatory budgeting is both a technical description of a type of program and a shorthand for what Council Member Rivera was just referring to, the $100 million in 2020, et cetera.

Participatory budgeting has been used by the city for many years in a program called Your Voice, Your Choice, where...

local communities could choose which program they wanted funded in their community.

They were mostly around transportation initiatives.

So I just, I add that additional context that when we talk about participatory budgeting, there's both a technical term, which the city is actually very good at.

And then there is this longer process.

And it's my understanding that there will be a bill that has to come back to council.

And I'll make sure to add this as a part of the briefings as we move forward.

Thank you.

And that is one-time funding.

And one of the things that I've communicated is that we want to make sure that whatever that package is does not obligate us to ongoing funding because it's a finite pot of money.

And also, I mean, your voice, your choice, I believe, was out of the Department of Neighborhoods, and that was a much smaller allocation that has been ongoing as a program at the city.

The $30 million was part of a bigger one-time ad of which it was 100. There were three efforts.

Two, I believe, went forward, and this is part of the third effort that did not yet move forward.

I think that's correct.

Particularly that your choice, your voice, has been a smaller scale, I think, if I recall, in the $1 million to $2 million range on an annual basis, but an ongoing one, focused specifically on small-scale capital projects.

A lot has been on transportation, but not exclusively.

Much smaller than $30 million, much.

And the 30 million is, again, was designed to be divided, the process played out to divide it among arranged priorities.

But again, you will see these as I brought back.

I'm going to move forward, partly keeping track of time.

been talking a lot about 25 and 26. I want to talk a little bit about 2024 as well and focus on this year.

But this notion is one that applies really once any budget is adopted.

So the budget doesn't remain static.

So if you think about it, the departments last made submittals to CBO in July of the previous year in terms of their budget.

So as we come around into January, it's been six months since they had sort of raised a flag about their own budgets.

So just sort of a natural timing thing that happens there.

In addition to the good, if you will, the city receives a lot of grants from state agencies, federal agencies.

The federal government meaningfully spends a lot of its money granting it to state and local agencies.

But then also from philanthropic entities and other nonprofits and private parties as well.

Those things, we can't know about them ahead of time, or we can know about some of them, but not all of them.

So grant acceptances are a regular thing, and departments even if they win a grant, they can't spend the money until you appropriate it.

So grants are not self-executing in that way.

No city dollar gets spent, there are some very minor exceptions, unless you appropriate it.

So just grants is one thing that has to happen.

And the system is set up to deal with those now two or three times in the given year.

Again, we try to be timely in accepting the grants so that we'll get them again and able to move on.

But you'll throw a review on the central staff side.

I mean, a classic question about a grant is to understand whether it has a tail implied that, you know, city, we get the money from somebody for the first year, but then THE IMPLIED OR DIRECT AGREEMENT AS THE CITY WOULD PICK IT UP.

SO YOU WANT TO ASK SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT GRANTS AS WELL, AND WE WILL DO THAT.

ANOTHER PIECE THAT YOU'LL SEE ON A REGULAR BASIS IS THE CARRY FORWARD ORDINANCE.

SO THAT'S A STRANGE NAME.

WHAT IS THAT?

SO IT IS, WE MAKE THESE ANNUAL APPROPRIATIONS, AND THEY'RE BASED UPON DEPARTMENTS' EXPECTATIONS ABOUT WHAT THEY CAN SPEND, AND THEY'RE VERY REAL EFFORTS TO to deliver some set of services.

But come the end of the year, they might not have been able to do all of those things and to spend all of that money.

Not that the goal is to spend the money.

The goal is presumably to deliver the services.

But the way your appropriations work and the budget works is for O&M expenses, those appropriations expire on December 31st at midnight.

So the department might not have got that work done, BUT THEY NO LONGER HAVE THE AUTHORITY TO SPEND THE MONEY FROM THE PREVIOUS YEAR.

SO THE CARRY FORWARD ORDINANCE IS THEM COMING FORWARD TO SAY, HEY, WE DIDN'T GET THAT THING DONE, BUT YOU WANT US TO DO IT AND WE WANT TO DO IT, SO HOW ABOUT LETTING US KEEP THIS MONEY?

AND THAT GETS REVIEWED BY THE BUDGET OFFICE AND THEN GETS REVIEWED BY CENTRAL STAFF AND ULTIMATELY HAS TO BE APPROVED BY YOU.

You can appreciate in a year where we're facing a big deficit, a lot of thought into those, perhaps more than usual.

But ideally, we're really on it every year, to be clear.

And some of the questionnaire can actually just be about department's capacity.

So if you didn't, pick some number, $20 million you didn't spend this year, if we carry that forward, follow my logic, that implies you're going to spend $40 million more this year than you did last, because you didn't spend the 20, so you're going to have to ramp up your activities to spend 20 more, and then you're going to have to spend last year's 20. So a real question about, like, is that really possible?

And, again, there are other things that money could get used for that might be more or less pressing.

So it might not be a punishment to a department to say, you know what, like, get it.

We want you to do that thing, too, but, you know, that's going to distract you from some other things you promised us, so...

Why don't you just use your existing money?

Because they could use current year money to fund those activities from the previous year, but they didn't complete in the previous year as well.

Any case, that's something that comes forward on a regular basis.

And then there are supplemental budgets.

Now, just two ordinances.

And again, that has been streamlined to good effect by work between CBO and central staff over the past few years.

We used to send down, I was author of more than one supplemental in past years, maybe one too many, if you will.

um because it's not particularly transparent and it makes it hard for you all to see what's going on but supplemental budgets are departments identifying new needs potentially so again we talked about unanticipated things and they it could be that they're requesting new money um if somehow we had it um in some some years we would um they may be just asking to shift money uh we'll talk about the way you appropriate money but if money's been appropriated for one purpose.

It can't necessarily be used for another, but if their relative priority of need has shifted between those things, they could be coming here to say, we don't want more money, but you put the money in that pocket, and we're not going to do that thing because we really need to be doing this other thing.

And then, but they've got to come to you with that.

Depending on the size of that, they have to come with you, to you with that.

So that's just an example of a mid-year supplemental action.

And there, again, there could be others.

And then happens again, we do it in kind of June, July timeframe and then do it again at the very end of the year to try to help through some things up at year end.

So these are things that will be happening over the course of the year.

And as I'm about to flip.

Council President Mayer on this slide.

Colleagues, this slide is very descriptive of why I think it's important to have select budget committee throughout the year because There have been two ways of doing this in the past where all of these bills could just go to the Finance Committee or they could go to the Select Committee.

And to Councilmember Kettle's point a little bit earlier is it is important that everyone is participating along the way so that we're not caught in September with information for the first time.

To add some context to what Director Noble shared about the carry forward is oftentimes, there's different ways of billing items in a project.

I worked with SDOT on a project last year where they could not bill for a project until it was completed and delivered, even though the majority of the work occurred last year.

And so, there were financial decisions about whether to do that project or not because carry forward was not guaranteed, because the billing, even though the majority of the work happened last year, would have been billed in this year.

Another piece of context with the supplemental is I know that we are looking for efficiencies and where the money is hidden in the couch cushions, and there are going to be some programs that we need to expand.

And we might not want to wait until the full budget to do this.

One thing that I keep advocating for is seven-day coverage for our unified care team.

because we know folks are working Monday through Friday right now, and I think everyone in our city would benefit if that was a seven-day program.

For that to happen before January 1st of next year, we would need to take that up in the supplemental.

That's all from me right now.

Quick question to follow up that for both director noble and council member chair Strauss you know we talked about earlier talked about from your previous time reforms and you know not being efficient we're talking about this process is as seen here on our screen is this also like if we have regular select budget committee meetings this also way to look at the budget itself not just the process but the structure of the budget and how we're doing things you know this is a great opportunity to have a big review And in terms, if we do something like this to say, hey, you know, the budget is structured this way in terms of silos, whatever else that you can think of, is this the time to, in conjunction with this, what we're talking about here in terms of the programs themselves, but also the budget itself versus just a program or whatever.

No, but Budget Chair Strauss and I have had that very conversation that engaging you in the supplemental process and candidly, previous counsels, It might have just been the finance committee and only been a few council members, but I think it would be a great opportunity for those of you who are less familiar with the process just to see it.

There's nothing like doing, right?

And you'll start to understand how the appropriation process works better by looking at an actual bill and seeing what's being shifted.

And like, we can come and describe that to you, but there's nothing like seeing it and doing it.

Well, seeing it and doing it and also coming with fresh eyes saying, should we always just be doing this because this is the way we're doing it?

Or is there a new model?

Since we both share the D6, D7, the maritime world, this is a chance to clean up the lines, mend the nets, if you will.

And I just throw that out as something that could be part of this process instead of just looking at dollars per programs, but the budget itself.

Yeah, no, and you'll see that that's an area where we generally want to be providing additional information, but I worry some that, you know, as we try to bring you up to speed on some of this stuff, that it'll be a little bit dry, candidly, and that there's nothing like diving in and doing it.

That was the point I was trying to make, but absolutely an opportunity for you all to signal with real things, if you will, actual ordinances and decisions of where you're coming from and how things might really be different.

And we at Central Staff taking cues from you about exactly that.

I will say, and this is not to be defensive, but, and I, Actually, as I came into central staff, I said, you know, I'm not here just for change's sake, nor am I afraid of it in any way.

But this process that I was describing here has been meaningfully streamlined over the last few years because it wasn't efficient, and it wasn't transparent, and it didn't help the counsel or candidate or the executive make decisions in a sort of comprehensive way.

It tended to come one-off.

And I think it is really important to see the whole big picture as often as you can, if you will.

And, And I, I think it bears mentioning that the supplemental is generally to look back at the budget we did pass and if we need to make any changes to it versus the budget processes for the following biennium, if you will.

And so both processes have a different reason for doing it.

But yes, you mean ideally you would look at both processes in conjunction because one has an impact on the other.

For instance, the suggestion that council member Strauss made about the care team will have an impact on next year's budget if we decide to take it up in the supplemental process.

And so sometimes, I mean, it is important to do the supplemental because you have to right-size what got passed the following year for this year versus what you're gonna do next year.

But to council member Kettle's point, it really things can't occur in a vacuum.

So it's very important to look at both and to have transparency.

When years passed, only the folks that were on the committee that served on that committee really had the full transparency.

And not even all the people on that committee.

Yeah.

And I will say that Councilmember Strauss and I, as vice chair of the Finance and Budget Committee, we've had a lot of conversations working together so that we have better transparency and better communication amongst vice and vice chair, I mean, chair and vice chair for this very reason.

That's exactly right.

So I was going to just tag on to your points, Vice Chair, and then to respond to Council Member Kettle, something that's really interesting to me, and I hope that what I want to do is to be able to look at our business lines of service.

Do we have overlap between departments?

Do we have a business line of service that was designed pre-pandemic and one that is post-pandemic?

Do we have, because do we have multiple departments providing the same service in different ways?

how do and do we have different colors of money from these dedicated revenue sources providing similar or different?

Because I think when we're able to look at the challenge, when we're able to, look, 24% of our general fund is property tax, right?

There have been no new revenue sources to our general fund in the last decade.

We're capped at 1% increases on property tax.

When we hold that color of money to the side and look at what are we trying to provide for Seattleites, agnostic of the color of money, I think we are gonna be able to come to better decisions and frankly find efficiencies that are existing today, we just haven't uncovered because we haven't looked at the lines of service.

And we also haven't looked at all the money that we get.

There are restricted funds that don't have the same transparency as other funds, like the general fund, in our budget process.

So we can talk about that later as well.

But just for the record, and we'll talk about this on the next page, I would love to have an all-council, all-budget, all-the-time budget.

proceeding forward and so I'm all about council select meetings on the budget whenever and I suppose I'm supposed to approve those and I don't know what the next steps are.

I guess they are dates or whatever but we gotta get that on people's calendar because we don't want, if we truly want everybody present then let's get that on the calendar.

Since I'm going to, partly conscious of time, I'm going to move forward here to talk about the committee.

So there's been a fair amount of discussion already about the distinction between the finance committee and the select budget committee.

It's noted here the finance committee is actually set out in the city charter, and it has generally been used over the course of the year to provide oversight over city finances, and there are a range of things that fall into that purview.

So, for instance, RELATIVELY ROUTINE BOND LEGISLATION THAT NEEDS TO BE APPROVED.

SOME ISSUES RELATED TO THE CITY'S RETIREMENT SYSTEM.

SO JUST A VARIETY OF THINGS THAT ARE OUTSIDE OF BUDGET THAT ARE STILL ALL ABOUT FINANCE.

SO JUST TO GIVE YOU A SENSE THAT THERE'S NO SHORTAGE OF WORK FOR THE COMMITTEE POTENTIALLY.

BUT AS WE'VE BEEN DISCUSSING, ONE OF THE THINGS THAT THE COMMITTEE COULD DO IS TO REVIEW ALL THE LEGISLATION THAT I JUST HAD ON THE PREVIOUS SLIDE.

OR, AS THE LAST BULLET SAYS HERE, THAT COULD BE DONE BY THIS FINANCE COMMITTEE OR IT COULD BE DONE BY THE SELECT BUDGET COMMITTEE.

AND I THINK CHAIR STRAUSS HAS MADE IT CLEAR THAT HIS INTENT IS TO DO EXACTLY THAT.

SO, AND THE IMPORTANT DISTINCTION THERE IS THAT YOU ARE ALL MEMBERS OF THE SELECT BUDGET COMMITTEE.

SO WE'LL ALL HAVE THE OPPORTUNITY TO VOTE ON THOSE THINGS.

IT IS, IT'S A SELECT COMMITTEE, AGAIN, ALL OF YOU, if it's set up the way all of you are members, that has been the tradition established by the Council President.

And again, as is being discussed, it doesn't have to wait until September to start meeting.

It can be meeting whenever it wants to, and I think the answer to the, you know, it's going to be sooner rather than later.

So just had a meeting today with Council Member Strauss and his staff to start thinking about specific dates and looking to build out a calendar for you all, because that will be another committee on your calendars.

And having just myself try to identify some dates for some labor policy committees, that's a drag for your schedulers if nobody else.

Your calendars are quite full, but obviously important work.

So you'll hear more about that.

So those are those two committees.

And I think we have a sense of how you're going to focus a good deal of work on the Select Budget Committee.

I do just want to add a couple other committees that are relevant in the process.

all of your standing committees could be part of the budget process in particular opportunities for you to bring in the departments within your purviews to hear about what they're how they're executing their current year budgets a little bit more about what they're thinking for 25 and 26. i would note and you can appreciate or not that that they they will not be in a position to share much of what they have provided to the executive executive regards THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE 25-26 BUDGET, AGAIN, THAT WE DESCRIBED TO YOU AS ONGOING, AS DELIBERATIVE PROCESS.

SO ONCE THEY DELIVER THE BUDGET TO YOU IN SEPTEMBER, ALL OF THEIR MACHINATIONS ARE PUBLIC.

SO WE HAVE A BIG DATA REQUEST, AN INFORMATION REQUEST STANDING, ONE THAT GETS DELIVERED TO US, US BEING CENTRAL STAFF, WITH THE BUDGET.

Once the mayor delivers a policy proposal, in this case the budget, the deliberative process exemption ends, and the materials that were used to help facilitate their decision-making become public and become yours as well.

And that just helps us understand their thinking and the like.

My point about this originally was that if you bring in the departments and ask them, so what are you proposing for 25 and 26, they will not be in a position to say so.

But they will be in a position to talk about the monies that they've been using.

They'll be able to talk a little bit about their priorities and the like.

So I'm encouraging this, not discouraging it, just acknowledging some of the limitations.

And then the other...

Committee is actually not a committee, technically.

It's the Forecast Council, and it's not a council committee.

It is a joint committee that includes two council representatives and two executive representatives.

I'm very familiar with this council because it's the one that I've been reporting to for the last two years before this, but just wanted to highlight their role, which includes approving the forecast.

So the forecast office actually develops three forecasts essentially designed to cover the range of potential outcomes, a baseline, a pessimistic, and an optimistic.

And almost always, we have recommended the baseline forecast.

But just for context, as the pandemic hit, the function was still in the budget office at the time.

The recommendation was to use the pessimistic forecast because our expectation and or concern was that this region could get hit harder than at the national level.

We had been the literal epicenter of of COVID and we are tourist dependent economy.

So there was good reason to think that we could get hit harder.

But in general, we stick to our baseline.

But the bottom line is that that decision is endorsed or not by the forecast council.

So just wanted you to be aware of that function as well.

So what I've shown you today has been about kind of the normal process.

Obviously, this is not a typical year, not a normal year.

And I've only had this slide up here to highlight the fact that you already know that we're looking at a very significant deficit.

This graphic dates to the fall, so actually the size of the deficit is larger than this.

I didn't want to put up a specific number because actually at this very moment, it's a very dynamic space because we are just reaching the end from the accounting perspective, reaching the end of 2023, which may sound strange since we are now sitting in February, but tax payments, Payments for tax obligations through the end of December actually aren't all due until the end of January or the first part of February.

So we don't actually know how much revenue we collected yet for last year.

And similarly, on the accounting side, there's reference to what's called the 13th month.

So the accountants are spending January determining the detail of what actually got spent over the course of the year.

So it is only really at the end of this month, give or take, that we'll have really closed out 2023 and know where we stand.

And that will inform a good deal about kind of where the budget is looking forward because we'll understand things about underspend on the expenditure side.

So money the departments weren't able to spend and that they aren't necessarily going to ask to carry forward.

And on the revenue side, you know, like to think we're good at the forecast, but we're not always right.

And in particular, the payroll expense tax, the jumpstart tax, is very uncertain.

It's very hard to forecast.

And although we receive payments over the course of the year, The last payment is really, those are estimated tax payments in the way that someone might make an estimated income tax payment.

And until they show up at the end of the year, we don't really know what we're getting.

So we have, to use a statistics term, we have some data, but it's not really a signal about what's gonna happen until we get that final payment.

So a lot to be resolved.

The other reason that this is not a typical year, and we've touched on this, is that six of you haven't been through this process before and in relatively short order are going to be asked to make some very significant, if not monumental, decisions.

So we at Central Staff, and now ever more in collaboration with Budget Office, dedicated to getting you guys at a place where that will be possible and that you will feel comfortable, as comfortable as you can, in doing so.

So I did want to highlight some work that's already underway.

Before you go on, can you go back to that slide?

So a couple questions, or one point is that you just mentioned the payroll excise tax payments are maybe weaker, but just to clarify, this graph does not show any of those revenues, or those, that source of revenue does not figure in the blue line, is that correct?

It does only to the extent, and it would through 2023, but not beyond that, excuse me, and into 2024, to the extent that there has been an authorized transfer of payroll expense tax into the general fund.

That has happened to the tune of $85 million for 2024. That's one of the reasons that revenues drop in the general fund from 2024 to 2025. is that there is this $85 million used to balance for 2024 and an ordinance that says that there will be no money transferred in 2025. So if you're the actual forecast of the general fund given that legal constraint doesn't include payroll expense tax.

Yeah, the order of magnitude of the payroll expense tax is in the $280 to $300 million basis on a forecast basis.

But it actually dropped from its first year to its second year in terms of revenue collected.

We can talk about the forecasting, but it's another point.

But yes, so there is opportunity to use some of those revenues to help close this gap, and that's not shown here.

OK, so the other question I have is that I started out by saying we're constitutionally bound to pass a balanced budget.

So my question is, how is it that we have a gap for 2023 of $117 million and $145 million for

Really good question.

And the short answer is that these are revenues, and they don't count, not counted in the revenues is the use of fund balance.

So use of one-time monies that were, that had accumulated over time.

In some years, that has been the transfer from the emergency fund.

So we, you know, dipped into the piggy bank, if you will.

And that's actually, in just a minute, one of the things I want to spend some more time with you all is explaining how it is that we could have a balanced budget in 2024 and face a deficit north of $250 million in 2025. And part of the answer is, again, that we're relying on the payroll expense tax in 24 and are precluded in 25. But there are all the significant, like, hundred plus million dollars of other one-time revenues that are supporting the expenditures as well.

I'm just looking backwards right now.

Yeah, and we were going to go further back as well.

Let me take advantage for a transition because I think it could help.

So these are some things that we're working on now to bring you all.

One is, I described it, an accessible summary of the base budget.

So if you open up the budget document from last year and try to understand what the city was spending all of its money on, painfully, you'd be hard-pressed to extract that from the budget.

I mean, you can at a super high level.

It shows funding by departments, but not more than that.

And you need to know that.

And we want to find a way that brings that information to you in a way that is useful.

That is to say, it really highlights the programs and the services that are being provided in each department and what it costs to provide them.

without getting into technicalities.

The legal budget is actually all about appropriating dollars.

There's not a one-to-one match from the budget document to that kind of information.

Fortunately, some initial conversations with budget office indicates that they've been working on something similar because they have their own decision-making to do as well and appreciate the need for this kind of information.

So that is something we're working on and working on quickly.

So these are things that I anticipate that we would try to bring you in the next couple months as we start having initial meetings of the select budget committee.

Another one is looking at, and this is a little bit about that, what's changed in recent years?

Because there's been a lot of, A lot of increased expenditure over the past few years, some of it related to COVID response and some of it related to deploying the payroll expense tax on new sets of services.

So we're looking at 2019 as the base.

I said 2019 or 2020 here.

We're fighting with the financial system a little bit, but we won.

So, and thanks to the budget office and central staff on that front.

So we're looking at 2019 as a base.

And just looking what has been added, and again, It's sort of artificial to pick any year as a base, but if you get too far back, you also just get lost.

So I think there's really an opportunity to understand some significant developments.

Arguably, we were facing a deficit in 2019 on a projected basis, but it was of an entirely different scale.

So I think there's a lot to be learned there.

But then specifically to Consular President Nelson's point, combining one and two and some additional information really do want to document the sort of how did we get here?

How is it that we can have a balanced budget and then not?

Which is sort of understand how do those fund balances that are propping my language now, propping us up, how did those develop and why do we not think they'll be available going forward and the like.

So I think that's an important piece for you all as well.

And it's a combination of one and two, but it's also some additional information.

And then another piece that we're just now exploring is the idea of benchmarking departmental spending.

working with CBO, they've identified a group that consultant group that has budget information for cities, not necessarily exactly comparable to Seattle, probably a little bit smaller.

And they highlight kind of in their overall budgets, what percentage of resources they allocate to certain functions and the like.

And there might be some value in understanding that and being to draw some comparisons.

I worry a little bit too that that'll be a little bit simplistic.

So I'm still evaluating that as an approach, but just as you can see, thinking about ways to bring you important information on those fronts.

And then a last point here that we also talked about, and Chair Strauss has mentioned as well, been in some initial dialogue, had a couple meetings with Director Dingley at the Budget Office and Mayor's Office staff about opportunity to collaborate some.

They're interested in hearing from Council, potentially in informal ways, if not formal, about your relative priorities and understanding, you know, what things, you know, need to be protected, my language, what things, you know, you might be willing, again, these will be painful choices, what might be willing, what could perhaps be sacrificed where funding could be reduced, and some principles and some guidance about that so that if nothing else, the budget arrives in September and you're not entirely surprised.

The form of that, still working, but do think there's some opportunity there and some value in providing some resources some feedback from you.

Whether there's opportunity for, like, a formally weighing in, I think, is still very much to be determined.

So that's work that we've got underway.

All right.

Thank you, Director Noble.

A couple quick comments and a question.

First off, on this slide here, I'll call out number four.

I do like benchmarking as a sort of valuable tool to help us understand the range of possibilities, what other jurisdictions are doing.

I strongly prefer it in the policy-making context in terms of writing new laws.

And it's one data point, not the only data point, but it's an important one.

We're hard-pressed.

For example, Houston, their permitting process is...

like notoriously or in a great way, it's streamlined.

And you know, like there are things I'm sure that we can consider from a policy standpoint to potentially implement here in Seattle.

It's not a direct one for one comparison.

But I'm supportive of benchmarking and understanding what the sort of broader market is doing, what other comparable cities are doing from a policy design standpoint.

I think the utility of that is probably less helpful in the budgeting process.

just because there's so many factors that you just can't necessarily account for.

And if you do, it's like, okay, what proportion is a particular city spending on X rather than like, okay, well, they were spent.

So in any event, I think we're on the right track there.

Benchmarking, from just a benchmarking standpoint, at least as I see it, probably less relevant and less probative value there for all of us as we think about budgeting.

The other comment, and just observing this kind of dialogue amongst my colleagues has been very insightful for me personally in understanding how all you think.

I would like to share kind of how I'm thinking about budget right now as well.

You know, first off, I think there is an opportunity to drive greater efficiencies and consolidate certain functions.

Council Member Strauss, this may or may not be what I heard you say a moment ago about the lines of business and kind of inventory and getting a survey of what that looks like.

For example, maybe there's an opportunity, if the city, if multiple agencies across the city are performing like similar or substantially similar activities in four areas.

Maybe there's an opportunity to consolidate that and streamline that and get it down to one or even two.

So I'm thinking about consolidations and efficiencies.

I'm also thinking there's a good opportunity to align our prior or spending in our budget with the priorities of the council that exists today.

As council member Kettle aptly pointed out, we have a two thirds net new council.

We all think about and approach things differently and and potentially differently than the last few iterations of the council.

And so I think we need to better understand and align our budget priorities with the priorities of everyone here that exists at the dais, not dais I'm told, today, not that of previous councils.

And the third and final thing I'll sort of note and flag kind of how I'm thinking about this is, and I think a lot of taxpayers are too, certainly in my district, whatever we're spending, we need to see some good return on investments.

And members of the public, just many members of the public, they're just not seeing that today.

And so we need to bake in and make sure we are seeing better ROI for whatever spending dollars we have in our investing today.

Part of that is continuing to track and monitor progress of our spending.

And we talked about kind of what that, a form of that.

what that kind of looks like.

I think we need to, you know, step that up and to better set expectations about that.

And auditing.

Yes, I think we need to consider how we can audit, you know, various agencies and this certain spending.

I think across...

Ideally, I would like to have an across-the-board auditing of the entire city budget, but I am mindful that that is...

very costly and a very time-intensive activity.

It's not practicable or feasible, certainly this year.

But in terms of what might be doable, I think the number one area where the members of the public are seeing lack of ROI is in our homelessness spending.

And so that's an area that I'm particularly interested in making sure we do a better job of.

So that's the comment.

Question.

work underway, this last slide here, you know, I note that the slide has no specific reference to any analyzing of any potential net new revenue sources.

And so I'd be curious to better understand, will these initial steps that we're taking here also include an assessment of potential new revenue sources?

And for some additional context, At this stage, for crystal clarity, at this stage, I am not endorsing any net new revenue, but I do think we need to take a very thoughtful and measured approach to how we solve this budget deficit, including considering new revenue options if needed.

But I also say that I'm aware of the city's revenue stabilization work group, that they completed an analysis of revenue options last year.

and otherwise known as the Progressive Revenue Task Force.

Unfortunately, I've learned that some of their work didn't have a full, let's just say it had a less than complete analysis of what is actually doable or implementable from a legal perspective.

And the city attorney's office, there were no city attorneys involved in their analysis.

And I don't think some of the, I don't think that was sufficiently clear from that specific report, to be honest.

But which, you know, is ironic because on the campaign trail, many of us were confronted with the question in a litmus test form of like, do you support X, Y, Z in this report?

And come to find out the analysis from a legal perspective was less than complete.

And certain of those recommendations, the city, as I understand it, has zero authority, legal authority to actually implement.

One potential example is the vacancy tax.

And so I think we do need some follow-up on the reporting options to better understand what is truly practicable and implementable from a legal perspective.

Looks like you have an answer.

I'm going to let you go first.

Council President May, Rob, Council Member Saka, my apologies.

We are going to have, what I'm very excited about is the amount of energy and perspective coming into this year.

So with the vacancy tax, that was actually, when I ran in 2019, it was something that I said that I wanted to investigate.

It is legal in other municipalities, and I thought that it would be something that would help get units filled, both commercial on the first floor and residential upstairs.

I then came on to city council, did my research, was told it was illegal, and then found it on the revenue stabilization task force list of options and thought, golly, did something change?

Only to find out it hadn't.

And so I didn't We are in a very similar boat, my friend.

Actually, we're in the same boat.

And so, yes, I think I just took a note here to add Revolutionary Stabilization Task Force to some of the briefings that we're having so that we can better understand what was done in the past, what is actually actionable, so that we may move forward together.

Yeah, because we don't need to spend, thank you, because we, from my perspective, we don't need to spend and waste cycles and waste time and, like, on things that we have no business or not even capable of potentially implementing.

And so, yeah, definitely, I think we do need, and is that part of the plan, I guess?

Going back to that question, Director Noble, is that part of the plan to make sure we have a more robust legal analysis performed on what is actually doable and implementable and practicable from a legal perspective?

Let me answer that.

First off, for a clarification, as Council Member Strauss has pointed out, a vacancy tax might well be legal in some other municipalities.

None of them will be located in the state of Washington, so without getting into the legal analysis.

So the short answer, Council Member Saka, is yes.

Work underway is, in my mind, is work that we hadn't done before.

A lot of the revenue review has been, and I'm not saying we wouldn't go back and take a look anew, but a lot of time has been spent, previous council, I was very interested in revenues.

Let me just be careful that we're not so careful.

So a lot of work done on that front, actually in my previous roles, both in my most recent previous roles in the same space as well.

So we have some of that in the can, but there's also an opportunity to consider some new things as well.

So yes, and again, recognizing fully that you all will be making all of these decisions, given the scale of the gap on the budget side, And again, based on the feedback hearing today, having an understanding of what the revenue options are and the scales of them does feel important to me as well.

Again, fully informed decision-making is what we are about at Central Staff, and that feels like part of the information.

Thank you.

Council President, may I add on?

Yeah, we are running about half an hour late.

And we have a, just pause a second.

I am going to move on.

But is this, do we need to, for the record, note that our executive session will not be meeting at 3.30?

We do not.

We will just let people know when we come back.

Okay, got it.

Thank you.

Go ahead.

Oh, thank you.

Council Member Saka, I've got a great example for you about departmental, multiple departments.

It actually, the example stems out of West Seattle where I believe it was an SDOT employee trimmed a parks tree or vice versa.

I can't remember exactly which.

But this just shows you we have multiple different departments that have arborists.

And it almost makes more sense to have them in one, actually, I think it makes more sense to have them all in one department, right?

Where you, an arborist working for parks can work on any tree rather than having one truck just for the street trees and one truck just for parks trees, right?

I think that that's a really easy example.

I had something else flew out of my head, but I think we'll get to it in my regional and and city committees report.

Yeah.

And that's actually all I had in terms of presentation, so I'm looking forward to actually operationalizing and diving in.

Okay, yes?

One last question, and you probably can't answer this now, but just I'm interested to find out how we're going about prioritizing where we can find those efficiencies as we look at the budget, because the council member Saka's point it would be great to be able to audit the full budget.

That's not practical.

And so how are we going to tackle how we prioritize what we're going to look at?

For instance, in my mind, anything that was one-time funding is a place where we should be looking at right away.

But that's not the only things that we should be looking at.

And we need to have a strategy for how we're going to tackle this.

would love to know if there are things being proposed on the strategy, because I think many of us will want to be on the front end of those conversations versus the back end of those conversations.

Early thinking still, but we'll return to that.

Thank you.

Thank you very much for all of your work so far getting us to this point that we can start the real work.

Thank you, Chair Strauss, for leading us on that.

I don't perhaps quite understand the battle between 2019 and 2020 as the baseline, but I do see the logic there.

So thank you very much.

And that's a good place, I think, to start looking at where some of the new expenses started.

But in any case, this will be, see you next time, I suppose, is what I'm trying to say.

This is a big conversation and it's great to see so many people so interested.

Thank you and looking forward.

Thanks.

All right, moving on, let's see, let me get to my spot here.

Okay, so the next item here is item number five, and this is the signing of letters and proclamations, and we have two proclamations up for signature today.

First, Council Members Saka and Hollingsworth have a proclamation for signature recognizing February 2024 to be Black History Month in Seattle.

The council members circulated a draft of their proclamation last week and I'll turn it over to Council Member Saka to describe it for the viewing public and field any additional feedback from your colleagues before I request signatures to be affixed.

Madam Council President, so I'm delighted and we have actually shared and socialized the version of this with all of you colleagues.

And I am delighted to to announce that, you know, we are honoring via proclamation and celebrating Black History Month.

And this month, our theme is African-Americans and the arts.

And tomorrow during the sort of big splashy announce, we're inviting several leaders from our local black and African-American community in the arts and cultural space to come to council to receive this proclamation directly in honor to kind of co-sponsor and launch this with council member Joy Hollingsworth.

The mayor has concurred on this particular proclamation.

So it's a truly collaborative effort More to come tomorrow.

Councilmember Hollingsworth, do you have any questions or anything else to add, rather, before we take questions?

I do not.

Really excited to be working with you on this and excited for Black History Month as well and all the organizations that will be with us tomorrow to celebrate.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

And I understand that you'll both be, you'll speak to the signed proclamation, maybe read a few lines and present it then.

Okay.

So any other questions or comments from anybody?

All righty.

Seeing there's no further discussion on the proclamation, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation recognizing February 2024 to be Black History Month in Seattle?

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss.

Aye.

Council Member Wu.

Aye.

Council Member Hollingsworth.

Aye.

Council Member Kettle.

Aye.

Council Member Moore.

Aye.

Council Member Rivera.

Aye.

Council President Nelson.

Aye.

Eight signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you very much.

Moving on now, today we also have for signature a proclamation from Council Members Wu and Morales recognizing February 10th, 2024 to be the commencing date of Lunar New Year of the Dragon.

As I noted earlier, Council Member Morales is excused from today's briefing.

So Council Member Wu, the floor is yours to speak to the proclamation and field any extra additional feedback or questions.

Go ahead, thanks.

Thank you, Council President.

So this was a suggestion from community members, especially from Lin Tai.

And so this proclamation recognizes Lunar New Year, a festival of significance for many Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities.

And so we're celebrating Lunar New Year tomorrow around 1.30 p.m.

out in the lobby.

There will be some dragon dancing and lion dancing as well, a presentation from community members.

So the start of the Year of the Dragon is February 10th.

The dragon symbolizes good fortune, justice, prosperity, and strength.

It's a 15-day celebration.

So we're bidding farewell to the Year of the Rabbit, or cat if you're Vietnamese, and welcome the majestic dragon into our lives.

And so I think it's really a special significance that we find ourselves celebrating both Lunar New Year and Black History Month side by side.

It's a powerful moment to express our solidarity and support for both the AA and HPI and black community.

And especially recognizing the cultural diversity within our city as we strength the fabric of our collective identity and One Seattle.

And so if there are no further questions, I hope we can vote.

Any other questions?

Thank you very much for doing this and I look forward to the festivities tomorrow very much, yeah.

So seeing there's no further discussion of the proclamation, will the clerk please call the roll to determine which council members would like their signatures affixed to the proclamation recognizing February 10th, 2024 to be the commencing date of the Lunar New Year of the Dragon.

Council Member Saka?

Aye.

Council Member Strauss?

Yes.

Council Member Wu?

Aye.

Council Member Hollingsworth?

Aye.

Council Member Kettle?

Aye.

Council Member Moore?

Aye.

Council Member Rivera?

Aye.

Council President Nelson?

Aye.

Eight signatures will be affixed to the proclamation.

Thank you very much.

Okay, we'll move on to the next agenda item, a preview of council actions and matters before council committees and regional committees.

So we'll begin our discussion of the preview, and the roll call order will be Saka, Strauss, Wu, Hollingsworth, Kettle, Moore, Rivera, and then me.

So Councilmember Saka, please begin, and then when you're finished, pass it on to Councilmember Strauss if there are no questions, thanks.

Thank you, Madam Council President.

First and foremost, a report on the student death that occurred in my district.

Mubarak Adam, a 15-year-old from Chief Sealth International High School, strategically killed almost two weeks ago now.

And so I have been in close touch with the family.

I've personally been in close touch with the family and I have assigned a member of my staff to serve as a liaison to the victim's family and direct service providers on behalf of the city and the mayor's office to work and partnership with them all to make sure the family has what they need.

I've also been in close touch with the mayor, the police chief, and parks superintendent, AP Diaz, because there was, and is, remains a camera issue with a non-functioning camera in the parks facility where this happened.

And Superintendent Diaz has indicated that, to me, that the non-working security cameras in the teen center building, they're undergoing a review right now and will likely be repaired and replaced.

And I express my hope and that it is a priority of me, my office, and this family that we complete the review as expeditiously and in an efficient manner as possible to make sure the end result is a new functioning camera in this particular facility.

and we will continue to be in touch with this family.

Colleagues, I just share with you now the West Seattle blog is reporting that there will be a student protest rally at City Hall this coming Friday as a heads up.

Now onto the Transportation Committee on a lighter note topic.

We are really excited about Tomorrow, our very first meeting of the Transportation Committee this year and of this new council.

It's gonna be tomorrow morning, 9.30 a.m.

I am really looking forward to it.

We're gonna get, we have some great briefings planned, an overview of SDOT and some of the more routine permitting and vacations process that the committee is responsible for.

And so more to come and colleagues on the committee look forward to you all joining tomorrow.

So other than that, I'll take any questions or comments from you all.

And if not, I will pass it on to Council Member Strauss.

Actually, can I say, I just want to recognize as someone who's your work in West Seattle and with the family, my heart goes out to this family as someone who has experienced my family, my children, as people know, go to Ingram High School where there was a school shooting.

I very much appreciate the work that you're doing to try and install a camera.

There's a lot more that we need to be doing, and I know we're going to all be working together as a council to find ways to address the gun safety issue and the safety of our students across the city moving forward.

But I wanted to acknowledge and thank you personally for the work that you're doing there and for the outreach to the family.

So thank you.

Thank you.

I will second that.

And I also recognize that sometimes it's hard to talk about really deep and painful issues and then transition into everyday business of the council.

And so thank you, Council Member Saka, for dedicating one of your staff.

I think that that's really important.

I'm the finance chair, so I'm now making that transition from a tough topic back to routine.

And thank you, Council President, for providing us an opportunity today to have a bit of a de facto committee meeting.

We just spent an hour and a half talking about the budget.

So now we don't have to do that.

We get to go into the next level of detail next time.

And as we proceed through these conversations, I will be bringing as much information to you as possible via the select budget committees.

And as often as possible in the absence of a select committee, we'll have it at the finance committee.

And I will ask for presentations that occur at the finance committee to be provided to members who are not indirectly, and then I will also be always providing you an opportunity to come to the finance committee.

For example, our meeting on the 21st, I'd like CBO to brief members of finance committee before the meeting.

And again, everyone's welcome.

For anyone who didn't get that briefing, I'll ask for them to follow up with you afterwards.

During COVID, I took a couple notes that escaped my brain as we were talking.

During COVID, the majority of municipalities nationwide relied on layoffs and cuts to service to balance that budget hole that we talked about.

And in Seattle, we patched the budget hole that we knew was happening before the pandemic.

We patched it with those one-time funds so that we could keep deploying services.

We could respond to the emergency and keep our employees working for Seattleites responding to that emergency.

Now we have to figure out how to make those hard choices.

And I will tell you as being somebody who is here in city council during the pandemic, Compared from then to today, I'm really glad that we're making those tough choices today when we are not in the midst of an emergency making rash decisions, when we have more runway and time to be thoughtful about the decisions we're making.

To answer another question that was brought up about the deficit being years in the making, we have solved, we as the, as Council Member Hollingsworth says, our city, our city has resolved these issues annually with one-time strategies or funding.

So when you look at underspend and being able to move that forward into a new bucket when you look at those reserves, we've been able to tighten up the underspend so much so that I think I don't know that we can rely on that anymore, and we don't have those one-time federal funds, which is why we also have to look at the short-term and long-term stability of our budget.

I'm going to use an example of a long-term, which are leases, building leases.

Not all city departments are in Seattle Municipal Tower.

Some have leases in private buildings.

To end that lease that is at the end of its lifetime now incurs one-time costs today of moving expenses, tenant improvements, et cetera.

So while it will give us savings in a decade, it is actually a cost increase today.

Those are things that we have to...

fix in the long run, and we have to make these short-term efficiencies like with the line items of service.

And Council Member Stocker, to answer your question a little bit more, I looked at Merriam-Webster's definition of audit, which says a methodical examination and review of financial situations.

I can tell you that in my conversations with the executive, there are processes in place, and I'm not going to represent them today.

I'll let them do that for themselves at committee.

And one of those examples is base budgeting that Director Noble was talking about.

I'll just say at large, this is our opportunity, our collective opportunity because the old ways of doing business aren't serving us today.

And we need to review the budget holistically because we need to get our arms around it and plot a more stable pathway for our city moving forward.

That's the Finance Committee report.

Actually, I'll come back to it.

So at our next Finance Committee report, you'll have the CBO, central staff, and we'll be discussing our work plan for the year.

At the March 6th, I had originally tried to put budget and Native communities and tribal governance overview in the first meeting.

Clearly, an hour and a half into this, we're going to have Native communities and tribal governance present their work plan on March 6th.

So we'll have the 21st dedicated to budget.

And then regional committees, starting tomorrow, I will be in Olympia for the Association of Washington City's Legislative Action Days, working with Office of Intergovernmental Relations to advocate on our legislative agenda, to represent Seattle at Association of Washington Cities, and bring awareness of city issues to the legislature.

I said this before, 24% of our general fund is property tax, which we are limited to with 1% increases.

We do have a bill in Olympia that AWC and Seattle are both supporting, which is a councilmatic allowance to raise that 1% cap to 3%.

I'm not hearing, much like council members talking, not hearing endorsing or saying this is what we're going to do.

I am saying that to get out of this hole, we have to have every option on the table.

So I'm excited to be down there.

And so I'm sorry to also miss your committee.

I will be back on Friday.

And that is my report.

I'll just note, thank you, Council Member Wu, for bringing the proclamation of Year of the Dragon.

I believe one of the last times we had a Year of a Dragon was in 1988, and I'm also very excited for April's release.

I'll leave it at that.

Thank you.

The budget is very important, and I plan to go to your budget meeting and have a lot of questions.

So I look forward to learning more about the process, learning about revenue and expenditures, and going forward from there.

Awesome.

So the Arts and Culture, Sustainability, and City Light Committee meets next on February 16th at 9.30 a.m.

It's probably going to be an overview of several of those This past week, I went to the First Thursday at King Street Station.

It's a beautiful facility.

Highly recommend that people check it out.

Every First Thursday, there is an art walk.

There were two artists that were part of SDOT's 1% Arts Program who were showcasing their visual art, and it was really fun to go down there and learn about their program.

And without any other questions, I'm gonna pass this to Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Thank you, Council Member Wu.

So I renamed our committee a little nickname.

It's called PUT, Parks, Utilities, and Technology, because I am a golfer.

So I thought that would be perfect for our committee name.

February 14th, 2 p.m., that's a Wednesday, Valentine's Day, we'll be going over some of the projects with Seattle Parks.

Very near and dear to my heart, they've been on the front lines of a lot of the projects social stuff that's going on in our city and our city workers.

So gonna hear about some of the projects they have on the front line and what they've been working on.

Utilities, obviously they are phenomenal with their, on the front lines of infrastructure.

So we'll go over that, but we'll have two presentations from parks and utilities on that date and don't have anything else for committee.

One thing I wanted to bring to the attention to my other colleagues in the next six to eight weeks, I'll be doing this very aggressively in our district, hosting public safety meetings.

I did one last week, we had over 150 people there.

I think it's really important, especially what's going on in our district, that all of the neighborhoods hear from us.

So we're going to be doing one every couple weeks, rotating them in our district to ensure that we're getting information and we're getting that out there to as many people as possible throughout the neighborhood.

So we'll be very aggressive on that, just a heads up, and be an entry-level service.

to connecting people to city resources, for them to hear from our perspective, what kind of we're doing on the front lines of some of the activity that's going on in our city, especially in our district.

So just wanted to put that out there on everyone's radar.

Thank you.

And I'll pass it off to Council Member Kettle.

Thank you, Councilmember Hollingsworth.

Quick update, yes, our first Public Safety Committee meeting will be next Tuesday in the morning, and we'll have the three chiefs joining us, Chief Diaz, Chief Scoggins, and Chief Smith.

It's gonna be centered on what we're developing in terms of a strategic framework to address the permissive environment, the permissive environment that underlines so many of our public safety challenges that we face.

Councilmember Saka, you know, what you mentioned in terms of that tragic shooting last week, previously with what Councilmember Rivera was speaking to, these are the things that come out of the permissive environment, and so we have a strategic framework looking to do that, and we're gonna kick it off with the three chiefs next week.

So, and by the way, all are welcome.

Councilmember Wu, you're definitely welcome to join us.

Separately, I just wanted to note, I attended the groundbreaking for the Fire Station 31 in North Seattle.

I'll leave details to my honorable North Seattle representative, but I did want to note, you know, probably the best line that came out of today was from Battalion Chief Murray, who said, you know, one Seattle is about looking out for one another.

And...

You're gonna probably hear this in the future as well, but I just thought I'd throw that out there as a little debrief from this morning.

Also debriefing over the past week, met with Chief Smith of CARE, very informative.

And then separately, in a different realm, met with Seattle King County Coalition on Homelessness, very great meeting, along with the Complete Communities Coalition regarding the Comprehensive Plan.

And lastly, on Friday, went out to the MOHAI, Great place, great museum, loved it.

Also, the South Lake Union Park, lots of great discussion there, and possibly a district office location, or district hours location, so I'm very happy to highlight that.

And the park question two will come up regarding our new District 7 neighborhood advisory council, and it's a great opportunity for us to bring the community together, and the South Lake Union Park there at MOHAI is a great place to do it.

With that said, I will pass off to Councilmember Moore.

Thank you very much.

But you did steal the best line, so.

Anyway, let's see.

The next meeting of the Housing and Human Services will be next week on Wednesday at 9.30 a.m.

And we will be having a presentation from the three departments that that committee oversees.

That'll be Office of Housing, the Human Services Department, and the Office of Civil Rights.

And we will at some point get a briefing from SCDI as well relating to landlord-tenant regulations.

In terms of work that I've been doing, I am very pleased to announce that I am opening a district office this week at the Lake City Service Center.

So I will be meeting people there on Thursdays from 1 to 4.30 and also remotely.

So that's a big step, I feel .

and following through on my commitment to try to be more district available and focused.

It was very exciting to be at the groundbreaking for the fire station.

It was my first golden shovel event, so I'm looking forward to having more opportunities to bring forth a lot of really important infrastructure in the district and the city.

And I want to just say to Councilmember Saka that I again wanted to thank your efforts on writing the letter in support of this free school meals legislation and I was really disappointed to hear that that did not make it through committee.

and appreciate the offer of support from the other council members.

And I would just like to throw out there that I think that it's incumbent upon us in the city to try to figure out a way that we can fill the void for free school meals for our children.

So hopefully we can move this forward if the state is unable to do so.

But thank you for being leading on that.

And I'll turn it over to Council President Nelson.

I'm minding the order today, carefully.

Go ahead.

Thank you, thank you.

Well, the first meeting of the Library's Education and Neighborhoods Committee is this Thursday, February 8th.

We're going to be getting an overview from the Seattle Department of Neighborhoods, and we're going to work our way through all the four departments that are under this committee.

which includes the ones I mentioned, plus the Office of Immigrant Right Affairs.

And I will say that a lot of us have been working on the public safety issue.

I've met with Chief Diaz to talk about the more recent increase in break-ins in our district, both private property as well as businesses.

And he has been very amenable to meeting.

So I will be scheduling hopefully some meetings or even other opportunities to have connections between SPD and the district businesses and hopefully the community councils as well.

So more to come on all that.

That's initial conversations, but it's something that I'm prioritizing.

I am also meeting with the North Precinct Captain Agard, hopefully later this week, if not early next week, to talk about this and other opportunities for having them have more touch points with the district as we move forward here.

Additionally, I visited the care team last week, as well as the 911 call center.

I got to listen to some of those calls.

I'm very impressed with the team, both the care team and separately, and with the 911 responders, both the folks taking the initial calls as well as the dispatchers, I will say I'm very impressed with their professionalism and proficiency and how quickly they get to those calls.

And it was a good reminder that we really are experiencing the SPD staffing shortage is really the issue of the inability to address some of these other public safety concerns.

You can see as calls come in, The priority one calls, which are safety to a person, are priority one calls.

And then, you know, you might have a priority three call where a crime is no longer in progress.

And you can see as the priority ones come in, the priority three have to be...

Delayed on the list and then you can see how it takes so long when people say I call and SPD is not able to show up right away, this is why, and so it was a good a good reminder and just evidence really of of the staffing shortage issue, so it was great to have that opportunity.

and to thank folks in person for their service to the city.

So that was really great.

And then I too am instituting office hours, more to come.

I'm hoping to have two locations.

I'm gonna be at the Good Shepherd Center soon, west of I-5, and then we're looking for a location east of I-5 so we can start doing signups for folks that wanna meet in district.

And that is our report.

or my report for this week.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

Just to follow up on what you said, I'm really glad.

I don't know if you're talking about the same businesses along the 35th corridor.

And just shout out to Council Member Peterson, who was really focused on that.

I'm really glad you're paying attention.

Gabe Garlanda, David Miller, and the neighborhood, they are dogging the city for attention to that as well.

As well as the businesses in the U District with...

Don Blake me right and then just businesses and Wallingford as well and most recently in the same point a business district and I'll be meeting with the owner of great state who has had multiple bright break-ins in the last month, so Yeah

Thank you for your attention.

It seems like we've got a pretty widespread attention on public safety, and we'll be looking more deeply at the police staffing issue as well, and why is it that it's so hard to staff up.

Okay, so the first meeting of the Governance, Accountability, and Economic Development Committee will be on Thursday, this Thursday, February 8th at 2 p.m., and let me just say my acronym is pronounced GADE, which is a lot.

G-A-E-D, which is a lot better than E-D-T-C-L, because there was no way to say anything with my last committee.

Anyway, so February 8th at 2 p.m., and we'll have a presentation from the Office of Economic Development going over their 2024 work plan, specifically highlighting OED's future of Seattle economy investment agenda.

which was unanimously endorsed by council in resolution 32099 in September of last year.

And then we'll also have a briefing by Wayne Barnett, director of the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission.

The SEEC has been under the purview of the governance committee for forever, but now that the committee has accountability as an explicit function, of its purview, it's in the title, is especially relevant to hear about the office's lines of business beyond working with candidates during an election.

So I'm looking forward to that.

Okay, I'll just very quickly go through the meetings that I took that are directly related to my city and external committee meetings.

Well, let me see.

I'll just pare it down to one because it's timely.

I did have an opportunity to meet Daryl Powell, whom the mayor nominated to be the interim director of King County Regional Homelessness Authority as the search for a new CEO to replace Mark Doans continues.

And there will be a special committee meeting on February 9th this week, two of the KCRHA governing committee on which I sit, to confirm Mr. Powell at a special meeting.

So I just wanted to make sure that that was on the record, that you folks knew about that.

I will skip the other things that I was going to say about my meetings, because they all relate to economic development.

I will include those in my notes beginning next Thursday.

And I will then move on to the last item here, which is, unless there's any further business.

May I just say, Council President, I just want to apologize.

I had immigrant rights.

I had had a conversation earlier today, and I misspoke when I said it's the Office of Immigrant and Refugee Affairs that is on my committee, and they will be presenting at some point soon, too.

But apologies for getting the name of that committee wrong.

Thank you.

Thank you for that note.

Okay, we'll now move into executive session.

Hearing no further business, we will now move into executive session.

As presiding officer, I'm announcing that the Seattle City Council will convene, and the purpose of the executive session is to discuss pending potential or actual litigation.

This is an opportunity for the council to discuss confidential legal matters with the city attorneys as authorized by law.

A legal monitor will be present from the city attorney's office to ensure that council reserves questions of policy for open session.

I expect the time of the executive session to end at about 4.30.

It's allocated 25 minutes or so on the agenda, and I'm building in five minutes of walk to your office, join on Zoom time.

And then if I have to extend that time, I will announce the extension and expected duration.

At the conclusion of this executive session, this council briefing meeting will automatically adjourn.

The next regularly scheduled council briefing meeting is on February 12th, 2024 at 2 p.m.

And I just want to note that we'll not have a council briefing the following week on February 19th in light of the President's Day holiday.

All right, the council is now in executive session.

Council members, please log on to the executive session Zoom meeting.