Seattle City Council Select Budget Committee Special Meeting 11/10/21

Everyone, thank you very much for joining the Select Budget Committee meeting.

Today is November 10th, 2021. I'm Teresa Mosqueda, Chair of the Select Budget Committee.

Will the clerk please call the roll?

Peterson.

Here.

Sawant.

Present.

Strauss.

Present.

Gonzales.

Here.

Herbold.

Here.

Juarez.

Here.

Lewis.

Present.

Morales.

Here.

Chair Mosqueda.

Present.

Nine present.

Thank you very much, Madam Clerk.

Colleagues, I do want to let you know we have a full agenda this morning.

I want to thank you for your participation in our ongoing Select Budget Committee meetings.

I will note that I have a few opening comments.

I want to make sure that we have an outline for what to expect throughout the day and the process over the next week and a half.

Then we will get into an overview of the presentation that central staff has made available to all of you and will be published to the agenda after our committee meeting today.

I want to make sure that we have an opportunity hear from all the council members who are interested in calling attention to the various budget actions that they submitted as amendments to the budget over the last two weeks and talk about what was included in the budget and what folks have any questions about and other desires that they'd like to see.

We'll have about two, two and a half hours today to do that.

We'll also have an opportunity on Friday to continue this conversation if there's any additional questions or issues you'd like to ask of central staff on Friday.

I wanted to make sure that you all had that preference as I go into some opening remarks here just to make sure that you know we will be getting into the city budget actions after my comments here as the chair.

Colleagues as you know this evening at the 5 30 hour we will be holding a public hearing to hear from members of the public solely dedicated to the city's 2022 general revenue resources, and the proposed budgets and corresponding legislation.

We are dedicating the entire evening to this, so that is why this morning's agenda does not include public comment for us to accept public comment.

I'm going to now move to suspend the rules to allow for this meeting to continue without public comment at this morning's meeting, recognizing during this same day, throughout the evening, we will hear directly from members of the public.

If there's no objection, the council rules relating to accepting public comment at a committee meeting will be suspended.

Hearing no objection, the council rule is suspended, and the public comment will not be accepted at this meeting.

We do look forward to hearing from members of the public at this evening's 5.30 public hearing.

As a reminder, registration for the public hearing begins at 3.30 p.m., and all of the opportunities to provide public comment are listed on the agenda for this afternoon.

Please do sign up starting at 3.30 p.m., and we will endeavor to get through everyone who has signed up for public comment.

For preparing for your remarks, please do note we will have one minute for public comment for each person.

Regarding the process for the rest of this week and next week, colleagues, you'll note that central staff and I provided a very high-level overview of the proposed budget via Seattle Channel at around 2 p.m.

yesterday.

We wanted to make sure that we were sharing with you and members of the public that the proposed budget was available for to review and for council members and members of the public to dive into analyzing that proposed budget before today's Select Budget Committee meeting at 9 a.m.

I want to thank the Council President who had graciously allowed for us to add a Select Budget Committee meeting to today's agenda and I want to thank all of you for your participation today.

I think that this is going to be a helpful primer on the proposed budget that we are releasing so that we can have an informed public hearing this evening, have conversations about any possible amendments that you are going to be considering for self-balancing amendments by this Friday, and that way we can also reconvene on Friday morning to go into any questions you may have, but more importantly offer central staff an opportunity to provide any clarification on any We are asking for you to submit those to central staff on November 12th at noon.

Council members wishing to amend the either through a reduction in appropriations or by new or increased revenues.

Please note that if proposed revenue requires increased legislation, that legislation will need to be introduced and referred to the Select Budget Committee meeting by Monday, November 15th.

Obviously, we will continue to work to make sure that these timelines are more ideal for council members and members of the public.

But unlike the state legislature that has a legislative body that receives about four months to work through their proposed budget, we have a total of eight weeks.

So thank you for all of the work that you've done to work with us on this expedited timeline.

and to consider any of your proposed amendments.

Again, we would need to have those on Friday at noon.

I want to thank all of you for the work that you've already done for the proposed balancing package that is in front of us today.

The committee will consider additional amendments on November 18th and 19th if needed.

Only budget amendments that meet the established deadlines on the budget calendar will be published on the appropriate meeting agenda.

Budget amendments that are not included on the final agenda will not be presented at the Budget Committee unless circulated via email to all Councilmembers and the Central Staff Director and Deputy Clerks by 5 p.m.

on the day before.

If a member wishes to amend, excuse me, if a member wishes to move an amendment that is not listed on the published agenda next week on November 18th and November 19th agendas, then the agenda must be amended by an affirmative vote of the majority of the committee members present.

As a reminder, the final budget committee votes and council adoption of the budget is set for Monday, November 22nd.

The budget committee meeting will be held in the morning of November 22nd.

We will take final votes on all of the budget-related legislation, and then that legislation will be transmitted to full council in the afternoon.

With that process information out of the way, I wanna say a few thank yous and then provide a little bit of context for our conversation today.

First, thank you to central staff.

Thank you to the tremendous team at central staff director.

and the entire central staff team for all of the work that they have done to make the proposed budget in front of us possible for your review today, for the tireless work that they've done to provide a summary that has been now emailed to all council members and will be posted to the agenda afterwards, and for the work they've done with all of you to make your amendments workable and balanced in this package.

It's our incredible central staff team that, through the leadership of Director Handy, deserves this shout out and really a tremendous amount of thanks to Dan Eater, Tom Mikesell, Lisa Kay, Ali Panucci for all the work that they have done to help scrub this budget to identify any possible revenue source given the decrease in revenue announcement that we heard last Wednesday.

We'll be going into more information about the revenue shortfall here shortly and in the central staff presentation.

I want to thank the department staff throughout the city who have been working very hard.

They and their teams, the frontline workers in the city have been working throughout this pandemic.

And they have also been working with us throughout this budget process to focus on key priority areas and provide information for how we can amend the proposed budget to really invest in our city's future.

I want to thank the council's information technology team, Ian, Sun, and Eric for continuing to keep us virtual and communicating directly to members of the public so we can make this virtual work possible.

Thank you to the clerk's office for also making sure that we had a process for conducting our meetings in a way that complied with all of the required responsibilities for city council and the select budget committee.

Thank you.

to Clerk Monica Simmons and the Deputy Clerks Amelia Sanchez, Jodi Schwinn and so many others.

I want to thank you Liz as well and anybody else that I did not mention in the clerk's office.

Your work is tremendously important and I thank you.

Thank you to the communications team, Dana Robinson, Sloat, Joseph Pija, and our former colleague Stephanie Guzman for helping to tell the story.

Clearly, we do need to continue to tell the story of what we are doing in this budget to make sure that any misinformation out there or misunderstandings are clearly understood, and we look forward to working with you to make that possible.

In addition to that, central staff, and thank you to Joseph Pija, has been providing very helpful tutorials and overviews, informational graphics so that people understand what is included in the proposed budget, and we will be sharing more information about what is included in this chair's balancing package.

And finally, I'd like to thank my team, everybody in our team who's been working with us to try to finalize this proposed budget.

Lori Mayhew, Farideh Cuevas, Aretha Basu, Aaron House, and Sejal Parikh.

And to every one of you and to all of your teams, and especially your budget leads who's been working around the clock as well to make sure that your amendments were shared on time and that we had the opportunity to hear directly from you why increases or decreases were proposed and the importance for helping to get our city into a more equitable, just, healthy and safe place.

As we get into this budget deliberation and have an opportunity to work with you to understand what is in the proposed budget in front of us, I'd like to start with correcting some misinformation that's out there regarding the council's balancing package that's in front of us today.

Our city and I are not going to engage in tactics to pit historically marginalized and disenfranchised communities against each other.

We cannot do that.

Not now, not while we're in the midst of a pandemic, not while families are on the brink of losing their homes, not now while we are seeing so many more families, seniors and kiddos not be able to have food securities and families wonder whether or not there will be food on the table.

Our most vulnerable need to have care and comfort.

That is why our proposed budget scrubbed every single department to look for any funding that was possibly available.

If there was funding that was going to be sitting on the shelf and not put to use immediately, we wanted to use those dollars to make sure that we were caring and comforting our most vulnerable, investing in workers, small businesses, and creating a more just economy.

I'd like to start at the front end by making sure that we address this misinformation to provide the full picture.

In our city, we must make sure that we invest in direct services to families, small businesses, and to make sure that our most vulnerable have what they need.

We are still in the midst of a pandemic.

small businesses are continuing to close while the Office of Economic Development is sitting on millions of dollars still allocated from the Seattle Rescue Plan that have not been spent.

Now is the time where we need to get every dollar that the city has allocated in the past and every dollar available in 2022 out the door to families who are on the brink of losing their homes, who are worried about whether or not they will pay rent, who are concerned that they are not providing They will not be able to provide for their families.

That is what our responsibility was.

Many of our families are still dealing with the loss from COVID.

Loss of health, loss of life, loss of friendship, loss of their livelihoods, loss of their housing.

And we need to make sure that we reject any fear stoking division and hate.

So let me address the elephant in the room with the truth.

The reality is that this budget had about a $15 million shortfall that we had to accommodate for last Wednesday.

Knowing the tremendous need that's out there, central staff and I scoured the budget and looked at every corner of the proposed budget that was transmitted by the mayor.

We looked at every single department to see where funding was available so that we did not have funding sitting in coffers waiting on shelves in 2022 that could be instead used immediately.

Every department received the same level of scrutiny.

Every department had the same litmus test of whether or not there was general fund dollars that we could use to get out the door in this moment of need.

I want to also be very clear that while Seattle Police Department is an area that everybody is interested in and we continue to want to make sure that we are investing in upstream solutions to reduce the chance that any individual ends up in the criminal justice system, we made sure that the full hiring plan, as proposed by the mayor, is included in this budget.

The full hiring plan, as proposed by the mayor, is in this budget.

We also assume the same level of attrition that we assumed last year.

Recognizing that there was still more officers who are leaving this year than we assumed, we did not increase that amount.

The same number of officers who left last year in our assumptions in the budget are also included here.

This budget uses that salary savings that would otherwise sit on a shelf so that we could invest in food, in housing, in gun violence reduction measures, in mental health investments, in making sure that we had housed and safe communities so that no dollar was sat on a shelf and just waiting.

It's an easy talking point to say that we're cutting a budget of a department.

But it is more important to look at the details.

Not every single one of those dollars was going into existing programs.

Some were proposed for new investments.

It is an important reminder for us that this is a tough part of our budget decisions when we have reductions in revenue that we must account for.

But I don't think that it's responsible to invest in new technologies that might be a nice to have, such as monitoring heart rates in a moment where we know that the heart rates of families and individuals who are suffering right now are increasing because they're worried about whether or not they're gonna keep their home.

They're worried about whether or not they can seek shelter and services.

And that is where we made some decisions to try to free up dollars that would otherwise be unspent next year.

We will go into every department, but I want to make sure folks know at the front end, $27 million is going into community safety and stability investments.

Our own Nick Jr. report said that today, 12% of the calls going to 911 and being deployed to SPD should be handled by someone else rather than an armed officer with a gun.

That is the analysis from the mayor's own team that 12% of the calls coming in today could be redirected.

We have made decisions to try to free up the opportunity for officers to respond to the most urgent calls while making sure that there is a well resourced alternative system that includes mental health providers, case managers and other first responders that don't require a badge and a gun.

So I look forward to having the conversation with you all.

We can get into those details too soon.

I know that you too are tired of misinformation.

Our duty as council members during this budget is to make sure that we address that $15 million shortfall that we simultaneously invested in our city's future while we invested in the trauma our city has faced due to COVID.

As our vice chair has continually said, shadow pandemic of trauma and additional stress in our communities cannot go unaddressed in this budget.

And that will help create healthier, more stable communities and local economies in the long run.

We also wanted to make sure to highlight the investments that we made in protecting the vast majority of dollars going into the stabilization funds.

While it was suggested to us that we drain the revenue to just $3 million last year, I'm glad we didn't do that.

What we have in front of us is an unprecedented situation where our city must plan for unforeseen economic downturns.

This year's downturn was not in large part due to jumpstart, despite the information shared.

over the last two days.

The vast majority of reductions that we saw to the proposed forecast were directly related to commercial parking tax.

I think that it's unfortunate that an assumption was made that commercial parking would rebound to normal rates starting on January 1st next year when we know that return to work measures have continued to be delayed and people continue to work from home.

We're going to do everything we can in this budget to also prepare for any additional decreases in the Jumpstart suggested funding.

But this year's revenue forecast that we received last week only decreased our assumed revenue from Jumpstart by $750,000.

So we have a $15 million shortfall.

We have absolutely tried to do everything we can with the good news we received with REIT, but there is still a $15 million shortfall in the revenue that we had and we had tremendous need and incredibly great ideas from council members that we wanted to accommodate for.

As you'll recall in September, I along with many of you raised the questions about the mayor's use of a baseline revenue forecast while the ongoing COVID emergency was proving that this could be a longer than projected downturn.

We asked questions about whether or not there should be the use of the pessimistic forecast and that foreshadowing has come true.

With dealing with this $15 million forecast, we then went into our proposed budget, looked at all of the amendments that you all have submitted, and made some important, and I think timely decisions about how existing revenue could be used to help shelter, house, feed, and care for our community.

I look forward to having conversation with you this afternoon about all of those decisions that we've included in the proposed budget.

I thank you for the ideas that you've put forward because there were so many overlapping themes because we all see so many overlapping needs.

I want to end with some good news.

The good news is that the city's fiscal health and prognosis does remain strong.

B&O taxes and real estate excise taxes are increasing.

Thank goodness we were able to use some of those REIT dollars for REIT specific purposes.

We have very high vaccination rates compared to other places across the country.

Seattle's office rent increases, excuse me, the renting of office space in Seattle continues to increase relative to other places across the country.

And we were able to, again, thank you to central staff, we were able to be able to make investments in council priorities to the tune of $70 million.

I wanna make sure that folks know that there is a caveat and a caution with those investments.

The vast majority of these investments do include one-time funding opportunities.

I think that it is an appropriate use of one-time funding in the midst of a pandemic to try to jumpstart our economy by infusing these dollars, but we also have to recognize that these dollars are short-term in nature, and many are attributed to the additional support that we've received from the ARPA funds, from FEMA funds, and other one-time funds, we have made a, I think, important and correct effort here to maintain our, to largely maintain our reserves, to maintain FEMA, and to make sure that we had stability in the sweetened beverage tax.

I look forward to working with you as we continue to try to support additional progressive revenue to maintain these city services, but the work that you've done to ensure that Jump Start funds go into Jump Start priorities means that we now have a guarantee that that implementation plan will be adhered to with this budget.

The budget conversation here would not be possible without the contribution of Jump Start, and that's to put it mildly.

We would be in a much worse situation if we did not have the revenue that we are counting on from Jumpstart.

And we have done Jumpstart in the midst of seeing record numbers of startup high tech firms coming to Seattle.

And we welcome them.

We're excited.

And we also want to make sure that we are using our payroll tax to invest in a more equitable economy to also address increases in income inequality that has come with a 21 percent increase in our population over the last 10 years.

Jumpstart has simultaneously created flexibility and stability and accountability by creating a fund so we can share what money is coming in and where it is going and allow for those dollars to be infused into Seattle's local economy now and support our most vulnerable.

The biggest item I will note that I am most proud of in this budget is that in these trying times, Because of JumpStart's investment, because of the work you have done, colleagues and community, there is now $192 million in this proposed budget to create new permanently affordable housing and rental housing.

$192 for community-focused acquisition, home ownership opportunities, affordable rentals.

This is a historic amount of investments made because of the $97 million that we have put into affordable housing through JumpStart.

This is nearly twice, almost twice the amount of housing investments that we have seen over the last four years.

So I want to thank you for all of the work that you've done.

With Jump Start and with the proposed amendments in front of us, we are investing in child care, in small businesses, in culturally appropriate services, in home ownership opportunities, in building generational wealth, in caring for our most vulnerable, in addressing past discriminatory zoning policies, in creating investments in human infrastructure, as well as the capital infrastructure necessary to care for and connect our communities.

So with that, I will have some more thank yous when we get into this overview of the amendments that council members have put together.

But that's the ground setting that I'd like to set as I hand it over to Director Handy to walk us through a summary of the resources and how we got Thank you, Director Handy.

Great.

Thank you so much, Chair Mosqueda, Esther Handy, Council Central staff.

And let's go ahead and pull up the slides.

I'm going to start with just a high-level recap of some of the process pieces.

And then we'll walk through the revenue forecast and resources used for this budget before handing it to my colleague, Ali Panucci, to walk through the investments in this budget.

So, next slide.

Thank you.

This is a, the previous one is a good recap of our budget process.

It highlights our first three steps in the process, which you have already been through.

Departments came and presented the 2022 proposed budget.

You had a public hearing.

Central staff presented issues that they had identified in this budget for your discussion.

And then October 26 to 28, you all proposed amendments to this budget.

Today, we are going to walk through the balancing package, including amendments that were all those amendments that are included in the back package were discussed in phase three.

Some have been scaled or altered as your discussions evolved.

But we will be continuing a discussion with the public about those today.

Next slide.

As the chair mentioned tonight, you will have a chance to hear from the public about this, and we will be back in committee on Friday.

And next slide.

Next week, you will have a chance to, these are the dates highlighted by the chair, where you will have a chance to discuss and vote on amendments to this package to get to a final budget.

Any questions about process from council members before I proceed?

I'm not seeing any, Director.

Oh, excuse me, Vice Chair Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you so much.

Just wanted to follow up on some of the comments that you made, Madam Chair, about the fact that the revenue forecast resulted in a significant, well, I should say the mayor's proposed budget being built on a revenue forecast that was insufficiently pessimistic is resulting in as the council having to find additional revenue to address that shortfall.

I'm just wondering, I know we had a really robust discussion with Budget Director Noble when he came and presented the revenue assumptions to council.

He was very transparent about the fact that the budget was going to be built.

This was before the budget was announced that the budget was going to be built.

on a particular set of revenue assumptions.

And several of us spoke at that point to our concerns with that approach and what that would result in if it turned out that those presumptions or assumptions were overly optimistic.

And so my question is, is there an option that we, as the council, in the future, having learned from this particular situation, is there something that the council can do to direct that the budget be built on a particular set of assumptions?

Perhaps that's one of the happy outcomes that might be able to be realized from the budget the economic forecasting staff that under Council President Gonzalez's leadership together with Chair Mosqueda that we are going to have in place for future budget processes.

But just wondering what our options are in the future to make sure that we're not in this position again.

Yeah, I'm happy to respond to that.

And Ali fill in any details that I miss.

I will say this summer, the council adopted passed an ordinance to create a new independent office of economic and revenue forecasting.

That office is currently being stood up.

So there's a process to hire a director and with the plan for it to be operational in 2022 and do the revenue forecasting for the city.

That forecast office will report to a forecast council that is made up of two council members, the council president and the chair of the finance committee.

two folks on the executive side, the mayor and the director of city finance or their delegates.

And the intention is that the independent office prepares a revenue forecast.

It goes to the forecast council to make decisions about what baseline is used.

So that independent body accountable to electeds on both the executive and the legislative side We will talk about the details of the revenue forecast in a little more detail shortly.

and recognizing that the mayor's office creates their budget over a five-month period versus us being able to respond in an eight-week period.

By the time we learned in September that they were assuming the baseline forecast versus what I think all of us cautioned against, they needed to be using the pessimistic forecast.

I'm assuming that they had built in hundreds, excuse me, $100,000, probably a few million extra dollars more than they should have by using that assumption.

That in addition to using the assumption that parking downtown would rebound in January, seems to have, seems to me like it could have been I want to thank the council president for the work that she's done.

I want to thank central staff and others who have been working on that proposal with us over the last few years.

And I think if there was a question about how we could readdress that or redirect them to use a

Great, well, then I'll continue in our next slide.

In our initial issue ID discussion, oh, sorry, this slide is the topics that we are going to walk.

Oh, yeah, go ahead.

Move forward is great.

Thank you.

This is the pieces we're going to walk for.

I'll talk about the initial issues in the proposed budget, the forecast, and then we'll talk about proposed changes.

So in our issue ID discussion, next slide, we talked about a couple of core issues underlying the proposed budget that came to the council.

We discussed that as a baseline, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the cost of ongoing general fund services have been growing, outpacing revenue growth.

We knew that without action by the council in 2022, in 2020 to pass the jumpstart funding bill and provide new source of progressive revenue, this would be an all cuts budget.

The mayor balanced her proposed budget using one time federal resources that are also utilized in this package.

And two, by applying $148 million of revenue from the jumpstart fund, which is $62 million higher than allowed by current policy.

and would have reduced the capacity of the Jump Start Fund to support programs in a like amount in 2023 and beyond.

We've discussed this quite a bit in the Budget Committee.

And in addition, that the budget included $70 million of ongoing funding for equitable community initiative priority projects, participatory budgeting, and community safety, community-led investments.

the city budget office.

And perhaps all of these projects are supported by this council.

But came absent an ongoing revenue source or equitable funding strategy to support them over the long-term.

Next slide.

And so then as discussed last week on Wednesday, November 3, the city budget office provided their final economic and revenue forecast of the year.

That forecast showed that the 2022 proposed budget could not be fully funded as proposed.

Specifically, the forecast showed a projected decrease of general fund revenue of $15 million.

This is largely driven by delays in return to work due to increase in Delta variant cases this fall that impacted the payroll expense tax, the sales tax, and parking fines in 2021. The total downward projections in the general fund were partially offset by an uptick in the business and occupation tax, creating that net $15 million decrease in projected general fund revenues.

Outside the general fund, the forecast projected a net $19 million decrease in other funds, including an $8.4 million decrease in the commercial parking tax due to fewer people visiting the downtown core for work and commercial activity.

a $4.5 million decrease to the sweetened beverage tax, and a $5 million increase to school zone camera revenues, again for a $19 million decrease in other funds.

Hey, Esther, can I stop you for a minute?

What was the last one?

I heard the parking tax and the sugar tax.

What was the last one?

The school zone camera revenue is down, is actually up by $5 million.

OK, thanks.

Yep.

So in the general fund, there's 20 different funding sources that come together to total that net $15 million decrease.

And the other funds, I think there are seven or so.

And then the largest bright spot in the revenue forecast is a $26 million uptick in real estate excise tax.

This is a result of continuing to have a hot both residential and commercial real estate market in the city.

And so before any other actions were taken on this budget, this balancing package had to address the projected losses in revenues to come into balance.

Next I'll move to the resources to set up this balancing package unless there are additional questions on the forecast.

Any additional questions.

Thank you Esther.

Thank you Director Handy for summarizing that.

And again, we received that information only a week ago, less than a week ago, since it was in the evening on Wednesday.

So thank you to central staff for all of the work that you've done to really deconstruct that updated forecast and to make sure that any errors were addressed and noted and that we have fully accounted for how to close that gap in this budget.

Great.

So next, you all got to work to address those shortfalls and the issues underlying the proposed budget.

you identified areas where spending could be cut or where funding did not align with council priorities.

And so the next two slides I will walk through are those resources that are being used to address the shortfall and to fund council member additions to the proposed budget.

I'll note just a process step here.

These slides, like the ones that will follow, include a reference to a CBA number for each action.

So in that first column, you'll see CBO 501, A001, for both council members and for the public following along.

If you'd like to see a more detailed description of these actions, the full descriptions are in the materials attached to today's agenda.

Huge appreciation to our central staff executive assistant, Patty Wigrin, for the creation of the table of contents guiding you through those 384 pages, I think, of content and the quick work to make these available.

So both the public and council members can cross-reference those throughout our discussion today.

Starting at the top, the first action is to reduce the 2021 spending in the year-end supplemental ordinance by $8.7 million.

This is largely capturing funding that was not going to be spent in 2021. It includes $3 million that was allocated for community safety capacity building funds that are being redeployed for community safety priorities in 2022. It includes a $700,000 reduction to triage one, which is, we'll talk about later, is scheduled to be stood up in 2022. These are unspent 2021 funds.

It removes the balance of reserves for COVID vaccination programs that are in sort of full swing in 2021 and redeploys some CLFR funding for rapid rehousing for similar programs next year.

So $8.7 million in 2021. The next is the chair's omnibus amendment, as we have discussed it, which restores JumpStart funding policy priorities to current policy adopted by ordinance previously.

The balancing package matches current policy by allowing $85 million of JumpStart funds to be used to support the general fund broadly to preserve existing programs while tax revenues recover.

and it invests $149 million in the defined jumpstart policy priorities, the majority going to affordable housing preservation and production.

This amendment also right-sized investments in equitable community initiative priorities and participatory budgeting to ensure there is a total of $30 million available to each of these programs using a combination of unspent money in 2021 and new funding in 2022 These adjustments are paired with a statement of legislative intent that the council will work with the new executive to identify a progressive revenue source or an equitable funding strategy to support these programs in the future.

Next, the third act cuts $4.4 million of federal CLFR funding for the Seattle Promise Program and instead funds the program with $4.4 million of underspend from the families education preschool and promise levy, what we call the FEPP levy.

This retains the mayor's proposed 2022 investment in the Seattle Promise Program.

The total FEPP levy underspend is projected to be $14.4 million.

So this captures just a portion, $4.4 million of those funds.

And this action leaves $10 million in undesignated fund balance as a reserve.

to ensure the sustainability of DEEL programs through the life of the levy, and as recommended by DEEL and the FEPP Oversight Committee.

I want to underscore that point.

This retains the same amount in the Seattle Promise Program, and it maintains the $10 million that the Oversight Committee had suggested that we hold back.

Just in case there's any confusion about that out there, I want to make sure we underscore that point.

Thank you very much, Director.

Great.

Next is a reduction of $1.4 million of Clifford funds in the IT department.

The Seattle Rescue Plan 1 added $2.3 million to IDT in 2021 to provide additional short-term support for their most in-demand lines of business.

The 2022 proposed budget included $4 million to continue that work for another 12 months.

This action would reduce the funding to continue that work for about seven and a half rather than 12 months.

Next, the balancing package reduces contributions to the Revenue Stabilization Fund, one of the city's fiscal reserves by $1.5 million.

This package retains a $23 million contribution to the reserves following the executive's proposed path to restore the city's reserves on a five-year time horizon to pre-pandemic levels.

And then the last one on this table before we go to the next is a approximate $600,000 reduction to the ID department, IDT department, assuming a 6% vacancy rate rather than 4%, which better matches the current reality in that department, which is currently just north of 7%.

Thank you so much.

Just as I noted at the beginning, every single department was looked at to see if there was any money that was over-assuming.

to make sure that we had the same level of scrutiny for any number of personnel that would not potentially be hired or any underspend that we could potentially account for.

So this again I think is a good example of where all departments have the same level of scrutiny and we look carefully to see if there was a justifiable reason to be able to make these types of reductions so that we could use these resources in this downtime.

Next, the next action is a reduction of $948,000 from the Seattle Department for Triage One.

The Triage One program is scheduled to hire staff between May and September of 2022 and to be operational by end of year 2022 or early 2023. So this action reduces funding for the first portion of the year and retains the core pieces of funding needed for the startup process, including hiring vehicles, et cetera.

So a continued commitment to triage one, um, capturing some savings that will not be spent in the longer timeline.

Um, stand up.

Mr. Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Can you remind us what was originally proposed, uh, for 2022 for triage one?

Yes, and you know what?

I should have that number right at my fingertips, and I don't quite.

I'm just going to look to my team to see if another staff analyst does, and if not, I'll circle back to get that to you shortly.

Mr. Herbold, I believe, to add to the conversation, I'm not sure that this directly answers you, but the $700,000 that we just approved last month is retained in the budget.

It's carrying over for the implementation.

And just want to make sure that that was also clear.

I hope I that was going to be my second question.

So thank you for anticipating.

And again, and I'm going to keep talking just in case central staff have additional comments that they want to pop in.

And if I'm filibustering for you, we have.

every interest in seeing the triage one program be successful.

As the council, excuse me, as vice chair, Herbold has noted there's a lot of work that's currently happening right now to report on a protocol system for 9-1-1 dispatch that will be very informative along with some other work that's being done on how to best deploy the right first responder.

We understood from the presentation from the departments that triage one at the earliest, even though there was an announcement mid-year this year, at the earliest the triage one program would be stood up is December of 2022. So that's why we are assuming a use of resources here.

It is not a cut to the program, but basically capturing dollars that would have otherwise sat on a shelf.

And I'll stop there to see if central staff have anything else to add.

Yes, I think our colleagues Greg Dawson, perhaps and Gorman have some additional information.

I did just want to clarify that the cuts to the year end supplemental did include cutting the funding for triage one that was that was being held in finance general and has not yet been expended or requested to be to be moved.

So the package does include both the cuts on both sides.

And I believe Greg and perhaps and can talk a little bit more about the implementation plan for Traders' World in 2022.

I'm happy to talk about 2022. The executive's proposed budget included full year funding starting on January 1st of 2022 for the triage one unit.

But SFD has subsequently provided information to us that suggests that they will not be able to launch that program until December of 2022 or January of 2023. There's just a lot that needs to happen between now and then.

And just to expand a little bit on what Anne's saying, when she says a lot that needs to happen, one of the key things that needs to happen is negotiation with the Seattle Police Officer Guild and Local 27 on the transfer of the 911 calls that would go to Triage 1 away from fire and away from police to the civilians in Triage 1 and the labor implications along with those negotiations are not something that can happen quickly.

And according to the timeline that we've received from the executive, those discussions would not even begin until the spring, if I remember correctly, Anne.

Yeah, that's correct.

And one other piece is that SFD is anticipating the need to create a new job classification for the counselors who will staff triage one.

Because when the city developed its counselor job classification, we were not sending those counselors out into the field to work side by side with first responders.

So acknowledging the special work conditions that these counselors are engaged in.

compared to other HSD counselors, they like to negotiate a new job classification for that work.

And so again, just returning to the original question, how much was originally proposed in the 2022 budget for triage one?

2.15 million.

Okay.

Thank you.

And I would love that information.

And I have a.

I have a chart that I think.

from the fire department that I think has been shared with you from my staff that I come to a different conclusion, but I don't have the information that you have about what's going on right now.

So that might be why.

It shows a number of months to do a certain number of functions.

It doesn't come down on a particular month in 2022. But if they are doing the things that they said back in, September that they were working on, and you count out the number of months on this chart, it seems like they could launch in June.

But perhaps the things that they promised they would be doing earlier this year, they have not yet begun, and that might account for the difference.

I have a timeline that lists out specific activities.

As do I.

I have it by months.

In April of 2022, we will be here.

I will make sure to forward that to your office.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Council Member Herbold, I appreciate your line of questioning and appreciate your support for continuing to identify all possible ways to have alternative first responders, and I know that you are very interested in this piece.

Apologies for misspeaking about the 700,000, and thank you for the clarification, Allie and Anne and Greg.

So just to reiterate, You had asked how much is in the 2022 budget.

I was assuming that we were keeping $700,000 as it carried over.

But if we do account for the $700,000 from last year, we just reduced $948,000 from this year.

There's still $1.2 million in for this program.

So that's where I was thinking, oh, well, we still have $700,000.

plus, but just a different pot of money there.

So retaining $1.2 million in this section.

Okay.

Thank you very much.

Let's move to the next item.

Great.

Thank you for that discussion.

The next action reduces funding in the Seattle Police Department by $10.8 million through a combination of actions.

The first is a reduction of $1.1 million for hiring incentives The second reduces technology projects by 1.24 million.

The 2022 proposed budget included $5 million in funding for seven different technology projects.

This action removes funding for two of those seven projects, the Active Workforce Wellness Management and the EAQ Forum that evaluates service through body-worn camera footage, retaining funding for the other five projects.

I think I know what you're going to say, Madam Chair Mosqueda and maybe I'll follow you.

Okay, wonderful.

I was actually going to comment on the health and well-being of first responders and to note that we have maintained mental health counselors for first responders, including SFD and SPD.

The health and well-being of first responders is something that this council has prioritized and invested in in the past.

We continue to do that.

As it relates to this technology here, this is a good example of a technology that might be important.

It might be important to look for federal dollars potentially to use to deploy here.

But when we are looking at a budget deficit again of 15 million dollars and the crisis that people continue to live in investing in a new technology to monitor some monitor someone's heart rate for example.

I want to make sure every dollar is being deployed to assist our community.

That is where the decision is made.

We did make sure to ask the police accountability monitor to make sure the items we were considering reducing from technology were not of concern.

are any concern to the court monitor.

We had a conversation, we tried to check in, as we've always done, and identify any concerns early on.

So just to reiterate, and it's in the bottom of Esther's email that we received about these potential issues, and Esther, I don't have it in front of me, so maybe you could read that line that's in italics there, and then I'll turn it over to Council Member Herbold for a follow-up question.

I don't have that email in front of me either, but it essentially says that this cut does not include any of the technology projects where the police monitor has expressed any concern.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I appreciate understanding your thinking for making this cut for the viewing public.

This was not proposed.

The technology investments were not proposed to be cut.

They were proposed to be provisoed.

Council President Gonzalez had proposed a proviso on the technology investments with an understanding that those funds would be released as we learned more about the plan for the investments and the intended outcomes.

And we had also, in this proviso, I think in a really useful way, prioritized release of money without sort of the the hoops to jump through or the reports to be delivered.

We had prioritized some of the investments in order to get the dollars out the door for those investments.

And I appreciate this is a different approach.

Rather than provisoring all of the money, it is a reduction of some of the money.

I am, and I appreciate that the reduction does not touch I am a little bit concerned though, about the, my understanding from.

issue ID paper and the appendix that describes each of these investments.

One of them is very, very closely tied, as I understand it, under the EAQ forum to the risk assessment work that is the follow-up to the Nick Jr. recommendations, and specifically the creation of a harm index for Seattle, which will inform the basis of the risk-based deployment model that is used in the other technology project that is being held harmless, the risk management demand project.

And so it's my understanding that there's about $260,000 in the EAQ item that is, again, that is a necessary component of the re-imagining policing to have fewer police officers responding to 911 calls.

So we'd just like to learn more about that.

And then also part of the Trulio-

I'm not sure if that's what you're referring to.

disparate treatment that people may receive in policing interactions, and that they were going to work with the police department to do a pretty, I think, amazing project of analyzing information captured by body-worn video, and just wanting to understand a little bit more about that one, too.

I think, Councilmember, I can answer many of your questions.

So you are correct that the equity, accountability and quality EAQ project that was originally proposed for a million dollars had sort of two parts to it.

One part was a $260,000 component that would evaluate the Nick Jr. study, and that was being done by the Research Triangle Institute.

The chair's budget breaks that part out and funds it separately.

The other part was the component that the was going to work with the department on for the.

The new, the leveraging of the body worn video to create a measure of service equity, basically measuring the quality of police interactions to determine disparities.

That component was 740,000 and is not funded in the chair's budget.

Yeah, helpful.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.

Thank you for clarifying also where the first item was included in the budget and just broken out.

Again, I'll probably say this a few times.

There's a number of items that might be nice to have at some point.

And I think we look forward to working with all of you to identify how the balance is approached in this proposed budget.

I think that understanding more about the data that's presented is important.

I think what we've tried to do in this budget here is reduce the chances that folks are interacting with officers in the first place by redirecting funding towards gun violence prevention.

Thank you, Council Member Herbold, for your work on that, by making sure that there's more mental health crisis intervention assistance.

I want to thank Council Members Lewis and Strauss and Herbold for continuing to emphasize mental health intervention.

So really, I think it's a matter of how do we We did make a decision to reduce that $740,000, which might be an important investment again if there's additional federal dollars that I'm hearing could potentially be available.

Maybe that's another opportunity to fund.

Okay.

Let's continue.

The next item on this list is a reduction in the expansion of the community service officer program at the Seattle Police Department.

The 2022 proposed budget assumed six new FTEs and six new vehicles for a new squad of six community safety officers.

This proposal would pause the expansion of the CSA program to allow time to determine how the program might be aligned with new alternative 911 response services that are being added in the 2022 proposed budget.

Greg, did you have anything else you wanted to add to that one?

No.

Okay, let's continue.

Great.

Next is a $2.7 million reduction, assuming additional staffing plan separations.

I'm so sorry.

I do want to just mention something very recent.

I want to thank the CSOs.

I want to thank members of Teamsters 117. They have continued to engage with this council as we've been talking about how we can scale up more of the CSO programs.

As you know, we just, I think in September, allocated funding for an additional unit of CSOs.

The work of the CSOs is not in question.

The ongoing question is the placement and location of the CSOs in the future.

And in conversations with members who are CSOs, wanted to reiterate our support for them.

And also, this is not a cut to the CSO program.

This is just holding off on an expansion until the question of where they are housed for future units to be expanded upon is decided.

And ideally, all of those CSOs will be kept together and be in one location in the future that really recognizes the community service side of the CSOs.

But I want to make sure to reiterate, we have not cut any of the existing CSOs.

This was a proposed expansion and we just added an expansion earlier this year.

Okay, let's continue.

Thank you.

Next is the $2.7 million reduction in additional, assuming additional staffing plan separations that more closely reflects the current attrition rate from the department.

This balancing package fully funds the hiring plan proposed for 2022, including 125 recruits and lateral hires.

Greg, anything more you want to add to that?

Yeah, just to reemphasize that, or to emphasize that the hiring plan of 125 new officers is fully funded.

And the separations that are assumed, there's two parts to that.

The first part is that the separations in 2022 will basically mirror the separations that the council assumed in 2021. In 2021, the council had thought that there would be 114 separations.

Turns out there were well over, there's going to be well over 150, but the council had assumed 114 and the council will again assume 114 in 2022. There are also 12 additional separations that are assumed as a result of the COVID vaccine mandate.

At this point in time, or I should say as of five days ago, as of November 5th, there were 80 officers that were unvaccinated and undeployable out on leave.

that we're having accommodation requests reviewed by the city.

Those accommodation requests the council expects are going to take a while and the council expects that 12 of those will result in separation at some point in time in January.

They will add to the separation forecast that I just spoke about that will mirror last year.

And the two coming together will result in 125 separations.

the same number of hires.

You will have a staffing forecast that is 125 hires, 125 separations.

It will net zero, and that is going to result in the ability for the budget to be cut by $2.7 million.

for police salaries that will not need to be used because the additional separations are expected to happen.

Pause to see if there's any questions here.

Vice Chair Herbold.

Excuse me, Council Member Juarez, I'll add you in next.

Sure.

Vice Chair Herbold, Council Member Juarez, Council Member Lewis, and Council Member Peterson.

I just have a question about our ability with this reduction and assumes separations.

I'm just trying to figure out how this proposal impacts our ability to continue to stay at the staffing.

The SPD staffing budget is fully funded.

My understanding is the 2022 proposal recognizes that 1,223 can be hired under, well, that's the total with what can be hired under the staffing plan, and this reduces the total to 1,200.

Is that more or less correct?

And I'm just wondering, the assumptions that are underlying the increased separations assumptions.

My notes show that the September update sent to council has numbers through August and shows that there were 68 separations over the first four months and 49 separations in the next four months.

And the chief has My regular meetings with him referenced his review of the hiring reports to suggest that separations are actually slowing.

So just wondering if central staff can comment on that.

Okay, start with the first one.

It's important to make a distinction between the staffing plan being fully funded as it was submitted in the proposed budget and the SPD hiring plan being fully funded.

The chair's budget fully funds the hiring plan in the sense that there is funding in the budget to hire 125 officers.

There is funding removed, the $2.7 million, because the chair's budget assumes that more officers are going to leave the department.

So it's not correct to say that the staffing plan, as it was submitted by the mayor, is fully funded.

Because as you point out, council member, the number of FTE that was funded, it would have assumed that only 94 separations would happen.

And the council is assuming that there will be 125 and taking the difference in dollars to 2.7 million.

So that is the case to say that the hiring plan is fully funded.

In terms of separations, it is the department's staffing plan through September that projects that there will be 150 separations through the end of the year.

And that includes actuals through September 30th with projections for October, November, and December.

And it's their own projections that I am citing.

So if the chief is saying that he thinks that something different might happen in the next three months, then that would be something that would be good for him to send to the council.

A revised hiring plan would be good.

But at this point in time, certainly the number of separations that have occurred are at least consistent with what the council is assuming at the 114 level, or for sure will be consistent with what the council is assuming at the 114 level.

And I think you had one other question that I may be forgetting.

I think you covered everything.

I just, what I was saying about the actual separations, and I know you can cut this information lots of different ways, but if you look at the first four months compared to the last four months for the most recent 2021 report covering the first eight months of 2021. If you compare the first four months to the last four months, the second four months is a significantly, I guess, I don't know, smaller number than the first four months, which I don't know if that makes a track.

I certainly hope so.

Thank you very much.

So I want to make sure to lift up a few of the pieces that Greg noted in his initial comments and then in the response here.

The mayor's office assumed only 94 separations when we are seeing this year projected according to SPD's own data and use of actual separations until September and SPD's own prognosis of the expected separations for October, November, and December.

We anticipate based on SPD's data that there will be 150 separations this year.

We are not assuming 150 separations next year.

We are only assuming 114 separations, just like we assumed last year.

Additionally, as Greg noted, with the vaccination mandate, we know that there's 80 officers who have requested special accommodations for not receiving their vaccination.

While we know the department is working to try to address those accommodations, there are many folks who are on the front line who we assume probably will not be able to have special accommodations who do require interaction with the public.

Conservatively, I think it's a fair estimate to assume that a dozen of those 80 will not be able to have an accommodation, and that is where the total universe of 126 officers separating next year comes from.

I just wanted to make sure to underscore those points for members of the viewing public, not necessarily for my colleagues, because I know you are steeped in this information.

We are still allowing for those future hires as the mayor's hiring plan projected.

I think we are making some informed decisions about where dollars may be sitting on the table.

Council Member Juarez, you are on mute.

I know you're saying something.

I should know that by now.

Thanks, I think you answered a lot of what my question was going to the back and forth on the separations and the assumptions.

So just so I can, there's one kind of technical question I have, and you can get that to me, or maybe the viewing public wants to know as well.

The five cuts to SPD, I noticed that item number one and five state who the sponsor is, but two, three, and four don't.

So I'd like to know who the sponsors were originally for the technology, the expansion, the additional staffing.

I don't know if there's a reason why you put a particular council member.

Yeah, I can answer that.

So for some of these proposals, they were initially proposed as Council Member Herbold noted as provisos.

Those provisos were suggested before the known $15 million deficit.

We did not associate a council member name with these items because they are changed.

They're not a proviso.

They are a reduction.

And so I, as the chair and the sponsor of those three, because they are different from what was originally proposed by the council members who may have suggested a proviso.

And it's also a reflection of the concept though, that was discussed publicly more in the vein of a proviso, but we made sure to adhere to the transparency here, if it was not associated explicitly with the council member's initial request, then I, when I changed it, have the chair's name next to it.

Okay.

Second, so I just want to make sure that maybe it's just me.

So we're assuming 125 hires and 125 separations and the 125 separations is a equals 2.7 million in savings.

That's where the 2.7 came from.

Is that a correct summation?

Yes.

Okay.

So, okay.

So, I know Council Member Herbal shared some additional information.

So, do we anticipate, and Council Member Herbal, thank you, because I know that you meet with the Chief regularly.

Will we be updated if those assumptions change?

Yes, the, the slide that Councilmember Herbold sponsored SPD 001 requires the department to send to the council quarterly a staffing report.

And the reality is that they send it to me monthly, and I confer with the public safety chair.

pretty much monthly on the staffing report.

And so in mostly real time, we keep up with the department staffing.

So yes, we will be monitoring that and we will see changes in the trend.

Craig, is it gonna be fair to say then that we've been pretty much close to some assumptions that we've made in staffing for 2021 and 2022?

Not really, no.

We've been, unfortunately, we have been.

No, I know.

Thank you.

I'm just trying to get, I'm trying to take notes, trying to like, okay, so go ahead.

I'll let you answer.

I apologize.

I was going to, unfortunately, no.

Okay.

No, neither the department nor council has been even close.

There has been, there have been significantly more separations than either side have predicted.

But that's an important question, Council Member Juarez.

I think that if the concern was that we were assuming more cost savings, then the numbers are actually bearing out, then that would be absolutely a problem from a budgetary perspective as well.

But what we are seeing, as Greg just noted, is higher than anticipated separation.

So if anything, there's additional salary savings.

a lot of the conversation we just had to have last month about the higher than anticipated salary savings.

So we are conservative in our estimate here of how much salary savings we are capturing for investments in the budget, assuming that those positions will not be retained.

So, thank you customer mosquito.

I, I'm really glad you walked us through the 10.8Million dollar cuts.

Within the 5 of now, I have a better understanding.

I know we're not we're not that we've got 1 more to go on the salary savings.

I'm not inclined to support.

I know there's more to share, but I'm just going to put that out there now in light of some assumptions that we're making, and so I just want to, you know, again, be transparent and candid with everybody.

So I will just leave it at that.

So thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you for the early heads up, Councilmember Juarez.

Appreciate your note of support for four of those five.

Thank you.

Councilmember Lewis and then Councilmember Peterson.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And I think this is going back to Greg just for a second.

And it's similar area that Council Member Juarez and Council Member Herbold went over on our assumptions on separations.

And I just want to make sure I have the formula right in how we get to the net zero 125 assumption.

So my understanding is we're repeating our 114 level that we set in the previous budget.

And then the balance is made up from assumptions from the mayor's vaccine or the city's vaccine mandate.

Is that correct?

Pretty much.

I mean, it's, it's 113 and then 12 is the precise math.

Yeah.

Is there, um, you know, I mean, I don't want to retread this cause I think council member Juarez basically just did this, but you know, I would like to have a better idea about.

how we are setting the formula to come up with the predicted separations.

It still doesn't sit completely well with me from the last budget.

When we set the anticipated separations at the anticipated higher number, it still feels to me like it was a little convenient to do that.

And I would just rather have the formula be based in in something other than trying to match the number of hires.

And I'm not convinced that this formula is doing that unless you can convince me otherwise, Greg.

And I'm not saying it should be lower necessarily.

I'm not saying it should be higher.

I just like the formula to be based in something that seems to be more defensible number than the number of hires, which is what it appears to me to be based on here.

And I know that's not completely fair, but I mean optically it looks like that.

So tell me why it isn't.

So what I think I would tell you is this, that the department has indicated, and I hope you'll allow me to speak for just a moment.

The department has indicated that there is no statistical way at this point that they can predict using the past what the future might look like.

The swings have been too great lately.

And so being able to look at the history and come up with any kind of, way to look forward and say what is reasonable from a statistical standpoint really is difficult at this point.

In fact, about six months ago, the department refused to do it any longer.

They refused to put forward projections.

They put forward projections for the budget because they had to.

They had to fund something, and so they put forward projections.

The council is putting forward projections because they have to fund something.

There are other ways that you could bookend the staffing plan if you were not comfortable with 125 and 125. Um, there are, um, there are, there is a salary savings proviso that restricts SPD from spending any of its salary savings on anything other than salaries for officers.

So the council could choose to cut less of the salary savings.

Instead of cutting the 2.7 million, they could cut, you all could cut a smaller amount of salary savings.

And you could keep some amount in the budget just in case the projections are off in that particular direction.

And the case is that there's a need to capture more salary savings, or you could, if there's a need to capture more salary savings, you've got the salary savings proviso there.

I think that that probably, You could reduce the amount and capture it through that proviso.

If you increased the amount, you would probably be facing the potential of having to, if the projections were wrong, come back later and provide more money.

So I think those are your two options.

And I'll ask Allie to jump in and see if I've said anything wrong here.

Thank you, Greg.

I think that you covered it.

And I would just note, the budget itself is based on a set of assumptions and projections on the revenue forecast and all of that.

all experience over the last several years, sometimes those assumptions with new information get updated and council then has to take up the issue.

And I, so I think that is sort of the case here last year.

Um, similarly, the, the, the council adopted a budget that modified the assumptions that the executive had made in their proposed budget, um, and, and made some modifications.

And it turned out that in addition to those salary savings, there was another 15 million this year, as Greg has noted, It's hard to really see trends right now, given what's been going on over the last few years in the world.

So I think that this is a similar exercise that the committee took up last year in sort of thinking through the assumptions that the proposed budget was based on and making some modifications based on the information in hand today.

Thank you, Ali.

So I was trying to think of, I'm sorry I got stuck there caught in thought for a moment.

I was trying to think about the two approaches and I guess what it boils down to is the council could choose to cut less than $2.7 million and rely on the salary savings proviso if indeed there are more people that leave or the exact 125 leave.

then the council will have the salary savings proviso and they could go back in and cut the amount later.

But if the council chose to cut more than 2.7 million, then that would be the case where they would have to go add money later.

So those are basically the two approaches I think that the council would have if they chose any other assumptions than what the chair is choosing now.

Okay, thank you, Greg.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Greg.

And thank you very much, Ali.

Again, as a reminder for folks, the challenge that we had was to identify any funding that was being put to the side in anticipation of some future use.

If it seemed like that money was not going to be spent in 2022, that meant that there was additional resources for us to be able to deploy to immediate assistance in this moment.

I absolutely thank central staff for the good work, the detailed work, the grounded work they've done to make the analysis on what additional separations we could anticipate this year.

Using 114 as our base from last year, which is still under the expected separation of 150 separations for 2021 is very sound.

In the moment that we were looking at the separations possibility from the vaccination mandate, There was about initially three dozen folks who had, I believe, had noted that they wanted some additional accommodation.

That number has gone up to 80 people who are seeking accommodation.

assuming a dozen of those are not going to be able to achieve their desired accommodation seems very conservative and reasonable.

So the last thing that I want us to be in a position of is having have reduced SPD's budget by more than the actual reductions, excuse me, by assuming a higher attrition rate than the actual attrition rate.

I don't want us to be in a position to have to then stall or delay in getting money back to SPD.

and having to vote later seemed like an unnecessary situation if we made a conservative estimate here.

This is a conservative estimate of attrition in 2022, and I appreciate the ongoing conversation that we will be having here soon about how we can support retention, but that is, I think, a very sound estimate the central staff has offered us.

I'm going to go Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Herbold.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

And thanks to you for putting together this balancing package and the hard work of central staff over the past few weeks here.

Really just want to acknowledge all the hard work that went into the budget review to get to this point.

And obviously, this is one of the more controversial things to be discussing.

So I realized it's worth the robust discussion here because of the importance of it.

And so I am concerned about some of these proposed cuts.

The first time I saw them was yesterday with most others.

I'm concerned about 911 response times and the need to staff large events and to provide what's the resources needed to retain officers and also as we look to finalizing the next permanent chief of police.

And I really appreciate the additional context and explanations today.

I do feel like there's still some uncertainty.

It is hard to predict what's going to happen.

I appreciate what these assumptions are based on.

At the same time, I'm hearing that while the hiring plan would be funded, the staffing plan would not be fully funded.

I do like the idea of instead of cutting and redeploying rather perhaps what was mentioned by central staff, the idea of a proviso that would set aside funding and then we can see what actually does happen rather than just making a hard cut now based on assumptions where things seem to be very fluid right now.

probably reach out to central staff and explore more of this idea of a proviso to help set aside some of these funds instead of cutting them right now.

Thank you.

And council member, if I could jump in and tell you that the chair's package does include a proviso on salary savings.

So, that's something you wouldn't even need to do.

You could just run an amendment to reduce the cut from 2.7Million.

And if there are salary savings, they would automatically be locked up by the proviso in the chair's package.

And that wouldn't be something you would need to, that would be something that council could access later and reappropriate or remove the proviso.

I would just, if I could just add in though, just so we're all on the same page, if there is a proposal to remove any of these cuts, this is all necessary to support a balanced package.

So there will need to be an alternative offsetting cut proposed or a proposal to remove some of the new spending in this package to offset the reduction because pulling any one of these So I think that cuts out and imposing a proviso puts the package out of balance.

Just your budget manager hoping we continue to stay in balance.

Thank you.

≫ Understood.

Chair Mosqueda, may I ask a follow-up question of central staff?

Thank you.

In terms of overtime needs, I don't know if there is a need to take into account what might need to be spent on overtime.

I want to be clear, there is not a cut in staff.

All of the expected hires for SPD as requested by the mayor's office are assumed.

We are taking into account a more accurate picture of what separations would be.

Thank you.

Thanks to chair is correct.

No cuts and staff.

The assumption is that these officers are going to leave and the cuts are simply taking the salaries that are not going to go to them.

There are cuts that are made to the overtime budget in the next item.

I guess I would ask whether or not the chair would want me to answer any other questions about this item and then move on to that before I hit overtime.

Let's pause and we'll take the last two hands and we do need to move on here to some of the other I'm going to turn it back over to councilmember Herbold and councilmember Lewis.

Early August, we passed the mid-year supplemental, and part of the legislation included adjustments to SPD funding.

Some of those adjustments included finding ways for SPD to spend money $15 million in money that they could not spend in salaries.

And we use these exact same, as I'm understanding, central staff and the chair explained, we use these exact same separation assumptions.

And we were still $15 million to the good of SPD conservative.

So I think this is a cautious approach.

If what I'm explaining my understanding to be is correct, and again, There was $15 million in SPD's budget in August for salary savings that they could not spend to implement what was basically the council's endorsed hiring plan for SPD.

They couldn't spend those dollars.

That is all correct, Council Member.

Thank you, Vice Chair and Chair of Public Safety.

Councilmember Lewis, did you have another comment?

I think I can take it offline with central staff, Chair Mosqueda.

Thank you.

I appreciate it, Councilmember Lewis.

Colleagues, thank you so much.

I do believe we have one more item to cover in this section here.

Is that correct, Greg?

Yes.

Director, shall I just take this one?

If you want to just walk through it, go for it.

All right, so this last cut of $4.5 million has several components to it.

And so I'm just going to go over the components.

It's the same cut that you heard about during the first round of CBAs as originally proposed by Councilmember Herbold.

The first component of this cut is a salary savings cut.

Just in the time that the mayor wrote her proposed budget, from the time that she wrote it to the time it was transmitted, more officers left than were accounted for in the staffing plan.

And so right away there was $1.1 million in salary savings available to the council.

The first thing that this cut did was to cut $850,000 of that salary savings.

It did leave some of the salary savings in SPD for a relational policing program, which is sort of a pre-training, pre-academy, program for police recruits to learn a little bit about community and and get a community lens before they go to the Academy.

So right away that there's a an $850,000 salary savings cut for for a difference in projections.

And then there are some efficiency cuts, the first of which is a $3.2 million overtime cut.

And in that particular case, it is the reduction of the SPD overtime budget from a proposed level of $29.6 million.

Let me get the exact numbers here.

One second.

Greg, I have that as a reduced overtime from $29.6 million to $26.4 million.

Thank you.

An 11% reduction.

Sorry, just had to change my notes up here.

And so that's an 11% reduction.

And the council has specified in the CBA that it is the intent of the council that that reduction be, to the extent possible, directed towards events and demonstrations and that the department begin to track events and demonstrations, specifically demonstrations, separately so that the council can make sure that the cut is being directed that way.

The next component is a travel and training cut.

The council has asked the department to find efficiencies in its travel and training expenditures such that they would be able to not spend $175,000.

This might include things like going to video conferences instead of traveling to conferences.

The overall travel and training budget is $1.1 million.

And so by cutting $175,000, it would leave 925,000.

And then the last piece of this cut is a $300,000 cut to the discretionary purchase budget.

And that is a $4.4 million budget.

And after the $300,000 cut, that would bring it down to a $4.1 million budget.

And again, the council is seeking that the department find deficiencies in its spending.

Thank you.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for all the work that you have done.

And I will turn it over to you.

I will note, Greg, I am interested in this and some of the other amendments, how we can help communicate to folks in the community that there are not cuts in some areas, whole cloth cuts.

There are some reductions.

and some items that are proposed to be held off on are new items.

So I think that that would be an important distinction so that people don't walk away thinking that the existing funding for SPD is being reduced by this amount, nor that there is any misunderstanding about existing staff being cut.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

Just a quick note on the overtime reduction of 11%, that's a reduction of 11% over what the mayor proposed, but I believe it's an increase over 2021, or is it the same as 2021?

It actually is an increase over the 2021 budget.

The 2021 budget was a $21.8 million budget.

And so this is providing the department with more overtime funds than they had this year.

They will have 26.4 million in 2022.

very, very helpful.

Thank you.

It's good to understand that this is actually an increase over 2021 with the understanding that things are going to continue to open up and there will be additional events.

But I just want to remind my colleagues as well as the viewing public is that we have a strong interest, a shared strong interest, in ensuring that, to the extent possible, events can be staffed with overtime not patrol officer overtime, but to the extent possible, parking enforcement officer overtime.

Because we really, really want police officers to be focused on using overtime to the extent they need to use overtime to fulfill their core law enforcement mission.

And there's currently a memorandum of understanding between SPD, between SPOG, and the parking enforcement officers, SPIOG, that allows there to be shared staffing of special events, and recognizes within that agreement itself that there may be fluctuation from year to year, event to event, month to month.

in who is getting more of those overtime hours, police officers or parking enforcement officers.

We want to see more of those hours to the extent possible, to the extent that it's safe going to the parking enforcement officers.

And I think we have a really good argument for the folks who are administering that overtime, that we have a law enforcement need to ensure that more hours are going to parking enforcement officers.

So to the extent that there are concerns about the memorandum of understanding between SPIOG and SPOG that allows both, I think there is ample reason to tip more of those hours going to parking enforcement officers so that the hours that police officers are doing on overtime are really focused on their core law enforcement mission.

Thanks.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for that explanation.

And again, to my question for central staff, and perhaps this is a graphic that we can have from our communications team to show where items are being proposed as reductions in the proposed budget does not equal a cut in the existing budget sometimes, right?

That's what we're talking about.

So that would be very helpful to see.

Councilmember Peterson, please go ahead.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Just following up on the overtime question I had earlier, thanks for getting to that item.

So I guess even if, so my concern is that if we're assuming additional separations, but then we're also adjusting the overtime, I'm concerned that the overtime budget would then need to go up if we're assuming additional separations.

So I support what Council Member Herbold was saying about having a more efficient deployment during events so that we have our parking enforcement officers in that mix.

At the same time, I'm just concerned about the overall imbalance if we're assuming additional separations of staff.

I would think the overtime budget would then need to increase so that we have sufficient 911 response times.

And as Greg mentioned, it is increased over the 2021 overtime budget.

The overtime budget in 2022 is increased over the 2021 budget.

And we're also making sure to preserve and invest in parking enforcement officers.

And central staff, did you have anything else to add to Councilmember Peterson's question or comment?

Only to say that if it is the case that the department cannot isolate, cannot isolate, well, To say that that if patrol augmentation is is needed in in in a way that can't be provided for within the existing overtime budget, because the staffing reductions are.

Are a problem, then they would need to come back to the council for more authority.

But that is not something that is maybe noble right now, given that we are in a place where.

Events are just starting back up.

And some are starting up quicker than others.

So I would say at this point in time, it's, again, a matter of assumptions.

Council Member Herbold, anything to add?

No, OK.

Allie, did you have anything to add?

OK, Esther, anything on this item?

No, happy to cover the last two items when you're ready.

I appreciate it.

And then I think we'll get into the what is included section of our agenda.

Appreciate the conversation, colleagues.

I do hope that you have been able to get some clarity on the information that has been out there.

Thank you, Greg, for walking us through this and to again reiterate that we will follow up with all of you so that this information is clear.

There are absolutely every single position that the mayor has planned to hire currently included in this budget.

There is still an increase in overtime.

There are still investments in information technology systems that the court monitor specifically has said are prudent.

There are maintaining our community service officers.

and another conversation to happen about where the best place to house those.

This is all in addition to the $27 million in community safety investments and stability investments that we will be talking about here momentarily.

$27 million into what helps create stable, healthy communities that hopefully reduce chances that individuals are interacting with officers in the first place.

And we will get into some very specific examples of alternative responses to police violence.

responses, but everything that we have talked about today should help clarify that there are not cuts to existing officers, that there are not cuts to overtime, and that we remain committed to making sure that we are transitioning to investments in community in a way that is balanced with investments into our traditional policing as well.

Lots of work to do on this and look forward to hearing more as we talk about those investments that we're making.

Please go ahead, Esther.

Great.

The final two resources listed on this chart are revenue.

The first is this balancing package recognizes $26.2 million of real estate excise tax.

and uptick in projected REIT revenue from that November forecast.

In the balancing package, REIT is used in several ways.

The first $8.4 million of it is used to pay debt service that was planned to be paid with commercial parking tax.

We project an $8.4 million decrease in commercial parking tax.

This strategy to use REIT instead of CPT demonstrates the city's use of its full faith in credit to pay our creditors on necessary debt service.

Another $6.8 million of REIT is used to free up general fund resources in two ways.

$2.3 million of it replaces commercial parking tax and transportation CIP projects.

That commercial parking tax is then used to replace general fund resources in the transportation operating budget, freeing up general fund for use elsewhere in the budget.

The other swap is that $4.5 million of this REIT supports capital expenditures budgeted from the cumulative reserve sub fund that offsets other CRSU revenues transferred to the general fund.

The balance of the REIT revenues are used for REIT-eligible capital projects in the budget.

Those are largely transportation and parks budgets, and where they are used, you will see them listed on the specific budget actions.

The final use of REIT is that this package allocates $3.1 million of REIT for debt service related to a new bond authorization, which we will touch on briefly in a moment.

Any questions about REIT?

Thank you for helping us be able to use these funds in a way that I think invests in our infrastructure and will help us build that more connected city of the future.

So we have more to talk about on how those REIT dollars are currently being allocated in the budget here momentarily.

And on this commercial parking tax, thank you, Council Member Lewis, for bringing this amendment forward.

Happy to have been able to work with you.

to allocate those dollars to councilmember priorities right now, and also some desired investments overall that the council has seen over the last few years.

I think this is a significant opportunity for us to make these investments now.

Okay, let's get on to the next one.

Great, so yes, you mentioned the commercial parking tax.

This is a 2% increase in the commercial parking tax projected to generate $2.9 million next year.

and twice that annually beginning in 2023. And the only item that is not on this table but is a significant resource that we will discuss in the transportation section is this package also authorized the city to issue up to $100 million of bonds for bridge repair and maintenance in 2022. And it appropriates the first year of debt service, requesting the executive to prepare a report for issuance by March.

So we'll pick that conversation up when we get to the transportation section.

With that, I think we are at the end of resources and I can turn it over to my colleague Allie Panucci to begin discussion on investments.

Are there any other questions or comments on the resources section of the presentation?

Okay.

We're going to turn it over to Allie.

Usually our morning meetings go until 1pm.

I don't think we had anticipated meeting the full time, but we usually do go to that time.

So we'll have a chance to go through all of the proposed budget actions in front of us.

Allie's going to give us an overview of each of the categories, which, as you saw in the earlier presentations, we are We have a general sense of the themes that we have prioritized for the chair's budget package here today.

So I will now walk through a summary of what is in the balancing package.

We'll not spend as much time focusing on the pieces that are freeing up resources.

And we'll be discussing this in the four themes and priority areas that Chair Mesquita just described.

Administration, affordable housing and homeless services, connected community and thriving economy, and healthy and safe communities.

So I'll walk through each of the subcategories and what you have in front of you is a summary table that shows within each category where there are resources identified, what the total increased spending or reprogrammed spending is in the ads column, and then the total that nets out the combination of those two numbers.

So I will start with the administration category and will not spend a lot of time in this area as it is primarily comprised of council budget actions that pass or adopt council bills and resolutions or clerk files that are necessary to adopt the budget.

But we will focus more on the council member amendments today.

So if we could move to the next slide.

And I'll just note here that I, let's see here.

I transposed a couple of numbers.

So the administration category, there's a total of $14.8 million in spending, and there's $44.8 million in resources.

I inadvertently typed in the total number there in resources.

So I just want to highlight that first, just a correction for the record.

Can you say that one more time, Allie?

Yeah, so you can see in the summary table at the top that the numbers are correct.

There's $14.8 million of spending in this category.

And there's $44.8 million of resources.

The total, the net, is a $29.9 million reduction in this category.

And that's primarily, oh, thank you, Patty.

that is primarily the amount of resources made available in the actions within this category are primarily from the omnibus amendment, FG001B001 sponsored by Chair Mosqueda.

There are a number of actions in that amendment.

I suggest people spend some time reading the attachment.

I will also tease out some of the details that relate to some of the other categories in the proposal, like affordable housing and economic revitalization, as we are walking through.

But that is the main amendment that frees up the bulk of the resources that were used to support the balancing package.

I will also just highlight a few other items that are included in this category and then open it and then turn it back to the chair.

This includes a amendment sponsored by Council Member Herbold requesting a report from the City Budget Office on citywide hiring incentive programs, although I believe that maybe was mislabeled.

a proposal by Council Member Peterson that adds $300,000 to our IT department for multi-factor authentication.

And there is also a funding sponsored by Council Member Morales to add money to implement a Juneteenth holiday in the city.

So that was just a few of the highlights.

I'll turn it back to the Chair.

I'm happy to answer questions.

Thank you very much.

I do see Councilmember Herbold's hand up.

And before we do that, I just want to make a quick clarification as well about sponsorship.

Allie, I think it might be helpful if you outline for folks when the budget chair's name is associated with items.

It's usually if there's been a major change to a proposed amendment.

I think the one that you're referencing, that Councilmember Herbold's name is there, we'll explain a little bit about the hybrid approach that I was suggesting here.

And I think it was supposed to have my name.

Generally, can you give folks a sense of when the budget chair's name is associated with an amendment?

If we, as we know, we had seven amendments as well that we submitted, but as you'll see, there's a number of items that do have my name next to it.

Yes, Chair Mosqueda, happy to.

So where there is your name specifically, it is typically amendments you propose for discussion in Committee, the 26th, 27th, or 28th, or in some cases, I believe this one was one of them, where your name should have been associated, where there was a proposal by a council member that was modified in the package and modified as such that it really wasn't as clearly the original sponsor's goal, so your name would be associated with it.

And then also note where you see BC, that is listed as budget committee on the council budget actions.

Those amendments are amendments that adopt or pass budget legislation.

and or are amendments that are freeing up resources to support the package.

That it has been historically how the council's budget process has worked as typically there are not a lot of council member proposals that propose cuts, but in order to accommodate all the asks for new spending, the chair has to incorporate amendments in order to free up resources in order to support the entire package.

So the majority of those are labeled as budget committee.

Thank you for that clarification.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you, and this may be what you're getting at, Madam Chair.

I believe that the CBA, or the C, yeah, the CBA that I sponsored, which is 13A-001, did not include a cut.

for the...

Well, it moved the money into finance general was the action, and that is no longer the action being contemplated, correct?

My interest was wanting to preserve the funds for a potential future bonus program that would help recruitment in departments that would be informed by an analysis that we would get from the executive.

Proposal still requests the analysis, but just does no longer includes parking the funds for a later use.

So it's different than the proposal that I made.

That is correct, Council Member Herbold.

The cut is in a separate CBA and not associated with you.

This is just the request for the report.

And I will just note, just to be really honest about it, we were moving very quickly.

And so there are some errors.

We will get those corrected and get the correct numbers and names posted on the agenda.

I'm hoping there's not too many more, but I apologize.

um in public for errors we are you know moving quickly and sometimes moving quickly it's hard to get things accurate.

So I appreciate your the opportunity to make those corrections.

All good thank you.

All good is right.

Thank you, Vice Chair.

And we will have my name associated with that request for the report.

I did want to credit you for reminding us that there was a two-part element to your original proposal, and it did include that report.

We didn't want that report to get lost.

So as you noted, and Ali noted as well, again, recognizing this is a bad news budget when we got the revenue forecast last week, looking for opportunities to use funding that would have otherwise sat to the side for a while.

I am suggesting that we utilize those resources and have utilized them in this proposed budget, given the pending information that I'd like to receive from this report and the policy conversation that I think is needed with this council.

I have suggested utilizing it given the urgent needs out there.

Thank you for helping to clarify that and for allowing for me to have a chance to speak to the differences there, too.

Thank you, Ali, for also noting that you'll be working to try to amend this document.

No problem.

Just happy to have those issues identified by council members so that the document that is posted to the agenda the final product and we can try and address any of those immediate issues before it gets posted.

So do note that that name will change on that one.

And if you see any other items, council colleagues, please do feel free in the spirit of full transparency and making sure that we are accurate in what we're posting to go ahead and flag it.

Again, central staff, no problem.

We know how busy you all have been working and really appreciate this spreadsheet here.

So I do want to give Allie the chance to walk through any other items that you'd like to flag for colleagues in this section, any other pieces that you'd like to lift up.

And then I'll also ask council colleagues if there's any pieces that you would like to lift up.

We're not going to list each CBO and an explanation in this overview today.

So this is your chance, council colleagues, to help call attention to ones that you're really excited about.

We do have limited time, but wanted to make sure to offer that so that you can flag for members of the public I think that is a key item that you're really excited about.

And Ali, of course, as we go through this, feel free to lift up as many of those councilmember actions that you think are appropriate to really flag for the purposes of our discussion as well.

budget legislation and that sort of thing, but happy to discuss other items if council members wanted to look those up.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, we will keep moving.

I know you've heard me talk a lot about the big one, the omnibus amendment that we are making here, and the importance of not just making sure that the color of money is correct, but when we use Jump Start revenue as intended in our spend plan, that helps to build those investments into the base budget for future years.

If we had not made these changes, for example, in affordable housing, we would have seen half of the investments that Jump Start was originally intending to make disappear at the end of the year with the use of one-time funds.

It is really important that we not only stay true to that spend plan, but that we're creating greater stability for the upcoming years and that we stay true to our spend plan for community partners.

That's what we have committed to in this proposed budget, including maintaining our commitment to investing in BIPOC communities, investing in the community safety grants and gun violence reduction strategies, in the participatory budgeting, and the equitable community initiative task force.

Truing those investments up to the same investment amount that we had committed to next year, making sure there are no cuts in those proposed amounts that we had committed to, for example, We are very excited about the opportunity to bring this forward.

All right, let's move on.

Great.

We will move on to the next category.

We move on to the affordable housing page, Patty.

So this, the next two summary tables are related to the affordable housing and homeless services category.

In total, the package includes just over $18 million of spending in these categories.

This is in addition to the $97.9 million of jumpstart funds that in the omnibus amendment are fully attributed to the jumpstart fund.

And that ensures that in an ongoing way, that funding will more than double the base amount of funding annually.

in future year's budgets.

So where that is happening, I've sort of noted that at the top of the screen.

So in the affordable housing category, the balancing package includes $2.6 million of spending on top of that 97.7 million.

Before I highlight a few of the amendments, I'm going to turn to my colleague, Tracy.

I want her to highlight a A piece of the omnibus amendment that's not listed here, but we've had some questions about, the omnibus amendment does swap the fund source for a proposal to ensure that there are services to support units that are supported by emergency housing vouchers, as well as city-funded permanent supportive housing units.

Tracy, do you want to add more there?

You've done a great job of summarizing, but just to be really clear, yes.

So we are proposing to use 2021 underspend emergency service services grant as well as Clifford funds to the tune of $6.9 million that will be used to fund those services, both for the vouchers as well as for Office of Housing, Permanent Support of Housing and Permanently Affordable Housing with services units that need services dollars.

In the admin section, actually, there is the two CBAs that get us that cut and then appropriate those funds directly to the Office of Housing for those purposes.

That funding will be provided for one year, and our expectation is that we're going to try to secure some federal, state, and county funds to help fill the gap for those services going forward, as well as, obviously, city funds in 2023 and beyond.

It's also expected that OH would work in collaboration with the King County Regional Homeless Authority and the Seattle Housing Authority on the distribution of the services for the vouchers in particular, because they are fundamentally involved in that effort.

So that all goes along with the cuts and the ads that happen in those two other CBAs underneath the admin section.

And again, it will amount to about $6.9 million in 2022 to cover the services for those two components.

Thank you, Tracy.

And through those actions, what that does overall is it also restores about $6 million in the jumpstart fund into the affordable multifamily housing category.

So through that, it's about a $6 million overall increase in investments in affordable housing on top of these other actions included in the package.

So I'll just highlight a few, not in any order of importance.

All of the amendments I know are priorities for the council, but just to highlight a few.

There is- You just zoom in one more time just to see.

I like it.

Thank you very much.

Excellent.

Thank you, Patty.

Thank you very much, Patty.

So OH7B1 sponsored by Councilmember Juarez would add $250,000 for pre-development costs for an affordable housing project at North Seattle College.

SDCI7B1 would add funding to the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspection for consultant support for a rental market study and adding staffing support for policy development and implementation of work around tenant protections and landlord.

And another amendment sponsored by Council Member Swan for the Seattle Department of Construction and Inspections, SDCI-10-A1.

The package includes $1.5 million to add staffing and other support to implement the economic displacement relocation assistance ordinance that the council passed earlier this year.

There are also a number of slides that are looking for partnerships with food banks and the community-based organizations who have received rental assistance grants sponsored by Council Member Strauss and an amendment sponsored by Chair Mosqueda but I believe she referred to either earlier or perhaps that was yesterday in ensuring that there is clear policy direction from the council for the office of housing to recognize 2022 appropriations to support projects that applied for funding through the 2021 notice of funding availability if they are ready to be funded.

So I'll pause there if there are other items council members would like to discuss or ask questions about.

Council members, any questions?

Okay, this is an area I'm very excited about, obviously.

I do wanna note these are the changes that we have made to the budget.

The overall investments in affordable housing, colleagues, is a record $192 million in affordable housing and supportive services.

I am incredibly proud of this.

It would not be possible without your support for that spend plan on Jumpstart and all of the work that you're doing to complement the housing investments.

I want to take a brief second to thank Emily Alvarado, who has been at the helm of the Office of Housing over the last few years, and we wish her the best of luck as she transitions to her new job.

Excited to work with the next housing director and the interim director, Robyn Koski, and I look forward to working with all of you on this council and members of the community so we can have more community-driven affordable housing projects that really create ownership and license and self-determination on affordable housing efforts.

Council Member Juarez, would you like to make any comments on affordable housing here?

Well, I turned my camera on by accident, but since you sound like Oprah, I'm happy that you're excited and we all get cars.

Thank you.

only wish I could say, and you get a house, and you get a house, and you get a house.

That is what we are working towards here.

Thank you.

Thank you for popping in screen.

Okay, if there's not any additional comments here, I do want to also thank Trace Ratzcliffe, who has been leading up this effort on housing.

We had a chance to hear from her a moment ago.

And also Jeff Sims, who has overlapping areas of interest as it relates to keeping folks securely housed so that they don't fall into homelessness.

I appreciate the work you've done, specifically the both of you on that $6.9 million component that was just explained by Tracy.

If there's no questions, pausing for questions or any other items that council members would like to identify or lift up for members of the viewing public or for your colleagues.

Okay, please go ahead.

Excuse me, Ali.

Since council members are being a little shy here, I'm going to go ahead and thank a few folks.

I want to thank all of the folks who have been working on the housing stability efforts.

to work to expand access to affordable housing.

You've done a tremendous amount when we get to this next section of making sure that more people have affordable housing options as an exit from shelters and from our temporary housing solutions and creating housing stability is truly the answer to getting more people out of streets, out of parks, out of tents and into somewhere safe to live with the support of services.

That's what this investment offers.

This is the solution to homelessness by making sure that people have housing and the health services that accompany it, which we will round out our discussion with today.

This budget is investing along that spectrum to make sure that everybody gets a chance to have access to fair housing.

We have not been able to accomplish that fully in this budget alone, and we know it's going to rely on regional partners to step up Again, a reminder, the McKinsey report says that we need at least $450,000 a year, excuse me, $450 million to $1 billion a year in our region to invest in affordable housing.

I'm proud that we are near $200 million in Seattle alone in this year's budget.

So thank you, and I'll have more to say when we get to the homeless services component and a lot of more.

Thank you.

Great.

Well, with that, we can move on to the affordable, excuse me, the homeless services table.

So in this subcategory, there is $15.4 million of proposals and a number of statements of legislative intent requesting additional information.

In this category includes amendment HOM 4B1, Ashley Stolzmann, CoB, she is on mute.

to expand high acuity shelter and behavioral health services in partnership with the county.

And I should also just know as I'm highlighting a few of these, we do have Jeff Sims on the line if there are specific questions about these proposals, as well as the rest of the central staff team to support discussions in other categories.

The, there is a proposal sponsored by Council Member Mosqueda that is adding one time increase to service provider contracts.

Also a, that's HSD 1B1.

And then a proposal by Council Member Sawant, SPU 3B1 that adds a million dollars to SPU for recreational vehicle wastewater and cleanup services.

So throughout the proposals, you see a number of amendments that are providing additional resources for the service providers, addressing people living in vehicles and RVs, support for the new regional homeless authority, including HOM 9A1 sponsored by Council Member Lewis.

that provides additional administrative support for the Regional Homelessness Authority to ensure that they are, in their first year of operating, set up for success.

And I will pause there.

I'm not seeing council members jump in to champion their investments here, so I will do that for them.

Colleagues, thank you for some of the overlapping priorities that you've submitted here.

We see that we are accelerating our investments in permanent affordable housing, as we are also investing in creating greater stability for those who are living unsheltered, living in their vehicles, and wanting stability in the existing non-congregate shelters that they have.

We are investing in construction, acquisition of building and land, supportive services, and making sure that we have the temporary housing needed for those who are currently living unsheltered to have more opportunities to get inside.

We have expanded outreach, shelter staffing, services to bolster our ability to connect people with services.

If you look at the amendments from Council Members Strauss, Suarez, and Lewis, if you look at the amendments from Lewis and Sawant, we have enhanced and expanded our shelter spaces in tiny house villages.

Thank you to Councilmember Lewis for the work that you've included here with the Regional Homeless Authority along with Council President Gonzalez to make sure that there's investments in stability for the entity to create.

The administrative structure is necessary to ensure its success.

And I want to thank King County.

I think it's important for us to recognize the work that they are doing to create greater stability, especially for high needs, high really entails deep partnership with King County and the Regional Homelessness Authority.

So I look forward to successful efforts to make sure that we're addressing the high needs population that Regional Homelessness Authority has identified and that we're building a strong proposal with our partners at King County that will then be handed over to RHA.

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

Thank you very much chair Mosqueda.

I just want to briefly touch on the really big impact that a lot of these investments are going to make on the ground with the ongoing crisis of chronic homelessness that we witness every day.

We know that there are huge gaps in service and resource for people who are falling through the cracks, who are not being served by a current shelter system.

This new partnership with King County to build a new facility to address and expand high acuity shelter and behavioral health services is a big step toward closing that gap.

I do want to say something that might be the elephant in the room.

Historically, as a city, we have not been expected to invest significantly in behavioral health services.

That is a function under how our government in Washington is set up that should be provided by the state and should be provided by the counties.

We cannot, however, stand idly by as the crisis of behavioral mental health that is playing out on the streets of Seattle continues to be unaddressed by other levels of government.

I think this is an equitable partnership between the county and the city to make sure we can go forward together and address that mutual high priority of closing that gap, of providing that on-demand, high-acuity behavioral mental health support.

And I look forward to seeing where that partnership can go over the course of 22 to meet the scale of the demand that we see in our community.

I do want to take a moment to acknowledge.

and appreciate Councilmember Mosqueda spending a considerable amount of time both with my office and with the regional authority and county leadership to try to accommodate as much of the regional authority's requests as we possibly could within the constraints that we have been experiencing.

I acknowledge that you know, unfortunately, we were not able to go as far as I wanted to go in centering some of these investments.

And I know as far as Chair Mosqueda wanted to go, but given the limitations, I had to make difficult decisions to triage and prioritize the most critical added investments in the sector.

I would hope that as we go forward in 2022, that we prioritize in supplemental budgets, whereas revenue and resources recover ways to protect, preserve, and expand programs like Just Care, which I just want to acknowledge falls between the cracks of this budget process.

It is probably my greatest disappointment with the budget overall, and I know that colleagues and Chair Mosqueda share my disappointment that the situation has necessitated delaying plans on the future of Just Care beyond 2022, and that this budget does not plan for that at the moment.

I also do just to offer hope to those in the community, particularly the stakeholders downtown and in Pioneer Square who have been working with Just Care to address longstanding chronic issues, that Just Care is fully funded under the current arrangement until June of 2022. So there could still be time in supplemental budgets and planning between county and the city to address that transition, make sure that we maintain that capacity that we've put in through that program.

I do just want to signal my ongoing commitment to build on these investments, but really acknowledge the engagement and work of Councilmember Muscata in accommodating the real core of what we need to do to start meeting the demand we see in the street.

And this, particularly this high-acuity sheltering asset is going to be a very big I think that is a very important part of what we are doing.

And I think that will help in addressing the issues that I know all of us hold in high priority.

Thank you.

Just a couple of points to make, echoing Councilmember Lewis's appreciation for you, Chair Mosqueda, for making this a high-priority area.

I will be sending to the IRC a resolution that can accompany our budget action And it really is focused on recognizing, as Councilmember Lewis said, that King County has created and King County operates the integrated care network, which encompasses all behavioral health providers in the county who provide Medicaid funded behavioral health services.

The fact that we are acting more in this area with this budget cycle than we normally would, because of the responsibility of King County and Washington State for areas associated with behavioral health.

We are investing more than perhaps normally we would, but that is not intended to at all suggest that the city of Seattle has authority in these areas.

It's simply a recognition of the great need, and the resolution is really focused on calling on the city of Seattle I just want to put up a point as it relates to Absolutely correct, as it relates to the availability of funding through June.

But I just want to make sure that everybody understands, assuming I'm understanding correctly, because I think they called it a tail.

There's a period of time when if they're assuming ceasing operations in June, there's a period of time where they have to stop accepting new people.

And so that by June, they're not sending people out on the street.

They anticipate that they will have found alternatives for those people by the time they have to cease operations.

And so as I understand it, that means that they cannot take any more people after January of 2022. if they are going to create that scenario that is a best case scenario with no additional funding, that in June, they're not sending people back out on the streets, but that they have used that six-month period of time to find alternatives for the folks who are in the Just Care facility.

So I think it's important for setting public expectations about the efficacy of Just Care to help us address unsheltered homelessness, to just recognize that they are not going to be able to accept new clients into their facilities after January of 2022 unless we are able to find some additional funding.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Councilmember Herbold, Councilmember Lewis, all of the comments that you just made about just care and the work that they do to provide services to especially high needs community members who are helping to shelter those individuals in appropriate non-concrete shelter, for example, in hotels.

All of that is exactly what we need to be doing right now.

I, too, am concerned about what happens if they don't receive additional funding after June.

So I look forward to working with all of you as we hear more about what the true underspend is in 2021. We will know that early in 2022. And I look forward to working with you as we did earlier this year to make sure that those high needs patients, excuse me, high needs individuals, apologies.

As you know, I've worked in healthcare in the past.

that those high-needs individuals don't face a situation where they are given a tent and shown the door.

We need to be maintaining beds in this moment, and I look forward to working with you all to do that.

I also am very excited about this partnership that was mentioned with King County and in line with what the Regional Homelessness Authority originally proposed to make sure that folks who are facing high acuity needs, the highest acuity needs, have a safe place to go.

So much more work to do to stand up those facilities, plural.

And I want to also note the amendment that Council Member Sawant had suggested to create new and to help operate new safe parking lots.

We have included that in this proposal as well, and we'll be looking forward to working with King County and the regional homelessness authority to make sure that those who are living in vehicles have a safe have safe places to go and that is being done in conjunction with our county and regional partners as well.

So thanks to you all for highlighting some of those pieces.

Any additional comments?

Seeing none let's move to the next section.

Great thank you.

Okay so we are now moving on to The livable, excuse me, connected community and thriving economy category, which overall the package includes $25.3 million of investments in this area.

That's in addition to $22.5 million of jumpstart funds for economic revitalization and funds for the equitable development initiative, and Green New Deal that I'll highlight in other subsections.

So, Patty, if we could move to the next page for the economic revitalization and equitable growth subcategory.

This includes $1.2 million of investments on top of the $22.5 million of Jump Start funds.

Let's see.

The screen may be frozen, Allie.

Do we want to take a quick second?

Yeah.

Patty, are you having technical difficulties?

Let's see here.

Yes, my apologies.

My computer was frozen for a second.

Thank you.

No problem, Patty.

Thanks for all the work you're doing to make this possible.

If it's unfrozen, we're just looking for the next screen here.

Next item.

There we go.

Perfect.

Thanks, Patty.

Thank you, Patty.

So at the top, you can see the overall amount of spending in the package provided in this main category, connected community and thriving economy.

That's the $25.3 million number I mentioned.

And then in the subcategory of economic revitalization and equitable growth is $1.2 million plus $22.5 million of jumpstart Funds, there are some specific items within this category that are funded directly from the Jump Start Fund.

FG1B1 that was highlighted in the administration category, because that's primarily freeing up resources, also includes $650,000 to create a strategic plan for implementation of the Jump Start economic revitalization.

spending in future years as well as funding to create and within that to develop a cohesive strategy for workforce development investments that the city makes.

So I'll just highlight a few of the items in this category.

One is DON 3B1 sponsored by Council President Gonzalez.

This would add $200,000 to the Department of Neighborhoods to do the policy work to implement or excuse me, to develop a guaranteed basic income program, and it imposes a proviso on those funds.

A proposal from Council Member Juarez, OED 5B1 that adds $50,000 of payroll expense tax to the Office of Economic Development to support new and emerging businesses in Lake City.

A proposal from Council Member Peterson, there are two proposals, ITD1B1 and ITD2A1, that includes $250,000 for a digital, for the digital navigators program in the Seattle IT department, as well as $300,000 for the technology matching fund.

There is also a number of statements of legislative intent requesting some policy work from the Office of Economic Development including OED 7A2 sponsored by Council Member Juarez that requests that OED provides recommendations to support establishment of an Indigenous pharmacy or market, as well as imposing a proviso sponsored by Council Member Morales in OED 10A1 that would provide some funding for the creative industry position in OED.

And I will pause there.

Thank you very much.

Are there any additional comments on this section?

Council Member Morales, did you have a comment?

Yeah, thank you.

I just wanted to remind folks about two things.

The first item that's listed here for D.O.N., this is a slide that requests D.O.N. to work with some of our other city departments to prepare a report on community wealth building strategies specifically targeted at reducing the racial wealth gap, excuse me, and to provide a report to the Community Economic Development Committee by next summer.

And then related to OED 10A1, colleagues, you may recall that in our previous discussion, I had an amendment that included a slide that would support strategic planning around our workforce development strategies.

That element of what we had talked about before, the chair included in her package.

So I want to thank the chair for including that in there.

This new CBA imposes a proviso, as Allie mentioned, on one of the creative industries positions the previous CBA had provisored.

But the intent here really is to ensure that OED maintains a dedicated staff position that can lead on policy development and implementation related to creative industries.

And there's, as we all know, a lot of Turnover frankly happening right now.

So we just want to make sure that this position and the funding associated with it is maintained to support the work that the department needs to do around creative industries.

Any additional comments or questions.

Okay, I want to thank folks for all of the work that you've done to invest in economic resilience, food security, making sure that we're investing in creative, artistic ways that are culturally appropriate for caring for our community and their ability to be entrepreneurs and to have a more just, Thank you to Council Member Juarez for the work that she's included for the refugee and immigrant women amendment that we've included to support economic opportunities for refugees and immigrant women.

I think that goes very nicely with Councilmember, excuse me, Council President Gonzalez's commitment to making sure we are looking across the board at how we create more walkable, livable cities and plan for that in the future.

We also have investments from Councilmember Peterson and Councilmember Gonzalez around child care assistance.

We have support here for after school and job readiness programs that Councilmember Morales just noted.

Playground improvements, thank you Councilmember Strauss.

Child care facilities, again, thank you Councilmember, Council President Gonzalez.

investments to make sure that we have greater opportunities for those who've been hardest hit by COVID is really, I think, embedded in what you see for equitable communities here, economic revitalization and equitable growth, noting the importance of investing in Green New Deal priorities.

So thank you all.

Okay.

Let's move on to the next subcategory then, which is livable, clean and connected communities.

This includes $8.9 million of investments in things like hygiene services, clean city, improvements to parks, as well as some statements of legislative intent.

One example is FG5B1 sponsored by council member Morales that adds $1.4 million that would be used to create two permanent public toilets as well as some funding for temporary portable toilets while the work is done to develop a plan and how to best implement and maintain the more permanent public toilets.

There is also a amendment sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, HSD14A2, that would add a million dollars for a senior center and clinic.

The proposed budget included a million dollars for this project that is the APACE project, but it was community development block grant funding.

that the project has indicated is difficult for them to use at this stage in the process.

So this amendment adds general fund and that CDBG money is used elsewhere in the balancing package that we'll get to later in the discussion.

It also includes a proposal by Council Member Juarez, SPR 1B1, that adds $3.1 million of Clipper funds to extend the Clean City Initiative through the end of 2022. The proposed budget funded those services for about nine months of the year.

An amendment sponsored by Council Member Morales, SPR 3C1, that adds $50,000 for Pickleball Courts that I'm sure you all have received emails about.

And then a couple of amendments sponsored by council member Strauss, SPR 5B1 and SPR 10B1.

The first one adds a million dollars to parks for development of a new playground at Fowler Commons Park and a million dollars to parks for park remediation work.

So I think I will pause there and see if there are questions or other items council members would like to discuss.

Okay, colleagues, do you want to highlight any investments that you've made here in clean, livable and connected communities?

Please go ahead, Council Member Morales.

Well, I just want to thank the chair again for including the public restrooms in this package.

The original request had been $2 million for four facilities, but I think it is important that we acknowledge we need some sanitation and hygiene services available for folks right now.

And we did hear from advocates requesting that we make a change here.

I still want to note that we did receive a report from the University of Washington who had been contracted with the city to do a study on our public restroom infrastructure.

There's a very detailed plan in place, well, proposed for how we can actually get to building up that infrastructure over time.

Just going to note my interest in pursuing that and my hope that over time we can really start to expand that infrastructure.

Yeah, absolutely.

There was a number of amendments that council members submitted that were really about health and hygiene.

We tried to make sure to accommodate those requests here because that is one of the most pressing issues in our community, no matter if you're housed or unhoused, if you live here in Seattle or if you're a tourist.

And if you are, you know, in the need of a restroom, you should be able to help.

And we want those to be clean and accessible.

The WHO has weighed in about how many we should have, and Seattle is woefully underperforming.

We have tried to address this in the past.

Let's hope that these dollars that we're allocating actually get deployed this year.

Thank you so much to all of the council members for the work that you've done on this.

I'm very excited to see the continuation for the Clean Cities Initiative.

Thank you, Council Member Juarez, for bringing that forward, something I supported as well, to make sure that we had a full year of Clean City Initiative funded in this proposal.

There's no additional comments.

I will just say thanks to folks, for example, from Garfield Superblock.

I know Council Member Sawant has been talking about that quite a bit, but wanted to note the importance of creating stability and capacity in these sections, investing in park, not just playgrounds, but making sure that we're remediating parks, and we've included We want to make sure that we have a plan that includes specific language that the council talked about prior to make sure that these investments in parks and cleanups are not equal to a mandate to move people.

We want people to be housed first as councilmembers have talked about when they introduced their amendments.

Thanks so much, colleagues.

I'm not seeing any additional comments, so let's continue.

$1.3 million of spending, and this is in addition to $14.3 million in the proposed budget and retained and protected in the omnibus amendment, $14.3 million for the equitable development initiative in addition to the funding they receive annually from the short-term rental tax.

This category includes six council budget amendments, one of which is a budget legislation so I won't describe this one, but given the short number that the.

lower number of amendments.

I'll just briefly describe the five actions.

There are two that spend money and three statements of legislative intent.

The first one is D.O.N. 1B1 that adds $800,000 to D.O.N. to support planning for the Chinatown International District.

The next four items are sponsored by Councilmember Strauss.

OPCD 1B1 would add $545,000 and a position to the Office of Planning and Community Development for the comprehensive plan update and to ensure that community engagement is supported through the development of the EIS.

OPCD 4B1 would request a report from OPCD to prepare a work program and budget for the regional growth centers planning.

This was originally an ask for some funding, but this would get additional information before the council understands the full scope of that work and considers additional funding in the future.

SDCI 2B1 would add position authority to non-SDC review locations to improve permit and inspection times at SDCI and request a report asking the executive to come back with a proposal that would allow that position to be supported through the fees that support permitting work.

And then SDCI 4A1, which requests a report on the design review program outcomes, process improvements, and equity.

I think that's all I have to say.

Council Member Morales, I see you on the screen as well nodding.

Thank you for your interest in this.

This is why we began the conversation last year, excuse me, earlier this year about the change to the single family misnomer and have moved forward with a name change to create a neighborhood residential.

We need to have a foundational understanding of what our current zoning that we can talk about improvements to that and modifications in 2022. That requires us to get ideas directly from community partners.

And that requires resources.

So we as a council are prioritizing investments in community conversations, building on the racial equity toolkit that we received earlier this year so that any changes that we are proposing in 2023 for final passage in 2024 on that comp plan are rooted in those community conversations.

Again, that cannot happen in an authentic way unless there is resources.

So that is what we have built back into this budget because that matters to our council.

Any additional comments people would like to highlight?

Let's move on.

The next category is sustainability and environment.

In this category, there are six budget amendments for a total of $2 million of spending.

This is on top of the $14.3 million of jumpstart funds for Seattle's Renew Deal.

And I would just note that in the issue identification overview paper that central staff prepared, my colleague Yolanda Hope provided a attachment that outlines all of the ways that that $14.3 million is allocated in the proposed budget.

In this category, there is a amendment sponsored by Council Member Peterson, MO 1A2 that requests a report from the mayor's office regarding creating a chief arborist position in the city.

OEM 1A1 sponsored by Council President Gonzalez, would add $100,000 to the Office of Emergency Management for Community Climate Resilience Plan.

In the previous discussions, this was directed to the Office of Sustainability and Environment, but in discussions with the department, OEM was a better fit for this work for some of the other and in combination with other work they're doing.

OPCD 6B1 sponsored by Council Member Morales adds $180,000 to OPCD that will support two Duwamish sustainability projects.

SPLA, excuse me, 2A1 sponsored by council member Peterson adds $1.7 million for libraries to provide air conditioning as a climate adaption measure in the Northeast and Southwest branch libraries.

And then another proposal by council, excuse me, council member Peterson, MO 1A2 is apparently listed twice.

So I won't read that one again.

And then OEM 1A1 sponsored by council president Gonzalez, which would add, Oh, both of these are listed twice.

I will not read those twice.

So there are four items in this category, not six.

and we're sure we didn't double in that, right?

That's not another 100 million, 100,000 for me right there.

Nope, it still just adds to $2 million total.

I just pasted things in twice.

No problem, no problem.

We appreciate the enthusiasm for those two items and the attention to them.

And council members, would you like to add any additional comments or questions on this section?

Okay, well, I appreciate all of the work that you've done to lift up priorities from the community for these investments in Green New Deal, in addition to the $4.3 million secured by Jump Start spend plan as recalibrated in our omnibus budget.

Specifically, I want to thank folks for the work that you've done with community organizations, such as those who are in Duwamish area here.

We've funded two of those three projects that they've requested.

I really appreciate the effort to make sure that there's immediate measures to mitigate the impact of climate change by making sure that there's cooling stations in Northeast and Southwest branches of the library.

That was a big lift for us to be able to get that in at the end.

So I'm very happy that we were able to accommodate their requests among many others.

Any additional questions or comments?

All right, folks are shy about touting their own wins here in this budget.

So I will try to continue to lift them up.

But Collings, if there's other pieces that you'd like to highlight, please do.

This is why the city council has the final chance to craft the budget.

Our annual budget is determined by city council.

And so your fingerprints and the community's input is being highlighted here.

Please feel free to lift up the pieces you'd like to know.

So moving on to the next category, which is transportation.

There are $11.7 million of investments, as well as a budget amendment that would authorize issuance of $100 million of bonds to support bridge maintenance and repair.

There are a number of items in this category, so I will just highlight a few.

S.3B1, sponsored by Council Member Strauss, would add $25,000 to SDOT for adaptive cycle programs.

S.102B1, sponsored by Council Member Lewis, adds $655,000 of REIT for the Market to Mohai project.

S.105B1, sponsored by Council Member Morales, adds $2 million of REIT to support SDOT's pedestrian master plan for new sidewalks.

in District 2 and imposes a proviso.

And then SDC, excuse me, SDOT 4B1 sponsored by Council Member Peterson is the amendment I referenced that would recommend to amend and pass Council Bill 120198 that would issue, That is the LTGO bond issuance ordinance.

This would, the amendment would allow an additional approximate $100 million of bonds in 2022. And it adds $3.1 million of REIT to cover the debt service for a half a year of those bonds and add $1.1 million to support design work of bridge rehabilitation projects and adds a proviso.

I will pause there.

Thank you.

Please go ahead, Council Members.

Anything you'd like to lift up?

Council Member Lewis, please go ahead.

I do want to briefly say before my remarks, I actually have a press obligation I have to go to and will have to leave the meeting, but I do just want to highlight a couple of things in here, and I want to ask a question.

So first, very appreciative of the addition of two really critical community projects in District 7, that there's been a lot of community organizing around, and I'm sure It will be greatly appreciated by the Belltown community to have a funded activation plan for the Battery Street portal site, as well as be appreciated by the South Lake Union community to have the market to MOHAI funding restored.

given the recovery of REIT and promises made in previous budgets, that is greatly appreciated.

I do want to ask, is it going to be here or somewhere subsequent where we discuss Vision Zero investments made through the commercial parking tax increase?

Councilmember Lewis, that is in this category.

It is towards the bottom.

Patty, if you could scroll down a little.

It's S.503B1. That is your amendment that increases the commercial parking tax.

Thank you so much.

Sorry.

Yeah, now that it's scrolled down, obviously I see it.

So I greatly appreciate that.

And I do just want to briefly recognize that I'm very, very pleased to see that investment as a non-car-owning bike, transit, and pedestrian person myself, where those are my primary means of transportation.

This is a really critical investment in public safety.

I think sometimes we define public safety very narrowly, but this investment really is going to be a council commitment that's going to save lives and really structurally change the built environment of the city to make all of us safer and how we get around on a daily basis.

So I really appreciate the incorporation of that dedicated expansion, which I believe is the only non-levy expansion of our Vision Zero funding in quite some time.

And appreciated the opportunity to work with you, Council Member Muscata, to incorporate that.

And really, really happy to see that make it into the final balancing package.

So thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Council Member Lewis.

Council Member Morales, then Council Member Hurdle.

Sorry, I might have accidentally risen my hand, but I will just say thank you to all of the colleagues who are acknowledging our need to invest in pedestrian infrastructure by putting in requests for your districts.

Hopefully, we will get to a place where across the city, all of our constituents are safer walking and biking and rolling.

Great, thank you.

And Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

Thank you.

I really appreciate the leadership of Councilmember Lewis in bringing this item forward, and thank you as well, Madam Chair, for including this increase in the CPT in the proposed budget.

It looks like, as promised, Councilmember Lewis may have left I did want to signal to him my interest in discussing with him what the potential beneficiaries of this increased commercial parking tax might be.

I know the recommendation, it does include some Vision Zero projects I am interested in an additional Vision Zero project, and that is specifically the sidewalk safety repair.

Just a little bit of background.

In 2019, Council passed Resolution 31908 requesting policy options for sidewalk maintenance.

Last year, SDOT completed a report including policy recommendations for sidewalk repair in Seattle.

And one of those recommendations is it was a citywide five-year sidewalk shim bevel plan to mitigate existing sidewalk uplifts and other deficiencies that can create accessibility barriers or trip fall risks.

sort of following up on SDOT's work, Council Member Lewis had requested that the City Auditor look into this area, and just a couple weeks ago on August 29th, the City Auditor released a report entitled Seattle's Sidewalk Maintenance and Repair Program, and one of the recommendations of the City Auditor was that the City should, in fact, implement the recommendation from the June 2020 policy recommendations for sidewalk repairs in Seattle report, including increased investment in the sidewalk shim bevel plan.

And so I'm interested to know whether or not there might be a willingness to to address some of these additional needs.

I will discuss that with the sponsor offline.

Councilmember Peterson, I cannot move off of this slide without us talking about bridges.

So I wanted to give you a chance to talk about the components listed in this draft proposed budget for our council's consideration.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda, and I wanted to thank the five council members that had signed on to this in public at the budget committee meeting previously.

But I really want to thank our budget chair for including this and for the flexibility and creativity to identify the sources and then to So that this city council is not kicking the can down the road anymore on bridges.

We are providing authorization to the next administration to issue up to $100 million in bonds to support bridge safety, ideally multimodal bridges, and want to really thank the chair for, and central staff for their work on this to make this happen.

I'll just be brief since I know we've talked about bridges a lot before.

Thank you.

And I see Calvin Chow on the line.

I want to thank Calvin from central staff and Dan Eater as well.

I want to also thank Sam Zimbabwe, director of SDOT, Council Member Peterson, you and your office for continuing to brainstorm with us as we came up with creative solutions here.

And I want to note for members of the public that this is a multifaceted CDA.

This has multiple components to it.

One is giving the authorization for the bond.

The second is securing the $3.1 million as a temporary hold with a proviso with a request for report back in March of next year to give us a better sense of which projects would potentially be eligible for some level of bonding.

And importantly, we're not waiting.

We've added $1.1 million to SDOT to begin the work of creating a project design list that is at 30% and beyond, so we can put people to work immediately if there are to be bonds dollars available.

We're also very excited about the infrastructure proposal that's coming from Congress here very soon, noting that there's still a lot of information that needs to be worked out in terms of how much comes directly to Seattle.

But the need is urgent, and with the ability to bring more of these projects up to 30% plus design, I'm excited about being able to deploy federal dollars and hopefully a transportation package from our state legislature this year, coupled with the ability that Councilmember Peterson has made possible with the bonding authority here.

I think that we will be able to bring more of our projects into a safe place so that bridges are not crumbling, so our roads are connected, and that we're considering the passage of vehicles as well as pedestrians and cyclists.

I am also very thankful to Estat for working with us to flag that there was the possibility of using up to $5 million in their current reserve for immediate investments that also help people to work on retrofits and maintenance, making sure that we're looking at seismic retrofits and what we can do for maintenance right now helps not only put people to work, but helps to connect our city in a more safe way.

So please do, colleagues, take a look at this comprehensive proposal that's been included here.

And again, Council Member Peterson, happy to have worked with you and central staff and SDOT as we've tried to figure out a way to move this concept forward and appreciate your recognition of it in the package.

Anything else on transportation?

Okay, I look forward to hearing from the MAS coalition.

because I believe many of the coalition's priorities are included in this proposed budget as they were last year in our initial proposed budget.

One more got added.

I think that that was related to 45th Avenue.

If I'm not remembering incorrectly, that was a late addition to their priorities.

And we have, again, included 45th Avenue in our proposed transportation investments here.

Any other items that folks would like to draw attention to?

Councilmember Peterson, I want to be deferential to you as chair of transportation, didn't want to cut us off if you had anything else.

Okay, and Councilmember Juarez, all right.

I'm giving Councilmember Peterson a hard time if he could at least try to look like he's not in a hostage video.

It's a big win, it's a big deal.

So thank you, Councilmember Peterson.

Yeah, it's a big deal.

Okay, let's keep going.

Okay, so we're now moving on to the healthy and safe communities category where overall the package includes $27 million of spending and and frees up about $11.7 million of resources.

The first subcategory is items related to the criminal legal system and alternatives to traditional public safety.

This includes $7.4 million of spending and frees up $10.8 million of resources that you all spent a fair amount of time discussing earlier in today's committee meeting.

So I won't focus on those items.

I'll just highlight a few.

One is CSCC 1B1 sponsored by Councilmember Herbold that adds $879,000 and 26 positions to the Community Safety and Communications Center to address the existing dispatch operational needs.

HSD 21B1 sponsored by council member Morales that adds $500,000 to the human services department for restorative justice programs and imposes a proviso.

HSD 51B1 sponsored by council member Herbold that adds $3.5 million to the human services department to maintain a preexisting diversion program and imposes a proviso.

And then the next two items, law 182, are both related to the law department.

The first item, sponsored by Council President Gonzalez, imposes a proviso on $1.8 million in the city attorney's office for pre-filing diversion programs and for the let everyone advance with dignity or the LEAD program.

And law 2A1 that adds $267,000 and four FTEs to the city attorney's office to fully staff and expand pre-filing diversion.

And this is partially offset by a cut of one strategic advisor position in the city attorney's office.

And then another amendment sponsored by council president Gonzalez that adds $661,000 to the office of immigrant and refugee affairs for the legal defense network.

I'll also just note this category includes a few statements of legislative intent.

Two sponsored by Council Member Herbold, SMC1A2 that requests that SMC report on all fees and fines imposed on a court-involved individual and analyze associated disproportionality.

And then SBD1A1 also sponsored by Council Member Herbold that requests Um, and a report.

Um, ongoing reporting on police staffing, overtime finances, and performance metrics.

Um, many of these reports are in perhaps all of them are reports that the city was receiving this or the city council received this year.

And this would continue that reporting.

Um, and a report sponsored by council member.

that is looking for reporting out on SPD's data collection and management practices for murdered and missing indigenous women and girls cases.

I'll pause there.

Thank you very much.

I am not seeing your hand.

There we go.

I was going to say Council Member Herbold, I'm going to call on you first.

Council Member Herbold, thanks for all of the work you've done in this category and on this topic.

I'm going to turn it over to you to go ahead and highlight any of these items that you've been working so hard on.

Absolutely.

Thank you.

I first just want to talk a little bit about the proposal for the Community Safety and Communication Center.

I think there's been a lot of focus on the conversation coming from the mayor's proposed Executive order around bonuses and not sufficient attention paid to the ways that the Council is working really hard in this budget process to try to address the unacceptable vacancies at CSCC right now.

So I'm just wanting to recognize that the intent is to increase FTEs at CSCC by an additional 26 positions.

This budget action relies on part from findings from a July 2016 Seattle Police Department staffing analysis, sometimes referred to as the Kimball Report.

It informed Council's addition of 15 FTEs to the then SPD-hosted 9-1-1 call center in the 2017 adopted budget.

In the background, council added six FTEs to the nine proposed in the 2017 proposed budget.

So this is council adding more FTEs to the 911 call center than was proposed in the mayor's proposed budget.

But we didn't go as far as the Kimball report recommended.

It recommended that the call center should have 169 FTEs based on its workload analysis.

The proposed budget in 2022 for the CSCC, if unchanged, would only fund 140 positions.

Of which 20 are vacant, and an additional 17 currently have part-time absences due to such situations as military and medical leave.

But we are looking at adding an additional 26 positions on top of 140, bringing it to 166 positions.

So still not quite getting to what the Kimball report recommended, but we're certainly getting closer.

with this recommendation and really appreciate all the hard work that folks at CSCC's call center do every day in the middle of a transition from SPD into this new community safety and communication center.

And recognize that vacancies result in mandatory use of overtime, and that can be very, very difficult and add to burnout.

So we are working to add positions so we can beef up staffing there as necessary.

And the other item I wanted to is actually a recommendation coming from President Gonzalez.

And this is the, that is included in the chair's proposed balanced budget.

This is HSD 025B001.

Just wanna, Highlight the fact that I've received a request from the city auditor's office to see if there's a way that they could collaborate with.

Madam president on on this particular CBA.

On the background on this is earlier this year, I asked the city auditor to produce a report based on 2015 audit recommendations that had not yet been implemented by the human services department.

And these recommendations are intended to help inform work to support community based organizations that have recently received community safety awards.

And so the city auditor, HSD, and awardees are all working together on that effort.

And these recommendations are really focused on how funded organizations can modify their practices to reflect the recommendations in that 2015 audit.

And those recommendations are all really, really laser focused on best practices to support organizations that are working in the area of violence interruption and violence prevention.

So the city auditor reached out to say that they were hoping that they could work with Madam, President Gonzalez, on ensuring that the work that's proposed by this report also build on existing knowledge.

There's a new 2020 review of national best practices for reducing violence, and then also working to make sure that it's aligned to help inform the work and the evaluation of HSD's Community Safety Initiative.

So just flagging that I would love the opportunity to incorporate this should the sponsor of this item support that effort.

Thank you very much.

Any additional comments on that or any related concepts?

Okay, I wanted to take a moment to thank the The sponsors of the investments as well and to lead the diversion program that we have been working with to create important first contacts with people to divert them out of criminal justice system and get them into necessary services and partnership with entities like REACH.

Thanks to the report that Council Member Herbold had requested to make sure that we were looking at how to fully fund a program like LEAD, we knew that we needed somewhere north of $3 million, even just to keep them whole.

We have kept the LEAD program whole.

We have built back that budget to $3 million and we have added half a million additional at this time.

My commitment to you, Council Member Herbold, and to the community is to continue to work to scale that number north even further given that we know that it was over $13 million, I believe, that was requested for full funding.

In this year, in this revenue shortfall week that we received to keep that number higher than the $3 million was a little bit of a challenge, but again, I'm optimistic about the potential underspend, especially in early next year for us to be able to have the conversation about how to scale that program even further, but just greatly appreciate those investments.

Council Member Strauss, I just want to make sure if you had any comments that you'd like to add on some of the investments that you had prioritized on the mental health response units.

I'm sorry, I'm getting the name of that wrong, that you had the opportunity to weigh in as well or any other council members on alternatives that they have been investing in so that the right person is responding initially.

Thank you, Chair Mosqueda.

Yes, I just want to appreciate the fact that you've included this in the chair's package.

We know that the mobile crisis team are the right team to address people who are having behavioral health crises and they're the right first responder to get there.

And we need to also invest in investigate ways that we can get these crisis responders to the places that people need them faster.

We heard at my town hall last night, the importance of having these mobile teams rather than having brick-and-mortar storefronts to meet these people where they are rather than wondering why they are not coming to the brick-and-mortar storefronts.

This is how we meet people's needs that we meet them where they are and we need to have a much larger investment in how we can address people in behavioral crisis.

So just a large appreciation, Chair, for including this in the package.

Thank you, Councilmember Strauss.

Colleagues, any additional comments or questions?

This is what the biggest point of contention was, apparently, over the last 20 And I want to make sure that we get a chance to emphasize the investments that were made.

And Ali, I want to make sure that central staff has a chance to correct me if I'm wrong.

But as we look across the various investments, including the investments in public safety, there's a direct nexus to creating safer and healthier communities that totals up to around 27 million.

Is that an accurate figure, Ali?

Yeah, that is that is correct.

So Patty, if you could scroll up a little, you'll see that carrying through for a little more so we can see the header or maybe you can.

I can't, but the overall resource in this category we are just in the first subcategories of the next category.

You'll see those investments, for example, in fire and behavioral health and other other subcategories coming up.

Great, and because I can't see the header on my end, I'm just going to read it off my printed paper here.

healthy and safe communities, total investments, excuse me, total spending, 27,028,351.

If there's any question about whether or not this council and through this chair's proposed budget is investing in public safety, again, 27,028,351 dollars invested in public safety.

That is our spending aspect of this budget.

as well as where we have tried to address where there was possible resources that were not going to be used in 2022. We discussed that at the very beginning.

Okay.

I'm not hearing anything else, Sally, for such an important topic.

We are going to go ahead and move on over.

I do want to thank all of you.

The investments that you have made here I think are absolutely helping to create greater stability and safety, helping to address concerns that we're hearing from neighbors and small businesses.

We are investing and making sure that our full hiring plan is intact, as proposed by the mayor, and where there would be money left sitting on a shelf or utilized for maybe nice to have technology but not imperative in the moment or deemed essential by the court monitor, we are able to make some of these critical investments.

So thank you very much, colleagues, and I look forward to future conversations about this.

Let's continue.

Moving on to fire and behavioral health.

This includes $6.1 million of spending and about a $0.8 million amendment that frees up some resources to support the proposals.

This includes CBO 2A1 sponsored by council member Peterson that is requesting that the city budget office develop models, costs, and timelines for citywide 24-7 mental and behavioral health response.

It includes the amendment that Council Member Straus just spoke to, HSD53B1, that would add $2.5 million to expand mobile mental and behavioral health crisis services, as well as SFD1A2, sponsored by Council Member Herbold, that would add $1.5 million to the Seattle Fire Department for 20 additional firefighter recruits.

In addition, it also includes funding in HSD57A1 sponsored by Councilmember Juarez that adds $100,000 to the Human Services Department for a new health clinic in the Lake City neighborhood.

And this is also where you'll see the resolution that Councilmember Herbold referred to previously, HSD54B1.

that would request increased funding for mental and behavioral health services.

And that may have been Council Member Lewis who spoke about it.

I forget.

But that is the resolution we referred to previously and expect to see that on the introduction referral calendar on Monday.

And I will pause there.

Wonderful.

Council Member Hurdle, did you want to add anything to any of these items?

I'm just browsing through here.

I think Allie covered it pretty well.

We did touch upon a couple of the items earlier.

Council Member Strauss spoke to the behavioral health piece.

And we did talk a little bit about the high acuity resolution about the partnerships with King County.

So not seeing any further items to add other than my appreciation to the chair for allowing the council to focus so much of its time and energy on mental and behavioral health needs for our community, and that is reflected in this area of spending as well.

And I appreciate having the time and space to work on what is now, what I've discussed before as a single budget action, which is now two separate budget actions, one to DEL. to expand mental health services provided in schools, and the other one through HSD to expand funding that we make via our interlocal agreement with King County for behavioral health services for the community through funding community health care clinics.

So really, really appreciate all of these really critical investments as We work to recover in the shadow of the pandemic, whether or not you're talking about recovering your physical health, recovering economically, or recovering as it relates to your emotional health.

All of these things are really important.

I'm really proud that our city is so focused on addressing them.

Thank you.

Thank you, Council Member Humboldt.

I want to thank all of you colleagues, Council Members Juarez, Council President Gonzalez, Council Member Strauss, Council Member Morales, Council Member Peterson, who are alone just listed on this document here, and also the co-sponsors of these various amendments for the work that you have done.

This slide with the previous two slides, because it was two full pages of public safety investments, really illuminate the council's proposed budget here and our investments in health, community health, public health, and public safety.

So please do take note of these investments here and the ways in which we are going to help make sure that we're connecting folks to the right person when they have a moment of crisis, and that we're then getting them connected to the right services.

That's the big thing we need to continue to work on.

the where people go after they have that initial touch.

But we are working very hard to make sure that if they do not need a response that requires a badge and a gun, that they do have alternatives to show up.

Many of the investments that you see here in behavioral health and our investments in firefighters and our investments in mental health providers and the community response system that we are creating in the previous slide.

are very important investments to take into context when you think about how we are investing in public safety and public health in this budget.

Council members, any additional comments?

Yes, please go ahead, Council Member Herbold.

Thank you.

Just one point I forgot to mention.

I wanted to uplift what we're doing.

I mentioned what we're doing to assist the SCC in addressing some of the vacancy issues that they have.

There's also a budget action that Allie mentioned related to the Seattle Fire Department, where we're adding $1.5 million to support the training of an additional 20 firefighter recruits in 2022 to address a higher than average vacancy rate.

Again, as background, from 2015 to 2019, an average of 53 firefighters separated from the fire department, mostly due to retirement.

In 2020, 70 firefighters separated from SFD and there have been over 70 separations to date in 2021, with more anticipated through the end of the year.

Because the fire department has a minimum daily staffing requirement, any absences of scheduled uniform staff have to be filled by other staff who are working on an overtime basis.

So with this additional funding that we're providing here in this budget, the fire department is able to expand the size of each of two planned recruit classes from 30 to 40. The historical graduation rate from recruit school is approximately 75%.

So, if 2022 results are consistent with past results, the fire department will be able to add approximately 60 new firefighters in 2022, 30 each in the middle and near the end of the year.

And the reason why we're able to do this with the fire department.

And we can't do it as it relates to the police department, putting aside differences of opinion about how many officers the police department should have.

It's a different situation for the fire department because they don't have the same artificial restraints associated with recruitment and training that the police department has.

The police department has some restraints that the fire department doesn't.

So we can actually add funding for more positions than the fire department plans to hire for in a way that we just cannot do with the police department even if we wanted to.

So really happy that we can do so with the Seattle Fire Department and part of it is because so many people want to work for this superior organization in our city.

Glad that we can really focus some of our public safety efforts in this in this area, which is a long standing over several years.

There have been deficiencies as it relates to the total number of funded positions at the at the fire department.

and just really appreciative of Madam Chair in her partnership with me and trying to address these as I've been Public Safety Chair, so thank you.

Absolutely, and I appreciate the work that you're doing and continuing to call attention to all of the other departments, especially in fire, where we are seeing higher than anticipated attrition in other areas.

This pandemic has definitely taken its toll on workforce stability in a number of areas of our city.

And so thank you for the work you're doing here to support our firefighters and the work that they do on the front line, not only for fighting fires and caring for some of our most vulnerable, but for the work that they've done, especially in this pandemic and supporting other areas of the country with fighting forest fires.

Not an easy workload by far, and it's no wonder that there's burnout.

And that's why we, Council Member Herbold and myself, really prioritize investments in mental health as well for firefighters and appreciate that there's a constant attention being drawn to the other areas of our department that need to have a focus on shoring up their staff personnel as well.

Okay, wonderful.

Well, I'm not seeing any additional hands.

Aldi, would you like to continue?

Yes, happy to.

I think we are on, we have just three categories left in this main healthy and safe communities category.

The next one is investments in food security.

This includes $5.8 million of spending.

There are two items that are related here, HSD 5B1 and HSD 27. The first item adds $5.1 million to the human services department to sustain 2021 levels of food and nutrition program funding and imposes a proviso.

The second action requests that HSD reports on the availability of state and federal funding for food programs.

So the combination of this action is meant to ensure that food programs are sustained at the same level through the first six to nine months of the year and that the expectation is that other funds will be made available through the state and federal funding that typically support investments in this space to ensure those programs can continue.

There's also a proposal sponsored by Council Member Sawant that would add $100,000 to the Human Services Department to expand a fresh produce program.

serving the Central District, as well as a proposal from Council Member Strauss, HSD 8A1, that would add $175,000 to HSD for Hot Meal Program serving Finney Ridge neighborhood.

And I will pause there.

All right, colleagues, is there anything that you'd like to flag?

Any additional investments that you've been talking to community about that you'd like to see highlighted here?

Okay, well, we did our very best colleagues to try to address the multiple requests for food security in this proposed package.

We made sure where we could to extend services.

There was an initial request to make sure that we were truing up investments in food security generally, at least through mid-year this year.

We've tried to extend that through quarter three.

to give us a little bit of additional time in case the state legislature has any additional food security assistance that we are anticipating specifically for food banks.

For example, we're also very hopeful that that Build Back Better Act will pass in Congress.

Thank you to our congressional delegation for continuing to advocate for the Build Back Better Act here within the next 10 days.

And that could include additional support for food security as well.

But we are making sure that we're investing.

Many of these programs do go year round, and then the larger one for the over 5 million that gets us through quarter three of next year with the anticipation that we will have additional support from our state and federal partners.

There has been a lot of conversation about how we ensure food security, delivery of food to those who might be isolated in their homes, especially during the pandemic, and appreciate the ongoing conversation that we need to have about a We are looking forward to those future conversations.

We have a larger food access and food security plan that we would be building upon some of the work that councilmember Morales did in her time prior to council.

Look forward to those future conversations.

This is a good example of where we had tried to prioritize any existing dollars for 2022 that were general fund and available.

The next subcategory is investments to support response to gender-based violence.

This includes $1.7 million of spending, and with just three items, I will just describe all three.

The first is HSD 4A1, sponsored by Councilmember Juarez, that would add $126,000 to the Human Services Department for programs for gender-based violence provided by an agency serving the Native community.

HSD 19B1, sponsored by Councilmember Herbold that adds $1.5 million for mobile advocacy services with flexible financial assistance for survivors of gender-based violence.

And OCR 2A1, also sponsored by Councilmember Herbold, that adds $120,000 to the Office for Civil Rights for domestic violence community expert and stakeholder workgroups.

Any additional comments or questions?

Council Member Herbold, anything else you'd like to say about the shadow pandemic here?

Council Member Juarez, anything else you'd like to say about the investments here for community in D5?

I am very happy.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you.

Thank you very much, Council Member Juarez.

Seeing no additional hands, let's continue.

Okay, and the final subcategory for investments in youth, education, arts, and culture.

This includes $6 million of spending.

Arts 2B1, sponsored by Councilmember Morales, adds $1.5 million for positions in arts to support public arts and cultural creative industry programming.

Another $1 million in ARPS 3B1 sponsored by Councilmember Strauss for organizations that did not qualify for shuttered venue operators grant funding.

I'll just highlight a few more.

DL2B1 sponsored by Councilmember Morales, $500,000 and authorizes a position in the Department of Education and Early Learning for culturally responsive afterschool programming.

Home 3B1 that is sponsored by Council Member Lewis and adds funding to support workforce development for youth experiencing homelessness.

HSD 17B1 sponsored by council member Peterson that imposes a proviso in HSD using their existing funds for childcare facilities.

And this would be specifically for a facility improvement in the university district.

And SPR 2A2 also sponsored by council member Peterson that adds $171,000 to parks for an afterschool program for resettled children who are predominantly low income living at or near Magnuson Park.

I will pause there.

Okay, colleagues, any additional questions or comments on these?

Council Member Morales?

Thank you.

I will be brief.

I just want to remind folks that The importance of investing in our creative sector, so the first CBA here is about supporting, hiring some temporary positions in the arts department to support our artists and especially through the next year with economic recovery.

And then some of the other CBAs that we have in here are to continue the programming that we began last year to support young people around arts programming, around programming that supports black girls and trans youth especially, and then some culturally appropriate and culturally responsive programming that we've talked about.

I've been here many times in this council, so I'm just thankful that the recognition of the value and importance of those programs is included here.

Excellent.

Thank you, Councilmember Morales.

Okay, are there any additional questions or comments?

We have included language to support youth job training opportunities, not only are we talking about investments in training opportunities for folks who are interested in the arts, which I'm very excited about as well, but we have included language to support job training opportunities for kiddos experiencing homelessness.

We have included language here for making sure that there's more culturally appropriate ways to create economic opportunities.

so that we can do direct investments in made-up-led organizations, and really excited about the youth pre-employment and job readiness programs that have already been spoken to.

This is a critical way for us to make sure that we have a more equitable recovery for our youth, and especially for BIPOC communities, as you see noted throughout these investments.

So thank you, colleagues.

Chair Mosqueda, so that was the last category, so that is the summary of the balancing package.

Excellent.

Well, lots of hard work went into that.

Thank you very much, Ali.

And to all central staff, some of whom were on the line ready to answer questions had you had them, folks seem a little bit ready to get into the conclusion portion here, so I will let you say any conclusion or ending comments that you may have, because we really want to make sure that folks have a sense of what is in this proposed budget.

Appreciate your time here today.

I'm not seeing any hands go up.

So I do want to thank folks for all of the investments that you've made via your amendments here.

And if you do have something to say, feel free to interrupt me.

Council members, but I will give a quick preview of what to expect next after Council Member Herbold and anybody else would like to go.

Council Member Herbold, please go ahead.

I didn't cover it.

I was gonna ask what we're doing on Friday, but sounds like you've got that covered in your what's happening next remarks.

That sounds good.

Well, let me get into that and we'll see if there's any additional questions.

So for Friday, we will have the exact same agenda with the same materials published today.

We will seek to at the beginning of that meeting, provide any updates, any clarification.

If there are any errors or adjustments that we need to note based on the materials that are published today, we'll make sure to flag that at the top of Friday's meeting.

If there are themes in terms of questions that council members are asking, we will make sure to roll those up in a public presentation as we have been working in a probable way to make sure that these conversations are transparent and that we are accountable to having our dialogue about the budget in our committee meetings here.

We are going to start our meeting on Friday morning at 9.30 a.m.

This, again, will be an opportunity for council members to ask any clarifying questions that they have of central staff, but it is sort of the last opportunity to ask those questions before your self-balancing amendments are due that same day.

This evening, we will continue our conversation with community partners who will begin dialing in to provide public comments starting at 3.30 is when public comment starts.

We open up our public, excuse me, when the signup sheet availability starts at 3.30.

That's two hours prior to when our public hearing starts.

Our public hearing is set for 5.30 this evening.

This is the second of three public hearings.

We will have the chance to hear from folks about the proposed balancing package in front of us.

I hope that individuals do take into consideration the clarification that I hope you heard today specific to public safety investments and ways in which we have identified possible resources.

The nuanced and I think very specific elements that we discussed today are much more important than a headline grabbing press release sent late in the night that tries to rile people up.

What is more important is the details in the budget, which we have spent the last three hours discussing.

So thank you for centering your comments on the investments that we are making and the revenue reality that we are facing, again, with at least a $15 million shortfall.

What we didn't cover in this discussion here is a very important element also baked into our budget, with the tenuous nature of our local economy and the national economy still recovering from COVID and the ways in which we have seen this global pandemic have an impact on workers and businesses.

We are, I think, being very fiscally responsible in holding money in our emergency funds just in case there is a continuation or worsening of our economic situation.

We, of course, are doing everything we can to mitigate for that by making sure that there's proactive and extensive investments in creating a robust and resilient local economy.

We want to drive people back to downtown and to make sure that our local economic hubs across the city are thriving.

We want to make sure workers have protections and availability for housing and childcare.

We are doing all of those things in this budget.

But we are also preparing for the possibility that there could be a prolonged impact on our local economy due to COVID.

That is a critical element of the proposed balancing package that we have offered for you.

And colleagues, I hope that you will take into consideration the importance of maintaining those reserves so that we can be prepared.

Again, we do not want to be in a position where we are being asked I look forward to hearing more from you all this afternoon.

I have a conversation about the depletion in our expected revenues and the ways in which we have offered to balance the proposed 2022 package that was released yesterday.

Again, the public hearing sign-up sheet opens at 3.30 PM.

That's two hours prior to the hearing.

You can find the public comment sign-up sheet listed on the agenda for this evening.

Please register with the same phone number you will be using to call in to ensure that your number is recognized.

A message will be sent to the registered email that you are signing up with that includes the call-in information and details.

Call the phone number to join the meeting at least 15 minutes before the public hearing begins, which is at 530. So dial in at 515. We will skip your name if you are not there.

At the hour mark each hour, we will come back and see who we've missed.

But I will not be scrolling back and forth to see if there's folks calling in just as they hear their name read.

You need to dial in 15 minutes before the committee meeting.

If we don't have you on the line, we will come back to you at the hour mark before going on to the other callers.

So please dial in.

Callers will be called upon in the order in which they've registered.

And each speaker will have one minute again.

adjusting your comments, and if you have anything else you'd like to send us, please go ahead and do so to council at Seattle.gov.

Again, if you're not able to join us this evening, on Wednesday, we will have the opportunity for our last public hearing.

That is Wednesday, excuse me, that's Thursday, not Wednesday.

Thursday, November 18th at 9.30 a.m., we will have an hour and a half dedicated to our final public hearing.

That's Thursday, November 18th.

Thank you all for all of your work.

Glad that we added this meeting.

Thank you, Councilmember Herbold for cheering on the addition of another meeting and to Council President Gonzalez for encouraging it and for welcoming it on our committee agenda here.

Appreciate your leadership, Council President.

And with that, if there's no further questions.

Thank you very much.

Thank you, central staff and everybody who made this possible that I mentioned at the top of the hour.

Have a great rest of your afternoon.

This meeting is adjourned.

We will see you at 530 tonight.

Bye-bye.

Thank you.